Rebuild L.A. Sees $1-Billion Infusion : Inner city: Ueberroth says more than 500 companies worldwide are developing investment plans. Officials sketch goals but no master strategy is offered.

More than 500 companies from the United States, Europe and Japan are developing plans to invest more than $1 billion in Los Angeles’ riot-torn inner city over the next several years, Rebuild L.A. Co-Chairman Peter V. Ueberroth told the recovery organization’s board Wednesday.

At a meeting that served as a moment of stock-taking for the region on the six-month anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, Ueberroth, Mayor Tom Bradley and other officials defended the city’s performance following the unrest, sketched rebuilding goals and honored individuals and corporations for helping revitalize neglected areas of greater Los Angeles.

But neither the mayor nor Rebuild L.A. leaders offered the broad master plan for civic renewal that critics increasingly have sought. And some of the cross-fire among the organization’s 80 board members only underscored the political and ethnic strife that has marked the city in the months after America’s gravest urban upheaval in a century.

Among the 500 companies with which Rebuild L.A. is engaged in discussions are industrial giants American Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co., Chevron, Dow Chemical, General Electric and Occidental Petroleum; consumer goods makers Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, RJR Nabisco and Sara Lee; retailers the Gap, the Price Co. and Wal-Mart, and many others, including Apple Computer and British Airways.

At the meeting at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, Ueberroth said the interest in urban investment--and the “several hundreds of millions of dollars” already poured into new business ventures and job training programs--was noteworthy, especially given the depressed state of the local economy.

“The reason is simple,” Ueberroth told the Rebuild L.A. board: The companies have decided that they can make a profit in the inner city.

At Rebuild L.A.’s first board meeting in late July, consultant Robert Taylor of McKinsey & Co. told the board that an investment of about $6 billion and the creation of 75,000 to 94,000 jobs were needed to revitalize the economy of Los Angeles’ neglected and riot-torn areas.

On Wednesday, Taylor, a Rebuild L.A. board member, said that a McKinsey team was still developing a strategic plan for the organization.

The plan, he said, will have four points of emphasis: job creation, local ownership of businesses, development of the work force in the neglected areas and government reform--a reference to regulatory streamlining and the creation of incentives such as tax breaks to spur investment in the inner city.

As he has done frequently in recent weeks, Ueberroth lambasted both the state and federal governments for failing to implement reforms and create incentives for business.

“We’ve got to get the government leg into place,” Ueberroth said, referring to his three-legged-stool approach of community, private sector and government involvement in rebuilding. “That’s a failure for us.”

At a lunch with Times reporters and editors earlier in the day, he blasted Democratic and Republican legislators for layering so many unrelated provisions atop the year’s major urban aid bill of 1992 that President Bush has no choice but to veto it.

Ueberroth noted that the original $2.7-billion urban aid package--which included tax incentives and so-called “enterprise zones”--had been loaded down with a veritable blizzard of “Christmas tree” ornaments, including a tax cut for yacht owners.

If federal incentives were enacted, Rebuild L.A. could “open the floodgates” to companies wanting to invest, Ueberroth said: “We’d have 10 announcements a day.” Bradley established Rebuild L.A. even before the deadly riots of April and May had subsided. Since then, the organization has come under fire for not moving swiftly enough in setting its goals or launching major initiatives.

But at the board meeting Wednesday, Bradley said there continue to be misperceptions about the group’s role. Rebuild L.A. is not a grant-making agency, he said, warning people not to imagine it as a “cash cow.”

“We don’t have the money, so don’t come to us and say ‘gimme, gimme,’ ” Bradley said, in what could be taken as a swipe at groups that called this week for more information about how they could get aid from Rebuild L.A. “That’s not our function.”

Rebuild L.A.’s leaders Wednesday reiterated their view that the organization’s role is to serve as a catalyst, stimulating private-sector investment and linking corporate resources with worthy but cash-short community projects.

For example, Ueberroth said the organization had encouraged Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., a large real estate company, with the operators of Camp Hollywoodland, making possible a swift $1-million project to rebuild the camp for inner-city girls after it burned down this spring.

Responding to recent criticism that Rebuild L.A., a nonprofit, public benefit corporation, has not properly accounted for its funds, Ueberroth said the organization had spent only $800,000 to operate during its first six months.

That is less money, he said, than it costs to run any California representative’s congressional office.

Of the total, $600,000 went for staff salaries, he said--and 80% of that went to employees who are members of minority groups. Only a third of the organization’s staff is paid and the others are volunteers, Ueberroth said.

According to Ueberroth, Rebuild L.A. took in enough cash in its first 10 days to fund its operations for five years. Organizations that offer contributions now are encouraged to make their donations to a needy community group.

Some fireworks developed soon after the meeting began.

Rebuild L.A. Co-Chairman Barry Sanders introduced 13 nominees to the board and asked for a vote on the slate.

“Whoa!” exclaimed board member Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade.

Bakewell said that though he personally liked one of the nominees, Herb Carter, president of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, he objected to the nomination because United Way, in his view, had attempted to impede the efforts of various minority organizations.

“United Way has not earned the right to sit on this board,” said Bakewell.

Bradley promptly stood up and reminded Bakewell that he had defended him when others opposed putting Bakewell on the board.

“This is not a board that has to have 100% support of all of us,” Bradley said, noting that the goal is to bring together a diverse group in order to get broad-based input from the community. Bakewell cast the lone dissenting vote on the slate’s nomination.

Later in the meeting, community relations consultant Irene Tovar of Mission Hills criticized Rebuild L.A.’s leadership and staff for being “insensitive” to the needs of the San Fernando Valley.

Tovar said that considerable “pockets of poverty” existed in the Valley and that a map showing the “neglected areas” on which Rebuild L.A. will focus ignored them. Ueberroth responded: “It’s your map. I welcome your suggestions. If you don’t like the map, change the map.”

The meeting ran considerably longer than the first gathering of the Rebuild L.A. board three months ago. The heads of 10 Rebuild L.A. task forces--on issues as diverse as construction and racial harmony--made brief presentations on their work.

Antonia Hernandez, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the racial harmony task force had set three goals: encouraging and expanding inter-ethnic communication, identifying ethnic conflicts and trying to resolve them, and developing multi-ethnic leadership.