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CRA/LA’s Bud Ovrom Touts His Agency’s Intergovernmental Relations

In only a little more than one year, Bud Ovrom’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency has been marked by several unprecedented opportunities. LAUSD has $10-14 billion in funds available for school facility projects, the Grand Avenue Authority is moving forward with one of the nation’s marquee downtown mixed-use projects, and phase two of the Staples Center project promises the city a long overdue convention center hotel. TPR is pleased to present this interview with Bud Ovrom, in which he addresses these opportunities and marks the achievements of his first year at the helm of the CRA/LA.

Published Wednesday July 28, 2004

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Bud Ovrom

Bud, we last interviewed you in March of 2003. You had just

taken over as the CRA’s CEO and you were focused on building or rebuilding working relationships with the County and the school district. Can you update our readers on the health of these intergovernmental relationships?

I feel real good about both. When I got here, the CRA and the school district were on a verge of a lawsuit over a difficult project in the Valley. We resolved those differences and we did not file a lawsuit. But more importantly, we established an ongoing working relationship with the school district in all of our regions to talk about where schools need to be built, what sites they are looking at, what sites we might suggest to them if they are looking at a site that has higher potential for commercial development. So, I feel real good about that.

I also feel good about how our relationship has improved with the county. It’s interesting, but the event that first got our foot in the door was the establishment of the Grand Avenue JPA. The Grand Avenue JPA has a four-member governing body, David Janssen, Gloria Molina, Jan Perry and myself. And that has given us a reason to get together regularly and talk about that project. And from that experience, we are finding that we can talk to each other about our activity beyond Grand Avenue. With the county, we are working together on the Hoover expansion area, the area around the Coliseum. We have made headway on the Chinatown lawsuit, where we prevailed. It does not appear that the county is going to appeal that. We have not resolved the bigger issue of the County lawsuits with regard to Center City, but we are making inroads. We’re finding that there are projects on which we can collaborate and we expect to see more collaboration going forward.

Some would say that the just announced L.A. Live development adjacent to Staples Center vindicates L.A. County’s legal position that a CRA redevelopment zone was unnecessary to spur investment. Was the county right?