Ueberroth Expects Rebuild Effort to Be a Long Haul : Recovery: He says he will be on the job up to five years and envisions 57,000 new jobs in depressed areas.

Peter V. Ueberroth is digging in for the long haul.

The Rebuild L.A. chairman, in an interview, said he plans to be on the job for up to five years--the first time he has given any indication of how long he believes it will take to revitalize the city’s most economically depressed areas.

He has big dreams for those neighborhoods--the creation of 57,000 new jobs; greater access to insurance, bank loans and venture capital; more movie theaters, supermarkets and minority-owned businesses. And fewer drug pushers.

“Our goals are long-term, systemic change,” said Ueberroth--change that incorporates key elements of the business community’s agenda, such as a sweeping transformation of the state’s workers’ compensation system and the city’s permitting process for businesses.

But it is far from clear whether any of these objectives can be realized.

Ueberroth faces formidable obstacles, including a chorus of skeptics who two months after the Los Angeles riots are asking questions akin to, “Where’s the beef?” and expressing bewilderment about how an organization can function with a board that numbers 50--and counting.

One businessman said Rebuild L.A. is like “a start-up business with 24-hour-a-day free advertising and no product.”

Executives of several large Southern California companies have expressed frustration with the nascent campaign, saying they are eager to help but have been unable to secure audiences with Ueberroth.

Other critics, such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), say they worry that Ueberroth plans to use the city’s poorer neighborhoods as a laboratory for some of the goals he advocated in the controversial report of his Council on California Competitiveness, which lambasted state government as a job-destroyer and called for dramatic changes in the way business is regulated.

On Rebuild L.A.’s board, Ueberroth has assembled a group ranging from entertainment industry mogul Michael Ovitz to Carlos Vaquerano, leader of the Central American Refugee Center--as well as representatives of several of Los Angeles’ warring political factions.

Yet in a city that seems increasingly Balkanized, he is under attack for not bringing more representatives of community organizations, environmental groups, labor, Latinos, women and a myriad of other interests under that tent.

And beyond such jostling lie towering obstacles outside Ueberroth’s control. In the past three years, Los Angeles County has lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs. Drastic state budget cuts are draining the city and county of valuable resources.

UCLA Prof. Leo Estrada, who served on the Christopher Commission and recently was tapped for the Rebuild L.A. board, said Ueberroth and his colleagues face a tougher task than the blue-ribbon commission that investigated the Los Angeles Police Department. “The expectations on Rebuild L.A. are much higher and more difficult to meet,” Estrada said.

From the start, Mayor Tom Bradley’s choice of Ueberroth--the wealthy Orange County businessman who ran the 1984 Summer Olympic games here--to head the revitalization effort has been attacked because of his ethnicity and lack of experience in the central city.

In the 67 days since his appointment, Ueberroth has met with countless groups, seeking input on what needs to be done and who should be involved in the vast, complex task. Ueberroth, 54, is a self-described volunteer, working “18-hour days” and bedding down most nights not at his Laguna Beach home, but at a hotel not far from Rebuild L.A.’s downtown office.

Frequently tired, occasionally disgusted, periodically hoarse--but apparently unfazed--Ueberroth, normally accustomed to moving fast, appears willing to accept the role of the tortoise who ultimately prevails over the hare.

The emphasis, he said, should be on the enduring quality of projects, not on how fast they can be put in place: “The last thing we need is to get a lot of people to rush out with goody-goody gestures that will not last.”

Former Xerox Corp. executive Bernard W. Kinsey, Rebuild L.A.’s chief operating officer, said: “We want to plant the right garden that will continue to grow after we’ve handed over the fertilizer and the watering implements.”

Their attitude, however, tests the patience of many waiting for post-riot action. “I’m a cheerleader for what they’re doing, but I’m concerned about the time frame and the approach,” said John Bryant, a successful young black entrepreneur who has enlisted the help of other business people to launch some small-scale projects since the unrest. “We can’t wait for home runs. We have to start hitting some singles.”

Despite all the clamor about the composition of Rebuild L.A.’s board, Ueberroth and Kinsey said the organization’s primary work will be done by “action task forces,” staffed by Rebuild L.A. officials. They hope that every board member will serve on at least one task force. There are 16 such task forces now, including ones on the environment, insurance, investment banking, land use, training, social services-human relations, and youth programs.

Ueberroth readily acknowledges that he had no model for a board as large as Rebuild L.A.’s. The board should be viewed as “a resource,” he said, not “a judgmental body” that would be setting policy or approving decisions on individual programs.

“This is not going to be a Greek democracy, with 55 to 60 people meeting and deciding major issues,” said Richard J. Riordan, a Los Angeles lawyer and declared mayoral candidate who is on the board.

Some community leaders say it is regrettable that Ueberroth has had to spend so much time assembling the board, both in his pursuit of diversity and the need to pacify the many groups angling for a role.

But T.S. Chung, a Korean-American attorney who is on the board, said the effort may prove worthwhile. The board’s “primary value will be in bringing diverse groups to the table so all concerns can be brought up, so whatever Rebuild L.A. does as a group will have broad support,” he said.

Rebuild L.A. has a staff of 25, about half of them volunteers. Several are loaned executives--individuals whose salaries are being paid by the companies for which they usually work.

The organization’s corporate flavor--and business-oriented agenda--is in ample evidence.

RLA, as Ueberroth calls it, is housed in a one-story building donated by Kaiser Permanente--a client of Latham & Watkins, the law firm Ueberroth has utilized in many of his ventures for the past decade. Latham has 15 attorneys doing work for Rebuild L.A.

