CRA/LA's Bud Ovrom Touts His Agency's Intergovernmental Relations

Bud, we last interviewed you in March of 2003. You had just

taken over as the CRA's CEO and you were focused on building or rebuilding working relationships with the County and the school district. Can you update our readers on the health of these intergovernmental relationships?

I feel real good about both. When I got here, the CRA and the school district were on a verge of a lawsuit over a difficult project in the Valley. We resolved those differences and we did not file a lawsuit. But more importantly, we established an ongoing working relationship with the school district in all of our regions to talk about where schools need to be built, what sites they are looking at, what sites we might suggest to them if they are looking at a site that has higher potential for commercial development. So, I feel real good about that.

I also feel good about how our relationship has improved with the county. It's interesting, but the event that first got our foot in the door was the establishment of the Grand Avenue JPA. The Grand Avenue JPA has a four-member governing body, David Janssen, Gloria Molina, Jan Perry and myself. And that has given us a reason to get together regularly and talk about that project. And from that experience, we are finding that we can talk to each other about our activity beyond Grand Avenue. With the county, we are working together on the Hoover expansion area, the area around the Coliseum. We have made headway on the Chinatown lawsuit, where we prevailed. It does not appear that the county is going to appeal that. We have not resolved the bigger issue of the County lawsuits with regard to Center City, but we are making inroads. We're finding that there are projects on which we can collaborate and we expect to see more collaboration going forward.

Some would say that the just announced L.A. Live development adjacent to Staples Center vindicates L.A. County's legal position that a CRA redevelopment zone was unnecessary to spur investment. Was the county right?

With regard to the issue of Staples Center and the redevelopment zone, I was not here at the time and cannot comment on how that debate played out. But, a part of the county's argument was that the 30-acres were not blighted and that the redevelopment agency was not needed to do a convention center hotel. The jury is still out on that. Right now the convention center hotel seems to be making progress. And at this point, they are not envisioning any involvement from the redevelopment agency. So, on the one hand, it is a sign that it is moving in the right direction.

Is anybody in the city or CRA presently charged with creatively leveraging the $10-14 billion of voter approved, now ready to be spent school facility bonds to improve the health and vitality of Los Angeles' inner city and inner suburban neighborhoods? Critics suggest that little city leadership has been given to realizing the potential of planning the school facilities with an eye towards healthy learning communities and revitalization.

I understand that argument and it's an extremely good point. And, that is the kind of dialogue that we are having with the school district. We start with the premise that we are in the business of building neighborhoods, not just commercial/industrial projects. Neighborhoods need schools, parks, housing, and jobs. The construction of schools is an important part of building neighborhoods, just like housing, retail and commercial.

At this point in time, we are working with the school district on the identification of sites. They draw these big circles on a map around where they need a certain class of school and then they keep honing the circle smaller and smaller as they identify a specific location. They look at parcel x, and we have to determine if a school is the highest and best use for that parcel.

One of the ground rules that we have established for ourselves is when they tell us they need a school and suggest a location, we'll never just say "no." If we think there is a higher and better use, we will work with the district to find an alternative site for the school where we can help eradicate blight and find a win-win solution. I bet we have at least half a dozen of those very specific discussions going on now and we genuinely are trying to work together to meet both of our needs.

Bud, you've mentioned the Grand Avenue Authority and its unique Joint Power Authority. Elaborate on that downtown development as well as what this JPA portends for future city, county collaborations.

The project by itself is a very exciting project. Along with the Twin Towers site in New York, there is probably no more dramatic or significant project in any urban area in the United States. These are four critical pads on Bunker Hill with immense potential. It is very visionary-and I can say that because I wasn't part of the JPA at its genesis. Instead of the city and the CRA going its own way with its two parcels and the county going its own way their two parcels, the JPA establishes a project within which the sum will be greater than the four parcels may have produced independently.

With regard to the working relationships formed through this authority, it's difficult for me to provide perspective because I wasn't here before this structure was established. I'm not sure how many other forums there were for the CRA, city and county to communicate and work together on a single project. But, I know about this one and this one has been very productive. My office has been working very closely with David Janssen's staff and Gloria Molina's staff-we all know each other now. We communicate regularly and that is spilling over into other projects.

Place the Grand Avenue project in the context of what else is happening in downtown Los Angeles. Is the present development boom a spike or a trend?

I am one lucky guy to be here at this particular time. I would like to be able to take credit for all of these developments and obviously that's totally unwarranted. The Grand Avenue project is a very significant project. We are all very proud of the Cathedral and Disney Hall, but if there is any one project that has genuinely been the spark plug for the revitalization of downtown, it's Staples. Staples has just totally energized that area. The combination of having Staples at one end of town and Disney Hall and the Cathedral at the other end of town marks a tremendous upswing in the development of downtown. You can see it in the residential development, with the reuse and new construction that is taking place. And, the additional plans taking place around the Staples area are very real and exciting. These are very bullish times for downtown. We are on an upswing right now that appears as if it's going to continue for several years.

