Hollywood Corner Infamous for Decay to Get a Makeover : Urban renewal: City officials unveil plan for retail and residential project. It would replace a crime-ridden cluster of abandoned shops.

A notoriously dangerous and crime-ridden corner of Hollywood could become a gleaming model of redevelopment under a Cinderella-style transformation plan, city officials said Wednesday.

The abandoned cluster of fast-food restaurants, strip mall stores and an earthquake-damaged hotel--which Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo called a snake pit--stands decaying at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue.

“I can’t think of any other corner in Hollywood that inspires this much dread in people,” Woo said at a news conference on the northeast corner of the intersection, as city officials, neighborhood activists and an occasional transient looked on.

Plans for the corner include 88,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, including a supermarket and drugstore. Above the retail outlets, 190 units of low-income housing for senior citizens are planned.

If all goes well, Woo said, the commercial half of the project should break ground in late spring, with the housing to follow shortly after.

“This corner should be a gateway to the Los Feliz and Hollywood communities,” Woo said. “If we can make this project a success, it will send out shock waves to the rest of the city that redevelopment works.”

The project would cost about $14 million and encompass 3.2 acres. It would be developed by the private Hollywest Associates group, which owns the property, with the help of $4.4 million in loans and financing from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

The financing is critical to the project, because Hollywest has expressed reservations about the high cost of financing the project and its location in such a rundown area, said Woo and Donald Spivack, the CRA’s director of operations for Hollywood.

Development of the area is considered especially important because a Metro Rail stop is planned for the southeast corner of Hollywood and Western, Woo said.

Area business people expressed guarded optimism. “We need redevelopment,” said Yit Chong, manager of the B & B Burgers across Western. “It’s too much like a jungle here.”

The project cleared its first hurdle Wednesday when it was approved by the CRA Housing Committee. The CRA’s board of commissioners is expected to give its approval today. The City Council has the final say.

The CRA is touting the mixed-use project as a cornerstone of its $922-million Hollywood redevelopment effort, and city officials say they expect the project’s financing to be approved without a hitch.

“We hope this will anchor the eastern end of Hollywood,” Spivack said. “It will stabilize the area and attract more private development.”

City officials acknowledged they have their work cut out. As they spoke at the site, a newly hired armed guard watched over the boarded-up buildings. Beside him stood a fence erected to keep out drug dealers, prostitutes and the 132 transients who lived in the abandoned Rector Hotel on the corner until police kicked them out two weeks ago.

Last year, there were four burglaries, seven thefts from cars, eight cars stolen, 12 assaults with deadly weapons and 40 robberies at the site, according to police statistics. Police said there have been eight burglaries so far this year.

“It has had a history of problems,” said Capt. Rick Dinse, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division.

Representatives of at least eight area neighborhood organizations are supporting the project. Some, such as the Los Feliz Oaks Homeowners Assn., have been behind it through the three years it has taken to inch the project through the city bureaucracy.

Others, such as the Los Feliz Improvement Assn., got behind it only recently, after developers cut the number of housing units in half.

“The crime is hideous,” said Beth Jacobs of the Los Feliz Oaks group, which says it represents 700 residents. “At one time, this used to be a busy business and commercial district for the surrounding neighborhoods. But there is nothing left.”