Not Consulted on Hollywest, Panelists Say : Hollywood: L.A. Councilman Mike Woo created the Community Advisory Council to monitor redevelopment. But some of its members say they did not agree to the project.

It was with much fanfare that city officials unveiled plans earlier this month to transform one of Hollywood’s most blighted, crime-ridden corners into a model redevelopment project that would include low-income senior citizen housing and retail stores.

But behind the peaceful and seemingly unified veneer projected to the media and the public, a problem has surfaced that seems to be growing into a fairly contentious squabble. Some members of the Hollywood Community Advisory Council, the residents’ group whose members were handpicked by Councilman Mike Woo last year to monitor local redevelopment projects, say they were not consulted about this one until it was unveiled as a done deal.

Some committee members were also dismayed that the redevelopment plan for the site at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue calls for the demolition of the now-abandoned Rector Hotel, even though earlier proposals they were shown stipulated that the 66-year-old structure would be preserved, refurbished and used to house senior citizens.

At their news conference Sept. 5, Woo and city redevelopment officials hailed the project, named the Hollywest development, as an important building block in the $922-million revitalization of the faded movie capital. The next day, the $4.4-million, low-interest loan package to help the $14-million project get under way was approved by the city Community Redevelopment Agency’s board of commissioners and sent to the City Council for its final say.

Redevelopment Agency commissioners approved the loan agreement based on an official memorandum report signed by agency Administrator John J. Tuite. It stated, among other things, that the project has the support of the Hollywood Community Advisory Council.

That apparently was news to most, if not all, of the 38 council members. Nine of the council’s more active members, in interviews with The Times, were unanimous that they had not heard about the project as approved by Redevelopment Agency commissioners. After rounds of phone calls and a stormy community advisory council meeting last Monday, members of the council’s executive committee voted to send a letter asking the agency to correct Tuite’s memorandum to show that they had not approved the project. They also voted to send a letter to Woo expressing their displeasure about being left out of the process.

The criticism from the council was unprecedented. Set up by Woo last year to replace a group of mostly elected resident advisers, whom the councilman was finding overly contentious, the new panel has been criticized from the start by some for being a lap dog for Woo and the CRA.

And, although some advisory council members defend their role as independent overseers of the redevelopment of Hollywood, others say they feel betrayed.

“We’re trying to act independently. Maybe we can’t,” said one council member, who asked not to be named. “Maybe we are being used as a political instrument. . . . Maybe we’re naive to think that we’re not.”

Cooke Sunoo, Redevelopment Agency project manager for the project, said he was responsible for the report saying the Community Advisory Council supported the plan, based on general discussions held months ago with some members.

“They took issue with that, and I accept their criticism,” said Sunoo. He said any error was not intentional and was an overstatement.

Donald Spivack, a senior Community Redevelopment Agency operations director, said plans to save the hotel were rejected because the building does not meet earthquake or safety codes and would cost too much to refurbish.

The advisory council put in long hours reviewing Redevelopment Agency projects and trying to draw up a general urban design plan.

“This is a pretty blatant disregard for the people supposedly being the eyes and the ears of the public,” panel member Fran Offenhauser said.

Offenhauser, who has been on the Redevelopment Agency’s advisory committees for several years, said she was disappointed because she thought that the agency was no longer pulling “dirty tricks” in trying to forgo public input. That is a charge often lodged against the agency, but one which it vehemently denies.

“I really felt positive, that things were improving. But I’m shocked,” said Offenhauser, an architect who is active in Hollywood preservation efforts. “I don’t even begin to understand it. This is something we’ll have to take up with the councilman.”

“Certainly, it should have come through us,” Barton Myers, chairman of the Hollywood Community Advisory Council’s Planning and Design Review Committee, said of the project.

Myers said the Rector Hotel, a four-story brick structure, had historical and architectural significance. “Obviously,” he said, “the policy would be to try to save it.”

Some advisory council leaders defended the Community Redevelopment Agency and Woo.

Torie Osborn, chairwoman of the council until two months ago and still a member, said she was unaware of the new project. But Osborn said she had no problems dealing with the agency. Osborn, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, said: “The communication generally has been terrific. It has been part of the rebuilding of trust between the (Community Redevelopment Agency) and the Hollywood community.”

If anything, said Christine Essel, the group’s new chairwoman, who is vice president of development for Paramount Pictures, the agency made an honest mistake.

Woo was out of state last week and unavailable for comment. His planning deputy, Eric Roth, said: “We hope in the future there is better communication, because (the council members) have valuable information to give, absolutely,” Roth said. “Some of their feathers have been ruffled, and that’s a shame.”

Several members, speaking on condition that they not be identified, said they feared that the way the project was handled underscored a more fundamental problem regarding the role of an advisory group operating in such a politically charged atmosphere.

Some said they suspected that the agency and Woo engineer such “end-arounds” to ensure that preservationists’ concerns do not get in the way of the project’s approval. Both Woo’s office and the agency denied such a ploy.

Said one advisory council member: “The sense is that certain projects that are sensitive are not being shown to us. This further suggests that the whole reason for our existence is being undermined. . . . The rules seem to be changing and that is very disturbing to us.”

Woo set up the Hollywood Community Advisory Council and appointed its members in May, 1989, as a replacement for the Project Area Committee. Woo said the old committee had become “an official forum for wacky behavior.”