By Emil Guillermo
The Record - Aug 13, 2005
STOCKTON — The Little Manila Foundation has enlisted help of property-owning residents in order to revive and rebuild the struggling neighborhood south of downtown Stockton.
It’s a tactic that may help the foundation win its nearly three-year battle to be named the master developer of the area, at one time the largest community of Filipinos outside of the Philippines.
Unlike developers who tear down blighted areas and raze buildings to generate profit, the foundation’s application to be the area’s master developer will include plans to recruit equity-owning homeowners to hand over their assets in exchange for residential units the foundation will build. The homeowner-partners will participate in profits and play a key role in determining the future of the historic district. So far, details of the future developments are being worked out.
“They are willing to use the equity of their property as an investment in the entire development project,” said Elena Mangahas, the co-chair of the Little Manila Foundation. “The homeowner is a partner in the whole process, and their equity gives leverage for bank loans.”
One of the first “owner-partners” is Arturo Manganaan, 55. He lives with three generations of his Filipino-American family in a Victorian home on Sonora Street, part of the eight-block Little Manila section just south of Lafayette Street between California and El Dorado streets. The house is almost fully paid for and is worth around $300,000, said Manganaan, who had been uncertain about future redevelopment in the area.
Now, as an owner-partner, Manganaan no longer fears the bulldozers or the inevitable relocation from Little Manila.
In exchange for the equity in his home, Manganaan will become owner of two condominium units in the project, roughly equal to his current equity. In addition, the family can stay in their existing home until relocated to a transition unit, with the option to buy that unit when the entire project is completed, Manganaan said.
Manganaan, who nearly cashed out his equity to buy more houses elsewhere, decided to stay put and partner with Little Manila.
“I see advantages with their plan,” Manganaan said. He thinks downtown real estate will boom, and he feels the prices for condos in the Little Manila project will benefit from other downtown efforts, such as the new arena and the Hotel Stockton. “I’m speculating a bit,” he admitted.
Vince Reyes, a Filipino-American and Stockton native who works with Urban Legacy, Little Manila’s development partner, sees the partnership as being a “socially responsible” developer.
“The idea is not just to wipe out a neighborhood, scrape it and build something for profit, like an apartment or strip mall,” Reyes said. “It’s really to rebuild that community with community participation.”
The approach impressed Mayor Ed Chavez, who will join members this morning to clean up one of the neighborhood’s landmarks, the Ilo Ilo Circle Club and Apartments. He praised the foundation as “folks who should be looked to in terms of what we do in the future.”
The Little Manila Foundation also is attempting to buy landmark buildings on its own. The group is in escrow to buy the Mariposa Hotel, an abandoned residential building on Lafayette Street that — along with the Rizal Social Club and the Emerald Restaurant — is one of the remaining historical sites in the neighborhood.
In May of 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., named the three buildings to its list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places.
Urban Legacy and the foundation plan to build condos, retail business shops, a Filipino museum and a community cultural center. Rising home prices have made the condo project viable, said Jim Hammett, principal of Urban Legacy.
