LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Linda Griego : Lodwrick Cook : Redefining RLA as an Engine of Economic Development

When Bernard Kinsey, an RLA co-chair, resigned last month, he noted that a basketball player, Larry Johnson of the Charlotte Hornets, had just signed an $84-million contract--more than the total of all government funds put into inner-city Los Angeles since the riots.

Created when Los Angeles was still smoldering from the riots, RLA is a private agency charged with developing the economy of the central city. Its first chairman, Peter V. Ueberroth, estimated it would need $6 billion in investment to create the 75,000 jobs needed to turn L.A.’s neglected neighborhoods around.

By the time of last year’s mayoral elections, it was clear that RLA was not meeting public expectations. Ueberroth had resigned in May, 1993. Few jobs had been created. Only one-tenth of the needed investment had been obtained. The board wanted a new chairperson, but most of the likely candidates made it clear they didn’t want the job.

Finally, Lodwrick M. Cook offered to take the helm, with one caveat. He wanted Linda Griego to run the organization as a full-time, paid CEO.

Cook is no stranger to RLA or to community causes. As chairman and CEO of Arco, he heads one of the cities biggest and most civic-minded corporations. A native of Louisiana, he came to Los Angeles in the early ‘70s. He has been Arco’s CEO since 1986. Active in the rebuilding of the library Downtown, Cook is the father of five grown children.

Most Angelenos will remember Griego from a commercial she ran during her unsuccessful bid for mayor last year. It featured Griego, clad in red, walking among black & white, life-size cut-out photos of her male opponents. A former deputy mayor under Tom Bradley, she spent six years in Washington as an aide to Sen. Alan Cranston. In 1986, Griego opened a successful downtown restaurant, Engine Co. 28. She is married to attorney Ronald Peterson.

Cook and Griego say their short-term strategy for RLA will include following up on commitments by businesses that have never been fulfilled. Over the longer term, they say they will stress a “bottom-up” economic strategy that they believe will create jobs by focusing on small- and medium-size businesses.

In an interview held on the top floor of the Arco tower, both admitted that RLA had lost direction. But each is convinced that with good management and hard work, RLA can accomplish its goal of creating greater prosperity for the whole of Los Angeles.

Q uestion : How would you define, or redefine RLA? What has it been, and what should it be?

Cook: Focusing RLA on economic development is the direction Linda and I want to go, and the board has approved that. We want to help existing companies expand, help small companies get going in the neglected areas and work with companies that might consider relocating parts of their businesses to these areas. In other words, job creation.

That’s in contrast with the past, when RLA sometimes tried to do other things. We’re better suited to work in this economic-development area than we are in things like affordable housing, for example. Unless, of course, if that is specifically an obstacle for a business to get started--then we would address it.

Griego: For the first couple of years, RLA was like a developer. Developers juggle a lot of balls. Some things work, and some do not. One of my first tasks will be to evaluate what has worked and what hasn’t. That development stage is over for RLA, and I see us moving into the building stage. We want to focus on the things that did work, and add to that some of the ideas I have about business networks. These are ways small and medium-sized businesses in the neglected areas can collaborate so that they can compete for larger contracts. This is a great way to create jobs.

Q: What else has RLA done right, and how would you rate its success so far?

Griego: We’ve succeeded in showing businesses that there are profits to be made. There’s now a lot of interest by business in areas that are underserved. For instance, I live in Baldwin Hills, and Lucky’s grocery finally opened a store in my neighborhood. It’s become the top-revenue producer in Lucky’s chain. For years, there were two Boy’s markets--no competition. Then competition comes in, and that’s started some revitalization in the Crenshaw area.

I always work from a position of trying to build on what we already have. And we already have companies that are committed to the neglected areas--that are doing business there, that hire locally. And the question now is what else do they need, what can we do for them? We want to work from the bottom-up. We want to know if businesses need capital, access to new markets or technical assistance. Are they running into red tape at City Hall?

Cook: I think it’s hard at this time to specifically measure the success of RLA. But from the beginning, RLA was a point around which people could rally. And the interest is still out there. Sure, we’ve got to be more effective; we’ve got to do a better job of channeling our energies. But we have a great resource in the people on our board of directors. It’s been criticized for being too big, but I think it’s wonderful that we have so many people from across the spectrum in our community who are working to revitalize the city. I believe that we’ve learned some things about what’s possible, and I think the level of expectation about what we can do is a little more realistic.

Q: What do each of you bring to the job? How are you going to divide the work?

Cook: Linda is the key to our new focus on economic development. She’s been an entrepreneur. She’s worked in City Hall, and had to work through City Hall as a businessperson. So she brings a real firsthand knowledge to the task. Hopefully, I can help her by continuing to tap resources that will push us along.

