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The Pasadena Star-News | Mon 01/20 01:54pm PST | Pat Maio
Altadena
Amid the wildfire devastation in Altadena’s business district is the sense of another looming disaster: Will restoring historic Black businesses and their culture be hindered by land speculators and a lack of aid?
Business owners are still taking stock of what happened two weeks ago.
As the Eaton fire swept into Altadena on Jan. 7, real estate broker Jihad Shakoor raced to his family’s business along Lake Avenue.
Shakoor sat in his car feeling the heat and watching as the inferno devoured the street.
Shakoor Realty and Finance, co-founded in the late 1970s by Shakoor’s father, was gone.
“I was stunned,” said the shellshocked Shakoor, a distant cousin of the late Black professional baseball player Jackie Robinson.
Scores of small businesses along Altadena’s business district were reduced to ashes. Today, its streets and parking lots are dotted with cars burnt to ash-colored metal frames, their windows shattered and tires reduced to their metal treads. Pulverized glass, clay roof tiling and bricks litter the sidewalks and roads.
Red-colored posters duct-taped to concrete walls left standing along Lake Avenue mark structures as unsafe.
The same scene of destruction is found along Mariposa Street, where a hardware store, townhomes and a nursery burned to the ground, and again to the west along North Fair Oaks Avenue — a predominantly Black neighborhood.
In the months before the fire, the local chamber was campaigning to attract more mom-and-pop businesses. The fire dashed those hopes, said Larry Hammond, a board member of the Altadena Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s devastating to see,” said Hammond, who walked the streets on Friday for the first time since the fire began Jan. 7, likening the business district to a “war zone.”
He struggled with the loss of Mariposa Townhomes where he first moved to Altadena three decades ago.
“This is where I first brought home my oldest daughter, Micaela, 27 years ago,” he said. “Everything is burned down.”
In his role as a chamber leader, Hammond worries about the future of Black-owned businesses.
Will they survive a long rebuild phase? Will the Black community lose its cultural identity in the business community as it rebuilds? How soon will federal aid arrive?
The Altadena Heritage, a nonprofit interested in the city’s cultural heritage, estimates one-fifth of the city’s 43,000 residents are Black.
The minority population began moving into Altadena west of Lake in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to urban renewal, turnover in housing stock and freeway construction.
Now community leaders fear the rebuild could take years, and speculators could make over the city into something else.
Real estate speculators are ready are eyeing Altadena and other fire-ravaged parts of Los Angeles, eager to sign deals and profit from fire victims struggling with how they’ll rebuild their homes and businesses.
On Tuesday, Jan. 14, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order aimed at cracking down on land speculators who make “aggressive and unsolicited cash offers” to buy properties touched by the wildfires.
The foundation and others who live in Altadena say the community’s history is defined by “redlining,” a practice in which people of color were denied or limited financial services, such as home loans in certain neighborhoods.
“People are hurt and damaged, and investors and sharks are out already, sending text messages saying that they’re interested in their property with all-cash offers,” said Shakoor, who said Newsom’s order is a start to deal with these speculators. “I know of a Black woman whose home was burning down, and the investor approached the family on the street, literally.”
Redlining contributed to an east-west polarization in housing along racial lines in Altadena in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Altadena Heritage.
Now, the Eaton fire and its devastation is tearing at old racial wounds.
According to Hammond, people living downhill in Pasadena rarely drove to Altadena’s Black-owned business district to eat breakfast at the half-century-old Little Red Hen Coffee Shop along North Fair Oaks, or pick up tools at the local hardware store on Mariposa, or attend happy hour at Rancho’s Bar, where the local chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity occasionally met.
With all of it gone, he frets that some might never return.
