For Chamber Head, a Turbulent Ride : Civic affairs: Brooke Knapp abruptly quit the troubled group. Then, just as abruptly, the pioneer aviator and businesswoman returned.
Brooke Knapp may have piloted the first business jet to land in Antarctica, but trying to chart a course for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has proved a far riskier venture.
For years, the chamber has been mired in controversy and legal problems, most notably regarding its management of the Hollywood sign and Walk of Fame. Knapp was hired a year ago to try to solve those problems.
Now, after the successful settlement of the state’s long inquiry into the group’s financial practices, these should be heady times for the chamber--and for Knapp, who is widely recognized for her exploits as a pioneering pilot and businesswoman.
But they are not. Although the chamber is trying to reassert itself as the civic booster organization for Tinseltown, it is split by internal fighting and beset by financial and organizational problems.
Things got so bad recently that Knapp abruptly resigned. Then, just as abruptly and only a few days later, she asked to come back.
This week, Knapp got her wish. She will stay on as head of the county’s third-largest chamber of commerce, at an estimated salary of $100,000 a year, plus benefits. She would not confirm her salary but said, “It is not nearly enough to do this job.”
According to interviews with chamber leaders and members, Knapp is understating the case. Many say privately that it would take the will of Superman and the diplomatic skills of Henry Kissinger to unite the group and re-establish it as a force for positive change in Hollywood.
“You’re dealing with a bunch of people who are just not very nice,” said Knapp’s predecessor, Larry Kaplan, who was thrown out of office. “They could get Norman Schwarzkopf or Lee Iacocca in there, and things wouldn’t change.”
Knapp’s challenge is to find a way to be a leader yet respect the wishes of the 45 members of the board of directors--an unwieldy group of bosses at best, chamber leaders agree.
“Quite frankly, I don’t know if I can do it,” Knapp said. “It’s a big, big job. But now that I’ve made the decision (to return), I’m excited about it. Scared, but excited.”
Sources familiar with the chamber’s finances say the group is in a financial tailspin, due in part to a slow but steady decline in dues-paying members in the last several years. Membership revenues last year were less than $250,000, sources said, and it takes $750,000 a year to pay overhead--much of which consists of chamber executives’ salaries.
Chamber members attribute the membership decline to diminishing confidence in the chamber’s ability to serve the business community and to the many problems involved in doing business in Hollywood--particularly crime, impending redevelopment and the coming chaos of Metro Rail construction.
The chamber gets money from other sources, including the annual Hollywood Christmas Parade. But some members complain that it lacks a financial plan to stay solvent in the years to come, and that few dollars ever make it back into the business community.
“The chamber is functioning more like a political entity than a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help the Hollywood community and related businesses,” said Craig C. Darian, co-chairman of Tricor Entertainment Inc. “Our (the chamber’s) overhead is disproportionate to our revenues, and our board has been largely dysfunctional, frequently paying little or no attention to the bylaws.”
Darian recently left the chamber after holding top management, personnel and marketing positions on the board. Some members predict that a dozen or more other board members may soon leave as well.
Longtime chamber lawyer Marshall Caskey also quit the group after 20 years. Caskey would not comment. But in a letter to chamber board Chairman Christopher Baumgart, he said that the leadership had become too politicized and that too many board members were left out of the decision-making process.
“In my view,” Caskey added, “key members of the chamber’s leadership have begun to confuse legitimate dissent with disloyalty to the organization.”
Several board members agreed. But others dismissed criticism by Darian and Caskey as the sour grapes of those who fell out of favor with the chamber leadership. In Darian’s case, they said, the board itself decided not to renew his appointment.
After Knapp quit, there was an outcry among the chamber rank and file--and some board members. Some spoke glowingly of her leadership and independence.
“She’s a terrific leader, and the best thing that’s ever happened to the chamber,” one member said. “It’s only the small-minded people who are fighting her.”
Why Knapp left is unclear; she says that she was hired to chart a new course for the chamber and that her job was done.
Another chamber leader suggested that Knapp left because her management style was divisive. “She definitely (angered) some people. Depending on who you talk to, that is a good or a bad thing,” the chamber leader said.
When the chamber voted last week to accept Knapp back, she was given “a pretty good mandate,” said William Fleet, a chamber senior vice chairman and publisher of a group of weekly newspapers.
Even so, the chamber board’s response to Knapp’s return has been lukewarm at best. “We didn’t ask her to leave, and we didn’t ask her to come back,” Fleet said. “She’s not perfect, but she’s done a lot of great things for this chamber.”
In fact, Knapp’s 10 months at the chamber have been busy. She is widely credited with leading the chamber’s successful fight to retain control over the Hollywood sign and Walk of Fame trademarks as part of the settlement of a state lawsuit.
She has forged closer ties to the many divergent, and often competing, factions within the local merchant community and made the chamber more accessible by moving its office to Hollywood Boulevard. She has worked hard at orchestrating membership drives and fund-raisers.
Knapp knows she has enemies on the chamber board but dismisses them as an occupational hazard.
“When you’re making a lot of changes, you’re bound to make people uncomfortable,” she said. “This has been a year of enormous change. Now we are in a healing process.”
Before coming to the chamber, Knapp was vice president of Golden State Newsprint Inc., a manufacturer of recycled newsprint. Before that, she founded and was president of Jet Airways Inc., a business aviation service and management company she ran for eight years.
Knapp has set over 100 world aviation speed records, including the record for the fastest speed around the world for civilian aircraft and for landing the first business jet in Antarctica. Still an active pilot, she is chairwoman of the California Commission on Aviation and Airports and sits on the board of directors of the National Aeronautic Assn.
