With New Management, CRA/LA Proceeds with Realizable Mission

You have been the administrator for the CRA/LA for four months. What priorities have you focused on? With how much success?

The most important thing was to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and to put in place a team that can help effectuate your vision. I had the challenge and the opportunity of having two vacant senior positions when I took this position-the chief operating officer and the chief financial officer. I recruited an impressive pool of candidates, and Glenn Wasserman, a statewide expert in redevelopment law, has joined us as the chief operating officer. Brent Culp, who has extensive budget experience at the city and county level as well as a real estate and corporate tax background, has joined us as the CFO. I think we will have the combined energy, experience, and initiative to move the agency forward consistent with the mayor's vision.

What does the mayor's vision entail?

It comes down to four points. First, a new approach to job creation. Second, creating housing ownership opportunities. Third, enhancing the livability of our urban environment. Fourth, bringing it all together with a special focus on South Los Angeles.

Regarding jobs, this agency had a great track record of creating strong construction jobs in housing, retail development, and office development throughout the city in the 1980s. What we haven't done well as an agency or as a city, is to integrate our redevelopment efforts with workforce development efforts. Working in partnership with my counterpart at CDD, Richard Benbow, and the mayor's business team, I'd like to pull us together with a true economic development approach to job creation.

That means taking the five target industries that everybody has identified, and identifying the types of businesses, their space requirements, land needs, and workforce needs, and marrying that to our job training programs. And leveraging our $60 million in job training money with the $100 million in job training money at L.A. Unified and other job training money at the community college district level to create the workforce we need to attract the businesses in the growth sectors.

The sectors that everybody identifies as growth sectors for Los Angeles are hospitality, logistics and transportation, bio-med, entertainment, and green industry. We need to have a comprehensive approach to this. You can't just go after the top jobs, we also want to get the jobs in building the widgets that come out of those great ideas of bio-medical devices, for example. In logistics, we want everything from the crane operators at the port through the warehouse distribution workers.

Second, in housing, under California redevelopment law we have to spend at least 20 percent of our tax increment dollars on low- and moderate-income housing. We have met our goals and always will meet those goals.

But our mission is the revitalization of communities. That does not mean gentrification; it's community revitalization for current residents. The best way to revitalize a community is to generate wealth, and the greatest source of wealth is home ownership. I'd like our agency to work with partners in the private sector and our sister agency, L.A. Housing Department, to create some innovative homeownership programs aimed at moderate to workforce housing. If we can have owner-residents in our redevelopment areas we will create the stability and the wealth necessary to bring up the entire community and the entire city.

Given projected population growth in the region and a relatively unfriendly business environment, how does the CRA hope to help create new and better jobs?

I think we need to be very strategic about creating job zones in this city. A huge part of beginning that is the land use industrial work that we've been doing with the Planning Department. We are surveying every industrially zoned district in the city. In the vast city of Los Angeles only 8 percent of the land area is zoned industrial, of which only half is actually used for manufacturing. Our industrially zoned properties are below a 2 percent vacancy rate. In fact, the biggest impediment to job expansion and attraction in the city for manufacturing firms is the inability to find space.

We can help preserve the industrially zoned property in the city-preserving, protecting, enhancing, investing in the infrastructure that would support new businesses, acquiring and in some cases cleaning up former industrial use property that has not been well used in the past, and then targeting specific growth sectors that have an job creation potential.

This is the heavy lifting of a comprehensive economic development strategy. It is drilling down, what are the kind of businesses that we have a competitive advantage in attracting to Los Angeles? Let's get them the land; let's get them the entitlements they need; and let's match our job training programs to the kinds of workers they need.

So, we're presenting them with land, with space, with entitlements, and a workforce ready to do the job. It's very different than what we've done in the city before. We've never brought all of those pieces together: land use, economic development, business attraction, business retention, and workforce development.

Many new LAUSD schools will be built in South L.A. With $10 billion in local school bonds still unspent, and with Mayor Villaraigosa's success with AB 1381, what are the possibilities of LAUSD collaboratively siting and building neighborhood-centered, joint-use schools?

It will be challenging. Within in the first month that I had this job, Gail Goldberg and I received an invitation to talk to the real estate folks at L.A. Unified about their plans for South L.A. They were very conscious of the need to work collaboratively and to coordinate their acquisition with our efforts. That was an important first step.

Most of the new schools will be in the city of Los Angeles. We would like to make clear to them the areas where we intend to target our investment and hope that they steer clear. The school district is reluctant to take residential property, so they often go into commercial properties and industrially built properties. This is of major concern as we're trying to preserve our job base. So, to the extent that we can co-locate, collaboratively plan, and try to get them to be a part of our workforce strategy by building into their new schools some forms of training academies, I think there are some opportunities for us.

South L.A. is where all our strategies can come together. The mayor has made it clear that South L.A. is his priority for this agency. And we are working at our regional structure to find a way to leverage resources, and put the best and the brightest on the most tractable problems in South L.A. I think we are going to play a key role with our sister agencies focusing governmental resources on investing in the infrastructure and on the entitlements that will make South L.A. a good place to invest.

The CRA approved funding last month for an ACOF affordable housing development-one of three uses (housing, primary schools, and early educational facility) on a block in the Westlake community just west of Downtown. Is NSBN's master-planned, joint-use development a model for preserving housing and still providing education in those L.A. neighborhoods that most need public services for families?

