Downtown L.A.--a Shift in Power Over the Shape of Things to Come

After a 10-year-long turf battle, the City Council has won broad power to govern land use and new building in downtown Los Angeles, a part of the city that had been the jealously guarded domain of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

The council, which has been a frustrated junior partner in shaping the downtown, now will have a big hand negotiating with developers, regulating the size of new office buildings, controlling traffic, stimulating the housing market and deciding the future of Skid Row.

“This is a rather dramatic change in the way we approve land use,” said Dan Garcia, the chairman of the City Planning Commission who for years has sought more influence over planning downtown. Garcia was a prime mover in the process, part legal and part political, that triggered the shift in planning jurisdiction from the redevelopment agency to City Hall.

Began in June

The shift began last June with the settlement of a lawsuit extending the City Council’s authority over planning downtown. But it was the unexpected resignation last month of the Community Redevelopment Agency’s formidable boss, Edward Helfeld, that gave city officials like Garcia and City Council President Pat Russell the opportunity to take a commanding role.

The rise of Russell and Garcia does not necessarily represent a united front downtown. Although both are close to Mayor Tom Bradley and would not have acted without his blessing, the two are potential political rivals, each indicating a desire to run for mayor someday, and they have not always agreed on the proper role of the council in planning matters.

Local civic groups who follow land use issues say it is too soon to tell what the effect of the City Council’s new role will be on refereeing downtown development.

“What remains to be seen is whether this is largely a power play by Garcia and the council leadership or whether it will lead to more rational planning,” said a lawyer active in land use cases who asked to remain anonymous.

The shift will enhance the top planning job under the City Council’s jurisdiction, that of planning director. It is a position that is coming open in May and is the subject of some debate among officials, including Russell and Garcia. Russell said she wants to fill it with someone who can work comfortably with politicians and developers. Garcia emphasizes the importance of finding someone who is skilled in the planning profession.

At the moment, around City Hall, the most talked-about candidate for the job is Mark Pisano, the executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments who directed water planning for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1977. Pisano’s academic training is in business and economics as opposed to planning.

Pisano has friends on the council, not the least of which is Russell. While Russell has insisted she is not touting anyone for the planning director’s job, she professes a high regard for Pisano.

“I work with Mark a lot, and I think he’s excellent,” Russell said last week.

There are other candidates, including Allan B. Jacobs, a professor of planning at the University of California, Berkeley, who directed the San Francisco Planning Department from 1967 to 1975; Robert Paternoster, the planning director for Long Beach; and Kei Uyeda, deputy planning director for Los Angeles.

The new planning director will replace Calvin Hamilton, who has held the job for 20 years. Hamilton announced last summer he will be resigning after Bradley and other city officials indicated they wanted a change.

Key Factors

Hamilton’s critics characterized him as an intellectual who lacked managerial and political skills, factors that assume greater importance as City Hall takes over from the CRA the task of negotiating with downtown developers.

City officials acknowledge that the council’s new authority in downtown planning will make the process more political as more money, in the form of contributions from downtown developers, becomes available to cooperative council members.

“Inevitably, developers will be spending more time with the council, and that will make life in City Hall more interesting,” Garcia said.

Nevertheless, Garcia and other officials insist that by strengthening the council’s hand in negotiating with developers they ensure that the public will be better served by new development--that fewer buildings will be allowed to dwarf their surroundings and that builders will be required to pay more for public improvements, such as wider streets or more buses or better sewers, that are needed to accommodate new development.

“We’ll have a much better ability to integrate the planning of redevelopment areas with the overall needs of the city,” said Councilman Howard Finn, who chairs the council’s Planning and Environment Committee. “We will be able to make sure that the impacts of new development on traffic and sewer systems are paid for by the beneficiaries and not by the public,” Finn said.

End of an Era

The council’s expanded role marks the end of an era for the Community Redevelopment Agency, which for the last decade enjoyed almost a free hand to plan and subsidize the rehabilitation of the city’s central business district. The agency’s virtual autonomy was due in large part to its successes under Helfeld. Using a variety of financial incentives--grants, loans and property tax revenue made available by a state law--the CRA stimulated nearly $5 billion in new construction.

Besides the downtown skyline, however, the agency’s legacy includes nearly 12,000 housing units--most for people of low to moderate means--nearly 50,000 jobs, the nearly completed Museum of Contemporary Art, and a $10-million investment in Skid Row shelters and relief agencies.

The agency, which is governed by a seven-member board, will continue to be a source of capital for new construction, but it will lose its dominant influence over the design and location of what is built.

Where the agency ran afoul of Garcia and members of the City Council was the way it allowed developers, on about 20 occasions over the last several years, to put up buildings as much as two and three times the size permitted by the city’s General Plan.

In return for the license to build beyond the legal limits, the agency required builders to restore a number of historic buildings, including the Central Library, and to contribute millions of dollars to a fund to buy more parkland downtown.

