Chris Hammond
Title:
Chief executive
Organization:
Capital Vision Equities
Born:
1956; Pittsfield, Mass.
Education:
B.A. in government at Pomona College, J.D. from UCLA
Career Turning Point:
Losing a city council campaign in 1991
Most Admired Person:
His father
Hobbies:
Golf and his children
Personal:
Married, five children aged 7 months to 17 years
Developer Chris Hammond pushes renewal of urban core by pursuing housing, retail projects
A former political campaign manager who worked for Tom Bradley and Jesse Jackson, Chris Hammond realized that as a political operative he might never make enough of a living to give his family what he wanted it to have. In the early 1990s, while working in tax-credit syndication, where people invest in tax credits for affordable housing developments, Hammond realized that type of housing was a way to enter the development business without much capital. He was in the right place at the right time when, in the wake of the riots in 1992 and the Northridge earthquake in 1994, there was an influx of public investment in urban development. Today, Hammond’s Capital Vision Equities has added retail and market-rate residential to its affordable housing base. It is best known for its Chesterfield Square project at Slauson and Western avenues. Other high-profile projects are the conversion of the Pacific Electric Building in downtown Los Angeles into market-rate housing and the redevelopment of Santa Barbara Plaza, a long blighted Crenshaw shopping center that Magic Johnson once tried to reinvigorate.
Question:
What did you know about affordable housing when you got into the business?
Answer:
Well, I had learned a little bit about development from the tax-credit-syndication work, so I had a couple of years under my belt. I also was working with a nonprofit corporation that had built an affordable housing project. But other than that I knew nothing, but had a desire to be involved in the community.
Q: Do we need to come up with a strategy to provide affordable housing for the citizens of Los Angeles?
A: More units are going out of service than we’re actually building within the city. I believe that home ownership is really going to be the solution. I think it’s going to involve more density within the city.
Q: But isn’t there still an issue with scarcity of land?
A: We need to think outside the box in terms of the way we look at our planning. That means sideyards being reviewed differently. It means looking at how it is we can create open spaces for kids to play in, possibly through some common play areas as opposed to just having row housing. We do have land. There are industrial sites that may have some environmental issues that the government can effectively think through how to clean up.
Q: What is your motivation for being involved in affordable housing?
A: We are certainly in it to make money. At the same time, there are easier ways to make a living and you wouldn’t do this if you didn’t have some underlying interest in trying to serve the community and to try to impact people who are poor.
Q: What’s the latest on Santa Barbara Plaza?
A: Back in February we received the exclusive right to develop that project. We have done a great deal of work in terms of assembling properties there. There are 37 different properties that need to be tied up and there are over 200 tenants that exist inside the center.
Q: Are these just retailers and restaurants and office tenants who can be moved easily?
A: There are a number of nonprofit corporations that provide some really important services to the community that need to continue to exist in that service area. Keeping them in that service area is going to require a great deal of handholding on our part.
Q: What is the scope of the project?
A: The project is going to be in excess of 300,000 square feet. The dollars involved are somewhere around $85 million. That’s for the retail component and we are contemplating other components.
Q: Do you have that much money?
A: We anticipate that this project can generate over $22 million in annual revenue. The project already had about $3 million from years past. The city has made a request for $10 million to be set aside in block grant dollars.
Q: Do you have the support of those with access to the money to fill whatever holes you find?
A: We recently had a big meeting in the Santa Barbara Plaza parking lot where all the elected officials for that area came together and made commitments from each of their bags of money to kick in and make this happen.
Q: Who was there?
A: Congresswoman Diane Watson’s office. State Assemblyman Herb Wesson. Kevin Murray, who’s a state senator. (County Supervisor) Yvonne Burke and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Q: How do the state of the economy and the events of Sept. 11 factor into what you’re trying to do?
A: It’s a concern, but it’s not a concern. This is an area that is massively under-retailed. As a result, there are services that are obviously lacking; for example, a bookstore. We don’t have a major bookstore within miles and miles of this particular area.
Q: If Magic Johnson couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can make Santa Barbara Plaza happen?
A: I don’t think we’re trying to do this independent of Magic Johnson. We’ve taken a big tent approach to the project. I have gone back and taken into the project virtually every developer who was a part of the project. So some of the partners who were partners with Magic are involved. We have a positive ongoing dialogue with the Magic Johnson group. We have asked them for and received letters of intent from a number of their entities that they own to be included in the Santa Barbara Plaza project including 24-Hour Fitness.
Q: So you have no obstacles?
A: I think there’s less capital, there’s cheaper capital, but there’s less capital in the marketplace. People are more risk averse in what they do. On the other hand, I think Santa Barbara Plaza is the most compelling piece of urban real estate in the country and I think that supercedes the fact that there is a lot of concern about risk out there.
Q: What is the relationship between the economy and the ability to build affordable housing?
A: There are some people who were doing Internet-type trading, day trading, things like that with their money who are looking at real estate now as a stable investment.
Q: Is it difficult to be an African-American developer in Los Angeles?
A: I think people have a tendency to do two things with you as an African American developer. One is presume that you don’t know what you’re doing technically and think you are a political person. They also assume that you are less interested in making a profit because you are doing this hard work. That said, there are some opportunities that maybe wouldn’t come to me otherwise. My partner, (Jerry Katell of Katell Properties, who is white) who’s done a Herculean job in terms of the Chesterfield Square project, has gotten a lot less press than I have. He’s as deserving as I am, but there’s something a little more interesting in talking about how I’m coming at it.
