Alliance of City, Business Leaders Attempts a Hollywood Make-Over

Nibbling pastries under blowups of movie stars, city and business leaders gathered Thursday to launch a wide-ranging effort to remake the image and reality of Hollywood, a district where the past remains more alluring than the present.

Touted as an unprecedented attempt to solve the area’s many problems and turn it into a thriving entertainment and cultural center, the Hollywood Economic Alliance will tackle everything from crime to a shortage of trained labor and the departure of entertainment companies.

Started with government seed money and driven by local businesses, the project is one of several underway to revive an area that has been in decline for decades.

“Hollywood is at a critical crossroads,” said John Rooney, a consultant who helped organize the alliance. “Now [it] has a plan.”

That plan, devised by Hollywood’s business community, outlines eight areas of concern and strategies for dealing with them.

Although the offices of Mayor Richard Riordan and Hollywood’s councilwoman, Jackie Goldberg, provided money to get the alliance up and running, Riordan sounded a favorite theme when he addressed the gathering of more than 100 people at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

“The city will be a partner, but the impetus has to come from the community,” Riordan said. “We can be a resource, but we can’t make things happen. It has to come from leaders.”

In this instance, the community seems to be embracing his challenge. More than 200 executives from Hollywood’s key industries--entertainment, tourism and medical care--are listed as participants in a slick booklet outlining the alliance’s plans.

“Five years ago, everyone was looking at outside developers and the city as the savior of Hollywood, and it didn’t happen. It was pretty bleak,” said Leron Gubler, executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “It became quite apparent that if we were waiting for other people to do it, nothing was going to happen.”

The alliance has settled on a variety of initiatives. It wants to:

* Create a media business improvement district in an area that is home to a number of post-production companies. Property owners would tax themselves to pay for such improvements as parking, security and communications.

* Help employers create job training programs to expand the local pool of qualified workers.

* Establish a visitors center at the west end of Hollywood Boulevard and develop more tourist attractions.

* Promote Hollywood’s image.

* Recruit businesses to the district and work to retain them.

* Support the opening of a homeless transitional facility to be operated by the Foundation House on North Madison Avenue. Using government grants, the organization is purchasing the building, which will include housing, social services and a bakery where the homeless will be trained in food preparation.

Rooney estimated that it will take at least $3 million in private and public money to implement the initiatives.

The site of Thursday’s gathering, the entertainment museum, is one of a number of recent projects that have given Hollywood boosters hope that the area’s long-awaited revival may be underway.

The city is in negotiations with a company that wants to build a $145-million retail and entertainment center just east of Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Three theaters have been or are being restored, and three Metro Rail stations are scheduled to open on the boulevard by 2000.

Riordan and Goldberg also persuaded Capitol Records to stay in Los Angeles rather than move to New York, saving hundreds of jobs and preserving the company’s well-known Hollywood building.

“I really believe we are going to be able to make Hollywood move further and faster than you could even hope,” Goldberg told the alliance.

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this story.