Southern California Edison donated $250,000 for initial expenses and has said it will contribute another $750,000 this year. American Savings Bank in Irvine provided another $200,000 for initial help and has told Ueberroth that more funds are available. IBM donated computers and office furniture. Arthur Anderson, the large accounting firm, designed management information systems to catalogue the 5,000 offers of volunteer help and donations that have come in.

Management consultants from McKinsey & Co. are working with professors at UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning on developing models for rebuilding parts of South Los Angeles. The federal Commerce Department provided $3 million for start-up costs.

Kinsey and Ueberroth endorse the business community’s position that the state’s overall regulatory framework is “strangling” business development in California.

Ueberroth insists that Rebuild L.A. “will not ask for one environmental standard to be decreased. We can’t in Los Angeles have worse air.” But reform of the workers’ compensation system--which they say is particularly harmful to small and medium-sized businesses--is key to their plans. And an overhaul of the city’s permitting process is also among their aims.

“We have businesses that have already indicated a great desire to do things in a very positive way,” Kinsey said. “But under the present way that permits are given . . . it may be two to three years before we see one job created or any dollar spent.”

City officials have indicated they are amenable to making changes, he said--but also have told him they face the prospect of smaller staffs with the consequence of further delays in the permitting process. Kinsey indicated that Rebuild L.A. might be able to provide volunteers to the city to help expedite the processing of applications.

It is an approach that some observers find troubling.

“I am critical of the city subcontracting the functions of democratic government to committees run by white knights,” said urban historian Mike Davis, author of “The City of Quartz,” a critically acclaimed book on Los Angeles’ development.

Until recently, Ueberroth has deliberately avoided describing his plans in detail.

On June 26, seven weeks after its formation, Rebuild L.A. issued a broad mission statement pledging work “to achieve change by creating new jobs, economic opportunities and pride in the long-neglected areas of our greater Los Angeles Basin.”

But Ueberroth and Kinsey went into greater detail in an interview last week. They said that they plan to bring back the 5,000 jobs that were directly lost as a result of the riots in a manner that will yield another 10,000 jobs.

“On top of that,” Ueberroth said, Rebuild L.A. plans to generate 57,000 new jobs for “the neglected areas, not necessarily the devastated areas . . . of the greater Los Angeles Basin.” He did not elaborate, but his words suggested that some of the job generation would come in low-income areas not affected by the riots, such as Boyle Heights and Pacoima.

The jobs should be in manufacturing, technology and services, generated by profit-seeking businessmen--and “not under any government grant,” Ueberroth said.

“If we accomplish those net new jobs, there is a spillover for additional jobs--a huge spillover effect,” Ueberroth said. “If you bring a fresh salary into a community, there’s money spent on the barber, a second drug store. All the rest happens.”

Ueberroth made it clear that he considers small- and medium-sized companies the likeliest source of new jobs. “Big business hasn’t grown,” he said. “In the ‘80s, the nation’s top 100 companies had a net loss of 1 million jobs.”

Both Kinsey and Ueberroth are insistent that dramatic work is needed to expand economic opportunity for residents of the inner city. There, qualified people have not had the same opportunity as people in Anaheim, Beverly Hills or Encino to get the financing and insurance needed to launch businesses. “We want to create a green-lined area where there’s been a red line,” Kinsey said.

The primary stimulus that the federal government could provide, he said, is the passage of enterprise zone legislation that would offer incentives to businesses investing in neglected areas. However, he cautioned, numerous studies have demonstrated that “enterprise zones by themselves don’t necessarily attract business.”

To go beyond such legislation, Rebuild L.A. plans to provide a pool of insurance money for depressed areas, create a venture capital fund and vastly increase the ability of business people in the city’s poorer neighborhoods to obtain bank financing for projects.

Ueberroth declines to say where the money will come from, other than acknowledging that he has a lot of offers.

“Every possible technique and every possible avenue of capital generation” will be used, he said, “domestic, foreign, private, public, pension funds.”

Rebuild L.A.’s full scope is still unfolding. The organization is being pressed to start a child-care task force. But Ueberroth said Rebuild L.A. will only get involved in the issue if it isdetermined that it can make a significant impact on the issue.

Similarly, Rebuild L.A. will work to link people or institutions with capital to those that need it, without touching the funds itself, said spokesman Fred MacFarlane. “I don’t see RLA becoming Ft. Knox.”

Kinsey said Rebuild L.A. hopes to facilitate considerable construction work but does not plan on becoming a developer itself.

Rebuild L.A.’s leaders do not claim an exclusive franchise on revitalizing the city. “Our focus is in areas where we think we have distinctive competence--bringing in business,” Kinsey said.

After the 1965 Watts riots, he said, the government and the community launched initiatives, but there was no wide-scale, sustained participation by the business world. Those projects that were undertaken--such as a Lockheed airplane parts plant and an Aerojet General tent-making factory--did not endure.

Yet even if the private sector makes massive investments in South Los Angeles, years of government neglect of the cities has to be reversed, said Dennis A. Collins, president of the Irvine Foundation and a member of Rebuild L.A.’s board.

“There’s no way we can address these issues without a change in public policy and . . . without major infusions of public dollars,” said Collins, whose foundation has contributed to several community organizations doing work in the riot areas. “One of my major roles in Rebuild L.A. will be to ensure that, as we are focusing on physical reconstitution of the community, that we not lose sight of the fact that there are root causes that need to be addressed.”

Times staff writers James Bates, James S. Granelli, Andrea Ford and Donna K. H. Walters contributed to this article.