Cook to Step Down From Top RLA Job in July : Recovery: During Arco chairman’s 13-month tenure, agency has focused on finding ways to aid inner-city businesses. He admits its progress is slow, but says it can serve as catalyst.
Wanted: A new chairman for a nonprofit organization with an 87-member board of directors and a paid staff of roughly a quarter that size. The agency has a meager budget, limited expectations, and it promises to go out of business in two years.
RLA, the privately run riot relief effort created by government officials in the wake of 1992’s civil unrest, is seeking a new board chairman with Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook’s formal announcement Thursday that he will step down when he retires from his Arco post in July.
Cook took the helm of RLA along with ongoing President Linda Griego 13 months ago, replacing a cumbersome quartet of multicultural co-chairs who never met public expectations they had generated about the ability of major corporations to create jobs and development in riot-scarred neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
At the time, Cook and Griego vowed to breathe new life into the agency, initially called Rebuild L.A., saying they would concentrate on aiding the 115,000 small-business owners in Los Angeles County’s neglected neighborhoods to expand and provide new jobs.
During the duo’s tenure, RLA staffers and volunteers have done considerable research on inner-city business conditions, interviewing about 200 owners of biomedical, textile, toy, household furniture, metalworking and food-processing plants, as well as the owners of 90 of the 250 still-vacant lots where buildings were torched during the riots.
In the case of the biomedical industry, RLA consultant Ahmed Enany recently helped form a 15-firm manufacturing council with an eye toward improving access to venture capital and to technology from local universities. Efforts to form business networks in other fields or to entice new groceries and other retail firms to the riot-racked lots, mainly in South-Central Los Angeles, are still taking shape, RLA officials say.
Asked the major accomplishment of RLA during his tenure, Cook said Thursday that it was convincing former Deputy Mayor Griego to head the agency’s day-to-day operations.
Griego, who is paid $150,000 a year, said Cook, who is serving without pay and has never taken a day-to-day role, has proven particularly helpful in using his network of business contacts “to open doors” for RLA to major corporations.
Stressing that RLA cannot be expected to solve the problems of the inner city single-handedly, Cook, 66, said the organization’s progress “is slow and it’s not going to be dramatic.” But he added that RLA, scheduled to phase out of existence in early 1997, can serve “as a catalyst, a convener and an instigator (to make) things happen.”
By making contact with existing manufacturers in impoverished neighborhoods--more than 15,000 businesses employing more than 360,000 people, according to RLA statistics--the agency can help develop new business opportunities that would create jobs, Cook said.
“We’re beginning to get a handle on how we can help that along,” said Cook, who made his announcement at RLA’s quarterly board meeting. Cook explained that he had made clear to the board a year ago that he would step down at the same time he resigned his Arco chairmanship. Cook, who underwent successful coronary artery bypass surgery in January, resigned as chief executive of Arco last June. The 37 board members in attendance voted to select a new leader by July.
