Rebuild LA Collection, CSLA-6, Overview

THE THOMAS AND DOROTHY LEAVEY CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LOS ANGELES RESEARCH COLLECTION

REBUILD LA COLLECTION, 1992--1997 (CSLA-6):
Overview of the Collection

The RLA (formerly Rebuild L.A.) collection includes the organization's records from its inception in 1992 to its dissolution in 1997. Some of RLA's records followed the new organization--LA PROSPER Partners--to the Los Angeles Community College District. The remainder of RLA's records came to Loyola Marymount University's Center for the Study of Los Angeles. The records include administrative files as well as files from the various task force groups including the Economic Development group and the Labor Force Development group. Personnel files, press communications, video and audio tapes, photographs, published materials, business advertisements and brochures, and correspondence also comprise the collection. A few of the significant topics covered in the collection include the General Motors Van Distribution Program, manufacturing networks, all of the speeches of Linda Griego (CEO, 1994-1997), and the Vacant Lots project.

The RLA collection documents the organization's struggles as well as its successes during the organization's five years. Due to staff changes and mobility within RLA, the files of the various departments were maintained by different people at different times. We made every effort to retain original order when feasible, though structural changes in RLA over the years caused records in some instances to change departments or to be consolidated into fewer departments.

For maximum accessibility as well as integrity, we divided the collection into thirteen series: Board of Directors, President's Office, Communications, Operations and Finance, Economic Development, Labor Force Development, Community Resource Development, Transition, Research and General Reference, Audiovisual Materials, Maps, Ephemera, and Published Materials. Most of the series also contain subseries; a few of the subseries have sub-subseries.