Ex-Planner for Cleveland Backed for L.A. Position : Urban agenda: Homeowner coalition endorses Norman Krumholtz, a supporter of affordable housing, to head city department. Bradley to interview finalists for the post on Friday.

As Mayor Tom Bradley this week starts to interview finalists for the city’s politically sensitive planning chief job, a nationally respected urban planner from Cleveland has gained the backing of neighborhood activists across the city.

Norman Krumholtz, the beneficiary of the support, headed Cleveland’s Planning Department from 1969 to 1979 and now, as a professor at Cleveland State University, advocates the notion that planners should work to help society’s underprivileged.

Krumholtz, 64, has already impressed advisers close to Bradley who favor a planning agenda that makes affordable housing and the economic development of South-Central Los Angeles top priorities.

Last week, he picked up the endorsement of PLAN/LA, a coalition of the city’s powerful homeowner groups headed by Bill Christopher, a Bradley appointee to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals and a Westside neighborhood activist.

In a letter urging Bradley to appoint Krumholtz, PLAN/LA called him an ideal candidate who would not allow political pressure to influence his judgment.

“There was a consensus that Krumholtz has more spine than most of the others and that he wouldn’t be rubber stamping the mayor or the City Council all the time,” said Gordon Murley, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., a group that represents middle-class and affluent homeowners who live in the Santa Monica Mountains. Murley is a member of PLAN/LA.

A City Hall official familiar with the mayor’s thinking on planning issues said Monday that PLAN/LA’s endorsement of Krumholtz may prove useful by demonstrating the candidate’s ability to win the respect of a wide range of community groups.

While Krumholtz has earned a reputation as an advocate of inner-city causes, his record also appealed to the middle-class homeowner bloc within PLAN/LA. “It’s the involvement issue,” said Christopher. “If we are allowed to be involved, we get heard.”

David Diaz, an Eastside private planner who headed the PLAN/LA panel that investigated the candidates’ backgrounds, said Krumholtz “has one of the best records in the country of involving the local communities in the planning process” and of “being unafraid of transmitting the community’s wishes to the politicians.”

The past year has been a period of turmoil for the Planning Department, marked by declining morale and by a scathing management audit that found city planners too often allowed their professional judgment to be influenced by the city’s elected officials.

Starting Friday, Bradley begins interviewing finalists for the post of planning director, which has been vacant since the fall of 1990 when Kenneth Topping abruptly announced his resignation after fewer than five years in the job.

Since Topping’s resignation, the city’s Planning Department has been run by Acting Director Melanie Fallon, also a finalist.

Frank Eberhard, the city’s deputy director of planning and a longtime San Fernando Valley resident, confirmed Monday that he has withdrawn from consideration for personal reasons. PLAN/LA had also endorsed Eberhard.

In addition to Krumholtz and Fallon, the other candidates Bradley will be interviewing for 30 minutes each are Con Howe, former executive director of the New York City Planning Department; Bruce McLendon, who has been the top planner in Ft. Worth since 1985, and Ronald Short, who has headed the planning agency in Phoenix for more than four years.

The city conducted a nationwide search for a new director and initially reviewed the records of more than 35 candidates. Two panels of citizens narrowed the candidate pool down to the finalists.