City to Get $4.5 Million in U.S. Aid for Poor Areas

WASHINGTON —  The Commerce Department plans to present Los Angeles with $4.5 million in federal grants today aimed at rejuvenating poor communities and repairing economic damage from the riots.

In addition, it will announce that it is willing to provide $5.6 million to help local defense firms convert to peacetime production and to generate jobs for people who become unemployed as a result of defense spending cuts.

“The good part of (the new funding) is it’s very targeted, and there’s a lot of leverage to be had from these kinds of things,” said Deputy Commerce Secretary Rockwell A. Schnabel.

Included in the riot-related grants will be $1.5 million to the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Commerce Department officials described it as the government’s largest-ever disbursement to promote local tourism.

Schnabel noted that the tourism industry, which has suffered extensively from the riots, is the city’s second-biggest business, employing 360,000 people, 80% of whom are minorities.

A spokesman for the bureau praised the federal government for moving quickly to try to stem anticipated tourism losses.

“We have every reason to be extraordinarily grateful,” said Michael Collins, vice president for public affairs. “We need to communicate with audiences who, with our limited budget, we aren’t able to reach, and this allows us to do that.”

Collins said the bureau will supplement the federal grant with $500,000 of its own money. The money will finance a direct-mail advertising campaign aimed at domestic and international travelers, broadcast media advertising in selected international markets and establishment of a databank to determine who is and who is not coming to Los Angeles on vacation.

One of the advertisements, Schnabel said, will feature a personal appeal from President Bush urging foreign visitors to return to Los Angeles. The video already has had “substantial impact” in England, he said, and it now will be aimed at Japan, which usually sends more than a million visitors a year to the city.

During a visit to Los Angeles today, Schnabel also hopes to deliver a $3-million grant to Rebuild L.A., the special task force headed by Peter Ueberroth. The money, which Bush had approved shortly after the riots, will be used to help the group in its mission of revitalizing the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Schnabel said the county is separately eligible for more than 10% of the $50 million that Commerce has received from the Pentagon to help communities cope with post-Cold War reductions in defense spending.

The bulk of the money--$4 million--would be used to set up a loan fund to aid local businesses affected by the cutbacks and to invest in helping those firms diversify into new lines of business. The remainder would go toward operating two local task forces set up to address the problem: the Los Angeles Technology Resource Center and the Los Angeles County Aerospace High Technology Council.

Community groups expressed satisfaction that some federal aid is flowing into the city but questioned its destination and ultimate goals.

Elena Popp, a spokeswoman for the Community Economic Development Unit of the Legal Aid Foundation, said: “$10 million is $10 million, but it is not nearly what we need in Los Angeles.

“I think money going to defense conversion is good. But I can’t imagine how the money for the tourist bureau is going to create jobs in South-Central or the Pico-Union area, where they are needed,” she said.