Under the 10 Freeway: Immigrant businesses scraped by while landlord dodged Caltrans
Rachel Uranga, Matt Hamilton, Ruben Vives
Los Angeles Times.
Wed, November 15, 2023
The 10 Freeway fire destroyed the livelihoods of more than a dozen small business operators, mainly immigrants. Caltrans says the company leasing the lot was far behind on rent even as it illegally sublet it out in pieces at high rates.
Wed, November 15, 2023
The 10 Freeway fire destroyed the livelihoods of more than a dozen small business operators, mainly immigrants. Caltrans says the company leasing the lot was far behind on rent even as it illegally sublet it out in pieces at high rates.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
For more than decade, Rudy Serafin showed up to his makeshift office underneath the 10 Freeway as the sun came out and the roar of the morning commute shook the ground below his feet.
With a generator, his cellphone and a portable toilet, the 49-year-old immigrant from Michoacán, Mexico, worked alongside a dozen others operating small businesses in spaces they rented between the concrete columns holding up the interstate. They were mechanics, truckers, garment suppliers, recyclers and pallet distributors, struggling to get by in the region’s economy. They paid rent to a Calabasas businessman who leased the land from Caltrans and, according to court records filed by the agency, illegally sublet it to them at far higher rates.
On Saturday, many of the renters’ dreams went up in the pallet-fueled inferno that caused such severe damage to the freeway that it is expected to be closed for weeks.
While officials say the cause of the fire was arson, many who worked there, with no fire alarms or sprinklers, say it was a disaster years in the making.
For more than decade, Rudy Serafin showed up to his makeshift office underneath the 10 Freeway as the sun came out and the roar of the morning commute shook the ground below his feet.
With a generator, his cellphone and a portable toilet, the 49-year-old immigrant from Michoacán, Mexico, worked alongside a dozen others operating small businesses in spaces they rented between the concrete columns holding up the interstate. They were mechanics, truckers, garment suppliers, recyclers and pallet distributors, struggling to get by in the region’s economy. They paid rent to a Calabasas businessman who leased the land from Caltrans and, according to court records filed by the agency, illegally sublet it to them at far higher rates.
On Saturday, many of the renters’ dreams went up in the pallet-fueled inferno that caused such severe damage to the freeway that it is expected to be closed for weeks.
While officials say the cause of the fire was arson, many who worked there, with no fire alarms or sprinklers, say it was a disaster years in the making.
The efforts of the largely immigrant business operators lie in ruins after the 10 Freeway fire.
(Eric Thayer / For The Times)
“I lost everything,” Serafin said. “We are not educated people. Most of the people are people that crossed the border, work hard, or maybe grew up here. But we are working-class people. We break our back to barely make a good living.”
Serafin sold hangers, elastic and wiring to the garment industry, and had been trying to unload the half a pallet of hand sanitizer that helped fuel the flames.
Their landlord, Apex, owned by Ahmad Anthony Nowaid, had failed to pay rent on the 48,000-square-foot triangular lot at South Alameda and East 14th streets for more than a year, and owed $78,000, according to Caltrans, which sued the company for back rent in September.
The property was one of five that Caltrans was attempting to evict Apex and another Nowaid company from, including a plot along the 5 Freeway in Sun Valley and another a block away from the fire. All told, Nowaid owed about $620,000 to Caltrans in unpaid rent as of September, the agency said in court filings.
Caltrans alleges that Nowaid’s firm secured leases of government-owned property with a host of restrictions, then turned around and broke the leases by illegally subletting to various businesses, including a tow company, a recycling firm, mechanics, a tree-trimming outfit and a trucking firm.
The lease for the land where the fire occurred said the property could be used only for parking operable vehicles and “open storage”; other uses required the approval of Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration, something the company does not appear to have secured. Nor was Apex supposed to allow the storage of inoperable vehicles, flammable materials or other hazards.
Photos of the lot show a hodgepodge of equipment, vehicles, shipping containers, stacks of cardboard and wood pallets around 15-20 feet high.
For 14 years, Serafin had rented about 10,000 square feet, one of about 11 slots on the parcel that Nowaid sublet to small-business operators, he said, most of them immigrants.
The triangular tract was chaotic, with no clear entrance or address, and with unhoused people living on tents and trailers outside its gates. Graffiti was sprawled around the perimeter. Inside, workers and equipment shared close quarters amid the stacks of pallets.
Read more: L.A. traffic since 10 Freeway closed is 'manageable' with pockets of 'absolute parking lot'
Serafin said fires regularly broke out in encampments around the property, but calls to police or for cleanups often went unheeded.
He and others would sometimes pay homeless people $20 just to move away from their businesses.
While Caltrans required Apex to hold $5 million in liability insurance, fire insurance was specifically omitted from the lease agreement, according to a copy of the agreement filed in court.
