EDITORIAL BLIGHT MAKES WRONG VAN NUYS SUFFERS THROUGH CITY HALL'S NEGLECT.

EAGER to mollify the secessionist impulse among Los Angeles voters, city leaders have made great efforts these past few months to talk the talk of the disaffected Angeleno. We've been hearing new phrases among the city's elite, like ``empowering neighborhoods,'' ``quality of life'' and ``stamping out blight.''

But the new rhetoric has yet to translate into a new hope for the stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard between Roscoe Boulevard and Vanowen Street in Van Nuys.

In Van Nuys, there's no shortage of reminders that City Hall's principal preoccupations fall well outside the San Fernando Valley.

For starters, there's the old Valley Federal Building, once considered the best building in the region. Now it's empty, as it has been since the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

Broken and boarded-up, with windows that are mostly shattered, Valley Fed's old building stands empty and in disrepair. The only signs of life, as the Daily News reported Sunday, are the weeds in the parking lot, which have sprouted up through the cracked concrete.

Two miles up the street there's the 13-story Panorama Towers building, awaiting millions for seismic repairs and improvements. Another eyesore, but only one of many.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood there are the former Union Bank building, the former Asian Ranch Supermarket, the former Chief Auto Parts building and sundry other unused structures and strip malls that are largely vacant.

The blight feeds off itself, scaring new businesses away from the area and driving out the few that still remain.

But over the years, most of the buildings' owners have shown little willingness to rehabilitate or sell their properties. For its part, local government has been impotent to raze the old buildings or attract new developers to take them over, and the city has made only token investments in redevelopment.

Downtown Van Nuys - in the heart of the Valley - might as well be light years away from downtown Los Angeles, which city leaders have diligently worked to dot with urban jewels: the new cathedral, Staples Center and the $300 million facelift for City Hall - to name just a few.

Yet for all the recent, professed interest in community issues, the City Council and the mayor continue to work hand in hand with their developer pals to direct more resources into downtown.

The latest grand scheme is a $2.4 billion redevelopment zone, which would put a greater drain on city services while keeping almost all of its tax revenues within its own borders. Then there are the billionaires planning to build a downtown football stadium who want - and are likely to get - a little help with interest rates through as much as $100 million in public bonds for their project. This supposedly won't cost taxpayers anything.

Meanwhile, Van Nuys and many other city neighborhoods stand in virtual ruin, neglected by a city government that's far more interested in erecting monuments to itself than in making all Los Angeles communities livable.

What would a piece of that $2.4 billion do to help downtown Van Nuys?

For all the new rhetoric coming out of City Hall, Van Nuys' blight points to the same old attitude.