Revitalization effort receives a new boost.

A new African-American Economic Coordinating Council has been established by a group of influential Angelenos as part of their effort to inject new capital and vitality into Los Angeles County's African-American community.

The council, established in late September, grew out of efforts

Since then summit participants have met more than three times at various Southland locations and have formed four task forces to address issues of commerce, capital formation, human resources, and power and influence.

The new council was established to implement ideas generated both by the task forces and the spring summit itself by using the resources of existing organizations.

"We don't really want to create anything new," said summit co-chairwoman Lynn Joy Rogers, who filed articles of incorporation for the council last week.

The coordinating council's members include Homer Broome Jr., president of the Greater Los Angeles African-American Chamber of Commerce; Thomas Sayles, California Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing and chairman of Gov. Pete Wilson's Los Angeles Revitalization Committee; Jimetta Moore, project director for RLA; and Julia Williams, director of business and finance for the California Commission for Economic Development.

The task force on commerce has several goals it wants the coordination council to implement, said member Leonard Maddox, president and general manager of Ingelwood-based Fourel Industries Inc. engineering services firm.

They include: increasing the number of African-American-owned franchises in Los Angeles; encouraging black-owned small businesses to seek technical assistance from nearby universities; encouraging African-Americans to start home-based businesses; increasing coordination with federal, state and local regulatory agencies in charge of setting policies that affect businesses in the African-American company; and, encouraging members of the African-American community to invest in businesses involved in high value-added industries, such as telecommunications, Maddox noted.

Furthermore, that task force wants the coordinating council to establish incubator programs that would support emerging businesses in the community, he said.

The capital formation task force, meanwhile, wants the council to help increase the deposit base at African-American banks and financial institutions and seek non-traditional lending sources that can lend seed money to start up businesses, said task force member Sheila Jones, senior tax manager with the L.A. office of Grant Thornton, an accounting and management firm.

Capital-formation task force members also want a standard to be established to measure the services being provided to the African-American community by financial institutions and other business services firms, Jones said.

They also want the council to identify black-owned businesses that are close to being able to qualify for a loan and assist them over their last hurdles, she said.

The coordinating council will also be in charge of carrying out, through already-existing resources, initial actions concluded by the summit last spring.

Specific initiatives, according to the summit summary, include:

* Floating an initial public offering and venture capital fund to finance the development of a shopping center in South Central;

* Establishing a real estate investment trust to provide capital for African-American commercial property investments;

* Developing minority-owned companies in transportation-related services and products.