Most of the businesses didn’t have insurance and lost all of their inventory and equipment.
Interviews with more than half a dozen tenants and court records offer a window into life under the freeway at the edges of downtown Los Angeles, where there was little enforcement and an underground economy flourished.
“We’re living paycheck to paycheck,” said Jose Luis Villamil Rodriguez, 53, who had a mechanic stand under the freeway.
“I lost everything,” Serafin said. “We are not educated people. Most of the people are people that crossed the border, work hard, or maybe grew up here. But we are working-class people. We break our back to barely make a good living.”
Serafin sold hangers, elastic and wiring to the garment industry, and had been trying to unload the half a pallet of hand sanitizer that helped fuel the flames.
Their landlord, Apex, owned by Ahmad Anthony Nowaid, had failed to pay rent on the 48,000-square-foot triangular lot at South Alameda and East 14th streets for more than a year, and owed $78,000, according to Caltrans, which sued the company for back rent in September.
The property was one of five that Caltrans was attempting to evict Apex and another Nowaid company from, including a plot along the 5 Freeway in Sun Valley and another a block away from the fire. All told, Nowaid owed about $620,000 to Caltrans in unpaid rent as of September, the agency said in court filings.
Caltrans alleges that Nowaid’s firm secured leases of government-owned property with a host of restrictions, then turned around and broke the leases by illegally subletting to various businesses, including a tow company, a recycling firm, mechanics, a tree-trimming outfit and a trucking firm.
The lease for the land where the fire occurred said the property could be used only for parking operable vehicles and “open storage”; other uses required the approval of Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration, something the company does not appear to have secured. Nor was Apex supposed to allow the storage of inoperable vehicles, flammable materials or other hazards.
Photos of the lot show a hodgepodge of equipment, vehicles, shipping containers, stacks of cardboard and wood pallets around 15-20 feet high.
For 14 years, Serafin had rented about 10,000 square feet, one of about 11 slots on the parcel that Nowaid sublet to small-business operators, he said, most of them immigrants.
The triangular tract was chaotic, with no clear entrance or address, and with unhoused people living on tents and trailers outside its gates. Graffiti was sprawled around the perimeter. Inside, workers and equipment shared close quarters amid the stacks of pallets.
Read more: L.A. traffic since 10 Freeway closed is 'manageable' with pockets of 'absolute parking lot'
Serafin said fires regularly broke out in encampments around the property, but calls to police or for cleanups often went unheeded.
He and others would sometimes pay homeless people $20 just to move away from their businesses.
While Caltrans required Apex to hold $5 million in liability insurance, fire insurance was specifically omitted from the lease agreement, according to a copy of the agreement filed in court.
Most of the businesses didn’t have insurance and lost all of their inventory and equipment.
Interviews with more than half a dozen tenants and court records offer a window into life under the freeway at the edges of downtown Los Angeles, where there was little enforcement and an underground economy flourished.
“We’re living paycheck to paycheck,” said Jose Luis Villamil Rodriguez, 53, who had a mechanic stand under the freeway.
The slow recovery from the 10 Freeway fire got underway with cleanup work shortly after a large pallet fire destroyed the businesses below.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
He estimates he lost $100,000 worth of tools, trucks and equipment, including a 1970 GMC Camper he had just fixed for $20,000. He now has to return the first installment of that payment to his client.
“This can’t be true; I hope it isn’t true, but if it is —” he told himself as he drove to the shop on the night of the fire. “I guess I’ll be OK. But I’ve sacrificed so much for it to end up like this?”
Rodriguez, who is Oaxacan, came to the U.S. from Mexico at 19. He worked on cars using a generator for light and a portable air compressor to power his tools. He paid Nowaid’s company $1,450 a month for the space. He had no insurance.
Now it was all in ashes. The concrete columns were cracked and charred.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was promising to “fix the 10.” What Rodriguez wanted was his business back, as did Serafin.
Serafin had hung a colorful sign between two freeway pillars advertising his distribution service that catered to the garment district. Over the years, his business grew, and he was able to support his wife and four children after paying $4,500 a month to one of Nowaid’s companies. He
estimates that collectively, tenants there paid about $23,500 a month total.
Rodriguez said the owner was relentless when it came to collecting rents. “I had to pay by the first of the month,” he said. “There was not much wiggle room.”
Alfredo Lara, 54, another tenant, said his rent was $4,000 a month, which was so much that he began subleasing a portion of his space to three other people for $1,000.
Apex, meanwhile, was supposed to be paying Caltrans $6,518 a month to lease the land, a figure that had not changed since about 2015, according to court records. Caltrans began leasing the land to Apex for $5,300 a month in 2008.
After the fire, Serafin said, he got calls from dozens of people checking whether he was OK. He also got a call from Nowaid on Sunday, asking whether the fire was on his property.
