Building a Smarter Los Angeles

by Gary Toebben

Los Angeles' business community has been clamoring for citywide development reform for so long that no one remembers what it's like to build a construction project without a sea of red tape. The City of Los Angeles has produced at least 100 reports on development reform in the last 40 years and not a single one of those reports has been fully implemented.

So when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Business Team announced the formation of a new Development Reform Advisory Committee (DRAC) in late 2010 and commissioned KH Consulting Group and Woolpert, Inc. to produce a report on development reform, you could hear the collective gasp of the entire business community. Another report? We pressed the Mayor’s Business Team on why this report would be any different than the previous 100 collecting dust in City Hall. They assured us this time would be different. And by all early indications, they're right.

Development Reform Strategic Plan: Building a Better L.A. is a strategic implementation plan to change the City’s development process. Its motto calls for the City of Los Angeles to "plan smart, work smart and deliver smart," with a focus on creating an environment with transparency, predictability and efficiency from beginning to end. The plan is comprehensive and technical, but the key difference from previous plans is that the consultants have been working with the City’s general managers and department heads on implementation while the drafting is still in progress.

The consultants, along with the City's department heads, are now presenting the draft plan to the public and describing how they are moving forward on the plan's recommendations. The good news is that we're already seeing some major results, such as the creation of interdepartmental teams to address conflicting and overlapping department requirements that have historically held up projects for months on end.

We applaud Mayor Villaraigosa and his Business Team for their vision and persistence. We salute the City's general managers for their commitment to make development reform a seamless, citywide effort instead of a piecemeal approach. And we recognize the DRAC for their meetings every two weeks to be responsive and responsible in addressing this critical economic development issue.

Finally, we thank you, the stakeholders in the business community, for continuing to beat the drum for development reform and for providing valuable input throughout this process. One hundred reports later, you're being heard loud and clear.

And that's The Business Perspective.