Young Duo Helps to Turn City Around By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter The catalyst for much of the economic downturn that has long-plagued the city of San Fernando was a string of riots at San Fernando High School that occurred during the late 1970s. Although the school is technically in Pacoima, San Fernando couldn’t avoid being connected to the uprisings. As a result, the white families that had fled to the city during the 1960s began leaving in droves and, little by little “The Mission City’s” economic infrastructure began to erode. “It was white flight all the way,” says Maribel De La Torre, one of the city’s newest city council members and one of a handful of young officials spearheading what can only be classified as an economic and cultural resurgence for the 2.4 square mile city. “We just got a bad reputation and it’s taken us a long time to move beyond it,” says De La Torre, 32. “But we are making progress.” De La Torre and City Administrator Jose Pulido, 38, are both on the Business Journal’s 40 under 40 list. Of course they have had help, but they are considered among the city’s top movers and shakers. They have worked to build up a five-member council and city staff that is, after some struggles to the contrary, finally in sync on a long-term strategic growth plan. And at the heart of their efforts is a tireless drive to bring a number of projects that will help return San Fernando to its former role as a destination city. San Fernando now has its very own Starbucks, which is anchored by a new library and Mediterranean-style commercial complex that enjoys bustling pre- and post-work day crowds. A lot that sat vacant for decades is now the site of three craftsman style homes built with city and state assistance all of which sold in the $400,000 range the first week on the market earlier this year. One of Pulido’s first acts following his arrival in fall of 2001 was to help secure a $150,000 grant from the state to fund a sweeping revitalization plan for the downtown corridor. “That’s a project that kept me up at night my first few months here,” says Pulido. “I’m still pinching myself.” De La Torre has been particularly instrumental in obtaining roughly $3 million dollars in state and county grants to build a regional aquatic center at Recreation Park, which will have an Olympic size pool, as well as two smaller pools and a water park for children. Across the street, plans are also underway to build several units of senior housing. Retail center After three failed attempts by one local developer, escrow is set to close on the sale of the San Fernando swap meet and plans are to build a commercial/retail center on one end of the property and a school focusing on either the arts or high tech on the other. De La Torre is one of six children born to Mexican immigrants in San Fernando. She and her sister, Cindy Montanez, the city’s former mayor, actually sat on the dais at the same time before Montanez was elected to represent the 29th district in 2002. She began with the city as an urban planner and is in her first term on the council. Her joining the council, many say, has helped break the previous panel’s long-time 3-2 split over development plans that have left the city deadlocked over developments, spawned rumors of builder favoritism and culminated in the abrupt departure of Pulido’s predecessor in 2001. “We are clearly a united council now because we are all in agreement about what our residents want,” said De La Torre. “We understand that we can only move forward if we listen to the residents of the city. Before, the focus was not unified.” Of the roughly 24,000 residents in San Fernando, 34.4 percent are under 18 years of age; the median age is 27. For Pulido, those numbers represent concrete opportunities. And the current and planned transformations couldn’t be more personal. Pulido essentially left San Fernando, his hometown, when he enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s. He eventually went on to earn a master’s in urban planning and took a job as economic and community development director for the city of Montebello. On drives back to San Fernando to visit his parents, Pulido could see San Fernando was attempting to bring itself around, if only in fits and starts, and when an opening for an interim city administrator came up he pitched for it. But instead of an interim post, the sitting council tapped him for the job on a permanent basis, and he’s never looked back. “It was something that I viewed as an opportunity to finally help do for my own city what I’ve helped do elsewhere,” says Pulido. “I basically left here because there was nothing here to do. But now we have opportunities to thrive again. We have a young population that is driving the change, a population that I want to see go off to schools and earn degrees and come back here and bring their skills and their goals with them.” Terry Zinger is vice president for San Fernando-based Bernards Bros, a local developer that has been headquartered in the city for nearly three decades. According to Zinger, the company owns several parcels in the city, most of which are divided by Ilex Street. Previously, the city council has balked at Bernards requests for vacant parts of the street so that two of its parcels could be conjoined to make way for a new headquarters and the company was preparing to leave the city for Santa Clarita. However, Pulido and other city planners have been working with Bernards and a proposal for vacating portions of the street are set to go before the council in September. “In the context of this project, several things have come along,” said Zinger. ‘Better environment’ “I would say the city has moved aggressively to plan their development, which now creates a much better environment for companies like ours to make long-term investments that we could not have made here.” If all goes as planned, Zinger says his company could break ground on the new building, a four-story, 75,000-square-foot, Mediterranean-style complex, sometime in spring of 2004, with a construction timeline of about 14 months. “I think we’ve definitely seen the effect of what I’ll call civic focus on San Fernando as a living and working environment,” said Zinger. “We’ve had very constructive progress with this planning commission and we have to assume that they aren’t operating in a vacuum. We’ve found Jose to be extremely cooperative from the standpoint of guiding our process and giving us a heads up about what we need to do.” For Pulido, as well as De La Torre, these are heady times for San Fernando and as much as they want to, it’s often difficult to slow down and watch the transformation take place. “I tell my staff every day to enjoy the moment because it’s not going to last forever,” said Pulido.