Showa Village Associates

As several of Mayor Tom Bradley's longtime allies lobbied from the sidelines, a developer who recently enlisted the influential group as partners was chosen Tuesday to build a $200-million office-retail complex on city-owned land in Little Tokyo. A competing developer's proposal, once viewed as a favorite in the stiff competition on the basis of its purportedly lower cost, was rejected.

As several of Mayor Tom Bradley's longtime allies lobbied from the sidelines, a developer who recently enlisted the influential group as partners was chosen Tuesday to build a $200-million office-retail complex on city-owned land in Little Tokyo. A competing developer's proposal, once viewed as a favorite in the stiff competition on the basis of its purportedly lower cost, was rejected.

As the dust was settling last week over a controversial City Council vote on a $200-million Little Tokyo project not expected to be under construction for at least another year, Michael D. Barker, managing partner of the winning development team, telephoned from his San Francisco office. Sure, he conceded, the decision to give his group the go-ahead had political implications: "I'm not going to argue with that. . . .

Despite charges of cronyism, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley signed legislation Monday approving the selection of a business partnership that includes six of his longtime supporters as the builders of a $200-million project in Little Tokyo. In a message to the City Council, Bradley acknowledged that "questions were raised" about the selection of First Street Plaza Partners by several council members favoring another developer.

The Los Angeles City Council will be selecting in the next few days a developer for the last large open tract in the Civic Center. It is a choice of significance. It is a decision that will test the council's commitment to its fundamental responsibility to appropriate planning and financial responsibility. But extraneous political considerations already threaten to intrude in the decision process.