SHERMAN OAKS : Hayden Partly Backs Redevelopment Area

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) has expressed tentative support for a proposal to create a redevelopment area in Sherman Oaks.

Before he can give his full blessings to the project, the legislator said, the community must be ensured a say over how the redevelopment money is spent. Hayden represents Sherman Oaks.

In May, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency suggested establishing a redevelopment area in Sherman Oaks as a means of rebuilding quake-damaged structures, constructing new homes, and working on streets and sidewalks. Traditionally, a group of community representatives--called a Project Area Committee--advises the CRA on the execution, and sometimes development, of the revitalization plan.

The Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. could be the nucleus of a broad-based community coalition that could offer itself as a project area committee to the CRA, Hayden said.

“(The association has) leadership, expertise; they’ve worked on the Sherman Oaks Master Plan for some time and I would hope the CRA would recognize them as co-equals in the process along with the councilman, who is Zev Yaroslavsky,” Hayden said.

Funds for the revitalization project would come from the tax increment, or additional property tax generated by the plan’s improvements to the area. Previously, it was thought that the earliest possible time that the money could become available was the fall of 1995, when the tax increment could begin to be used on a pay-as-you-go basis, or to back a bond issue.

But Monday, for the first time, Hayden said a CRA board member told him that the agency could come up with the money sooner--as early as December--by borrowing money, possibly from a federal block grant for redevelopment and economic development activities.

Even six months is too long to wait, Hayden said.

“If you can borrow it, can’t it be sooner rather than later?” he said. “Why can’t that be today rather than December?”

According to Hayden, the CRA official, whom he declined to name, said the CRA does not have the capacity to issue bonds.

The politician said he wants to know how much money will be made available by the project, and whether expediting the funding mechanism would mean waiving an environmental study, which he believes is a normal part of the redevelopment project process.

Hayden said he will speak about redevelopment and related issues at a Aug. 17 meeting of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.