What is the potential of the Sears East L.A. redevelopment project Mark Weinstein is managing and how does it impact other plans for downtown retail?

The Sears project gives us an opportunity to have a dramatic, catalytic project on the Eastside that we just were unable to identify ourselves. The project has immense potential on at least two fronts. One is the housing opportunity. The project would have an ownership component as well as a rental component. Promoting homeownership on the Eastside has been very important to us.

I am also as excited, if not more so, about the retail component. That area of East LA is so incredibly underserved. If people in East LA want to go shopping, they have to go to Monterey Park or Alhambra because there are so few opportunities for good retail in East LA. Sears is willing to expand and upgrade their store, either in terms of remodeling in the space where they are today or building an entirely new space. With Sears as an anchor, we have all kinds of other retailers who are very anxious to go into that trade area. Even though these areas don't have the high per capita income, the population density suggests very significant purchasing power. So retailers are revisiting these urban areas and we have dozens of retailers lining up to talk about that site.

Bud, TPR has covered some of the development opportunities unfolding in San Pedro. Can you update us on the CRA's role and the harbor area's potential?

I have always felt incredibly strong about the harbor-owned land from the bridge to the breakwaters on the harbor side of Harbor Avenue. The port has land there where the old Ports O Call used to be, where the Catalina cruise ships are, and that site is incredibly underutilized and with tremendous development potential. Can you think of another port on the West Coast, or in the nation, that frankly has neglected its port or failed to achieve the potential of the port as much as LA has with San Pedro? It's now San Pedro's turn and the harbor and the redevelopment agency and the council office are working together to determine the best use of that land.

This September, L.A. is hosting the Rail-Volution Conference, a national gathering of planners and others interested in transit-oriented development and livable communities. How involved is the CRA with transit-oriented development and this conference's livable communities agenda?

Transit oriented development is very much on our agenda. As I mentioned earlier, we are building a great relationship with the MTA. Together we jointly funded an Urban Land Institute study of a potential transit village in North Hollywood. North Hollywood was a classic example of where the redevelopment agency was off doing its thing, the MTA, which has the biggest chunk of land around the North Hollywood Red Line station, was off doing its thing, and private developers were off doing their thing. But, there was no overall cohesive vision about how all of these efforts fit together.

Also, the MTA and the redevelopment agency didn't start working together on North Hollywood until after the North Hollywood Red Line station had already opened. On the Gold Line extension, we already have formed a working group to get ahead of the curve on transit-oriented development opportunities.

In the last few months there have been a number of significant changes in senior personnel within the Mayor's Office and L.A. City Hall, notably the departures of Don Smith from the L.A. Housing Authority and Sarah Dusseault from the Mayor's Office. The CRA lost two commissioners, as Doug Ring stepped down and former chair David Farrar has been replaced. How are you coping with such changes?

When I got here Sarah Dusseault was the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Jonathon Kevles was the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development-neither of them is currently in that role. But we now have Renata Simril, the Deputy Mayor for both of those functions. We have a new Housing Director over at the Housing Department, Mercedes Marquez and we are building that relationship. With Renata, Mercedes and myself, we are getting together more frequently and talking about what we need to do to build a more coordinated working relationship.

On our own commission, we have had a couple of departures. Paul Hudson has replaced David Farrar, who was the chairman when I got here. I liked David Farrar very much, but Paul Hudson is a fantastic replacement. Paul Hudson is an outstanding gentleman and leader and we feel real good about having Paul be our chairman. We were all surprised to hear about Doug Ring leaving. He just told us literally the day he issued the press release. None of us knew that was coming. We were sorry to lose Doug, but I'm confident that the Mayor's Office will replace him with somebody equally as good in the very near future.

Lastly Bud, please bring us up to date on your ongoing plans to reorganize the CRA?

It's been 14 months since I arrived and our re-organization is not yet complete. But we are making significant progress. We have a transition plan that has allowed us to functionally implement the reorganization plan, even though it has not been formally approved. We have established the seven regions and placed regional managers in each of the seven regions. Frankly, I feel extremely good about the progress we've made even though we don't have total sign off on it yet.

I have always felt that the key to management is surrounding yourself with really smart, hard-working people. No matter how good your CEO is, he or she can't do all of the work. You need superstars in all of these regions to get the redevelopment agency out closer to the communities being served. Hopefully, we're within weeks of having the reorganization formally approved. As a de facto matter with the transition plan, we have implemented much of what we're trying to achieve and it's starting to pay off.