CRA Architect Seeks to Link Policy, Realty

At first sight, the recent selection of John Kaliski to succeed Gary Williams as the new principal architect for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency seems a surprising choice.

Chosen from 120 applicants, Kaliski is young (32) and relatively inexperienced in urban design. He received his master’s in architecture from Yale University only 6 years ago, and spent most of his short professional life in the Houston and Los Angeles offices of Skidmore Owings & Merrill.

“The form of cities has always been my main area of interest,” Kaliski said. “I see the practice of urban design in an agency like the CRA as a vital link between public policy and real estate realities.”

As the chairman of the American Institute of Architects’ urban design committee, Kaliski made a mark as critic of his own profession’s narrow focus.

“In Los Angeles, the physical environment contains both the evidence of man’s highest ideals and his basest instincts,” he wrote in the LA/AIA’s house organ. “Driving around and living here, it is easy to develop the impression that the latter have taken precedence over the former.”

John Spalding, CRA director of planning and Kaliski’s immediate superior in the agency, said Kaliski came highly recommended by many architectural professionals and academics for the $60,000 a year post. “We wanted someone with a strong urban design interest and a team player,” he said.

Function Curtailed

“The CRA principal architect has to work in a multidisciplinary group that includes planners, real estate and transportation specialists and artists. This complex collaboration is vital if the redevelopment process is to work effectively.”

Since the provoked resignation of former CRA Administrator Ed Helfeld in December, 1985, the suspicion has grown among many observers that the CRA’s then-vigorous urban design function would be curtailed. In the past few years, this suspicion has seemed to be confirmed by the resignation or dismissal of several of the agency’s best urban designers, including John Given, Charles Loveman and Carol Goldstein.

“We have shown a concern for things of the spirit as well as the flesh,” Helfeld said proudly at the time of his departure, hinting at a conflict between the agency’s staff and its board about complaints by many developers that Helfeld was unsympathetic to their interests. Helfeld went on to say that he “feared very serious dilution of the Central Business District by unchecked commercial development.”

Sale of ‘Air Rights’

Another complaint about Helfeld’s 10-year administration was the accusation that he ignored the city Planning Department in granting discretionary variances without respect for the zoning requirements of the General Plan. These variances, which were used as development incentives, and the questionable sale of “air rights” over public properties, such as the Central Library, were creatively manipulated to finance Helfeld’s vision for the future of downtown.

Helfeld created a “dual monarchy,” planning officials claimed, deriving his authority directly from Mayor Tom Bradley over the heads of other city agencies concerned with planning issues.

Under the management of Administrator John Tuite, the CRA seems to many observers to be moving into a less “autocratic” and more collaborative mode with other city agencies and the development community.

“We used to have a lot of hassles with the CRA,” said one prominent local architect, who requested anonymity. “Now the agency is much more amenable to our concerns.”

Spalding claimed that “architecture and urban design elements will have an increasing influence on the slant of agency policies. At the same time, we have established a close liaison with other agencies so that we may integrate our policies with theirs at the earliest possible stage.”

A clue to Kaliski’s approach to urban design is his belief that it has to be incremental, not visionary.

“I feel that the days of the grand design that ruled the 1960s and ‘70s, are gone,” he said. “Development is now an organic process, operating on a project-by-project basis. The agency has to work within this context of reality while seeking to balance the incremental with a larger idea of the nature of the city--whatever that may be.”

Process seems to be a key word in Kaliski’s urban design vocabulary. “Whatever the final result as architecture, we must be seen to engage in a thorough process of community participation and professional consultation,” he said. “The design advisory committees the CRA has set up in some of its redevelopment project areas, notably Hollywood, are a vital link in this process of participation.

“I don’t really know if a true consensus about the future of urban design in Los Angeles is really possible right now,” Kaliski commented frankly. “But I believe it is the CRA’s responsibility and opportunity to seek that consensus and help it come about.”