Read more: Cash Return for State : Caltrans Expands Freeway Airspace Leasing Program
“Then he asked if there was an investigation,” Serafin said. “I said yes. Then he hung up.”
Asked about the fire by phone on Monday, Nowaid said he “did not know anything” yet and was consulting with his attorneys.
His lawyer Mainak D’Attaray said he and his client were doing their own investigation of where and how the blaze started.
“It happened so recently that we don’t even know what occurred,” D’Attaray told The Times, later adding in an email that Apex Development “had nothing to do with the fire.”
The relationship between Nowaid and his tenants had long since soured.
In April, court records say, a Caltrans employee visited the lot and told tenants to stop paying their rent to Apex as the state planned to evict the company.
That visit prompted Apex to sue Caltrans in June, accusing the agency of interfering with its businesses, according to court records. Apex also said it had made more than $100,000 in improvements to the property, and that evicting Nowaid’s firm would amount to “unjust enrichment” of Caltrans.
The workers underneath the freeway stopped paying.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t want to pay him,” Serafin said. “We just wanted him to fix it, to pay Caltrans.”
It didn’t work. In June, he said, Nowaid arrived with security in unmarked cars and locked the tall iron rod gates until each of the tenants paid rent.
Nowaid posted a few people at the gates, Serafin said, while the tenants each fetched cashier’s checks from their banks.
“He was trying to get as much money from us as he could,” Serafin said. They continued paying him until October, shortly after state lawyers moved to evict Apex from his five sites.
Several tenants, including Serafin, said they stopped paying Nowaid this month after receiving notice from the court to appear for the lawsuit in December. They said that the moment they stopped paying rent, Nowaid threatened to lock the gates again.
“He sent one of his workers to collect the payment,” said Carina Quinto, who runs a mobile mechanic shop from the underpass. “We told him no, you can’t do that. It’s not legal.”
Normally, she said, he would respond by shutting the gates, but this time nobody ever came to close the doors.
Then came the fire, a little more than a week later.
10 Freeway damage not as severe as expected, engineer says, but more tests are needed
He estimates he lost $100,000 worth of tools, trucks and equipment, including a 1970 GMC Camper he had just fixed for $20,000. He now has to return the first installment of that payment to his client.
“This can’t be true; I hope it isn’t true, but if it is —” he told himself as he drove to the shop on the night of the fire. “I guess I’ll be OK. But I’ve sacrificed so much for it to end up like this?”
Rodriguez, who is Oaxacan, came to the U.S. from Mexico at 19. He worked on cars using a generator for light and a portable air compressor to power his tools. He paid Nowaid’s company $1,450 a month for the space. He had no insurance.
Now it was all in ashes. The concrete columns were cracked and charred.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was promising to “fix the 10.” What Rodriguez wanted was his business back, as did Serafin.
Serafin had hung a colorful sign between two freeway pillars advertising his distribution service that catered to the garment district. Over the years, his business grew, and he was able to support his wife and four children after paying $4,500 a month to one of Nowaid’s companies. He
estimates that collectively, tenants there paid about $23,500 a month total.
Rodriguez said the owner was relentless when it came to collecting rents. “I had to pay by the first of the month,” he said. “There was not much wiggle room.”
Alfredo Lara, 54, another tenant, said his rent was $4,000 a month, which was so much that he began subleasing a portion of his space to three other people for $1,000.
Apex, meanwhile, was supposed to be paying Caltrans $6,518 a month to lease the land, a figure that had not changed since about 2015, according to court records. Caltrans began leasing the land to Apex for $5,300 a month in 2008.
After the fire, Serafin said, he got calls from dozens of people checking whether he was OK. He also got a call from Nowaid on Sunday, asking whether the fire was on his property.
Read more: Cash Return for State : Caltrans Expands Freeway Airspace Leasing Program
“Then he asked if there was an investigation,” Serafin said. “I said yes. Then he hung up.”
Asked about the fire by phone on Monday, Nowaid said he “did not know anything” yet and was consulting with his attorneys.
His lawyer Mainak D’Attaray said he and his client were doing their own investigation of where and how the blaze started.
“It happened so recently that we don’t even know what occurred,” D’Attaray told The Times, later adding in an email that Apex Development “had nothing to do with the fire.”
The relationship between Nowaid and his tenants had long since soured.
In April, court records say, a Caltrans employee visited the lot and told tenants to stop paying their rent to Apex as the state planned to evict the company.
That visit prompted Apex to sue Caltrans in June, accusing the agency of interfering with its businesses, according to court records. Apex also said it had made more than $100,000 in improvements to the property, and that evicting Nowaid’s firm would amount to “unjust enrichment” of Caltrans.
The workers underneath the freeway stopped paying.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t want to pay him,” Serafin said. “We just wanted him to fix it, to pay Caltrans.”
