If Forever 21 doesn't find a large expanse of land soon, it could leave Los Angeles -- taking important manufacturing jobs with it.
"That's going to be really detrimental to Los Angeles because we pump in hundreds of millions of dollars here," said Lee, who was recently appointed by the mayor to the city's Industrial Development Authority.
Lee and Forever 21 founder Don Chang were two of several business leaders who accompanied Villaraigosa on his trade mission to Asia in 2006. Six months later, Forever 21 gave $100,000 to Villaraigosa's successful campaign to elect three new school board members. In recent months, the company agreed to give $1 million to Villaraigosa's Million Trees L.A. initiative, which encourages residents to plant more trees.
The company also gave $150,000 to Villaraigosa's staging of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Century City last year, a donation so significant that Lee was given a speaking role at the event's closing reception at the Griffith Park Observatory.
Tezozomoc said that such contributions make it difficult for Villaraigosa to deal fairly with the former farm site.
Szabo, on the other hand, said the mayor has "an absolute obligation" to ask businesses such as Forever 21 to contribute to such causes as a recent community cleanup on the Westside.
"I mean, we're talking about planting trees and donating T-shirts for kids," Szabo said.
Supporters of the proposed development say a distribution center would create much-needed jobs in South Los Angeles. Foes say the neighborhood, which sits near the freight route known as the Alameda Corridor, does not need more warehouses.
A city zoning officer is expected to decide this month whether to require an environmental impact report on the proposed distribution center, which probably would add a year to the approval process.
Opponents have forwarded hundreds of e-mails to the city's planning department, saying the 2,400 daily truck trips expected to be generated by the project merit a lengthier review.
"At this point, there is no way any diesel-truck, industrial warehouse is going to do any good in that community," said Leslie Radford, spokeswoman for the South Central Farm support committee.
Radford contends the project would add to the neighborhood's air pollution and create "dead-end jobs."
