COUNCIL MOVES TO BUILD HOTEL OPPONENTS QUESTION CITY'S RUSHING PROJECT THROUGH.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

The Los Angeles City Council, overriding arguments it was acting too quickly and ignoring the threat of secession, approved a plan Friday to try to develop a downtown site for a Convention Center hotel.

The 10-3 vote, coming after more than an hour of debate, sets the stage to create a tax-exempt corporation designed to contact various hotel firms to build a 1,200-room facility to serve as a convention headquarters hotel.

``My question is why? Why this? Why now?'' Councilman Jack Weiss asked. ``I don't understand the headlong rush to do this. Over the past several weeks, this council voted to set aside hundreds of acres of downtown - some of this quite prime - and told we would be helping the needy.

``Then we hear about a proposed football stadium. This is something that ought to be the duty of private enterprise to carry out and not us.

``I am the biggest supporter of keeping this city together, but I don't know what to tell people when they see this headlong run to use public power for the benefit of the downtown area. Help me explain this.''

Los Angeles County officials, fearing the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of property tax revenues in the next 30 years, had previously warned that the county will file suit if the city includes the hotel site in a new redevelopment area the council approved last week. A day later, a proposal to build a National Football League stadium in the redevelopment area was announced.

The 879-acre City Center Redevelopment Project Area includes property near the Convention Center and Staples Center, where city officials have said a major convention hotel could help end years of losses by the city-owned Convention Center.

This year, the city's subsidy for the Convention Center is $7.6 million.

Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton said the proposal approved by the council Friday is a way for the city to try to get a major hotel firm to build adjacent to the Convention Center to serve as a headquarters. He said it is modeled after plans used successfully by other cities.

``We have been talking for years about a headquarters hotel,'' Deaton said. ``This is not jeopardizing any of the general fund. This is just to allow us to negotiate to get a hotel. I assure you that this will not be approved without going to the City Council and will not affect the general fund.''

Deaton said one of the complaints for years has been that there is no headquarters hotel for the Convention Center, which has suffered in recent years in its competition with other cities.

He said convention organizers want to be able to have direct access between the Convention Center and a hotel facility to make their events successful. They do not want to be required to travel any distance to a facility, he said.

But Weiss, along with Valley council members Dennis Zine and Wendy Greuel, said they believed the proposal was being moved along too quickly and needed further study.

``I have spoken with people about why they don't bring their conventions to Los Angeles, and it's not because of the lack of a hotel, it's because of the area,'' Zine said.

Councilman Eric Garcetti, however, argued the council needed to take action if it hoped to see the Convention Center succeed.

``We can continue to pay money out of our general fund for the Convention Center or we can take action,'' Garcetti said. ``Is this council too timid to try to make the Convention Center profitable?''

The Convention Center and the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau have come under criticism in recent weeks over the loss of events and the failure to attract new ones.

As a result, the Visitors Bureau announced on Friday it was developing a reform plan to try to bring more conventions and tourism to the city.

Among these efforts is the idea of creating a broader marketing plan to appeal to more groups and include representatives from the airport area and of developing new policies to work with trade missions.

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