‘I don’t want to see Hollywood become another Bunker Hill in terms of just glass and : steel office buildings.’ : Woo Revives Hollywood Design Board

Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo reactivated a design review committee for central Hollywood last week, urging it to help make the community a friendly place for pedestrians while protecting it from an onslaught of “glass and steel office buildings.”

Woo called on the advisory group of architects, planners and designers to rework a proposed urban design plan for Hollywood Boulevard released by the Community Redevelopment Agency last fall. The plan would set standards on the boulevard and nearby streets for such things as rehabilitation of historic buildings, construction of new projects and parking.

In laying out what he called “my own vision for the future,” Woo moved to give new momentum-- with a clear emphasis on design--to the Hollywood redevelopment effort, which had become bogged down amid dissension within the project’s citizens advisory committee and a prolonged court battle over a lawsuit to block the redevelopment project.

Favorable Court Ruling

Last month, a Superior Court judge tentatively ruled in favor of the CRAin the lawsuit, lifting hopes among redevelopment proponents that the project may finally move forward and that the county may soon release about $2 million in tax revenues withheld from the agency. In addition, the citizens advisory committee has been working in recent weeks to improve its image.

Woo’s message Wednesday night was punctuated by a tone of urgency--at one point he told the committee, “It is important for you to move rather fast”--and its timing less than two months before the April 11 municipal election was not lost on his detractors. Woo faces three challengers in his bid for a second term.

“I think it is pure electioneering,” said Berndt Lohr-Schmidt, a candidate for Woo’s seat who attended the committee meeting. “Mr. Woo has all of a sudden become very visible and very active in matters affecting Hollywood.”

‘Window Dressing’

Lohr-Schmidt accused Woo of using the revived design review committee “to take away attention from the real problems” in Hollywood. He described urban design concerns as “window dressing” and said Woo should be concentrating instead on traffic problems within Hollywood and calls for the City Council to exert greater control over the CRA.

“There are real issues in Hollywood, but Mike Woo is not facing them,” Lohr-Schmidt said. “He is more concerned with . . . the color of facades.”

In his remarks to the committee, Woo said the proposed design plan, which was drafted by the CRA and its consultants and released in October, should place greater emphasis on pedestrian needs and should include a specific section on how the requirements would be implemented. In an effort “to put real teeth” into the design criteria, Woo asked the CRA to write the final version of the plan as a city ordinance, rather than as a policy guideline, as the agency had intended.

“In our efforts to redevelop the Hollywood area, we need to find ways to enable (the) innate qualities of Hollywood to . . . emerge from the appearance of morass that we sometimes seem to be in,” Woo said. “In other words, I don’t want to see Hollywood become another Bunker Hill in terms of just glass and steel office buildings. I don’t want to see Hollywood become a Century City in terms of a sub-neighborhood dedicated to private automobiles and ignoring the needs of pedestrians.”

Woo said in an interview Thursday that his comments were not intended “to be an outright criticism of the CRA,” although he acknowledged such criticism was implicit in some of what he said.

CRA Hollywood Project Manager H. Cooke Sunoo interpreted Woo’s remarks as a clear statement that “the councilman is going to take a very strong interest in the design aspects of development.” He noted, however, that the CRA has been working closely with Woo’s staff on the urban design plan and that the plan already “reflects a lot of the councilman’s input.”

The design review committee, an advisory panel that was established in 1986 when the City Council approved the Hollywood redevelopment project, has been inactive for about a year because members said they could not judge proposed projects without an urban design plan. “If a design review board doesn’t have a specific charge and a specific goal . . . it is just using up a lot of our people’s time,” said architect and committee member Fran Offenhauser.

This time, Woo turned the tables by instructing the committee to come up with its own version of the proposed design plan. When it finishes that task, Woo directed the committee to help the CRA draft a formal proposal for a separate design plan to cover the entire 1.7-square-mile redevelopment project.

Woo described the second design plan as “the big plan,” and said it “will set the tone and the context for the future of Hollywood’s redevelopment efforts.”

In the interview, Woo said the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan, which set up the redevelopment project but did not include specific design criteria, does not require the CRA to develop the larger urban design plan. He said, however, that the CRA agreed last fall during negotiations with his office to add the second plan--at an estimated cost of $400,000.

Although the design review committee has no real authority, Woo emphasized Wednesday night that he will hold the group’s recommendations in high regard and that he expects the CRA board to do the same. Woo said a lot of the “nitty-gritty issues” about Hollywood deal with urban design issues, giving the group an unusual opportunity to shape the future look of Hollywood.

“As a city councilman, I spend a lot of my time on planning issues, but I have been somewhat frustrated as a planner sitting on the City Council because we frequently do not deal with a lot of the issues that basically define what a community is all about,” Woo told the committee.

In a move intended to give his council office a direct say in urban design issues, Woo said Thursday that he will hire Ari Sikora, an urban designer and member of the design review committee, as a consultant. Sikora, who Woo said previously worked for the CRA, will help the councilman come up with his own suggestions for the Hollywood Boulevard urban design plan and the larger design plan.

Joining Sikora and Offenhauser on the design review committee are: Ted Kitos; Patric Mayers; Lauren Melendrez; David Serrurier; Bruce Sternberg; Brenda Levin; Christy Johnson-McAvoy; Barton Myers and Stefanos Polyzoides.