Griego: This is just the kind of team that will work--the small-business perspective I bring, and the City Hall expertise, and Lod’s connections in the corporate world and his involvement in the community. We each have a stake in this city.

Cook: It’s a personal stake and a business stake. This is the biggest gasoline market in the country, if not the world, and Arco is the leader in that market. This is where a lot of our people live; so we have a real stake in seeing that things work better.

Griego: We’ve been through some pretty rough times, but there are a lot of small emerging businesses in our city. You don’t read about them, because they don’t make headlines. But, for instance, I was just talking to a man who, with his sister, started a flower business at 8th and Olive 10 years ago. They started with $150 and bought a used refrigerator. Today, they employ 150 people. This guy says he’s not stopping until he gets in the Fortune 500. These are the kind of entrepreneurs I know exist in the communities we’re concerned about.

Q: You mentioned one model, of businesses coalescing to win bigger contracts. Are there other models, other things being done elsewhere that might work here in Los Angeles?

Griego: The model I referred to was from Pennsylvania, where, in the ‘80s, the state had lost a lot of its industrial base and tried to figure out what it could salvage. It turned out there were a lot of small and medium-size companies--mostly manufacturers--and they worked on ways to intersect and strengthen these businesses. Today, that area is doing very well. Maryland did something similar with biotech firms.

Some of the biggest success stories are in Northern Italy. Those were very small companies that were not able to compete with the Germans and others. So they began collaborating--figuring out who could do this, and who could do that, and today that is the most successful region in Italy. So collaborations are not a new concept; they would just be new here.

Q: What are your goals? What would you like to accomplish in a year, in two or three years?

Cook: The first task is to zero in on the commitments that were put forth by businesses and government two years ago, when the organization was born. We want to pin those folks down and get them to honor their commitments. I’m sure Linda is going to evaluate the people in the organization. We want to make sure that we have plenty of people out in the field, working one-on-one with businesses, and with the city as well. So it’s a step-by-step process of getting geared up in a new direction and becoming a truly active player. We don’t want to duplicate efforts being made by others, and we don’t want to compete with others for resources--if the funds can be used more effectively by another organization, we will support their efforts. Of course, we need more funding, too. But if someone isn’t working the downstream part of the business--out there with the entrepreneurs, finding out what their needs are--then it doesn’t do much good to accumulate a big war chest.

Griego: I think that’s what’s unique about RLA: It’s private-sector-driven. Entrepreneurs like that, because they know we understand what they are going through, and that perhaps we have been there ourselves and can provide some answers. Many times when government offers assistance, you get there, and it’s just a lot of forms and documents. RLA can help businesses cut through some of those forms.

Q: One of the criticisms of RLA--and it’s one the mayor has expressed--is that there is too much emphasis on creating jobs within the inner city. A better course, it’s suggested, would be trying to place inner-city workers in jobs located elsewhere. What’s your answer to this charge?

Griego: I don’t think some magic company is going to come along and say, “OK, we’ve got jobs, just bring the people over here.” Let’s face it, most people use networks to get jobs. Friends or family will tell them about an opening where they work--that’s always been the best way to get a job. And the new jobs are coming from small business. Think about this: If each small business could hire just two people--and there are 130,000 small businesses we’ve identified in the neglected areas--you are talking about a huge number of jobs.

Q: How does the recent earthquake change the focus of RLA?

Cook: I think it reminds us again that we are a community, and that we depend on each other a great deal. It reminds us that when there is urgency, we can get a lot done. If we could get some fraction of that urgency back and working for us, so that red tape isn’t as burdensome as it is, we would accomplish a great deal. If you look at all these calamities that have hit us, the one positive to come out of them is that we’ve found quicker ways to do things. We ought to learn how to keep those same kinds of efficiencies during times when we aren’t having calamities.

Griego: The very things that small businesses complain about--why does it take so long to work through the bureaucracy?--seem to disappear when there is a disaster. Suddenly, the city can get a permit out quickly. It’s not like people are working overtime. They’ve just changed their thinking in order to make things happen faster. And this is what small business has been asking for all along. And, of course, the more responsive the city is to helping business, the quicker it can rebuild its tax base.

Cook: The quakes and fires and floods have been devastating for many individuals. But we still have huge underlying social issues in our community that affect everyone, everyday. So we don’t want to give up. Whatever we do at RLA is not going to be overnight, not dramatic, and we may not know for a period of time if we’ve had any success or not. Hell, we may fail. We may not make a difference. But we are not going to give up.