Ueberroth Quits Rebuild L.A. Post : Recovery: He resigns as co-chairman but will remain on board. He says criticism of him deflected attention from group’s activities. Community leaders have mixed reaction.

Peter V. Ueberroth, the well-connected businessman chosen by Mayor Tom Bradley to shepherd recovery efforts after last spring’s devastating riots, is resigning as co-chairman of the embattled private relief organization Rebuild L.A.

In a letter sent Friday to RLA’s 80-member board of directors, Ueberroth said he is stepping aside immediately as one of five co-chairs to, among other things, “devote more time to my family and other commitments.”

But at a news conference at RLA’s downtown headquarters to announce his decision, Ueberroth acknowledged that he had become a lightning rod for criticism that had deflected attention from RLA and its activities.

“The focus on one individual has been getting more and more unfair as we continue to grow as an organization,” said the former major league baseball commissioner and L.A. Olympics czar. “It’s important . . . as we go into Year 2 that the focus is different--that it’s not Peter Ueberroth.”

Ueberroth has long voiced frustration at the lack of governmental support for RLA’s efforts and has indicated for several months that he would like to assume a lesser role in the organization. But his resignation as a co-chairman seemed to surprise many.

“I think that RLA and Peter got no support from any governmental entity at all,” said Harry Usher, Ueberroth’s right-hand man during the Olympics and now a private sports promoter. “I suspect that it was a bit frustrating not having the force and effectiveness of a government program to help these areas.”

Ueberroth said he will continue as a volunteer on the RLA board of directors, working to help attract investments to neglected communities.

“It’s what I do best anyway, getting corporate leaders to take a chance on inner-city America,” he said. “They gave me the best non-paid job in America. It’s been exciting, it’s been fun. But it’s time for a change.”

Ueberroth said that he reached his decision by himself and that he was not pressured by the board or RLA’s other co-chairs. And he said that his timing was not influenced by the mayoral runoff or the advent of a new City Hall Administration.

Ueberroth was accompanied at the news conference by RLA Co-Chairmen Tony Salazar and Barry Sanders. The group’s other senior leaders are Bernard Kinsey and recently appointed co-chairwoman Linda Wong, who is scheduled to begin her duties in June.

Salazar and Sanders said Ueberroth’s departure will not markedly change the organization’s overall operation, nor its focus on creating long-term inner-city investment. And both men emphasized that there are no plans to fill Ueberroth’s position by appointing another co-chair.

Salazar praised Ueberroth as the “conscience” of RLA and asserted that his colleague had been unfairly attacked by the media.

“When you pick up a national magazine and read negative things about yourself for no reason, those things take a toll,” said Salazar, who shared an office at RLA headquarters with Ueberroth. “I’m extremely grateful for his leadership and think the city owes him a great amount of gratitude.”

That sentiment was shared by others in the city. Mayor Bradley praised Ueberroth’s tenure and said his resignation “in no way diminishes his commitment” to attracting private investment to Los Angeles.

“He will . . . continue to focus his energies on the economic development of low-income communities,” Bradley said in a prepared statement. “My supreme faith in Peter Ueberroth to spearhead this revitalization organization has been confirmed time and again.”

Ki Suh Park, a Korean-American member of the RLA board, said Ueberroth oversaw a difficult year for RLA but was in part the victim of the community’s false expectations about the organization.

“He has done a tremendous amount of work in attracting investment in the inner city, but we need to bring the public sector and the community as well into the Rebuild L.A. work,” he said.

But reflecting the controversial nature of the role Ueberroth had undertaken, many community leaders expressed ambivalence about his departure.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who sits on the RLA board but has also been a vociferous critic, took Ueberroth to task for RLA’s shortcomings at a City Council meeting last week. On Friday, he refused to directly criticize Ueberroth but said the organization now has a chance to restructure its leadership.

“When Rebuild L.A. was organized it was in the image of Peter Ueberroth,” he said, adding that RLA has not done enough for riot-torn areas.

Brenda Shockley, executive director of Community Build, a competing recovery organization established by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), said that Ueberroth’s departure symbolizes a new era in post-riot Los Angeles, one that will be marked less by celebrity endeavors and more by community activists “rolling up their sleeves.”

