Even as Los Angeles officials search for surplus public property that can be sold to help balance this year's budget, the City Council is weighing a plan to give a three-acre site in North Hollywood to a developer who has promised to build an office tower and a seven-screen Laemmle movie theater.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed budget for fiscal 2008-09 calls for raising $14.2 million by selling excess real estate holdings, among them an old animal shelter in San Pedro, three vacant fire stations and the old Cypress Park library.
Yet Villaraigosa's appointees at the Community Redevelopment Agency are also recommending that the council hand over a site that the agency has valued at $14.9 million to the J.H. Snyder Co., whose projects include the West Hollywood Gateway retail center and the Crescent apartments in Beverly Hills. The firm's president has contributed $160,000 to the mayor's political and philanthropic causes.
The plan is scheduled for a council vote today. Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district includes North Hollywood, said he supported the Laemmle project but relied on the redevelopment agency to craft the contract points.
"I don't negotiate these deals. I leave it up to the agency," he said. "But I do know this: North Hollywood went nowhere until [J.H. Snyder] got involved."
The proposal drew fire from one longtime critic of the strategy of subsidizing private development and of dense projects. Urban historian Joel Kotkin questioned whether the east San Fernando Valley needs more movie theaters.
"I don't understand it. We're giving away property when we're supposed to be selling it," said Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History". "You'd think that the budget crisis would make people think twice about this."
The redevelopment proposal represents the final phase of NoHo Commons, a multiyear effort to revitalize North Hollywood's arts district. The first phase allowed 438 apartments and condominiums to be built and the second brought a Hows supermarket. Both are next to the Metro Red Line station.
Redevelopment agency officials said they offered the site to J.H. Snyder for $1 after the developer agreed to donate 500 square feet of it for a job center and spend $3.25 million to expand a nearby medical clinic and $1.5 million to build a child-care facility at nearby Valley College.
The company also agreed to relocate and refurbish Phil's Diner, a historic restaurant that has been shuttered.