I think the collaboration in that project is a model. But, as I understand it, it was a difficult process. We are very excited about the Gratts Academy and the housing development being built around it and some of the cutting-edge green building techniques they're using. I guess the key is that the model is that of collaboration. These are not projects that are easily replicable; each one has its own unique community challenges and characteristics as well as site constraints.

This project took four years because there were so many challenges involved in it. The next time we do something like this, I hope it will take less than four years and cost a lot less because we will have learned from the previous experience. Our staff is very excited to have been a part of this.

To meet Mayor Villaraigosa's objective of elegant density, won't the CRA have to better collaborate with city departments, such as Planning, CDD, Housing, Transportation, and Engineering?

This mayor has a unique ability to pull together city departments, and it has been an important part of his management style. From day one he has made it clear that we are one city-we work together for a common vision-and that he will not tolerate silo mentalities, turf battles, or war between departments. Deputy Mayor Bud Ovrom has carried through with that tone by forming a housing and economic cabinet that meets twice a month with the general managers of all of the agencies that you just mentioned, along with some others, to discuss the key issues facing us.

It has been a pleasure to work with Gail Goldberg. She and I see each other probably two or three times a week. There is clear, open communication between us-likewise with Mercedes Marquez at the LAHD and Gloria Jeff at DOT. I don't think we've ever seen this level of collaboration among city agencies. I have been part of the city family through three different mayors and I have been amazed at the change in tone and attitude. It is challenging, but people are committed to working as a team rather than having turf warfare. It's kind of a new day in Los Angeles.

Reviving blighted neighborhoods and creating jobs typically require creative staff and lawyers. Is the CRA receiving good counsel from the city attorney's office-your former employer?

I think we have what we need. Of course we could always use more resources, but we do operate in a constrained environment. With the combination of excellent outside counsel and committed city attorneys, I think we have a good team. I am hopeful that with the addition of my senior management team, both of whom are lawyers, we will be able to have a common vision to get the deal that we have been discussing for years.

And we have some outstanding attorneys working with us-not just in the CRA/LA city attorney family but also in the broader city attorney family. It's been a pleasure coming back to the city and reach across to my former colleagues in the city attorney's office and have them help out on so many issues, even though they may not be the assigned city attorneys for the CRA/LA. In particular, folks like Maureen Vincent and Peter Gutierrez have stepped up when I needed a little extra help or we needed to understand how to resolve issues across departmental lines.

You mentioned that one of the mayor's and the CRA's priorities is the greening of L.A. How much progress is your agency and the city making towards this goal?

First, I would recommend to the board that if anyone expects a dime of agency money that their development should meet these standards. Second, when we see an opportunity site in one of our project area that is too small to develop for housing or too small to combine with other parcels for commercial development, let's make it into a pocket park.

Let's invest in the social infrastructure of the community by creating a pocket park or a community garden or some other kind of respite from urban stress. It won't generate a tax increment, but it will add value to the surrounding properties and to the community.

Third, we're going to be big players in the mayor's Million Tree Initiative. We have talked with Paula Daniels, who is spearheading the effort, about how our agency can play a lead role. We would like to provide financial resources, staff support, and coordinated planning efforts to see that our projects area become the focal point of the tree planting campaign.

The Million Trees Initiative has done a canopy analysis, and, not surprisingly, it indicates that most of our redevelopment project areas have very little canopy cover. So, we think we have a responsibility to see that those trees are planted and create a legacy for the communities that we are serving. Another part of creating a livable urban environment is excellent design. Any time our agency touches a project, it should have superior design; it is not going to be unarticulated stucco that does not engage the surrounding neighborhood. It is going to relate well to surrounding buildings; it's going to create a walk-able pedestrian environment; and it's going to create a place that people enjoy.

The sleeper issue on the November ballot may be Prop 90, which draws energy from popular resistance to eminent domain. Given the reach of this initiative and the incredible array of opposition that it has generated in the civic, business, labor, and environment organizations throughout the state, how seriously does Prop 90 threaten the CRA's mission?

We take it very seriously. It is a cloud that is hanging over the head of the agency. There is so much more to Prop 90 than what is does to eminent domain authority and redevelopment agencies, and that's why so many organizations from across the political spectrum have come out against it. That's why developers, environmental groups, the BIA, agricultural organizations, the teachers union, the cops, the Sheriff's Department are all coming out against Prop 90.

Eminent domain is just one piece; it is the Trojan horse that is being used to win voter support. But in reality the threat posed by another component of Prop 90 may be even more far reaching, and that is enshrining this notion of regulatory takings. It could paralyze government from ever sourcing or approving additional environmental regulations or any type of discretionary land use. It provides a cause of action for anyone who believes that their property has been injured by any action by the government; they can bring a claim against the government.

A similar measure approved in Oregon a few years ago has resulted in over 2,000 claims-over $2 billion worth of claims. It has paralyzed land-use approvals in Oregon. I have every reason to believe that if the voters approve Prop 90, it will have a similar effect in California. And that reaches beyond what our agency does; it affects environmental regulation-any time you want to get approval for any kind of development that needs any discretionary approval, governments are going to be terrified of approving projects because they'll be worried that they may get sued.

This looms over everything that we do, but if it does get approved we're not going to close up shop the day after the elections. We have other strategies and other tools. It is just going to be far more costly and far more difficult to do the kind of community revitalization that people want us to accomplish.