Civic leader Steve Soboroff to head L.A.’s wildfire rebuilding and recovery efforts

Former police commission President Steve Soboroff will lead the city’s wildfire rebuilding effort, Mayor Karen Bass said Friday.

Soboroff, a real estate developer and longtime civic leader, will serve as chief recovery officer for the city.

He will work directly with the mayor and with the assistance of city departments to build out a comprehensive strategy “for rebuilding and expediting the safe return of residents, workers, businesses, schools, nonprofits, libraries and parks” in fire-ravaged areas, according to the mayor’s office.

Soboroff, who raised his family in Pacific Palisades, is known for a variety of civic and private sector roles: he helped bring the Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) to downtown Los Angeles and led development of Playa Vista, a multibillion-dollar residential, office and retail community. He was a senior adviser to former Mayor Richard J. Riordan and has served on the harbor and parks commissions. He also ran unsuccessfully for mayor in the 2001 election.

“He knows our communities. He knows how to activate City Hall,” Bass told reporters on Friday, saying that Soboroff would work at “warp speed” to help expedite the process.

The announcement comes 10 days after the catastrophic Palisades fire ignited in Pacific Palisades, killing at least eight people and destroying more than 3,500 structures in and around the city. Outside the city of Los Angeles, and Bass’ official purview, the destructive Eaton fire continues to rage in Altadena, northeast of the city.

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“This is not an urban planning exercise,” Soboroff said Friday. “This is a saving people’s lives and family and the people that work for them and help them exercise.”

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of L.A. at Loyola Marymount University, enthusiastically praised Bass’ selection of Soboroff for the role, saying he thought the developer was uniquely qualified for it.

“He knows how to build. He knows the obstacles to building. He knows government. He knows how government thinks and creates obstacles,” Guerra said. “If there’s anybody who has a foot in both worlds, that has legitimacy and is respected, it’s Steve Soboroff.”

The choice will undoubtedly be a consequential one for Bass, who has faced criticism for her handling of the firestorm. She issued an executive order late Monday that aims to speed up the rebuilding of homes and businesses.

The move to bring in an outside rebuilding czar is a decision with strong precedents in city history, said Raphael J. Sonenshein, the executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.

“In New York or Chicago, the mayor runs everything. That’s not the case in L.A.,” Sonenshein said, nodding to the city’s relatively weak-mayor system. “There’s a long tradition [in L.A.] of civic leaders being brought in to lend an outside hand and to build a wider coalition beyond the officeholders.”

Sonenshein cited a number of examples, including the Christopher Commission formed by then-Mayor Tom Bradley and chaired by attorney Warren Christopher to look into excessive force at the Los Angeles Police Department in the wake of the beating of Rodney King, and Bradley’s choice of businessman Peter Ueberroth to lead rebuilding efforts after the 1992 civil unrest.