However, Garcia, Finn, and city transportation officials warned that the CRA-inspired building boom was producing a crush of cars and people that the city’s streets and public works could not handle.

Last June, Garcia got his first chance to move on the CRA’s planning prerogatives. It came after a judge ruled in favor of a group of homeowners who had accused city officials of ignoring the city’s General Plan. Garcia maintained that, to comply with the plan, the Planning Commission and the City Council needed greater authority to regulate building downtown.

The settlement of the suit gave the commission the right to rule on any proposed development that was 25% larger than the limits set out in the General Plan. Any action by the commission is subject to review by the council.

More recently, Garcia began work on a proposed ordinance that would give the commission and the council even broader authority to review the merits of proposed downtown buildings. In addition, the council began drafting another ordinance, proposed by Russell, that would require all new developments that generate more traffic to help pay for necessary transportation improvements.

In December, the CRA official most opposed to sharing planning authority resigned. Edward Helfeld, who had directed the agency for 10 years, stepped down after a contractual dispute with the agency’s board of directors.

Members of the board said privately that the CRA’s planning staff had grown too large under Helfeld and had attempted to usurp the board’s authority over policy-making.

One member of the board, who asked not to be named, described the agency’s planning staff as a “department run wild.”

Look to Future

With Helfeld gone, the board’s ranking members, Chairman Jim Wood and Vice Chairman Chistopher Stewart, two men who have worked closely with developers, say they are looking forward to working with city officials on planning matters.

“There is a strong feeling that the city needs one planning authority, and that’s as it should be,” Wood said. “I am not at all uncomfortable about bringing our projects before the Planning Commission.” Last week, members of the council, the commission and the CRA board agreed to form a special committee to spell out the role that each will play in planning future downtown redevelopment projects.

But even before that meeting, the commission had ruled on a major CRA project, and while the result angered some people, it showed that the commission did not intend to come down hard on every mammoth development proposed for the downtown.

Although the commission expressed reservations about the project, a $300-million dual skyscraper complex next to Pershing Square, it ultimately gave its blessing.

Last Tuesday, the city’s largest historical preservation group, the Los Angeles Conservancy, filed suit against the commission and the CRA charging that they ignored the legal limits on building size in approving the Pershing Square development.

Garcia defends the project as legal, but says approval of it should not be taken as indicative of the commission’s future role in downtown development. He said that for now the commission does not have the power to block a project that, however objectionable, it saw as legal.

Garcia said the ordinance he is now drafting will give the commission the authority it lacked over the Pershing Square project. Moreover, he said he does not think that a lot more new development is needed downtown.

“We don’t need massive new development beyond what has already been approved,” he said in a recent interview.

Assuming that the ordinance passes, Garcia said, “We will be able to make future decisions based on a thorough review of the merits and public benefits of a project.”

Downtown developers insist that they are not apprehensive about working with the Planning Commission and the City Council despite the talk of tougher regulations.

“I don’t see it as a cause for alarm,” said Nelson Rising, executive vice president of Maguire/Thomas Partners, the builders of one of the largest projects now going up downtown, a pair of office towers flanking the Central Library. As part of the project, Maguire/Thomas is making a substantial contribution to the renovation and expansion of the library.

“Developers have to face up to their responsibilities, dealing with the traffic and the congestion that is created. We can’t dig a hole and bury our heads in it,” Rising said.

But others are less sanguine about the changes in the political landscape downtown.

Some people worry that with Helfeld gone from the CRA, the agency’s efforts on behalf of Skid Row residents will be toned down.

In a recent interview, Christopher Stewart, vice chairman of the CRA board, said he thought the CRA staff should reconsider locating relief agencies in the heart of Skid Row near 6th and San Pedro streets where a burgeoning toy industry is taking root.

“We need to question the whole concept of locating the social service agencies in one area, and we need to do a better job of working with the industries that are there,” Stewart said.

Other people are worried about the selection of the next planning director, fearing that city officials will replace Hamilton with someone who is a strong administrator but who has no flare for design.

An independent committee of architects and designers has been meeting with members of the City Council in the hope of persuading them to fill the director’s job with somebody who is an imaginative planner as well as a skillful manager.

“Our concern is not to put too much emphasis on deal-making,” said John Jerde an architect and a member of the committee. “The danger is that we will get a bureaucrat, someone who stays in line, who is inert.”

The planning director’s future role could prove to be a bone of contention between Garcia and Russell.

In statements recently, Garcia has made clear his feeling that members of the council, by championing the interests of developers in their districts, have interfered with the planning director and made sound planning difficult.

“The council has got to show more patience and a greater willingness to compromise. The council can’t scream for the head of the planning director every time a member doesn’t get his or her way,” Garcia said.

Asked how she reacted to Garcia’s views, Russell replied icily, “I wouldn’t agree with him on that.”