Various Law Firms Contracted as Outside Counsel for City’s Community Redevelopment Agency

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Page 4

Various Law Firms Contracted as Outside Counsel for City’s Community Redevelopment Agency

By NICK YULICO, Staff Writer

The City Council yesterday authorized the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency to negotiate and extend contracts with 25 law firms for outside legal counsel to be used on an as-needed basis for a three-year period beginning in July.

The CRA is a state-authorized agency set up by the City of Los Angeles to devise and implement strategies to check and reverse deterioration in troubled economic areas of the city.

The agency helped change Bunker Hill from an area of dilapidated mansions to the high-rise corridor it is today and has been working for over 15 years now in the ongoing beautification of Hollywood project.

The council authorized an initial expenditure of $1.5 million for the agency to spend on outside counsel for the three-year period, with any increase to be approved by the council.

All legal services work will be monitored by the City Attorney’s Office and no firm may receive more than $75,000 without council approval. Firms’ hourly rates are capped at $225 per hour.

Firms will offer legal services in areas such as redevelopment, real estate, environmental, cost recovery, litigation and eminent domain for the agency, Richard Benbow, a CRA deputy administrator said.

The agency’s current three-year contract with firms expires June 30 of this year and the new one will take effect the next day. The CRA recently amended its current three-year contract to boost expenditures from $1.5 million to approximately $1.8 million with the council’s approval, Benbow said.

The list of firms to be used on an as-needed basis is as follows:

Redevelopment

•Goldfarb & Lipman

•Kane, Ballmer & Berkman

•Law Offices of Kathryn Reimann

•Robinson & Pearman

Real Estate

•Alvarado, Smith & Sanchez

•Brown, Winfield & Canzoneri

•Jung & Yuen

•Pircher, Nicholas & Meeks

Environmental/Cost Recovery

•Caldwell, Leslie, Newcomb & Pettit

•Foley & Lardner

•Fox & Sohagi

•Keesal, Young & Logan

•Smith, Rendon

•Trutanich & Michel

Litigation

•Arter & Hadden

•Bergman, Wedner & Dacey

•Greenberg & Bass

•Lewis, D’Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard

•Suzuki & Ito

Eminent Domain

•Avila & Putnam

•Demitrou, Del Guercio, Springer & Francis

•Graham, Vaage & Cisneros

•Jackson & Associates

•Meyers, Nave, Riback, Silver & Wilson

•Oliver, Vose, Sandifer, Murphy & Lee