NEWS ANALYSIS : Resignation May Help RLA Rebuild Itself

With the sudden departure of Peter V. Ueberroth, Rebuild L.A. has the opportunity to remake itself and broaden its links to the community, but it also faces the specter of losing its primary connection to capital deemed critical to revitalizing the inner city.

There was widespread disagreement Friday over the immediate impact of Ueberroth’s resignation as one of RLA’s co-chairs. The organization’s remaining leaders said there would be a smooth transition but some observers argued that, given Ueberroth’s pivotal role, his stepping down was bound to have a major impact.

Other observers said that his announcement was of little significance to the neglected areas that RLA was created to help. “We are totally unconvinced that there’s going to be any progress by changing the captain of the Titanic,” said Eric Mann, director of the Labor Community Strategy Center, which issued a study last month that questioned RLA’s basic strategy.

There also was praise for Ueberroth Friday, including expressions of gratitude that he will remain on the organization’s board. “I think it was a stroke of genius to have him lead this organization,” said attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who is an RLA board member.

Others stressed that it would remove from the organization’s power structure the person who has become the focus of much criticism.

“The organization will now be able to develop an identity separate from Peter,” said RLA board member Felicia Marcus, who is president of the city’s Board of Public Works. That could diminish some of the criticism that was precipitated by the mere presence of a white, millionaire Orange County businessman as the leader of an urban revitalization group.

But Friday’s announcement means that RLA no longer has the cachet of an organization led by a man with wide ties to big business. “It’s going to be a problem in that Peter brought to the table a set of connections in the business world,” said Joel Kotkin, a Pepperdine University professor who has been a vocal critic of Ueberroth. “He is an icon for those in the business world. . . . There is a mystique about Ueberroth and I think that’s important.

Ueberroth’s diminished role presents the remaining four co-chairs with a significant opportunity, said board member Leo Estrada, a professor at UCLA’s graduate school of architecture and urban planning.

“I’d like to see the co-chairs use this as an opportunity to change the methods of the organization and move away from things that have been hurting its credibility,” Estrada said.

He said the organization’s leaders have to reach out to RLA’s critics if it is to become a more effective force for revitalizing the city.

Estrada also said he thought the co-chairs should pay heed to a critical study issued last month by the Labor Community Strategy Center, which said the organization’s “market-driven” strategy was fundamentally flawed and that there remained a need for massive infusion of government investment in the city.

A somewhat different view was offered by Jane Pisano, dean of the graduate school of public administration at USC. She said that whatever one thought of Ueberroth, he was only one person and hardly could be expected to transform the economy of poor neighborhoods by himself.

“With all Peter’s many talents, I have always felt that the prime determinant to attracting capital to the central city is to turn around the economy of the region and to begin to address some of the long-term issues like education and crime,” Pisano said. “While it’s true that Peter’s presence would be an attraction for people in the business community, they’ll be looking at many other factors. The challenge for us as a community is to act on these problems and Rebuild L.A. can be part of that if it keeps its eye on the main ball--attracting business to the central city, job training and job expansion.”

She also said that Ueberroth’s action “may well be a sign that what began in a crisis situation is now becoming institutionalized and that the founding entrepreneur is passing a baton to a leadership group that is reflective of the ethnic diversity of the community and will put its shoulder to the wheel to accomplish the goals that RLA has established,” she said.

She was referring to RLA’s remaining co-chairs: Bernard Kinsey, a former Xerox executive; Tony Salazar, a specialist in low-income housing; Barry Sanders, an international lawyer, and Linda Wong, a public interest lawyer who has been specializing in education issues in recent years.

Those four will now have to step up to the plate and assume a stronger role, said Bong Hwan Kim, director of the Korean Youth Center and an RLA board member.

The question of whether one of them will become the organization’s central figure is unclear. “There’s a lot of things you can do with a committee but in the end one person has to emerge with the vision of the organization and provide the symbol that people will identify with,” Estrada said.

But despite the diversity of its leadership, fundamental questions about RLA’s role are still at issue.

RLA leaders have said that their primary goal is to bring jobs and capital to the city’s neglected areas. A study issued by an RLA consultant last summer said that $6 billion and the creation of 75,000 to 94,000 jobs are needed to revitalize the economy of those neighborhoods.

However, some critics have said that RLA needs to play a more significant role in healing the city, over and beyond economic revitalization. The organization created a bevy of task forces, including several dealing with social services issues, and to some extent that has generated a confusing message about what the organization’s central role is.

Earlier this year, Ueberroth issued a statement claiming that the organization had attracted $500 million in capital and was responsible for creating 4,500 new jobs. But critics have noted that several of those investments--including the decision of Vons to open a dozen new inner-city stores--were made before last year’s riots. And others have stressed that RLA has been unwilling to provide any detailed accounting of what it has done.

Times staff writer Dean Murphy contributed to this report.