It didn’t work. In June, he said, Nowaid arrived with security in unmarked cars and locked the tall iron rod gates until each of the tenants paid rent.
Nowaid posted a few people at the gates, Serafin said, while the tenants each fetched cashier’s checks from their banks.
“He was trying to get as much money from us as he could,” Serafin said. They continued paying him until October, shortly after state lawyers moved to evict Apex from his five sites.
Several tenants, including Serafin, said they stopped paying Nowaid this month after receiving notice from the court to appear for the lawsuit in December. They said that the moment they stopped paying rent, Nowaid threatened to lock the gates again.
“He sent one of his workers to collect the payment,” said Carina Quinto, who runs a mobile mechanic shop from the underpass. “We told him no, you can’t do that. It’s not legal.”
Normally, she said, he would respond by shutting the gates, but this time nobody ever came to close the doors.
Then came the fire, a little more than a week later.
10 Freeway damage not as severe as expected, engineer says, but more tests are needed
Thomas Curwen
Tue, November 14, 2023
Damage to the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles from Saturday's massive fire is less severe than initially feared, a Caltrans engineer said. (Eric Thayer / For The Times)
Preliminary tests show that damage to the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles from Saturday's massive fire is not as severe as initially feared, according to a bridge engineer with Caltrans who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Caltrans engineers met with senior management Monday to provide an assessment of the damage and possible timelines for getting traffic moving across this critical link in the region’s freeway system.
“The results were very good,” said the engineer, who described two scenarios contingent upon the damaged freeway being shored up and supported from underneath.
In the worst case, the shoring will be removed in stages — one direction, then another — so lanes can be replaced and the portions of the road can be kept open to traffic. In the best case scenario, the shoring will stay in place, allowing repairs to be made without closing down any lanes.
“The best case is where I think we’re headed,” said the engineer, who argues that the state transportation agency was lucky the fire didn’t lead to more severe damage.
Read more: Arson is behind the massive fire that shut down the 10 Freeway, officials say
“Caltrans has known about this for a long time,” the engineer said. “They have permitted lessees to store flammable stuff underneath these freeways for decades. They’ve had a couple of fires in the last three years that have affected columns, but inspectors can’t completely get underneath the bridge to make a thorough inspection because of all the junk.”
A Caltrans spokesperson declined to comment on the engineer's statements.
In 2017, a similar fire caused a portion of the 85 Freeway in Atlanta to collapse after combustible materials stored under the freeway caught fire. The closure snarled commuter traffic for six weeks. Afterwards, Caltrans wrote a policy directive directly based on that incident that prohibited the storage of flammable materials under its bridges and required access for bridge inspections.
In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe. The cause of the fire is being investigated as possible arson.
Debris is still blocking access underneath the freeway, but as soon as the site can be accessed, experts will make a complete assessment and crews can begin to raise shoring underneath the freeway.
“They can get that shoring up really fast,” the engineer said.
Of particular concern is a 1,500-foot stretch of the freeway between 14th and Elwood streets that had sheltered not only pallet storage yards but also a number of homeless encampments. Clearing out this area and assessing it for hazardous waste have been challenges, said the engineer.
In this area, the underside of the freeway shows signs of fire damage, said the engineer, but after an initial exam, that damage doesn’t appear to be structural.
Nearly 100 columns were affected by the fire, and the Caltrans engineering staff is looking at 45 columns that show the most severe fire damage. Shoring is being erected near Lawrence Street to take the weight off of the most compromised columns.
With a state of emergency declared by Gov. Gavin Newsom, commuters have been left scrambling to find alternate routes around the closure, snarling traffic on other freeways and side streets. About 300,000 vehicles pass each day through this mile long stretch of freeway that extends from the East Los Angeles interchange and Alameda Street.
Read more: 10 Freeway closed: How to deal with the traffic nightmare in downtown L.A.
As of Monday morning, engineers had completed core testing on the concrete on both the deck and one of the 45 columns. Testing also took place on the steel, known as rebar, inside the freeway and the columns to see if its strength was compromised by the fire as well.
“The compression tests for the concrete are looking very good,” the bridge engineer said. “And the tests on the rebar are looking good as well.”
Because water is used in the manufacture of concrete — helping to create the bond between cement and small stones known as aggregate — water molecules can dry out when exposed to fire and heat, causing the concrete to crack. Cracking reduces the strength of the material, leading to exfoliation of the surface, or spalling.
Compression testing places pressure on the concrete sample to measure how much weigh it can bear before failing. Results from another technique known as petrographic testing, in which dyes are applied to samples of the concrete core to highlight any microscopic cracking, are still outstanding.
Caltrans expects to have completed its testing of all 45 columns and a decision on whether the freeway will need to be replaced or repaired by the end of the week, according to the engineer.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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