Cim Group

Before the Cirque du Soleil performers pranced onto the outdoor stage in the sweltering heat Sunday, bushels of ice cubes were flung across the wooden floor to cool the surface for the hands and feet of dancers. A crowd of hundreds, hot but patiently watching at the Grove shopping center, cheered as if this safety step was part of the show. Onstage, Sebastien Coin, encased in a yellow striped unitard, balanced his body horizontally on one hand and languidly eyed his rapt audience.

Los Angeles is being promised more than 800 jobs, millions of dollars in new Hollywood tourism and a 10-year run of the famed Cirque du Soleil, and all the city has to do is approve a $30-million loan -- in federal money -- to the lessors of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. What could be bad? A lot. The city should reject the loan, then take a serious look at how it invests in economic development projects.

The Los Angeles City Council is weighing a plan to issue a $30-million loan that would allow the owner of the Hollywood & Highland shopping mall to retrofit a theater so it can house a decade of performances by Cirque du Soleil. CIM Group, which owns Hollywood & Highland but leases the Kodak Theatre within the mall, hopes to bring the acrobatic performances to the venue starting in 2011.

Los Angeles officials thought they were being generous last year when they agreed to allow Hollywood-based CIM Group to place three supergraphics, or oversized vinyl advertisements, on an office building on Highland Avenue. Three months later, that same building has six supergraphics, twice as many as were approved by the City Council. CIM Group also has not removed two billboards from the building's roof, as required under the agreement.

Re "L.A.'s generosity flows in Mid-City," June 20 Residents who are mystified at the generosity of the city recommending giving $14.3 million in subsidies to the CIM Group might not be surprised to hear that its executives have made several thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to city candidates, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. This is yet another example of why Los Angeles needs to move to full public funding of its election campaigns. Then voters would never have to wonder why elected officials were doing so much for big-money campaign contributors, because there wouldn't be any. Trent Lange Los Angeles The writer is president of the California Clean Money Action Fund.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a Hollywood landmark that attracts millions of tourists each year to its outdoor courtyard where generations of movie stars left their hand and footprints, has been purchased by Hollywood's largest commercial landlord. CIM Group of Los Angeles says it has no plans to change the 80-year-old theater, and the purchase continues its string of acquisitions in the heart of Hollywood.

Efforts to upgrade a key section of the Hollywood shopping and entertainment district, part of a revival that is making the area more attractive to locals and tourists, have taken a major step forward. CIM Group, the district's largest commercial landlord, said it had agreed to acquire the Seven Seas building, a dilapidated structure that once housed a famous Hollywood Boulevard nightclub. At the request of the city's redevelopment agency, CIM plans to restore the edifice to its 1920s style.

The $201-million sale of the Hollywood & Highland retail, hotel and entertainment center closed Friday as the new owners announced plans for $20 million-plus in improvements to boost traffic year-round at the complex where the Academy Awards ceremony is held. It was reported last month that the Hollywood Boulevard site would be purchased by CIM Group Inc. of Los Angeles from Trizec Properties Inc., a Chicago real estate investment trust.

Plans for a large-scale shopping center at Pico and San Vicente boulevards in Los Angeles have been revived with the purchase of the 12-acre site by Hollywood developer CIM Group. The previous owner, a Los Angeles partnership called Kital-Pico, secured City Council approval in 2001 for a $90-million project, to be named Pico Plaza, over the objections of neighbors who were concerned about the center's design and potential traffic problems.