New Yorker Picked to Run L.A. Planning Department : Government: The selection of Con Howe ends a yearlong search to fill the politically perilous job.

A New York City planner, known as a resourceful diplomat who worked effectively with opposing interest groups, was chosen Monday by Mayor Tom Bradley to head the beleaguered Los Angeles Planning Department.

The appointment of Con Howe, 42, a former second-in-command of the New York City Planning Department, ends a nationwide, yearlong search for a new planning director--one of the more politically perilous jobs in local government.

If approved as expected by the City Council, Howe will take over an underfunded, overpoliticized department that will be called upon to play a critical role in handling many of the city’s toughest challenges--low-income housing, economic development, traffic congestion and neighborhood preservation.

Howe would replace Kenneth Topping, who resigned in late 1990. For the last year, Melanie Fallon, a deputy under Topping, has directed the department.

Howe, who would earn $145,000 yearly in the new post, was selected from a field of 39 applicants who were screened by panels of urban planners, academicians and activists from rich and poor neighborhoods.

Howe was chosen, according to city officials, because he had the most experience operating in an environment like Los Angeles--where a department of 350 must plan for a multicultural city beset by conflicting political agendas.

“Among all the candidates, he had the most practical, hands-on experience with the kind of intense, complex working environment he will find here,” said Jane Blumenfeld, the city’s deputy mayor for planning.

In choosing Howe, the mayor rejected Fallon and three other finalists, Norman Krumholz, a former Cleveland planning director on the faculty at Cleveland State University; Bruce McClendon, director of planning in Fort Worth, and Ronald Short, who holds the same position in Phoenix.

Homeowner groups, who have been increasingly resistant to growth policies that threaten the character of residential neighborhoods, expressed misgivings about the choice of a planning director from one of the nation’s most crowded cities.

“Any mayor who takes a planner from New York and puts him in Los Angeles is spelling trouble for Los Angeles,” said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino. “We are in a lot of trouble for the next year or so. I think it spells a new era of pro-growth in this city.

“Manhattan is an unlivable community,” Silver added. “It is the wrong vision for this city. I don’t want anyone with a vision of Manhattan to come here and tell us how our city should be planned.”

Among Howe’s most visible accomplishments in New York were the Planning Department’s successful efforts to revitalize Times Square and to preserve the nearby theater district.

In Los Angeles, officials described Howe as someone who skillfully balanced the pressure in New York for growth with demands for preservation of neighborhoods and historical landmarks.

“He was the best match for L.A.,” Blumenfeld said.

“He worked effectively with New York’s multitude of neighborhood planning boards. He was responsible for new development around subway stations. He came up with legislation to remove zoning barriers to new housing, and he figured out a way to cut through the city’s backlog of environmental impact reviews.”

A native of Pittsburgh who was educated at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Howe spent 13 years with the New York City Planning Department, four of them as executive director, a position that placed him second to the city’s planning commissioner. Howe left that job last year to become director of the Lower Manhattan Project, where he was in charge of public- and private-sector improvements in downtown Manhattan.

During his tenure as planning director, Howe came to be known as a skillful mediator, who attempted to ensure that the city’s explosive commercial growth met rigorous design standards and tried to channel some growth to poorer areas that needed it the most.

“Con Howe was very low-key in style but capable of bringing consensus to most issues,” said Carl Weisbrod, president of the New York City Development Corp.

“He was particularly good at reaching an objective by allowing others to take credit for his ideas,” Weisbrod added.

Phillip Howard, a lawyer and professor of planning at Columbia University with a strong interest in neighborhood preservation, said that because of Howe’s “quietly determined style,” the city’s pro-growth Planning Commission adopted design requirements for new buildings that helped preserve the character of neighborhoods.

Reached in New York on Monday, Howe said the job he has agreed to take is not to be underestimated. “As a challenge in my profession, this is probably the greatest in the country,” he said.

Acknowledging that the issue of growth is likely to be one of the toughest he will face, Howe said there are ways to accomplish it without inflaming social tensions.

“You can redirect it from where it is counterproductive to areas where it is desperately needed,” he said. “I always saw the Planning Department’s role as one to shape projects in such a way that they addressed both community and environmental concerns.”

One City Council member underscored the difficulty of the assignment that the new director will face.

“He may not be able to meet the challenge,” said Councilman Nate Holden. “He’s really stepping into quicksand because the Planning Commission, the mayor’s office, the council and the community rarely agree on any proposal.”

Last summer, an audit of the Los Angeles Planning Department concluded that planning in the city had reached “a crisis level.” The city, it said, “needs to overcome more than a decade of inadequate attention to planning issues.”

The audit said that the Planning Department had been severely weakened by political interference from the City Council, by a shortage of resources, by low morale and a general absence of leadership and direction.

Today, according to Blumenfeld and others at City Hall, the Planning Department faces a number of daunting tasks.

The city’s general plan, drawn when Los Angeles was nowhere near as populous or ethnically diverse, requires a massive overhaul. The department must develop a strategy for affordable housing to accommodate a burgeoning immigrant population and to staunch the flow of wage-earners to cheaper neighborhoods elsewhere. The department is also expected to channel new commercial development along transit routes in a manner that will reduce dependence on auto travel and provide cleaner air.

Above all, the planning director will be looked to for a citywide strategy that promotes growth and protects the environment, and that can muster the political support of the haves and still fill the needs of the have-nots.

Times staff writers Aaron Curtiss and Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.