CRA Plan to Redevelop Valley Area in Jeopardy

A plan to create what would be the largest redevelopment area in Los Angeles has bogged down, sharply dividing a citizens panel and leading to suggestions that the proposal be dropped.

Two years after the City Council took the first step to create a redevelopment area on 6,835 acres in the San Fernando Valley, the group of residents and merchants chosen to offer advice appears deadlocked on its future.

Jim Leahy, vice chairman of the Project Area Committee created by state law to advise the city, said he will meet with City Councilman Alex Padilla this week to urge that he pull the plug on the entire project.

“I’m going to tell him I think we should stop it,” said Leahy, executive director of the Volunteer Center, a social service agency in Panorama City.

Leahy said that he does not believe the plan has the community’s support and that there are serious concerns about whether the entire area is blighted. He also believes the Community Redevelopment Agency has not shown in other parts of the city that it can cure urban decay.

Padilla said he will await the recommendation of the full committee before deciding what he will recommend to the City Council about the plan’s future, noting that there are many who support the project area’s creation.

The CRA has proposed spending $490 million during the next four decades to revitalize a huge swath of the Valley that it claims is blighted, including parts of Pacoima, Sylmar, Sun Valley, Panorama City, Arleta, Lake View Terrace and Mission Hills.

The idea is to take the money from property taxes generated from increasing property values in the area to subsidize development of the area’s fading commercial and industrial strips and housing stock.

Substandard buildings would be razed for new office and commercial buildings. At least 20% of the money would be spent to build and rehabilitate housing.

“The northeast Valley is an area that would very much benefit from redevelopment activities,” said Keith Richman, a CRA board member and physician whose medical office is in Sun Valley.

Caron Caines, a lawyer who chairs the advisory panel, said redevelopment would help provide the many low-income residents of the area with better housing and jobs.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), who proposed the massive project when he was a councilman in 1997, faulted a faction on the committee, led by Leahy, for delays in moving the plan forward.

“It has clearly taken far too long to approve,” Alarcon said. “It has been bogged down for at least a year now.”

The committee was elected by residents and businesspeople in the proposed project area under guidelines set up by state law to provide public input. For months, the committee has had the bare minimum of a quorum to act, and Alarcon said Leahy and other opponents have been able to block the adoption of rules for operation of a project area.

With the recent departure of one member, only 11 of the 23 seats on the panel are filled, fewer than the legal level required for the panel to act on the plan.

Elections are planned for mid-December to fill the remaining seats, which means the committee will not be able to act on the plan until January.

But Leahy and other members of the committee say delays in the plan are largely the fault of the CRA itself, which admits that a required report on the environmental impacts of the massive plan is more than a year behind schedule.

The consultant drafting the study has been swamped with work on other project area proposals elsewhere in the city, said Bob Fazio, a CRA planner on the project.

The report may be released this week, but it remains to be seen whether the election in December will result in a committee majority that would vote to forward the plan to the City Council.

Leahy is not alone in expressing deep concerns about the proposal.

Objections raised by committee members include:

* The area proposed is too large, lacking focus on truly blighted neighborhoods.

* The proposal would give the agency too much power to condemn properties for private developers.

* The agency has not put forward a specific enough plan, with details of individual commercial, industrial and housing projects, to show how it would spend the $490 million.

Some have suggested that the creation of such a vast project area is an attempt to create a cash cow for the CRA, an agency facing serious budget problems that have seen it cut its staff from 350 to 190 workers in the last five years.

The proposed project would be the largest redevelopment program in the city. It is three times the size of the Bunker Hill, Central Business District and Hollywood project areas combined.

“We may be taking a very large geographic area and putting it in redevelopment simply to get tax income even though only a small portion can be redeveloped,” said Fred Weinhart, who represents the Sylmar Chamber of Commerce on the committee.

Weinhart said the project area would have to be scaled back and better focused to win his support.

Padilla said he is open to whatever the committee recommends.

“It may sound like it is [too big] because it incorporates various parts of the district, but I also know I have needs throughout my district,” Padilla said.

The infighting and lack of full participation on the Project Area Committee have sparked deep concern among supporters of the redevelopment program.

Fazio said he recently briefed Padilla about the option of disbanding the panel and setting up a new advisory group that better reflects other views, but Padilla said he does not support that option.

Advisory panel member Luke Walker said he wants to see a workable project approved, but that he wants more details about what the plan would do.

Walker said he was taken aback at an unofficial meeting of the panel last week when someone asked the crowd of about 100 residents in the audience to raise their hands if they wanted the project canceled.

“It was very interesting that every member of the public except one said they didn’t want it,” said Walker, who owns a Sylmar cafe.

Padilla said he believes there is community support, and said he wants a plan approved quickly, but is dissatisfied with the small number of people involved in the committee.

“We need to bring this CRA plan to closure, but the community involvement needs to be greater,” Padilla said.

Weinhart said he could vote for a plan that is detailed and answers all of his questions.

“But if I were forced to a vote today, I’d vote against it because I don’t know what it is,” Weinhart said.