EDITORIAL IT'S HOLLYWOOD, STUPID CITY PLANNERS DON'T HAVE THE MARKETING SENSE THAT WRESTLERS DO.

BEEFY men romping around in tights. Colorfully costumed characters grappling with each other theatrically in the ring. Hulk Hogan. For all the goofiness associated with WrestleMania 21 Hollywood, it drew sold-out crowds over the weekend.

The marketing mavens at WrestleMania know how to sell. That's why they smartly associated their Los Angeles leg of the tour with the city's best-known brand: Hollywood.

No matter that the event took place at Staples Center downtown, far from L.A.'s storied Tinseltown neighborhood. They know that the rest of the world knows ``Hollywood.'' The didn't try to sell WrestleMania 21 Downtown L.A.

The marketers at Universal Studios understand that, too. While the amusement park is clearly on the San Fernando Valley side of the hills, it bills itself Universal Hollywood, not Universal Toluca Lake.

If this unique branding opportunity is so obvious to event promoters and marketing professionals, why can't the city's own urban planners and leaders see it?

Bureaucratic blindness seems to be endemic in the city. Instead of capitalizing on its very own gold mine and building up what is the figurative center of Los Angeles, the fathers and mothers of Los Angeles listened to the billionaires and developers and bet on downtown.

They drained the city's coffers and starved the neighborhoods to sink money into a place that never embodied the soul of the city and hadn't been a destination since the day of the trolley cars.

True, downtown Los Angeles is more vital now than it has been during the lifetimes of most Angelenos, but the cost has been tremendous - city streets elsewhere crumbling into potholes, neighborhoods spreading haphazardly without any plan to guide growth.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has taken decades just to overcome its sleaze. If City Hall had done its job over the years, Hollywood would be more vibrant today than Santa Monica or Pasadena, but it still has a long way to go.

But that's history.

What's important is how the city grows in the years ahead. After the May 17 mayoral runoff election, city leaders will choose a new general manager for L.A.'s ineffective Planning Department.

With longtime Planning Director Con Howe stepping down, the next mayor of Los Angeles will be in the unique position to reshape how the department thinks and plans the city, removing it from the clutches of the developers and politicians and get it working for the public.

The future of Los Angeles is at stake.

A city of the size of L.A. deserves the best, and needs the best. This is an opportunity to bring in a leader with the vision and skills to revive neighborhoods all across the city. A world-class urban planner who could make some sense out of the endless grid of Los Angeles. Someone who is at least as savvy about recognizing the region's potential as a bunch of muscle-bound entertainers.