The City of Commerce allowed a tenant with ties to a businessman favored by City Hall to openly use a city-owned warehouse to sell bulk liquor, food products and energy drinks for nearly a year in violation of its own Municipal Code, a Southern California News Group investigation has revealed.
Commerce was notified, but did not object, in March 2023 when Amitim Group LLC obtained state licenses to distribute and sell liquor, beer and wine wholesale to other license holders, even though Amitim did not — and still doesn’t — have the city’s approval to legally operate.
Amitim, which runs L.A. Wholesalers out of a Slauson Avenue warehouse owned by Commerce’s former redevelopment agency, has neither a business license nor a conditional use permit, both of which are required by the Municipal Code to sell alcohol anywhere in the city.
California prohibits the issuance of a state retail liquor license to a business without local approval, but it does not have the same requirement for wholesale and distribution. Instead, notices are sent to local law enforcement, the city’s planning director and the City Council asking if they object.
In Commerce’s case, there was no response, according to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Amitim applied for a Commerce business license and a conditional use permit for the cash-and-carry store last year, but did not complete either process, according to city officials. The business failed to receive approval from the county Fire Department, which flagged multiple violations at the store just days before it opened to the public without the city’s permission.
Rent below market rates
On top of ignoring the blatant violations, Commerce charged the company far below the market rate for a 25,000-square-foot-warehouse, potentially missing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
Amitim pays just $6.24 per square foot per year. A similarly sized warehouse on Slauson Avenue, less than two miles away, charges $22 per square foot annually, according to the real estate site LoopNet.
The lowest priced warehouse available in Commerce is listed on the website at more than double what Amitim pays the city.
The city’s $13,000 per month lease with Amitim, approved administratively in 2022 by since ousted City Manager Edgar Cisneros, appears to be largely for the surrounding parking lot. It explicitly states that the warehouse on the site is included in the lease “for the purposes of securing it for the licensor while plans for future development of a city facility are finalized.”
Prior deals with businessman
A prior investigation by the Southern California News Group found Cisneros had leased 26 acres of city-owned land for pennies on the dollar to a well-liked businessman capitalizing on the dire need for tractor-trailer parking during the pandemic-fueled gridlock at the ports. The businessman — Martin Fierro, owner of Fenix Entrepreneur — paid as little as $1,000 per month to lease 14.4 acres at one point, during a period in which real estate experts estimated each acre by itself could have generated as much as $30,000 to $50,000 per month.
City officials, in their quest to help Fierro secure land, convinced at least one other company to rent to Fierro as well and nearly drew a $5 million fine from Los Angeles County as a result. Fierro found support in his other businesses too. A cannabis company he backed was one of the few to receive the city’s approval, despite missing key deadlines.
Another Fierro entity operates an open air market every week in Commerce at a shuttered Montebello Unified School District property, a lease that was supported by Cisneros in 2014 when he served on the school board.
Cisneros previously denied Fierro and Fenix received any special treatment, saying that the city discounted the rents for truck parking lots in light of improvements made to the sites, including the removal of mounds of dirt illegally dumped on one of the properties.
Though Fierro is not mentioned in Amitim’s business filings, he lists L.A. Wholesalers’ website in the introduction section on his personal Facebook page, advertised store specials and answered questions about the available products alongside posts about his other businesses.
Amitim’s listed owner — Azael “Sal” Martinez Sonoqui, a former county probation commissioner — described himself as the “asst. clerk to Mr. Fierro” in emails in October 2022, the same month that Cisneros approved the Slauson Avenue lease.
At the time, Sonoqui was helping Fierro resolve a dispute in the City of El Monte after city’s code enforcement officers discovered Fierro was operating an unpermitted truck parking lot.
Two months after the Southern California News Group first published a story about Commerce’s low-cost leases with Fierro, some of the leases quietly shifted away from his company to others. One of the newcomers, Abee Trucking Logistics LLC, was registered by Sonoqui’s son less than two weeks before Cisneros agreed to rent 11.25 acres to it for $25,000 per month.
Working to get permits
Reached by phone, Sonoqui acknowledged that Amitim does not have a business license or permits, but said he is in the process of working with the city to resolve that problem and expects to have a license “in our hands by the end of the month.”
