Center to Help Businesses Cut Red Tape : Commerce: State office is part of ‘one-stop’ approach to streamlining permit process for L.A. area entrepreneurs.

A new “one-stop” government permit and business advice center was opened Thursday in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza at a splashy ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Richard Riordan.

The state-sponsored Business Revitalization Center, down the hall from a Buster Brown shoe store, is the latest in a long series of one-stop solutions that public officials claim will help ease the red tape Los Angeles business owners face in dealing with government agencies.

Just last week, the City Council directed city building permit officials to coordinate all post-riot city rebuilding activities at a single one-stop counter--replacing four separate post-riot one-stop counters operated by the city at the Construction Services Center. During his successful mayoral campaign, Riordan repeatedly stressed the need to set up a “one-stop shop” at City Hall to streamline the procedure for granting city business permits to new and existing businesses.

The $1-million Revitalization Center replaces Wilson’s One-Stop Permit & Licensing Center, which was opened on Wilshire Boulevard last October but attracted few inquiries from business victims of the riots trying to return to operation.

Although in an area affected by the civil disturbances, the new center will provide assistance to any Los Angeles-area entrepreneur seeking environmental, business, air and water quality, transportation, or toxic substances permits from state agencies.

The center will also have a city staffer to assist those seeking local business permits, presumably through the city’s one-stop business permit desk.

“It is possible for someone who wants to open a business to come into this Business Revitalization Center and achieve all the permits, environmental and otherwise, that are necessary--not just the state permits but the city and the county and the federal as well,” said Wilson in remarks to more than 150 corporate and government VIPs who gathered for a breakfast reception in the Crenshaw district mall.

Later, however, the executive director of the 14-employee Revitalization Center conceded that with only a single city employee in her office, such service would better be viewed as a goal than as a reality.

“What we’re trying to convey is we will be the most efficient, expedient point for processing of all levels of government,” director Jamesina E. Henderson, a former business and health care consultant, said in an interview. “We will be learning in the process what exactly that precisely means.”

The Revitalization Center will provide information to prospective business owners on how to seek financing and prepare marketing plans. But it will not directly offer loans or assistance in seeking insurance--two vital components in getting a business off the ground in Los Angeles.

“This office is only one piece of the puzzle,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, after the ceremonies. “But it is important.”

“There’s no point in getting the permits if you don’t have the capital,” the councilman said. “But once you get the capital, you get beat half to death trying to get the permits.”

Prior to the snipping of a red ribbon outside the entrance to the gleaming new offices, Wilson and Riordan met briefly before TV cameras with a handful of business owners who said they had received assistance from the now-closed state center in the Wilshire district. Later, in his remarks to the audience, Wilson cited their “really marvelous success stories” and said they demonstrated the “great creative energies” of business entrepreneurs.

One businessman, Paul Abernathy of Mercury Technology International, said his firm has received assurances that it will take six months rather than a more customary two to five years to win environmental and hazardous waste permits to open a metal recovery plant at Alameda Street and Washington Avenue.

The Pennsylvania-based firm, which hopes to provide 120 new jobs, plans to recycle mercury from fluorescent lamps and recover gold and silver from used hospital supplies. Daryll K. Ford said that after writing a letter to the governor, he received state assistance in winning health and building permits for a 14,000-square-foot restaurant and banquet hall he plans to open in Inglewood in September.

“Have you gotten any venture capital?” asked longtime businessman Riordan.

“No, we don’t,” replied Ford, “we did it by private funds.”

Michael Jamerson, who hopes to open a soda bottling company in South-Central Los Angeles, praised the one-stop approach. “It comes all from having everything focused into small units that you can go to to get simplistic answers. As I say, they cut out 2,000 years of bureaucracy.”

Mary Shen of Angelus Office Equipment told a beaming mayor and governor that she received help in applying for a federal loan to relocate her showroom and service center, which was destroyed by fire during the riots.

What she did not tell Riordan during the brief session was where the business, which had long been in Koreatown, has reopened: Burbank.

“In our business we need showrooms, offices and industrial spaces for repairs. We also need a parking lot . . . and rents that are reasonable,” Shen told a reporter later. “It’s hard to find (a place) to accommodate all those requirements in that location.”