Pressure From City Officials on Hollywood Plan Claimed

Former Los Angeles City Planning Director Calvin S. Hamilton testified Thursday that heavy political pressure from Mayor Tom Bradley and other city officials kept him from pushing for adequate traffic and zoning studies during the adoption of Hollywood’s $922-million redevelopment plan.

Hamilton, who stepped down as the city’s top planner in 1986, testified in Los Angeles Superior Court as part of a lawsuit brought by residents trying to revise or overturn the redevelopment plan, which allows greater future development in the 1,100-acre core of Hollywood than is permitted in almost any commercial area of the city outside of downtown.

In 1985, as city planners and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency struggled to piece together the crucial development blueprint, Hamilton fought to have the redevelopment plan adopted in concert with changes in Hollywood’s outdated community land-use plan, a process that would have assured additional traffic studies and public comment, Hamilton testified.

But Bradley, acting through his aide Fran Savitch and then-Hollywood City Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson, put pressure on him to “back off” so that the redevelopment plan could be adopted as quickly as possible, Hamilton said.

The high-density plan was being backed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which included a number of large campaign contributors to both Bradley and Stevenson. Chamber members had raised $150,000 to begin initial work on the plan.

“There’s no question that I was put under more pressure by the mayor’s office on this issue than I had on any other issue as the planning director for 21 years,” Hamilton told Superior Court Judge Barnet M. Cooperman. “It was made very clear that if I didn’t conform to Mrs. Savitch’s request (to go along with the plan) that my role as the planning director might be under question.”

Bradley, through spokesman Bill Chandler, denied the charges, saying he had “no recollection” of ever putting such pressure on Hamilton, either directly or through Savitch. Stevenson could not be reached late Thursday for comment.

Attorneys for the redevelopment agency, which is the target of the lawsuit, tried to keep Hamilton from taking the stand, arguing that Hamilton supported the plan when it was adopted in early 1986 despite adequate opportunity to oppose it.

“There is no reason he could not have brought his concerns to the joint public hearing” of the agency and the City Council, attorney Kay Reiman argued. “For him to come back in (and object) now . . . there’s just no logical grounds for that.”

However, Cooperman called the charges of undue pressure “a serious allegation” and allowed Hamilton to comment at length about his interactions with Bradley, Stevenson and former CRA Director Edward Helfeld.

At one point, Hamilton testified, he attended a meeting in Stevenson’s office along with Helfeld and Chamber of Commerce president Bill Welsh. At the meeting, Stevenson and one of her aides “made it very clear” that if he did not “jolly well go along” with the plan’s adoption, Stevenson might seek cuts in the Planning Department budget, Hamilton said.

Welsh and other chamber members--who at one point gained a majority of positions on the 25-member committee formed to help shape the Hollywood plan--opposed Hamilton’s proposals because they wanted to avoid additional citizen participation, the former planning director said.

“They wanted to have this freedom to build anywhere they wanted to,” Hamilton said.

In an interview Thursday, Welsh denied the charge, saying one of the goals of the chamber is to seek better housing in Hollywood, a community that has declined sharply over the last several decades.

“We never saw us going down that road all by ourselves,” Welsh said. “We have worked with every homeowners group we’ve been able to make contact with. We don’t always agree, but we always work with them.”

The chamber president said he did not remember Stevenson threatening to cut the Planning Department budget or pressuring Hamilton to go along with a quick adoption of the redevelopment plan.