New Trial Sought Over Redevelopment Group : Hollywood: A coalition of landowners wants the Project Area Committee reinstated. The advisory panel was disbanded but continues to meet without city recognition.

A small group of Hollywood property owners, claiming to have documents damaging to the Community Redevelopment Agency, has gone to court to reinstate the Project Area Committee, the onetime official citizens advisory panel on Hollywood redevelopment.

Hollywood Endangered Property Owners, an informal coalition of several dozen landowners, filed a motion Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court for a new trial in a 15-month-old dispute over the status of the committee.

The committee, which continues to meet without city recognition, had become the primary mouthpiece for critics of the 1,100-acre renewal effort when the Los Angeles City Council voted last year to disband it. Hollywood-area Councilman Michael Woo, a strong supporter of redevelopment, said at the time that he could not work with the panel, which he described as a “forum for wacky behavior.”

Members of the property owners group said this week that they have documents showing that the drafters of the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan intended for the committee to remain in existence for the life of the 30-year redevelopment project. A court hearing on the motion is scheduled for Aug. 31.

“The Project Area Committee was the only representation we had,” said Don Lippman, leader of Endangered Property Owners. “When they were disbanded, we became very, very concerned.”

Michelle Liu, who owns two buildings and operates a restaurant in the redevelopment area, said property owners are looking for protection from the agency’s power of eminent domain.

“We should have the right to do what we want with our own property,” Liu said. “If we don’t want to sell it, we should have the privilege not to sell it.”

City and CRA officials have argued that the redevelopment plan guaranteed the Project Area Committee’s existence for just three years following City Council approval of the renewal project in 1986. The council officially abolished the committee in May, 1989, and replaced it with a separate group appointed by Woo.

About half of the Project Area Committee’s 25 members refused to disband, opting instead to challenge the City Council in court. Last December, Superior Court Judge Kurt J. Lewin rejected claims by the group that the council’s action violated state law and the redevelopment plan. Lewin refused a second bid in January by the committee to overturn the council’s action.

Attorney Bruce Tepper, who represents the CRA on matters involving Hollywood, predicted that the city and agency would prevail again.

“The judge has spoken twice,” Tepper said. The members of the Project Area Committee, he said, “have had every opportunity to come up with this evidence, and it has never shown up. This process has been through a sifting and examination the likes of which no other redevelopment plan has ever been through. The process has worked.”

Woo described the latest legal action as “a headache that won’t go away,” and he blamed it on a small group of Hollywood activists bent on undermining the renewal project.

“It is evidence of the continuing effort on the part of a handful of people to prevent Hollywood from being improved through the redevelopment process,” Woo said. “We will move ahead and not let these legal procrastinators try to hold us up further.”

In a related matter, members of the Project Area Committee on Tuesday formally appealed Lewin’s ruling on their case to the state Court of Appeal. Committee member Ruth Goulet said the group “anguished over this for some time,” particularly because of the high costs of an expected court battle. The group passed a hat to collect the $200 filing fee.

“We just decided it is an outrage that we cannot have,” Goulet said.

BACKGROUND The Hollywood Project Area Committee was set up in 1983 to help the Community Redevelopment Agency prepare a renewal plan for central Hollywood. When the Los Angeles City Council adopted the plan in May, 1986, the citizens committee became largely an advisory group, making recommendations to the agency on proposed developments and other issues involving the $922-million renewal effort. But in elections in late 1988, redevelopment critics gained a majority on the 25-member committee, often putting it at odds with the CRA and Hollywood-area Councilman Michael Woo. At Woo’s urging, the council voted to disband the committee in May, 1989, and replace it with an appointed panel selected by the councilman. The council’s action was upheld in court, but 14 members of the committee continue to meet and call themselves the Hollywood Project Area Committee.