HOPE FOR BLIGHTED AREA SINGLE-FAMILY HOME DEVELOPMENT SET.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - An area once noted for its crime-ridden four-plexes is being sold for a single-family home development that Lancaster officials believe will improve the neighborhood.

Lancaster is selling a 79-lot property located between Avenues I and H-12 and between Beech and Elm Avenues for $1.7 million to Avenue I Trust Homes LLC. It is anticipated the company will begin construction of the homes in 2004.

``It was a terrible mess - now it's being cleaned up,'' said Mayor Frank Roberts.

In October 1992 the city launched an anticrime effort called Operation High Desert Storm. The program's aim was to get rid of blighted conditions in the north downtown area, an area that had crime-ridden multifamily housing units.

In the year before Operation High Desert Storm began, 87 felony arrests were recorded in the area. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had stepped up patrols in the area, but the city began acquiring property in the area and demolishing mostly vacant fourplexes that attracted drug dealers and prostitutes.

The land acquisitions totaled $1.6 million, according to the staff report.

The city's redevelopment leaders reached an agreement to sell the land to a home developer in the mid-1990s, but the project fell through. At the time, the region was in the midst of a severe recession.

``The housing market wasn't strong then and they decided not to go forward with the project,'' said Mark Bozigian, Lancaster's assistant to the city manager for redevelopment. ``The housing market is stronger now and we have high hopes.''

Avenue I Trust Homes LLC is a partnership between MBK Homes Ltd., a division of Mitsui & Co. Ltd., the world's 13th-largest corporation as rated by Fortune magazine, and Community Foundation Land Trust, a wholly owned subsidiary of the California Community Foundation.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com