LOCAL ELECTIONS / LOS ANGELES MAYOR : Riordan, Woo Offer Plans for Central City : Politics: The entrepreneur focuses on a business-friendly atmosphere. The councilman stresses a reformed redevelopment agency.

Vying to lead a municipality they both see in crisis, mayoral candidates Richard Riordan and Michael Woo have outlined broad platforms that promise everything from safer neighborhoods to cleaner streets for Los Angeles and its central core.

It is Central Los Angeles, after all, that houses the city’s financial district and what’s left of its manufacturing. And here is where the city’s cash-rich Community Redevelopment Agency has invested much of its time and money in recent years and could be forced to re-evaluate its priorities in the next decade, depending on who wins the June 8 runoff election.

Recently, City Times asked Woo, who has represented the 13th City Council District for eight years, and Riordan, an entrepreneur and attorney, to detail their economic proposals for Central Los Angeles. Woo discussed his proposals; Riordan declined several requests for an interview, citing the demands on his time of the campaign trail.

As he has campaigned, however, Riordan has outlined his basic plan for improving the economy of the central city in particular and Los Angeles in general. In large part, his hope for economic revival hinges on turning the city into a more business-friendly municipality.

To do that, he has said, the city must first be safe. And to make it safer, Riordan has made hiring 3,000 more police officers a top priority of his campaign. To hire those officers, Riordan has proposed leasing Los Angeles International Airport to private enterprise.

On a broader scale, Riordan has said Los Angeles’ economic rebirth hinges on creating and keeping smaller companies, not big ones. As he said in an interview with City Times before the April primary: “Think small- to medium-size businesses. Don’t try to hit home runs. Hit singles and doubles.”

The city’s bureaucracy, Riordan asserted, has been particularly cumbersome for the very businesses that Los Angeles needs to encourage--companies with 100 or fewer employees.

“City Hall has been an enemy, particularly of small-business people,” Riordan said. “You go throughout the inner city of Los Angeles and you will hear time and again that minority businesses have been hurt worse by anti-business attitudes at City Hall than anything else.”

For Woo, running against City Hall is difficult, given his tenure on the council. Still, he agrees that it needs to be more responsive to business. And that, he says, will require reforms and a new direction.

One priority, Woo said, would be to appoint a czar to coordinate all economic development programs within the city. Other reforms, he said, should begin with the redevelopment agency.

Pivotal to his plans for the central city, Woo said, is redirecting the redevelopment agency so its funds are spent on jump-starting businesses and revitalizing neighborhoods, rather than building office towers, apartment buildings and shopping centers, as was the agency’s focus during the 1980s.

“In my opinion, the CRA is like a giant World War II battleship which did a great job in fighting World War II, which in this case was building up the western part of Downtown, Bunker Hill,” Woo said. “But now our challenge is not whether to build more high-rises. I want to make (the agency) the premier economic development agency within city government.”

Agreeing with Riordan that the city’s industrial base must be resurrected with small- and medium-size businesses, Woo said that effort should be among the new priorities for the agency.

“The idea is that future growth in our economy is likely to come in small- to medium-size business rather than large business. So instead of going after a goal that may be unrealistic, look at where growth has been and accentuate that,” Woo said.

Laying claim to what’s left of Mayor Tom Bradley’s multicultural coalition, Woo also said the city’s diversity can be a boon to its development so long as businesses are given assistance in growing and staying in Los Angeles.

Since entering the race, Woo has said that the city’s location--near Mexico and at the hub of the Pacific Rim--lends itself to a variety of smaller businesses that relate to trade. Those businesses, from toy wholesalers to import-export, can open quickly and employ tens of thousands in trade-related jobs destined to be part of the Downtown’s future, he said.

The other new goals for the redevelopment agency, Woo said, should be promoting affordable housing citywide, especially for first-time home buyers, and expanding social service programs for the homeless, runaways and others who require government assistance.

Woo said he has discussed the new priorities for the agency with two county supervisors who have endorsed his campaign--Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. And in his talks, Woo said, he urged them both to block efforts at raising the agency’s borrowing limits Downtown unless it agrees to new priorities.

If that happens, Woo said, the agency could turn its considerable resources from buildings to services that will improve the Central City’s business economy and residential environment.

Woo noted that in his council district, which runs from Hollywood to Glassell Park, plans are under way for a project where redevelopment agency funds will be used to hire private security guards to patrol streets.

A proposal allowing agency funds to pay for sworn police officers requires a change in state law. And although a bill to do that stalled in the Legislature last year, Woo said another effort will be launched.

Arguing that no new development will succeed without customers or tenants, Woo noted that the agency’s plan for a Downtown theater center have been foiled by street crime. “The city invested $27 million in the L.A. Theatre Center. But because of the failure to address crime, many people who might have otherwise come in refused to patronize” the area, Woo said.

Meantime, he said he also supports other innovations that will do more than keep streets safe--they will provide new businesses and job opportunities.

One plan, patterned after a successful project in Michigan, is a business loan program where government funds are used to leverage loans by private institutions.

In Los Angeles, Woo said, $5 million in city funds could be used to secure as much as $100 million in private loans for new businesses.