Hollywood Redevelopment Proposal Advances

A significant piece of the long-delayed Hollywood redevelopment project won approval Thursday from the Los Angeles Planning Commission, marking one of the few forward movements since the project began nearly a decade ago.

In sending the Hollywood Boulevard District Urban Design Plan to the Community Redevelopment Agency’s board for final approval, the Planning Commission added some recommendations for yet more changes. Still, the planning board’s approval of the first, largest and possibly most important of the redevelopment plan’s several components was seen as a signal that the project may get moving again at last.

For the last seven years, the $922-million project has been stalled repeatedly by disputes, including two lawsuits, between the CRA and various community groups.

Planners’ suggestions included making portions of the plan to upgrade Hollywood Boulevard more specific. Critics have complained that the CRA’s version was too general to be attractive to potential developers.

“In essence, there is no plan,” said Robert Nudelman, a community activist and longtime critic of the redevelopment effort. “Each developer has to go through hoops for the CRA.”

Critics also said the agency has dragged its feet on presenting the plan.

“By late 1990, work on the plan was 95% complete,” said city planner Michael Davies, who wrote a department report on the status of Hollywood redevelopment in 1986 and who has remained familiar with the process. The plan submitted for Planning Commission approval Thursday was “substantially the one” drafted years ago, Davies said.

CRA officials said extensive public comment generated by previous drafts led to the delay in getting the proposal to the commission. Don Spivack, the CRA’s director of operations, said the latest plan differs greatly from earlier versions.

“We had a draft in two years and the general sense was that it wasn’t what people thought was appropriate to the boulevard,” said Spivack, who said that proposal brought a half-inch thick sheaf of public comment. “It didn’t make sense to go ahead.”

Further complicating the course of the 1,100-acre project to reinvent one of the world’s most famous communities is the fallout from upcoming construction on three Metro Rail subway stations along Hollywood Boulevard.

Merchants in the area fear that the construction, scheduled to begin in the spring and last more than three years, will keep customers away.

But some observers see the Planning Commission’s approval of the first piece of the plan--along with efforts by the area’s new councilwoman, Jackie Goldberg, and CRA officials to build consensus--as a sign that the worst is over.

“The animosity in Hollywood is dissipating,” said Jerry Schneiderman, a member of the Hollywood Citizens Advisory Committee, which often has tangled with the CRA. “The climate is changing.”

“Like everything else in Hollywood, I don’t think there’s going to be unanimity,” Goldberg said. “But we’re all sitting at the same table at the same time. That’s unheard of.”