Woo Aide Gets Hollywood Blvd. Consulting Job : Redevelopment: Critics charge conflict of interest after contract is awarded without bids or much advance notice.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce awarded a $56,000 contract Thursday to an aide to City Councilman Michael Woo to organize Hollywood Boulevard merchants, prompting charges of conflict of interest and trickery.

The contract, approved that morning by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which provided the funding, was given to Woo aide Nina Greenberg without competitive bidding and with little advance notice or fanfare. Chamber President Larry Kaplan, a top Woo aide until last year, said he selected Greenberg for the contract at the urging of Woo and CRA officials. Kaplan added that competitive bids were not required.

The move fueled a longstanding conflict in which critics have charged that Woo, who represents Hollywood, and the CRA and chamber with working in concert to plan the massive Hollywood Boulevard revitalization effort, disregarding the needs and wishes of local merchants and residents.

“Nice deal. That is so political I can’t believe it,” said Robert Goldfarb, a local merchant and member of the chamber’s board of directors. He said the board had no prior knowledge of the contract.

Greenberg, who will leave Woo’s employ to take the consulting job, will be responsible for carrying out the chamber’s contract with the CRA to organize business owners to carry out the objectives of the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan.

Some merchants expressed outrage that one goal of the new consultant, as approved by the CRA, is to set up an assessment district in which merchants will be asked to pay for area improvements.

The boulevard, said CRA Administrator John Tuite, has “unique needs that the city can’t fully address,” but that the consultant could, particularly by creating the assessment district.

Kaplan, however, said the CRA misstated the chamber’s position, and that the assessment district is just “an option we are considering seriously.”

The $56,000 will pay salary and expenses for Greenberg, Woo’s crime issues deputy, who will work in the chamber office full time, Kaplan said.

Greenberg said she is “excited about the job,” but refused to discuss her new or old salary. The City Controller’s Office said Greenberg’s annual salary is $32,427, and she joined Woo’s staff in October, 1988. Her contract with the chamber will be renewed for another year “if services are satisfactory,” the CRA said.

Woo was on vacation, and not available for comment. But Greenberg, Woo spokeswoman Julie Jaskol, CRA spokesman Marc Littman and Kaplan all defended the selection of Greenberg and the way in which it was done.

“I can predict what (critics) are going to say, that it’s a scam,” Kaplan said. “This is the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and I can sole source (a contract without bidding) when I want. And Nina has proven that she can do a good job.”

“It became clear that a (consultant) might be a really efficient way to get done what everybody wants done; the cleanup, the anti-crime improvements,” said Jaskol. “It’s not like everybody got together and crowned her.”

Goldfarb, manager of the McDonald’s restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, echoed some other merchants who complained that they were not notified of the impending contract, Greenberg’s hiring and the possibility of assessment fees. In fact, Greenberg and CRA officials said nothing of the plans during a meeting they attended at McDonald’s on Tuesday, in which about 40 merchants complained bitterly about area conditions and the ineffectiveness of Woo and the CRA.

“This just shows, again, that we can’t believe them, we can’t trust them, we get open promises and we are being led down a primrose path while the entire machinery of the city infrastructure is broken,” Goldfarb said.

For years, many merchants have been critical of the city’s response to the crime, graffiti and other urban blight in Hollywood, particularly the failure to get increased police foot patrols on the boulevard to make tourists feel safer. As Woo’s crime deputy, Greenberg should have done more, Goldfarb said.

“It is a manipulative move to control merchants on the boulevard. That is what this is about,” said Ruth Goulet, a member of the Hollywood Project Area Committee, an elected body that Woo replaced as the official citizen advisory group on the redevelopment project in favor of his own group last year.

Marguerite Power, owner of Hollywood Celebrity Florist, said she was especially disturbed that the CRA said merchants were going to be asked to pay “for things we are really entitled to. I am very disturbed by it and wondering what recourse there is to take on this.”

Besides, said Power, “who is (Greenberg) to be getting so much money? She’s no elected official.”

Three years ago, Doreet Hackman and an aide to Woo set up the Hollywood Merchants’ Assn. at the councilman’s request. Hackman, now the elected president of the association, said she was “let down” because merchants were left out of the selection process and will get none of the money.

“It is so outrageous and so terrible that it is hard to understand,” Hackman said. “It’s so clear that no benefit will be there for the merchants. They will be used to please whatever Michael Woo has in mind.”