He declined to answer questions about whether Fierro has a financial interest, or about the company’s arrangement with the city, saying it is a “matter between us and the city.”
Fierro similarly refused to answer questions, repeatedly telling a reporter to check “the public records.”
“That’s all you have,” he said.
While L.A. Wholesalers moved forward without a permit on one side of town, Fierro opened his own market and liquor store with the city’s full blessing roughly two miles away on Washington Boulevard. Both L.A. Wholesalers and the new market used the same contractors, records show.
The business, CCM Market, features liquor sales, cigars, a butchery and plans to add a restaurant in the future, according to its applications with the city.
Actor Mark Wahlberg even visited the shop in its opening days to promote his tequila line.
Another business planned?
In February 2023, chef Federico Giugno, who listed himself as the executive manager and shareholder of CCM in emails with the city, told a reporter for What Now Los Angeles that he planned to open a pizzeria and brewery above the market with his business partner, Commerce Councilman Ivan Altamirano.
In an email, Altamirano denied having a business relationship with Giugno, saying the pizzeria was “discussed as a concept that never came to fruition.”
He did not respond to questions asking if he had any interest in CCM or Fierro’s other businesses.
Fierro, reached by phone, was already aware that a reporter had contacted Altamirano for this story. He hung up when asked if the two men had any business dealings.
A conditional use permit for CCM approved by Commerce’s Planning Commission in May indicated Fierro still intended build a pizzeria by the same name above the market.
Commerce promoted CCM’s grand opening on its Facebook and Instagram accounts in October, posting pictures of Councilman Hugo Argumedo exploring the market and paragraphs of text that read like an advertisement.
“CCM Market also has a grand variety of fine wine, and spirits, as well as over hundred of types of alcohol,” the post reads. “Visitors and locals can also purchase specialty hand-rolled cigars which are housed in a state-of-the-art ventilation system for their carefully procured collection of cigars.”
Commerce, which primarily uses its Facebook account to promote public events, made only two other posts about businesses opening in the preceding two years. Both contained short messages welcoming the stores to the community.
City leases scrutinized
Altamirano would not discuss the city’s past leases with Fierro and others, saying they were “completed administratively by our former city manager without action or approval by the City Council.”
“Our current administration is reviewing the management of all City properties, including these leases,” he wrote. “Currently, the City Council has limited information on these transactions. In addition, due to the terms of the separation agreement between the City and our former city manager, I am unable to provide additional comments related to events that occurred during our former city manager’s tenure.”
The Southern California News Group submitted a public records request for all of the city’s lease agreements on Oct. 20, 2023. Four days later, the City Council scheduled a closed meeting to discuss those same leases.
Cisneros, still city manager at the time, sent out a barrage of termination letters in the following weeks, ordering Fenix, Abee Trucking and at least one other truck company with ties to Fierro to vacate by Dec. 31, public records show.
Cisneros abruptly resigned in early November in exchange for a $214,000 severance package, according to a separation agreement. His one-sentence resignation letter did not explain why.
Assistant City Manager Vilko Domic subsequently sent out additional termination letters, including one to Amitim, after assuming the role of acting city manager.
However, Domic, in an interview, said the termination of Amitim and Abee Trucking’s leases has since halted, pending negotiations. Though he described Amitim’s months of operation without a business license as “a little extensive,” Domic said the business friendly city wants to work with the company to try to cure its deficiencies.
“I’m working diligently to review all of the leases,” Domic said. “The ones that have been terminated, and if the tenant doesn’t want to rekindle it, we’re just letting those die.”
Domic did not know why the termination leases were originally issued by Cisneros, and said the letters he sent out were only finishing what Cisneros started.
“I wasn’t any part of what happened as it relates to any of those leases,” he said.
Domic acknowledged that the rents charged to Amitim — and Fierro — were too low. Future leases will require close to market rate rents and will be approved by the City Council, rather than by the city manager solely, he said.
“I’m going to set up checks and balances that will oversee any kind of rental lease or terms with any city property,” he said. “Whatever needs to be remedied, I will do my best to right the ship and work collaboratively with the City Council and staff to make sure that going forward we do the right thing.”