Shockley also declined to evaluate Ueberroth’s performance. But she said observers should not have been surprised that he failed to meet many early expectations

“If you look at what his experience has been and what this job calls for, it was never a given that it was the best match in the world,” Shockley said. “(But) that was then. This is now. And Peter Ueberroth will have a tomorrow.”

Ueberroth, a millionaire businessman who once owned the nation’s second-largest travel firm, gained a reputation for effective leadership when he managed the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, an acknowledged triumph for Ueberroth and the city. He was named Time magazine’s 1984 Man of the Year and later became commissioner of major league baseball, all the while gaining far-flung fame as an organizational miracle worker.

But his appointment to lead recovery efforts after the nation’s worst urban violence this century drew praise and scorn. Many critics questioned what kind of answers an Anglo, Orange County entrepreneur could offer inner-city Los Angeles.

He seemed to acknowledge the difficulties in an address to delegates at the 1992 Urban League convention in San Diego last summer.

“I live in Laguna Beach, a mostly white area, but I know that the people of South-Central Los Angeles must have a chance to have jobs, hope, to pay fair prices for food, everything the suburbs have but that the inner city does not have,” he said then.

Indeed, many of the problems that have confronted RLA have revolved around complaints that it has not been sensitive to Los Angeles’ various ethnic communities. Sanders, an Anglo corporate attorney, and Kinsey, a former Xerox executive who is African-American, were appointed co-chairmen simultaneously last summer. But Salazar, a Latino community development specialist, was not appointed as fourth co-chairman until December, and Wong is both the first Asian-American and female co-chairwoman.

Although Ueberroth and RLA may have overcome questions of sensitivity, the organization has endured persistent criticism that it has no clear focus and has sent mixed signals about its mission.

An internal report released last month by one of its board members, Warner Bros. executive Dan Garcia, contended that RLA’s role in the rebuilding process has been confused and ineffectual.

Other board members have complained about poor communications from senior leaders and staff. More important, questions have been raised about the accuracy of RLA’s claims of corporate investment.

The organization says that it has received commitments of more than $500 million from firms willing to invest in South-Central Los Angeles. Clearly, RLA and Ueberroth have been influential in bringing in million of dollars that might not otherwise have come to the city.

Companies such as Toyota, Ford, Arco, Hyundai Motors, and the Shell and Chevron oil companies have underwritten job training facilities in South-Central. There has been construction of retail outlets and reconstruction of damaged stores. In addition, RLA has created an independent lending fund, the RLA Community Lending Corp., to provide financing for small businesses in riot areas.

But the organization still has not been able to itemize all of the $500 million in pledges. And a Times investigation in November found that many companies RLA identified as being among those intending to invest had no such plans.

Salazar and Sanders said Ueberroth’s departure would not affect corporate giving to the organization.

Joe Hicks, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Ueberroth’s leaving will go largely unnoticed in areas hardest hit by civil unrest.

“People simply feel that Rebuild L.A., for all of its defensiveness and attempts to convince us it has done some good things, simply hasn’t been able to put across a coherent strategy and program that people in affected communities can say: ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ ”

Times staff writers Henry Weinstein and Marc Lacey contributed to this story.

Ueberroth’s Career

Here is a biographical sketch of Peter V. Ueberroth. Although he announced Friday that he is moving aside as Rebuild L.A.’s leader, Ueberroth will remain on the 80-member board to recruit private investment for riot-damaged neighborhoods.

* 1937: Born in Evanston, Ill.

* 1959: Earns bachelor’s degree in business from San Jose State.

* 1962: Begins to make his mark as an entrepreneur, building a small travel consultant firm into First Travel Corp., one of the nation’s biggest travel companies.

* 1980: Appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to head the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, which earns a surplus of $215 million. He attracts worldwide attention for his work and gains a reputation as a skilled organizer and shrewd negotiator.

* 1984: Named Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

* Named the sixth commissioner of major league baseball. Serves for five years.

* 1991: Named by Gov. Pete Wilson to head his Council on California Competitiveness, a blue-ribbon panel of business and labor leaders charged with improving the state’s business climate.

* 1992: Accepts Bradley’s invitation to head an “extra-governmental task force” to rebuild the city. Organization officials say that after one year RLA has attracted half a billion dollars worth of investment pledges for South Los Angeles.

Compiled by Times researcher CECILIA RASMUSSEN