Los Angeles Riots

The federal judge in Rodney G. King's successful lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles has ordered the city to pay nearly $1.6 million in legal fees to a variety of attorneys who represented King, attorneys disclosed Tuesday. U.S. District Judge John G. Davies awarded King's team of more than a dozen lawyers considerably less than half of the $4.4 million they sought for representing him in the civil suit, which grew out of his 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers.

Just weeks after the Clinton Administration denied Los Angeles inclusion in the lucrative empowerment zone program, city officials are privately raising alarms that pending Justice Department regulations may prevent the city from tapping into a huge new federal program to hire police officers, sources said Monday.

That Monday morning, we awoke to the roar of rock grinding 11 miles below the surface of the Earth. A year later, we awake to the roar of hammers banging a few feet below our windows. From Simi Valley to Sherman Oaks to Seal Beach, the sound of construction splits the air as Southern California pounds back from the costliest natural disaster ever to strike North America.

The Northridge earthquake shoved the 1992 riots from the consciousness of most disaster-weary Southern Californians. Rebuilding homes, businesses and lives damaged by the catastrophic temblor took precedence over making the city whole after riot fires were extinguished. In the wake of the Jan. 17 quake, Washington sent billions of dollars in assistance to homeowners, business owners and poor people who lost homes, possessions or jobs.

Mayor Richard Riordan, bitterly disappointed that Washington denied Los Angeles' bid to be designated an empowerment zone, snubbed President Clinton Wednesday but said Los Angeles would try to make the best of the $350-million consolation package the federal government is offering instead. Riordan made his pique known by refusing to participate in a conference call Wednesday as Clinton told leaders of other U.S. cities how they had fared in the empowerment zone competition.

Los Angeles leaders, once confident that the region would be tapped for a $100-million federal empowerment zone program, are worried that they will be shut out of the grant derby, and are now scrambling to persuade Washington that the area's poorer neighborhoods desperately need the money.

Shopping Center to Reopen: Crenshaw Towne Plaza, a retail center destroyed during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, has been renamed Crenshaw Center and will officially reopen Saturday. Reconstruction of the shopping plaza, located at Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, was completed last week. The owner of the property, Slauson/Crenshaw Associates Partnership, said it rebuilt the center without any government funds or disaster relief. The 137,000-square-foot complex has 39 commercial tenants.

Antoine Miller, a former defendant in the Reginald O. Denny beating case, was ordered Monday to stand trial on a charge of being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. After a brief preliminary hearing, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Michael Pastor ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold Miller, 22, for trial on the allegation that he possessed a semiautomatic pistol on Aug. 26 and violated his parole. The counts stemmed from an Aug.

Clothing designer Clotee McAfee can barely contain her excitement as she describes a pocket-making machine she will install in the new, fully automated garment plant she plans to move into by the end of the year. "It can set a pocket in three seconds," McAfee said. "Right now, with a single needle, it takes three minutes" for one of the 25 sewing machine operators she employs to make a pocket and sew it onto a shirt.

FROM: Genethia H. Hayes, Lucky Altman and Corey Madden. Hayes, 50, is assistant executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Los Angeles and director of its Project Ahead. Altman, 53, is a Catholic lay worker who coordinates adult human relations programs for the National Conference in Los Angeles. Madden, 34, is associate producing director at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles who is producing "Bandido!"