New Faces and a Contentious Revival (Part 1 of 2)

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

A more affluent crowd is slowly being drawn to downtown Santa Ana, Calif., sometimes at the expense of older businesses.

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: October 30, 2011

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Business has never been slower at Mina Bridal, which sells billowing taffeta ballroom dresses in colors like hot pink and electric blue for quinceañeras, the traditional 15th birthday celebration for Mexican girls.

Mina Madriles, who has run the downtown store for nearly three decades, said that a generation ago girls would have elaborate parties just as their parents had — where a $1,000 dress was just a fraction of the expense. Now, she is giving away her dresses to some families who hire her to coordinate the party at their homes to save money.

“Nobody has any money anymore; there’s nothing we can do,” Ms. Madriles said.

Fourth Street — also known as Calle Cuatro — has long been the center of Latino business in Orange County, the place where Mexican immigrants could find nearly anything they might have looked for in their homelands. Along some stretches, it is impossible to hear anything but Spanish. The signs beckon customers to travel to Guadalajara or buy a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots for a “super discuento,” and the sidewalk vendors shout, “Frutas, frutas,” as they call attention to their freshly cut coconuts and mangos.

But as the economy has soured, many of these stores have struggled to stay afloat. Some stores closed, others asked their landlords for a reduction in rent. At the same time, several property owners began pressing to create a group to improve downtown Santa Ana.

The owners, who were mostly white, were determined to make it more welcoming to English-speaking clients and bring in customers from more affluent parts of Orange County. What they really wanted to do, opponents said, was scrub away any suggestion that it is an immigrant hub, in a city that is 85 percent Latino. Fiesta Marketplace changed its name to “East End,” and the pink buildings that might evoke a Mexican plaza were repainted in muted hues. A few stores put up signs proclaiming, “Stop ethnic cleansing.”

Supporters of the changes say any charge of racism ignores the fact that nearly all of the new businesses that have opened in the last two years are owned and operated by Latinos.

But what is largely left unsaid is that those shop owners and their customers are second- and third-generation Latinos, often far less interested in buying the “goods from back home” that attract more recent arrivals. This generation has more money to spend and is more like the well-heeled shoppers one would find throughout Southern California.

“I don’t want to go someplace else to buy my suits,” said Carlos Bustamante, a city councilman and Santa Ana native, the son of Mexican immigrants. “There should be options for everybody here. The city is not changing ethnically; it’s changing socioeconomically.”

On one corner of Fourth Street, a restaurant that served Mexican seafood for decades is being replaced with a high-end hamburger joint. Farther down, a longtime jeweler closed its doors this year. But a T-shirt and tattoo supply shop a block away says business has never been better, as high school students stop in daily.

“All of them are children of immigrants,” said Danielle Barragan, the owner of the store. “Their parents might not want to spend the money, but they will give it to their children, and they will come spend it here.”

But business has dried up for the dozens of quinceañera shop owners like Ms. Madriles. Her husband,  Adolfo Lopez, was one of just two immigrants on the board of the Downtown Property Business Improvement District, the group promoting the area. But he was forced to resign when the couple did not pay the taxes required by the group.

Ms. Madriles echoes much of the anger of the older merchants downtown: “What are we paying for? They don’t do anything for us. They only care about nightlife and bringing in the wealthy, but those people aren’t going to help my business.
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