Downtown L.A. Markets Finally Making a Move : Produce Sellers Establish New Roots at Modern Site

After decades of anticipation, moving day has finally arrived for Los Angeles’ bustling downtown produce markets.

Although the move--from cramped quarters at picturesque turn-of-the-century marketplaces to automation-era concrete and steel facilities--covers only a few blocks, it reaches across a century in time.

Some merchants at the old 7th Street market still remember the shiny metal rings attached to posts outside their fathers’ stalls that an earlier generation of peddlers used to tie the reins of their vegetable-laden, horse-drawn wagons.

Next door, at the new, $90-million Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market on Central Avenue, a streamlined 20th-Century version of the old marketplace offers a startling contrast. Loading docks accommodate rows of huge, shiny, semitrailer trucks that are loaded and unloaded with automated forklifts that move large pallets of fruits and vegetables. And the 30-acre facility--three times the size of each of Los Angeles’ two old downtown produce markets--has enough parking and maneuvering space to accommodate a constant flow of traffic during the early morning peak hours of trade.

Glad to Move

About 25 of the area’s largest produce wholesalers are making the move. And, although their families have occupied stalls at the old 7th Street and 9th Street markets for generations, they betray not a trace of nostalgia.

“I don’t miss a thing. No regrets,” said Art LaLonde, 60, whose Valley Fruit & Produce Co., one of the largest in the business, recently moved to the new facilities after 50 years at one of the old markets.

“It’s like moving into a new house,” LaLonde said. “And we’ve been looking forward to it for 20 years.”

Most merchants agree that the move was long overdue. The aging markets, built in an era of horse-drawn wagons and small trucks, did not fill the industry’s changing needs as it grew into a $1-billion enterprise and entered the age of automation and mass transportation.

Fewer Local Farmers

“When my family first started out, the wholesalers bought their merchandise from local farmers maybe as far away as the San Fernando Valley or Venice,” LaLonde said. “By the time I started in the business, we brought in merchandise from Northern California and maybe a little from the Northwest.”

Today, the new wholesale market--billed as the largest-volume wholesale produce terminal in the country and the center of Los Angeles’ 12-block produce district just south of downtown--ships and receives produce from around the world. The 7th Street and 9th Street markets, crowded with a larger number of smaller produce houses, tend to sell for consumption in the Los Angeles area, said Dick Mount, executive officer of the Associated Produce Dealers and Brokers of Los Angeles.

Despite their preeminence in the business, the large produce companies at the new wholesale market nevertheless serve a range of customers--from large grocery store chains and restaurants to mom-and-pop businesses, and even street peddlers such as Alfredo Flores, who goes there every morning to load his pickup truck with vegetables and fruit to sell in Latino neighborhoods.

Gets Busy Early

Hours before the sun peeked over the top of the new market one recent morning, bleary-eyed buyers strolled on the docks amid the perfume and color of fruit displays--grapes, nectarines, cantaloupes, tomatoes. Inside, others wound their way carting peaches and asparagus through aisles stacked high with cherries, grapes, squash, green beans, potatoes. Some salesmen took phone orders, others filled out receipts for buyers on the premises.

Through an interpreter, Flores told merchant Rick Moreno in Spanish that he had purchased a pallet of nectarines for $6 the day before, hinting that he wanted to buy another for the same price today.

“Tell him to come back yesterday,” Moreno said, smiling.

It’s a typical exchange in the highly competitive business with a strong tradition of haggling. A favorite buyer’s comment is, “I can get it a dollar cheaper down the street,” Moreno said.

“It’s like a poker game,” he said. “Do you call their bluff or not?”

Moreno’s father, Dick, whose family has been in the business for four generations, said that he and his fellow merchants had been talking about moving to new facilities for several decades.

Threatened to Leave

A threat by the merchants in the mid-1970s to move outside the city spurred Mayor Tom Bradley to initiate proposals for building a new wholesale market in the city. Plans were stalled four years ago when merchants became alarmed over projected higher rents at the new facilities.

They were drawn back into the project, however, when they were allowed to become part-owners in the project through 15-year lease-purchase agreements. The arrangement provides for the merchants to eventually become owners of 80% of the market, in partnership with the developer, Birtcher Pacific, which will retain 20% ownership. The market was financed with about $63 million in private funds and $26 million in federal and city money.

Although there was hesitancy among some of the older merchants to make the move, demand for the 88 warehouses at the five-building complex has outstripped supply, according to a spokesman for the development company. About half the tenants have moved in, and the rest expect to do so by the end of the month, he added.

“If I didn’t have two sons in the business with me, at our age--my brother and I--we probably wouldn’t have moved,” Dick Moreno said, pointing out the “confusion” of moving equipment and setting up shop anew. “But I encouraged my two sons to move because of their future. They had to move to grow or they wouldn’t survive.”

Higher Lease Payments

Moreno, like others at the new facility, is quick to note that the monthly payment of 87 cents a square foot is about three times higher than they paid at their old quarters. Most merchants agree, however, that the improved working conditions are worth the added expense.

They anticipate that the more efficient facilities will result in increased productivity and savings in labor costs, as well as giving them an edge in the competitive business. Extensive in-house cold-storage facilities, for instance, have saved merchants the expense of transporting unsold produce at the end of the day to other storage facilities. Also, merchants at the new facilities no longer have to worry about having their delivery trucks blocked for hours at a time because of traffic congestion.

Sitting in his spacious, upstairs suite of offices carpeted in dusty blue, Dick Moreno said: “I never believed I’d sit in a produce office like this. It’s really a pleasure. I only wish I were 20 years younger.”

Peddled From Wagon

Moreno’s grandfather, who immigrated from Italy when he was a boy, peddled fruit and vegetables on the streets of Los Angeles from his horse-drawn wagon.

But, like others among the old-time Italian and Jewish family merchants who after generations in the business are looked upon as its leaders, the Morenos now complain about a new generation of merchants--mostly Latino and Asian immigrants--who work on the “fringes,” out of small shops and corner lots, and fail to meet industry wage and sanitation standards.

Moreno earlier recalled how his father “would take his old truck and go to the San Fernando Valley” in the early 1900s to pick and pack his own merchandise for sale in town. Now, however, Moreno complained about unfair competition from new immigrants who will drive a whole family to Bakersfield and arrange to pick a farmer’s field, then return to undersell their competitors in Los Angeles.

Ready to Take Over

The vacuum left at the old markets by the move of the big produce houses to the new wholesale market, as well as by the retirement of old merchants, is quickly being filled by the newcomers.

“The old-line Italian and Jewish immigrants have become the biggest companies in the industry,” said Mount of the merchants association. “Now the Latinos and Asians are your Jews and Italians of the early 1900s.”

The industry has attracted succeeding generations of immigrants because it is relatively easy to get into, Mount said. “If you have enough guts and a little money to back you, you get a truck and start selling in your neighborhood.”

The old and the new continue to coexist side by side on Central Avenue. The different worlds share a common rhythm, each in a flurry of furious commercial activity that ends each day as the sun begins to peek over the markets’ rooftops.