Rail Station Renovation Runs About a Year Late : Project Is Part of Watts Development

Every day, Eloise Williams looks out her office window and sees the Watts Train Station, a national historic landmark built in 1904.

But it is not a view she likes. The walls of the small beige building are splashed with graffiti and political posters. The windows are boarded. The dirt around it sprouts a bright red-and-white sign proclaiming it a city restoration project--”Completion: July 1987”--but Williams has yet to see it happen.

“It’s an eyesore,” she said. “People always come in and ask me, ‘What are they going to do?’ We’d appreciate it if they would do something.”

Delayed 6 Months

Refurbishment of the single-story, wood-framed structure at 103rd Street and Grandee Avenue has been delayed more than six months because of technical problems in initiating contracts for the work, according to Bill Brown, the Watts project manager for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.

Original estimates called for the station restoration to cost about $310,000--but those numbers were 3 or 4 years old by the time bids came in, Brown said. The prices that contractors quoted, ranging from $532,000 to $1.1 million, caused redevelopment officials to scrap the bids and start over from scratch, he said.

“We said, ‘Let’s go back and rebid this and get it right this time,’ ” Brown said.

Other less important technical problems have also delayed the work, he said. But those problems appear to be ironed out, and the agency is expecting to start the work by the end of the year. It is likely the work will cost just over $500,000--an amount the agency considers reasonable, he said--and the project should be completed by next summer, Brown said.

$28-Million Redevelopment

Watts residents, meanwhile, expressed less concern about the delays than excitement over the project. The refurbished station will become a new ornament in the community’s $28-million redevelopment plan, which since 1969 has resulted in three major apartment complexes, a new health center and two gleaming new shopping centers in a neighborhood badly burned during the Watts riots.

“I remember when this area was tacky, tacky, “ said Byron King, 36, a lifelong Watts resident who has watched the community transformation. “Now I’m proud to live here.”

Bill Benfield, 60, a longtime maintenance worker in Watts, said he eagerly looks forward to the refurbishment of the station--a favorite reminder of his childhood. He recalled when he could spend a dime there to board the old Red Car train and travel to points from San Pedro to Santa Monica if he was inclined to make transfers.

“On Saturday mornings you would see people catching the Red Car to go downtown to do their shopping,” Benfield remembered. “(Those cars) were fast, quick, no waiting. You could depend on them. If you had to be there at 8 o’clock, you’d be there at 8 o’clock. They came rain or shine or flood--whatever.”

Although the last of them came more than 20 years ago--they gave way to an era of freeways--the newly planned 27-mile light-rail line from Long Beach to Los Angeles will be running again past the historic station beginning in 1992 or 1993, city officials said. Work on that project is well under way next to the building.

The station, meanwhile, will be mostly for looks--and for use by the city’s Department of Water and Power, which is planning a small office in the old structure. Rail travelers who whisk past it will see something that has endured the best and the worst in Watts’ history, Benfield said.

“What amazed everybody is that during the Watts riots they burned down everything in sight,” Benfield remembered. “But they never touched that building. For some strange reason, they never touched it.”