CRA Project Moves Forward : Redevelopment: The City Council has approved a 150-acre expansion of the Crenshaw Redevelopment Area, which proponents say will give riot-torn areas an economic boost. Critics call it a land grab.

With the Los Angeles City Council’s recent blessing, the Community Redevelopment Agency will finally move forward with a 150-acre expansion of the Crenshaw Redevelopment Area--a project that supporters say is crucial, but critics call a land grab.

The council’s approval of the expansion, which was given Tuesday, means that about $75 million will be funneled into the expanded redevelopment area for a variety of projects. According to CRA officials, these projects include a loan program to improve the facades of businesses, rehabilitation of commercial properties and design plans for improving sites such as Santa Barbara Plaza.

The funds, agency officials say, will include $24.5 million in tax revenues, with the balance coming from investment revenues, the city of Los Angeles, the federal government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Specifically, the council’s action enables the CRA to increase the boundaries of the redevelopment area to include Leimert Park Village, Santa Barbara Plaza and areas along Crenshaw Boulevard. The proposal arose after the city’s 1992 riots leveled many neighborhoods, including some properties surrounding the nearby Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.

Officials praised the expansion as a way to accelerate rebuilding in the area.

“This means we can move forward with the revitalization of the community,” said the area’s councilman, Mark Ridley-Thomas, a strong supporter of the expansion since the riots. “It means economic empowerment. It means the business owners will get more help. Ultimately, everyone in the area stands to benefit.”

Some members of the Crenshaw community said the approved expansion is a long overdue move by the city.

“We’ve been looking for this for 20 years,” said Jimmy Dodson, a business owner and 18-year resident of Leimert Park. “For too long, all the CRA money was going to Bunker Hill, and meanwhile, our district was neglected.

“We need the CRA to provide the funds, the expertise and the political forces to make (redevelopment) work. It’s too much for individual people in the community to do,” he said.

But critics, including some residents and merchants in the affected areas, described the expanded redevelopment project as a land grab by the CRA, which will have the power of eminent domain to condemn commercial properties that block redevelopment.

Some of the critics question the CRA’s promise not to disrupt residential neighborhoods. Ronald Murphy said : “I am thoroughly disappointed. . . . I am not against development, but I am against the CRA coming in to take people’s homes that they have worked for all their lives.”

Murphy, a retired bus driver, also disputed the city’s contention that the expanded project area was needed to restore areas blighted by the riots. (CRA officials have said 19 properties were damaged in the riots, but critics note that is only a fraction of the area’s lots.)

“Years ago, I used to drive . . . Crenshaw Boulevard,” Murphy said. “You have buildings that have been vacant down there for years. . . . So this didn’t just happen during the civil unrest.”

Robert Moore, owner of Moore’s Hair Design in Santa Barbara Plaza, was less than enthusiastic about the expansion for another reason. Moore, president of the plaza’s merchant association, has been working with the CRA for several years and has yet to agree with the agency about the plaza’s fate. The expansion turns the plaza, long a study area, into an official part of the project area.

“I say, show me something that’s worked first,” Moore said. “That mall (the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza) still isn’t doing anything. All the merchants that were displaced by the development, where are they? I still don’t know. Some of us have been here 20 years and better and are over 60. . . . It would be very hard for us to relocate.”