"I'm proud of my roots," said Rosalva Alvarez, as she stood in her beauty store on Maine Avenue, which is in the redevelopment area. "I was born in Mexico and raised in this country. I agree we need some change. But what they want to bring here is totally unrealistic. Applebee is good, but a Kabuki? And also a Trader Joe's? Come on, I don't even go to Trader Joe's."
Some opponents say that one councilwoman had told critics to "go back to [Tijuana]."
"I don't know where they got that," said Councilwoman Marlen Garcia. "What I said was 'We're striving to insure Baldwin Park doesn't look like Tijuana.' "
As he wiped down the counter of his Via-Mar Family Restaurant, Mexican immigrant Audon Diaz, 36, wonders if one day he might be pushed out too. It took him eight years just to get established, often having to repair the busted street lamps in the parking lot himself.
"It's like they want Baldwin Park in the style of Capistrano or like Hacienda Heights," Diaz said. "The restaurant industry is pretty hard to make it in. Eight years, and I'm barely hanging on. It's like the city wants to make it hard for you."
But Mayor Lozano is undaunted.
As he rode through the streets of his city, past the rows of low-slung mini malls with signs in a mix of English and Spanish, Lozano complained that downtown Baldwin Park had too many discount gift stores, too many beauty salons, too many Mexican restaurants and way too many pawnshops.
Lozano and his allies believe that mainstream retailers now fit better with Baldwin Park, where many of the residents are second-, third- and even fourth-generation Latinos with little interest in stores aimed at immigrants.
Now that the city has choices, he said, it should send a clear message to "amigo store" promoters, like those who introduce themselves with business cards decorated with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
"They're pitching their 'Latino' type agenda," Lozano said.
Anthony Bejarano, a Baldwin Park councilman and graduate of Georgetown University law school, is a fourth-generation Mexican American who says he speaks "very little Spanish."
He said that the proliferation of what the mayor calls "amigo stores" forces him to go to other cities to shop.
"I love to go to traditional Mexican restaurants. I shop at Vallarta [supermarket], but I can't get everything I need," he said. "At the end of the day, it's all Mexican restaurants here. When we want Italian, when we want sushi, where do we go? If I want a pair of Kenneth Coles, I have to go to Arcadia."