Artist Roberto Marques, left, of Dallas, Texas places candles as Rosalinda Miranda of Pasadena kisses a candle at a makeshift memorial during a vigil for the victims of the Eaton fire at Lake Avenue and Villa St. in Pasadena on Saturday, January 18, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
“The office was a haven,” says broker Jihad Abdus-Shakoor on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 for all the people who stopped in at his family’s business Shakoor Realty and Finance lost in the Eaton fire in Altadena. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Artist Roberto Marques of Dallas, Texas lowers his head in prayer during a vigil for the victims of the Eaton fire at a makeshift aerial with wooden crosses at Lake Avenue and Villa St. in Pasadena on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
The Theosophical Library Center along Lake Avenue in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. How will all the tons of debris left behind by Los Angeles County’s unprecedented wildfires be dealt with? (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Melissa Michelson, left, along with SGV progressive alliance and Altadena not for sale Protest at Lake Avenue and Woodbury in Altadena about the people trying to buy up property in Altadena and Pasadena on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
The Aldi Store along Lake Avenue in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
A charred half mast American flag still flies as wind continues to blow through the area on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 at the corner of Lake Avenue and Altadena Drive where businesses were destroyed in the Eaton fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Artist Roberto Marques, left, of Dallas, Texas places candles as Rosalinda Miranda of Pasadena kisses a candle at a makeshift memorial during a vigil for the victims of the Eaton fire at Lake Avenue and Villa St. in Pasadena on Saturday, January 18, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
On Friday, a coalition of advocates urged Los Angeles County elected officials for an equitable recovery for victims of the Eaton Fire.
Residents and advocates gathered at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest Black congregations of this denomination in Pasadena, to join a rally for rebuilding.
“The thing that makes me the most upset is knowing that the vultures are circling, knowing that my neighborhood will never look the same, knowing that the people are displaced and being taken advantage of,” said Donny Kincey who lost his home on West Poppyfields Drive, where he stored artwork and ran his business, OstracizedGenius.com,as a side gig to his day job as a second-grade teacher assistant and co-director of the afterschool program at Pasadena’s private Chandler School.
“I want to make sure that we fight, we stay, we don’t sell out no matter what,” said Kincey, who lost his artwork and t-shirt streetwear brand business in the fire.
“The neighborhood has changed a lot. The demographic has changed totally,” he said. “I know what these properties are worth, with or without homes on them. I know that people come into the neighborhood and tear these houses down and build the houses that they want. There are lots of houses being turned into multi-unit apartments.”
Chris Larson, owner of the Rancho Bar along Lake, said that he plans to rebuild the bar that attracted customers from “all walks of life,” including the local chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, a historically Black collegiate fraternity met regularly at his establishment.
“Those guys from the fraternity came in often. It was great,” said Larson, who met his wife Christina at the bar. “Hopefully we can start it up again.”
Barb Shay, owner of the Little Red Hen Coffee Shop along North Fair Oaks, lost her restaurant in the fire.
“I’m not mentally or emotionally ready to go see it,” said Shay on Sunday of her burned down restaurant that her mother, Rena, opened in 1969. “I’m still in mourning.”
Shay isn’t sure what the North Fair Oaks business district will look like after it’s rebuilt. This district is located about a mile west of Lake Avenue, connected by East Mariposa Street, along which flames engulfed several homes, including the landmark McNally mansion, originally built for map making tycoon Andrew McNally during the last decade of the 19th century.
“The land speculators are going to be here,” she said. Related Articles Business | Seal Beach restaurant will host benefit concert for victims of Los Angeles fires Business | Despite dangerous winds, firefighters make progress on Palisades, Eaton fires Business | Should some parts of Los Angeles never rebuild? Business | Firefighters gain upper hand after 80-acre Bonsall fire forces evacuations Business | Water quality still undergoing daily tests in Pacific Palisades, Pasadena area for drinking safety
Shay is considering different options to rebuild on a temporary basis, including a food truck, renting a commercial kitchen to prepare food and hire a food delivery service like DoorDash or UberEats for take-outs, or even setting up a tent and temporary kitchen on the land where her restaurant once stood.
When her mother ran the diner, comedians Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson and Redd Foxx would regularly stop by for delicacies such as catfish, grits and shrimp, Shay said.
Gone are signed photos on the restaurant’s walls from the three comedians; President Barack Obama; Floyd Norman, an artist with the Walt Disney Animation Studios; Don Cornelius, the host of dance and music show Soul Train, Sophia Loren; and other Hollywood stars.
“I think that general contractors are going to try and come through and do cookie-cutter houses,” she said. “I don’t think things will be rebuilt in the same character that they were.”
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of The Fox’s Restaurant that was destroyed during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of the Aldi store that was destroyed during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of Altadena Hardware during the aftermath of the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of The Fox’s Restaurant during the aftermath of the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of The Fox’s Restaurant that was destroyed during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)
Larry Hammond, Altadena chamber of commerce board member in front of The Fox’s Restaurant that was destroyed during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)