Latino to Be Rebuild L.A. Co-Chair : Unity: Tony Salazar will join two Anglos and a black as the agency seeks to be more reflective of the community.

Under pressure from Latino leaders dissatisfied with their role in shaping efforts to rebuild riot-torn Los Angeles, leaders of Rebuild L.A. have chosen Tony M. Salazar, a Latino community development specialist, as the organization’s fourth co-chairman.

The move, which sources said will be announced today, is designed to add new expertise and credibility to the group at a time when there has been increasing pressure to make Rebuild L.A.’s leadership more reflective of the community at large.

Currently, Rebuild L.A. has three co-chairmen, two of whom--former Olympics czar Peter V. Ueberroth and corporate lawyer Barry A. Sanders--are Anglo. The third, Bernard W. Kinsey, a former Xerox executive, is black.

Salazar, 40, who has been serving on Rebuild L.A.’s board for several months, said he accepted the post after being approved by the 21 other Latino board members.

He is the former chairman of the National Council of La Raza, a leading Latino civil rights organization. Salazar also is senior vice president of McCormack Baron & Associates, a nationwide real estate firm that has been widely acclaimed for its work in redeveloping urban areas.

“I think my selection clearly sends a signal that Rebuild L.A. is opening up its arms--publicly and in every other way--to the Latino community in its efforts to rebuild L.A.,” Salazar said in an interview. “Ultimately, Rebuild L.A. will look beyond South-Central and look at areas of need throughout the city.”

Salazar’s selection was praised by many Latino leaders, some of whom had complained that Rebuild L.A. had been too slow to acknowledge the importance of Latinos in Los Angeles by failing to place one in its top management.

“All things considered, he is a home run,” said Dan Garcia, a Warners Bros. vice president and Rebuild L.A. board member who pushed for Salazar. “He is a realist about low-income housing. He knows how to make the pieces fit together. His head isn’t too big and his heart is in the right place.”

Garcia and others, including Deputy Mayor Linda Griego, say Salazar’s expertise in affordable housing and in joint ventures of government, corporations and nonprofit organizations makes him ideal for the job.

“Tony brings to the position something none of the rest of the co-chairs have--direct community development experience,” said Rebuild L.A. board member Esther Valadez, who is president of Affordable Housing Associates.

Salazar has combined “the best elements of private entrepreneurship with altruistic goals,” said Raul Izaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, a coalition of 160 organizations. “Everyone who has worked with him feels he is a glue, a bridge person, a person who brings people together. He can be tough as nails, but he normally comes as unassuming and makes friends easily,” Izaguirre said.

The new co-chairman also has ties with Wall Street firms, organized labor and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-L.A.), one of Rebuild L.A.’s most outspoken critics. In fact, McCormack Baron has a joint venture agreement for a project with Community Build, a nonprofit community development group launched by Waters.

Rebuild L.A.’s Latino board members, sources say, coalesced around Salazar as their candidate in recent weeks after Griego, Garcia and Antonia Hernandez, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, spurned overtures to take the position.

A graduate of the University of Missouri with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, Salazar is a second-generation American who is the son of a railroad worker and a homemaker.

After completing his education in 1975, Salazar went to work at Guadalupe Center, a nonprofit advocacy group for Kansas City Latinos, and eventually became its executive director. In 1980, he became executive director of the Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance, a citywide agency that stimulates inner-city housing development and works with community development groups.

He joined McCormack Baron in 1985, Salazar said, because he wanted to work with a “for profit” developer committed to doing inner-city projects with community groups.

Salazar is married to Denise De La Rosa, a Boyle Heights native who is an education specialist with California Tomorrow, a nonprofit social policy research group concerned with multicultural issues.

The couple were driving here from their previous home in Washington, D.C., to open a new office for his St. Louis-based company on April 29 when they heard on a Louisville radio station that riots had erupted in Los Angeles.

“From the time we left Louisville until the time we got here, it was on the radio 24 hours a day,” Salazar said. “I don’t know if people here realize the impact the riots had on the psyche of America. It showed how fragile things are.”

Griego said the fact that Salazar is new to the city will be more of an asset than a liability: “He has fresh ideas; the parts that he doesn’t know, we’ll be there for him.” Moreover, “he doesn’t have any political baggage,” Garcia said.

On the other hand, conservative Latino activist Xavier Hermosillo branded Salazar, whom he has never met, “a lightweight, an out-of-towner who has no track record here.”

Although the organization has been accused of being hampered by having more than one chairman, Salazar said he does not expect problems in reaching agreement with his three co-chairs because he worked with seven partners at McCormack Baron.

He said he will focus on bringing corporations and community developers together to address housing and job development issues.

Salazar was “extremely successful in bringing the business community and the neighborhood revitalization movement together” in his native Kansas City, according to Bill Hall, president of the Hall Family Foundation, which has invested several million dollars in McCormack Baron projects.

Salazar said that while he has worked in many difficult situations, conditions in Los Angeles are formidable.

“This is a very tense city,” Salazar said. “There is tension between the public sector and the private sector, among community groups, blacks and Latinos. . . . Everyone has to hold hands and get in the boat together. Only by doing that will we make change in this town.”