Shift in Redevelopment Priorities Felled Tuite : Downtown: Low-cost housing effort came too late. The agency chief, despite accomplishments, never achieved his dreams.

In the end, both critics and supporters said Friday, departing Community Redevelopment chief John Tuite was a victim of changing times which demanded social responses to urban decay and poverty--not the grandiose skyscrapers and public squares that marked his tenure.

The CRA, under Tuite, gave a badly needed shot in the arm to Chinatown, helped fund the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast and belatedly began a major push to create affordable housing in a city desperate for inexpensive rentals. He tried--some say too hard--to answer persistent criticisms from the City Council that his agency was an aloof bureaucracy following its own agenda.

But the chief of the powerful CRA fell short of his dreams of turning shoddy Spring Street into a historical district and creating a 24-hour residential downtown with distinct neighborhoods and nightclubs. On the eve of his departure, downtown is still clogged with vehicles, lacking any workable traffic plan.

Although the agency recently boosted its construction of affordable housing--6,700 new units during Tuite’s 4 1/2 years--many were replacements for demolished housing that the CRA caused to be torn down during redevelopment.

Some observers, who spoke ironically and sadly of Tuite’s departure, said that after years of intense pressure, he came to agree with critics who demanded that the CRA focus on the city’s disadvantaged.

“John changed the mission of the CRA--that has been his major accomplishment,” said George Mihlsten, an attorney and lobbyist who represents powerful downtown developers. “But as the agenda changed, it was his bad fortune was to end up with an agency that neither promoted growth fast enough for the business sector nor built services and housing fast enough for the advocates of the poor.”

Tuite came to be seen as a liability by Mayor Tom Bradley and his aides because of the agency’s role in promoting high-rise office development at the expense of low-cost housing and social programs.

If Tuite was a man struggling to understand the needs of the community, perhaps the most telling event came earlier this year in Watts. A near-melee erupted among 1,000 livid residents during a public meeting at which the CRA announced a plan to tear down entire neighborhoods in Watts.

Stung by the response, officials withdrew the plan.

“John’s attitude was always, nobody is going to tell this agency what to do,” said one housing official who asked not to be named.

That had been one of many persistent complaints from council members, who increasingly demanded an accounting from Tuite about major projects that would suddenly appear on their agendas. Top CRA officials and business leaders said that Tuite became lost trying to make peace with the 15 council members.

“John said yes too many times to certain council members who were very demanding,” said Councilwoman Gloria Molina. “I like John, but what we needed was a good manager who was fully in control.”

Tuite recently funneled tens of millions of extra dollars into housing and other services for people with very low incomes, critics and supporters agreed. Tuite’s change of heart on affordable housing came in response to years of complaints from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and other advocate groups who said the agency subsidized skyscrapers and luxury units while building only enough affordable housing to meet legal obligations.

“Tuite is not an activist director and he is not a strong advocate for the poor,” said Alice Callaghan, founder of Skid Row Housing Trust, which is renovating flophouses on Skid Row. “But it has to be acknowledged that the CRA has greatly increased its spending on low-income housing in the last two years and we welcomed it.”

Despite those more recent accomplishments, many critics never forgave Tuite’s oft-stated dream of coaxing professionals downtown to rent apartments near their jobs--using public funds to create a luxurious urban setting.

Ray Remy, president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, said Tuite grappled uneasily with a dramatic shift in public perception. Remy said quality-of-life issues, congestion, development and growth became inescapably linked to projects promoted by the CRA.

“When you head an agency that is supposed to do these things as its job, you are bound to come in for criticism,” Remy said. “There’s a new attitude about growth and commercial space, and it’s been more negative than positive.”

An agency press release Friday cited as Tuite’s major works expansion of the downtown Convention Center, rehabilitation of the fire-damaged Central Public Library and construction of Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.

But some who worked closely with Tuite said that he succumbed to worries over the mounting criticism, especially on such failed redevelopment projects as Spring Street.

“You could spend the same funds and do the same projects John Tuite did--but without the closed doors--and people would say thank you,” said the city housing official. “That didn’t happen for Tuite.”