West Hollywood says it's 'left bank and right on.' (business-friendly atmosphere in the Westside community)

West Hollywood, the "city on the left bank," is meandering toward the right. With promotional flourish usually reserved for funky art exhibitions or gay-pride celebrations, the tiny Westside community is now heralding a package of reforms to make itself, well ... downright business-friendly. Hearings are being eliminated, zoning laws revamped, permits streamlined.

The shift, to hear officials tell it, isn't exactly up there with The Wall coming down. Then again, this isn't just another vanilla Southland community. As its own advertising literature states, "West Hollywood is Left Bank and right on. Kinky and contemporary. Billboards and Boystown."

And more.

In its eight years of cityhood, West Hollywood has raised eyebrows, embracing causes that transcended the landmark rent control and homosexual-rights laws which galvanized its secession from county rule. Ever since, comparisons to liberal San Francisco, Greenwich Village or the "People's Republic of Santa Monica" closer to home have flowed like beer at Barney's Beanery.

With proclamations more befitting a commonwealth than a municipality, this city has: condemned the Persian Gulf War, banned styrofoam, outlawed gas-powered leaf blowers and declared itself a nuclear-free, pro-choice zone -- not to mention a haven for political refugees and abused animals.

The town that boasted America's first out-of-the-closet lesbian mayor also trailblazed some of the region's toughest slow-growth laws and workplace safeguards.

Now that those "core" issues have migrated from the political fringe to center stage, West Hollywood officials say the ridicule heaped on them initially by comedians and conservatives alike was worth it.

"Early on," says West Hollywood City Councilman John Heilman, "people viewed us as a little flaky, but we're the ones laughing all the way to the bank now."

Comments one Los Angeles observer, "People outside the area look at West Hollywood as kind of frivolous, a den of hedonism. But beneath the frivolity, they're like Mae West: serious."

And this city must grapple with such situations as increasing numbers of school-age children and Russian emigres.

To broaden its image beyond being regarded as just a nocturnal hot spot -- and a place that cancels public meetings for Halloween block parties -- the city in the late 1980s began pushing itself as a shopper's mecca and entrepreneurial axis. City Hall created a non-profit Marketing Corp. to promote West Hollywood as the "Creative City." Shibboleths of the past -- particularly the "Gay Camelot" tag -- were too provincial for a community whose industry generates $3 billion in revenues yearly.

As the image makers frame it in glossy brochures and self-published magazines, the city of 38,000 is a safari for the senses. For the famished, there's more than 130 restaurants, from upscale Spago's and Chasen's to the more blue-collar Tail-of-the-Pup and Carney's. On the aesthetic side are the Pacific Design Center, 300-related interior design shops and showrooms along Melrose, Beverly and Robertson boulevards and art galleries galore.

Entertainment also figures big time. To the west are the Sunset Strip clubs -- the Whiskey a Go-Go, the Roxy and the Troubadour -- where the head-bangers and performance artists belt it out nightly. To the east are the Warner Hollywood Studios, Time-Warner offices and Carolco movie company.

As for the physical terrain, it's 1.9 square miles of the densest urban area "west of the Mississippi River," officials say with pride. Bungalows, faceless apartment buildings and modular office structures coexist with crowded storefronts and the 60-foot-high "Marlboro Man" sign that has stood over Sunset Boulevard since long before smoking became a social no-no.

Not satisfied with marketing alone, city leaders in 1988 even manufactured a border war with posh-but-staid neighbor Beverly Hills, over which was "winning" the restaurant-business game. If the friction between the two wasn't real, the publicity West Hollywood got for labeling the adjoining city "Mount Sinai for the living" was.

"We took the risk of saying we weren't like Waterloo, Iowa, that we were avantegarde, hip, an uncommon place not meant for everybody," says former Marketing Corp. chief Rick Cole, now Pasadena's mayor. "The purpose was to show that creative freedom was not just the province of social policy or lifestyle."

Yet, something still was amiss, despite the successful marketing effort that increased city revenues by several hundred thousand dollars.

The "ying," a vibrant, diverse community with a Flash Gordon flair and swanky architecture, was out of sync with the "yang," onerous land-use prohibitions and other laws that had industry miffed, according to Cole. The estrangement between City Hall and the business world, triggered when some executives formed a political action committee to fight cityhood, never fully mended.

But today the city faces a familiar threat: the potential loss of a corporate tax base that girds two-thirds of its social programs. So far, West Hollywood's current $28.3 million budget has survived the recessionary tremors, but some minor shaking has been registered.

Some high-profile tenants are making plans to move elsewhere and several capital projects have been postponed.

Also hanging over City Hall are withering state subsidies and growing competition among cities to cherry-pick each other's companies.

"The city probably never intended to be anti-business, it just didn't understand the full impact of the rules and regulations they were passing to protect the residents, all the overlapping commissions, all the permits," says Mark Lehman, president of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and a lawyer by trade. "What they're doing now (the reforms) is a big deal. Part of it is a loss of innocence. The good times of the 1980s are over."

Gushes entrepreneur Eli Samaha, who owns West Hollywood's Tacos Tacos eatery and the Roxbury club, "I'd love to see them make it easier on business so I don't have to travel to Orange County to do deals. This is a hip place."

In fact, the pendulum may have already started to swing back.

During the past year, the council has: eliminated the role of the business license commission in approving new and expanding nightclubs; created an "over-the-counter" permitting system for outdoor bistros; placed fewer restrictions on sign placements and dimensions; and lifted once-ironclad parking strictures to help small businesses grow.

To boost entertainment-related companies, the council also created the Sunset Strip Incentive Zone, principally by easing height and other zoning rules.

Yet the question remains: Can a city that marches defiantly to its own progressive beat stride with developers, corporate titans and nightclub owners without accusations it's courting the once-dreaded Establishment?

Absolutely, leaders say. Economic growth, tolerance and quality of life aren't mutually exclusive, despite what the the purists and gadflies may yelp.

"We've evolved to a point where we can be both socially liberal and pro business," says Councilwoman Abbe Land. "Our conscience is still good. After all, cities have a responsibility to have a healthy economic base to provide services."

Warns another city official, "And nobody is saying we are going to suck up to big oil companies or anything."

Truth be known, West Hollywood circa-1990s is after more than just cutting-edge design firms or nouveau riche cafes.

Though the city boasts no theme park, beach or national monument, it wants to become a tourist draw, whether the incoming are flying in from Peoria or Paris.

"We've marketed our diversity, now we want to be a destination point," says Marketing Corp. Assistant Executive Marsha Sculatti. "Lots of people don't know that we aren't part of Los Angeles or Beverly Hills."

Real estate broker Ron Kates, the marketing group's ex-chairman, believes West Hollywood's newest image campaign has been a long time coming, and that City Hall will never relinquish its progressive tilt to industry hawks.

He says, "There is nothing about what they are doing now that doesn't reinforce the city's cause celebre: a magical place where it is never boring."