Redevelopment Agency Bids Farewell to Critic

Mildred Weller spent the last decade as the proverbial wrench in the gears of the Community Redevelopment Agency, taking powerful politicians to court, badgering bureaucrats and even reducing one city official to tears.

As president of North Hollywood Concerned Citizens and a member of the Project Area Committee, Weller was the agency's chief critic in North Hollywood, charging it failed to revitalize a community despite spending more than $110 million.

But Weller has fired off her last scathing letter and pounded her last table.

She and her husband, Ed, have sold their North Hollywood office building and packed their marketing business off to what she hopes will be greener pastures in Tucson.

Weller said her disgust with the lack of progress by the agency in staving off the spread of blight in North Hollywood was a key factor in her decision to move out of state.

"The city is totally dysfunctional," Weller said. "I was born in Los Angeles, and I saw a beautiful city turned into a ghetto."

Some North Hollywood civic leaders privately welcome Weller's departure, saying she was an obstructionist.

Others regret her leaving. They say she could be an asset now that the MTA has opened a new subway station and a developer has proposed a major entertainment and office complex.

"I hope she will come back and visit in two years and be pleasantly surprised," said Loretta Dash, president of the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Dash politely said she and Weller "had different perspectives."

But others said Weller kept the city agency from running roughshod over homeowners and merchants in the area, energizing the community to stand up for its rights.

"She had a tremendous impact," said Glenn Hoiby, who chairs the North Hollywood Project Area Committee, created by the City Council to oversee redevelopment. "She put in hundreds of hours to get people involved in what was going on."

Weller said she feels she served as a check on the CRA's easily misused powers.

"I got them to be more realistic about what they do by exposing their failures," she said.

A stickler for detail, Weller recently turned over to other activists more than 40 boxes of documents she had collected in her decade-long battle against the CRA.

Hoiby has been elected to replace Weller as president of the 40-member North Hollywood Concerned Citizens, and has vowed to keep up the pressure.