Battle Heats Up Over Development : Council: Riordan, Ridley-Thomas rally support on eve of vote to override mayor’s veto.

On the eve of a widely anticipated Los Angeles City Council vote to override the mayor’s veto of a development project for South-Central Los Angeles, combatants on both sides turned City Hall into a political battleground Tuesday. Meanwhile, the mayor’s office, hoping to head off the override, scrambled to win concessions from the bank that is helping finance the project.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is leading the charge for the housing and commercial revitalization project on the riot-scarred corner of 81st Street and Vermont Avenue, hosted a rally and buffet breakfast for supporters on the broad south lawn of City Hall.

“I live and work in this vicinity. . . . I will work to the end to see this project fulfilled,” said Essie Grissom.

She was one of about 100 people who stood with the councilman while television cameras recorded their cheers and expressions of support. They held hand-lettered signs and wore yellow ribbons symbolizing their hopes for the project, which they see as a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization.

Two hours later, a somewhat smaller but equally adamant group of project foes, who want an all-commercial development, held a news conference with Mayor Richard Riordan before fanning out to lobby council members in their longshot bid to halt the override.

“We do not want housing on a commercial strip,” said Julie Simmons, president of the Vermont Knolls, Vermont/Manchester and Vicinity Assn., which has fought the housing element of the project since its inception three years ago. The 25,000 square feet of commercial development in the project is insufficient, she said, adding: “We are tired of going to Fox Hills Mall” near Culver City.

Riordan’s unusual veto last month cranked up the emotional debate on a project that has split the city’s African American community. It has deepened the rift between two of the community’s most influential political leaders, Ridley-Thomas and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who lives in the nearby Vermont Knolls development.

The veto also squarely aligned the mayor with Waters and her neighbors and heightened the tension between Riordan and Ridley-Thomas, one of his strongest City Hall critics.

The veto invited an override from the council, which has a long tradition of acceding to the wishes of colleagues in district matters.

Today, Ridley-Thomas will ask his colleagues, who unanimously approved the project last month, to provide the 10 votes needed to overturn the mayor’s veto of the land acquisition agreement and allow the project to proceed.

Riordan said he has a verbal agreement from First Interstate Bank--which is lending about $15 million for the private and city-subsidized project--to increase its financing commitment. That would enable the city to reduce its subsidy of the project’s 35 townhouses for first-time home buyers with moderate incomes. Riordan said he is asking the bank to finance additional commercial and retail projects in the neighborhood.

That will not satisfy project opponents. But the mayor’s office hopes that the changes, including reducing the city’s per-home subsidy from $90,000 to $70,000, will be enough to dissuade council members from overturning the veto--and to then vote for a modified development plan.

Riordan has insisted that his objections stem from concerns about cost and other aspects of the project, not from a desire to get back at Ridley-Thomas or curry favor with Waters and her neighbors.

But his remarks Tuesday were hardly conciliatory.

Riordan called Ridley-Thomas’ failure to heed the opponents’ wishes “an arrogant show of power.”

Earlier, Ridley-Thomas accused the affluent mayor of neglecting minority communities in the city’s core.

Both sides did agree that too much has been made of the dispute’s political implications.

“It’s a mistake to think this is about one councilman and [his feud with] the mayor,” Ridley-Thomas said.