LOS ANGELES : RLA Drops Plans to Open Branch Offices, Citing Cost

Citing fiscal and logistic considerations, the riot recovery RLA agency has scrapped plans to open three satellite offices that had been described as an effort to reach out to small businesses in impoverished neighborhoods.

RLA President Linda Griego said research had shown that “physically setting up (the offices) was going to be too expensive and not necessarily too productive.” The offices had been planned for South-Central Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and the Van Nuys-Pacoima area.

Griego, speaking after the riot recovery agency’s quarterly meeting, said RLA staffers are instead continuing to work out of the agency’s Downtown office in an effort to set up networks of small businesses that can work together on marketing and training programs.

At the meeting, RLA officials announced that they have interviewed business owners in such fields as children’s toys, household furniture and metal-working. The agency is taking a “bottoms-up approach,” said staffer Linda Yeung, at working with the manufacturers and distributors of products ranging from “stuffed animals to battery-operated toys.”