NAACP Protests Target Bakewell : Compton Group Backs Restaurateur in Dispute With Developer

If there is anything more bitter for Jim Jones than the prospect of losing a Compton business representing a lifetime of work, it is the irony that among those ready to close him down is another African American who has built his political fortunes and real estate empire championing economic empowerment for blacks.

But in a matter of days, a struggling restaurant that Jones has worked a dozen years to build could be padlocked unless he and his supporters--led by the Compton branch of the NAACP--persuade a real estate partnership that includes Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell to give Jones more time to pay off back rent and other debts totaling $65,000.

“He says he wants to watch out for the black community,” Royce Esters, president of the Compton NAACP, said of Bakewell. “Why not watch out for Mr. Jones, who is an African American businessman?”

In recent days, the anger of Compton’s NAACP has reached the point that it has begun picketing Bakewell and other owners of the Compton Towne Center, where Jones’ restaurant has been a fixture for years. And the protests will continue, Esters has pledged, unless the owners of Compton’s largest shopping center give Jones another chance to save Mr. J’s Family Restaurant and Sports Bar, an 8,000-square-foot establishment across the street from Compton City Hall.

“It is a human rights [issue] and it is wrong,” Esters said of the threat to Jones’ business. “No one has ever gone after Danny, and it shows that the NAACP doesn’t just go after white people. If we see something wrong, we go after it . . . [and] and we will go after Danny Bakewell just like we would go after the Ku Klux Klan.”

But Bakewell, who over the years has mounted numerous protests of his own on behalf of African American residents and businesses, said Thursday that he is dumbfounded by charges that he has been anything but fair to Jones.

“We want this man to survive,” said Bakewell, who also said he was stunned that the NAACP would think of him as anything but a friend. “I just hope [NAACP officials] are getting the right information. I support and respect the NAACP.”

And in an effort to prove he also wants to keep Mr. J’s open, Bakewell said in an interview that he would put $6,500 into an escrow account to encourage others to help pay off Jones’ back rent.

But that commitment, Bakewell said, was tempered by his knowledge of the restaurant’s long and troubled history of getting and keeping customers.

“If you go to Mr. J’s restaurant, you don’t see any people,” Bakewell said. “I can give him a break. I can give him an extension. But I’m not a restaurant operator. I can’t bring people in.”

Jones said it was Bakewell who encouraged him to open the Compton restaurant in his shopping center.

“He’s the one who got me out here in the first place. He was calling me every week, promising me that if I came out here, he would help me get . . . financing and that I could own the property,” Jones said. “He didn’t make good on any of those. I had to buy the building myself. I had to come through with my own financing.”

Jones’ restaurant was once as successful as Jones could have dreamed. It was a Sizzler then, and had the second-largest sales nationally in the chain.

But after seven years, Jones said, the business became struggle. First, he said, came a recession. Then, the riots. And by last year, Jones said, the franchise was so unsuccessful that he and the Sizzler Corp. parted company so he could try to reinvent the restaurant with a new name and theme. Bakewell, however, said Jones lost the franchise for nonpayment.

Since opening Mr. J’s, Jones said, business has been far from brisk, but has been increasing steadily enough for him to believe that, with a bit more time, he can finally erase his debts. Those debts include $200,000 owed to the city, he said, adding that officials there have agreed to give him more time.

“I am disappointed. I am angry. And, most of all, I am hurt because I am [at risk] of losing my life savings,” Jones said.

But Bakewell countered that Jones’ major problem was not the riots or the recession, but a severe and chronic lack of customers. For years, Bakewell said, he and his company had been granting Jones extensions on money owed or forgiven debt altogether.

“Every time he has had a problem, we have said, ‘OK, Mr. Jones, let’s sit down and work it out,’ ” Bakewell said.

But he also said that at some point, as a businessman, he has to take stock and determine if the restaurant can survive. To make his point, Bakewell handed over three printed sheets of paper listing Jones’ debts that had been forgiven or reorganized.

That said, Bakewell insisted he had set no deadline to foreclose on the property, though a letter had been sent to Jones stating that the procedure was imminent.

But even as Jones worries that his business could be shut down in days, the Compton NAACP has scheduled another protest on his behalf for this Saturday. And the picketing will continue, NAACP officials said, until Jones gets a reprieve.

One sticking point, according to Jones and the NAACP’s Esters, is that the owners of the Compton Towne Center continue to refuse to talk with Jones about the possibility of buying the land on which the building rests so he can obtain a loan that would erase his debts. “You can’t borrow money on a building that is on somebody else’s land,” Jones said.

Jones and NAACP officials note that Bakewell and his partners in Compton Towne Center purchased the 17-acre development some years back from the city for $500,000--about a third of its appraised value at the time of sale. That agreement provided that the new owners would make no payments for five years while also receiving more than $1 million in property improvements.

“I have paid over $500,000 [in rent] . . . he got the entire shopping center for $500,000,” Jones said.

Esters added: “We are just saying that if the city has helped [Bakewell] in the past, that he should just help this man. Just give this man, an African American businessman, a chance to make a living too.”