Factory Conversions

It has been the most agonizing of reappraisals by the peace-loving leaders of Czechoslovakia, but there seems no way out. This country, once a major manufacturer of the East Bloc's weapons arsenal, is going to stay in the arms business.

Antelope Valley aerospace workers, their jobs evaporating in the aftermath of the Cold War, may be able to build electric cars and trains at a Palmdale Air Force plant, a federal official suggested Tuesday. The suggestion came from Assistant Secretary of Commerce L. Joyce Hampers after she toured Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale shortly after the official release of a study predicting that the decline in defense spending would have a severe impact on Los Angeles County's economy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified pulp mills as a significant source of toxic water pollution in 1985, and steadily since then, environmentalists have pressed the industry to find a way to make softwood pulp without using chlorine. Chlorine bleaches wood pulp to a brilliant, commercially appealing white without weakening the fibers--but in the process, it combines with compounds present in wood to make toxic chemicals of the infamous organo-chlorine family.

At Dowty Aerospace, a small defense contractor in Arcadia, the business outlook grew so dire last month that its owners did the unthinkable: They gave the operation away in a cash-free deal that will eliminate 50 of the firm's 130 electronics jobs. Across town, another unlikely story is being played out.

In an ambitious bid to create jobs and reduce smog, a group of Los Angeles elected officials, entrepreneurs and labor unions is seeking to make Burbank the hub of a future electric car industry in Southern California. A driving force in the campaign is a Monrovia aerospace firm that is coordinating an effort to build a prototype high-tech electric vehicle later this year with components from California manufacturers.

While lawmakers debate the award of a coveted rail line contract to a Japanese-owned company, a Los Angeles transit official Tuesday proposed that a new assembly plant be created locally to build the thousands of buses and rail cars that will be needed in the next 30 years.

The nationwide slump in commercial real estate is reviving developer interest in an old but challenging option for getting rid of costly, unwanted buildings: converting them to apartments, stores and other uses for which there is greater demand.

A last-ditch effort by a group of Los Angeles-area political leaders Tuesday failed to persuade General Motors Co. executives to reconsider their plan to close the Van Nuys assembly plant--Southern California's last remaining car factory. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles) and state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) had hoped to ease the pain of the recession locally with a plan to make the Van Nuys facility the hub of new transportation technology.

After four hours of debate, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday failed to override Mayor Tom Bradley's veto of a plan to convert the old May Co. building into a huge garment plant--but agreed to let developers reapply for a permit to do so. The council's action drew mixed reactions from developers who are seeking a conditional-use permit for plans to place 7,000 garment workers and 600 businesses in the 1-million-square-foot building at Broadway and 8th Street.

The Bush Administration plans to encourage U.S. companies to invest millions of dollars of their money and some of their best technology in the Soviet defense industry--to help convert it to civilian production and private enterprise. Donald J. Atwood, deputy U.S.