Wood’s Reappointment as CRA Leader Opposed

In a rebuke of downtown development policies, a Los Angeles City Council committee on Monday voted against Mayor Tom Bradley’s reappointment of James Wood as chairman of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

“I cannot allow myself any longer to rubber-stamp the confirmation of someone who is in a position as important as you are,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

“You want to create a dense urban core in downtown Los Angeles. Incredible. I cannot share that vision.”

The committee voted 2 to 1 to turn down Wood’s reappointment. Yaroslavsky and Councilwoman Gloria Molina voted against Wood, while Councilman Richard Alatorre staunchly defended him.

“I think that he has been a good chairman of the CRA,” Alatorre said. “The things that we hold him accountable for, we ought to hold ourselves accountable for.”

The reappointment goes to the full council for a vote next week.

Wood was appointed to the agency’s board in 1977 and since 1984 has been chairman, a position he also held in 1981 and 1982. During those years, the CRA, with an annual budget of $500 million, presided over the dramatic rebirth of the city’s central business district.

Through most of the last decade, the CRA enjoyed almost a free hand to plan and subsidize the downtown rehabilitation.

Using a variety of financial incentives such as grants, loans and property tax revenue, the CRA stimulated nearly $5 billion in new construction.

The agency also helped construct thousands of housing units, many of them low-income, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The CRA also has invested millions of dollars in Skid Row relief agencies.

A combative leader, Wood often wrangled with critics who questioned his--and Bradley’s--goal of using hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to create a bustling downtown of gleaming skyscrapers and apartment towers.

But in recent months, Bradley has moved the agency away from its emphasis on downtown, proposing instead that the agency spend more time and money creating low-income housing, revitalizing small businesses in poor areas, creating child-care centers for the working poor and developing other programs targeted to the needy.

“I carried out the mission that was given to me by the majority of the City Council,” Wood said during one of several tense exchanges with Yaroslavsky and Molina.

Wood later told reporters, “I myself am very comfortable with what we’ve done. I’m proud of the Community Redevelopment Agency and I’m happy to go before the full City Council.”

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Monday that Bradley firmly backs Wood. “We feel strongly that Mr. Wood will prevail handily when the entire City Council votes,” Fabiani said. In recent months, he said, Wood has helped redirect the agency toward an emphasis on affordable housing. “Perhaps it takes a while for perception to catch up with reality,” Fabiani said.

The committee action follows more than a year of open fighting between the CRA and the council, which last summer gave itself greater control over the CRA, but stopped short of a complete takeover.

“The City Council has effectively placed the CRA on probation,” said Molina, who chairs the Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee.

She said there are “serious questions” about how well the CRA has mitigated the impact of the growth for which it has pushed.

“People want underwriting of social programs,” Yaroslavsky said, “not more development of downtown. You accomplished that mission long ago.

“I don’t think you get it, Mr. Wood. I don’t think you understand what’s going on downtown.”

Alice Callahan, director of Skid Row’s Los Familias del Pueblo, a service center for the homeless and poor, said that despite Wood’s pro-developer reputation, “I have learned how to work with him and he’s been very supportive of the programs on Skid Row, and I’m actually sorry to see him leave, if he does.”

But to others, Wood typified what they felt was the resistance at the CRA toward helping the truly disadvantaged.

Larry Gross, director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, an activist group involved in rent control and affordable housing issues, called the City Council committee’s vote on Wood “exciting.”

Gross said he hopes Wood is replaced with “a person who is more concerned and committed to ensuring that the CRA builds affordable housing, and does not tear down more homes than it puts up.”

Whatever occurs, Wood will be remembered for his emotion-charged defense of the CRA and its goals.

Last year, a months-long feud finally erupted between Wood and an interruptive gadfly who regularly assailed the CRA’s policies during commission meetings. Wood performed a citizen’s arrest of the gadfly, William Tut Hayes, 54, who wound up in jail last September with a sentence of 155 days for repeatedly disrupting public CRA meetings.

Hayes was released by the courts only after Bradley interceded amid a public outcry over his jailing. But Wood said then that he “only did what I had to do.”