Chat Room : Jump-Starting Neighborhoods : NEXT L.A. / A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis

From his eighth-floor office at the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency’s headquarters on Spring Street, John E. Molloy can survey landmarks of the agency’s work, from the glistening Downtown skyline to the modest storefronts that offer CRA-financed social services.

Molloy, who arrived from Sacramento in September to become the agency’s fourth administrator in a decade, will be able to watch the historic Angels Flight funicular railway being restored to its place on Bunker Hill after a 30-year absence. He can gaze down on the vacant, graffiti-scarred shell that was once the proud flagship of the Broadway department store chain and know it soon will be resurrected as a state office building.

Yet the agency is beset by shrinking finances, low staff morale and continuing debate over its future role.

Molloy, 48, has spent 20 years leading planning, redevelopment, finance and housing agencies. He seems eager to steer the CRA in new directions, including an expanded role in helping to jump-start the economies of neighborhoods hard hit in the 1992 riots or the 1994 Northridge earthquake. He spoke with Times staff writer Jean Merl about the CRA’s place in the city’s future.

*

Question: What’s the most important of all the challenges you and the Community Redevelopment Agency face?

Answer: There are organizational issues, there are financial issues. But the issue in my view is helping to shape and find the soul of the agency, its mission and where we need to be going in the future. And it has struck me that by moving into the various new project areas, on the Eastside and in the South-Central area in particular, we’re finally and at long last really trying to do the right thing with redevelopment. The projects down there are, frankly, less financially feasible, but I think they are very important as an expression of the city’s intent and desire to try to get into the poorest areas of the city and make things right.

*

Q: Then is the agency basically finished with its work Downtown? Or do you see a future role for the CRA there?

A: Clearly in Downtown we have a lot of unfinished business, and the spending cap [a court-sanctioned limit on how much property tax income the agency can spend in the Central Business District] is a very important issue. But we have to transcend that and find other strategies. We need to find more ways to enlist the Central City Assn. and others to work with us in revitalizing the historic central core. And the problem is huge. Everyone knows the trouble leasing brand-new office space up on Bunker Hill, much less trying to get the older buildings in the historic core renovated.

*

Q: How do you see that ever happening?

A: It’s going to be a long-term process, but ultimately we have to find a way to make Downtown the kind of environment where people want to come. Only if we can succeed on a marketing and promotional front can we begin to see some success on the physical front. That’s why we need help from the [business] organizations down here.

*

Q: Bunker Hill and other Downtown commercial projects are the agency’s most visible symbols. What would you like to see become the next emblems of CRA activity?

A: One is Hollywood Boulevard. I call that a hard to miss opportunity for the entire Los Angeles region to establish the premier entertainment district in the United States. Millions of people are coming to Hollywood Boulevard now just to see it. I think that we have been remiss to not have capitalized better than we have on that, and that we would be doubly remiss if we did not go forward now to establish a plan for that area that the studios and other major investors can really feel good and comfortable about.

*

Q: Anything else?

A: As I said before, getting into South-Central Los Angeles [and other struggling neighborhoods] is the right thing to do. At the highest philosophical plane, I see it as important for the government here to signal that it is with the people in South-Central. Now, with respect to getting specific projects done, it’s going to be a very, very difficult row to hoe. For market reasons, and in terms of finding quality developers who are willing to come in and develop in those areas. There are going to be four or five projects that are going to be very important for us to get moving on down there.

*

Q: How will you finance projects there?

A: We’ve been working with RLA [the post-riot agency formerly known as Rebuild Los Angeles], and they’ve been doing a lot of market research in South-Central. There is a tremendous uncaptured market for the purchase of goods and services there. Part of our challenge here is just to figure out how to capture that market potential. We may need some up-front subsidies from the [federal] Economic Development Agency or the Community Development Block Grant program. We’ll also have the new Community Development Bank here, and that is going to be a tremendous opportunity to see some capital for investment in that area.

*

Q: Does this kind of project signal a change in the CRA’s basic approach to revitalizing neighborhoods?

A: Redevelopment--not only in Los Angeles but all over the country--has been changing and evolving over the years from the early days of urban renewal, and now the change is that it’s going to be much more grass-roots. In the redevelopment project areas that we’re going to be doing, you will not see 100% redevelopment of the area. You’ll see a new building here, a rehabilitated building there. It will turn on our ability to work with existing property owners and to get some grass-roots reinvention of capitalism, if you will, on the part of the people living there. It’s not going to be this highly stylized, corporate lawyer sort of negotiation that we had in the past.

*

Q: Redevelopment has long been controversial and has attracted groups of very tenacious, vocal opponents. Will the CRA be more welcome in the “recovery” project neighborhoods than it has been in say, North Hollywood?

A: Oh, yes. I go to these project area committee meetings and I sense a desire to get something done, a tremendous impatience on the part of the people of these communities to get something going. It’s a very positive environment for the redevelopment agency.

*

Q: You have said that the days of the mega-projects are over. Does that minimize the impact redevelopment is likely to have on the future Los Angeles?

A: Not at all. For example, we want to look at ways to improve the commercial environment along Figueroa and ultimately get a Convention Center hotel. We’ve talked about Hollywood Boulevard and some of the recovery projects in other neighborhoods. We want to do more in Little Tokyo and Chinatown. We are working with the Valley Economic Alliance on getting some of their programs going. Taken together, those things will add up to a very important element of the city’s overall economic development agenda.Our job is to promote a positive future for Los Angeles in even those neighborhoods that are experiencing significant disinvestment . . . and to figure out how to go forward to obtain that. That, conceptually, is where I’m trying to get this organization.