Call it a B+, with room for improvement.

Midway through his term, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is getting generally solid marks from local business leaders for his performance.

The popular mayor has won praise for his lobbying for more state and federal funding and for boosting the city’s profile both here and abroad. He’s also credited with sustaining the city’s development boom as several mega-projects have steamed ahead even as the local housing market has stalled.

But, local business leaders say, the mayor could do more to aid existing enterprises coping with the high cost of doing business and to bring Los Angeles International Airport into the modern era. And they lament the mayor’s inability or unwillingness to rein in the pro-union tendencies of the City Council.

“Looking back on the first two years, he deserves a lot of credit for leading on transportation and education. He has a very good track record on development. But there could also be a little more balance with labor interests and we’d like to see more attention on an economic strategy for the future of jobs in this city,” said Brendan Huffman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.

A year ago, even that kind of mild criticism from business interests was unheard as Villaraigosa was riding a wave of popularity and business leaders sought to stay in his good graces.

But since then, the mayor has been dealt a legal setback in his attempt to assume more control over the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District and the city failed in its bid heavily backed by local businesses to be the U.S. choice to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Furthermore, business leaders were stung by the City Council’s passage of a living wage ordinance targeting hotels around Los Angeles International Airport. Villaraigosa unsuccessfully attempted to forge a last-minute compromise. In the end, the hotels won a court injunction blocking the ordinance from taking effect.

While some business leaders were quick to point the finger at themselves for not mobilizing quickly enough on the living wage issue, others said they would like to have seen Villaraigosa get involved earlier on.

Reached last week while on a trip to Washington D.C. to lobby for passage of an immigration reform bill, Villaraigosa defended his attempt to negotiate a compromise.

“I don’t engage in finger-pointing; instead, I like to bring the parties together. I like to find common ground between business and labor,” he said.

Major projects

The mayor himself prefers to talk about some of the economic development accomplishments he has helped bring about, including a record $10 billion in construction-related investment over the past two years.

“When I campaigned for mayor, I said I wanted the (construction) crane to be L.A.’s favorite bird,” he said. “And just look around you. It’s happening all over this city.”

To a certain extent, Villaraigosa has benefited from events beyond his control. Those include a robust local economy, which has been creating jobs at a steady pace as the international trade, tourism and real estate sectors have boomed. Also, record amounts of capital have flowed into the region, with much of it going to fund massive development projects.

Nonetheless, he has taken credit for moving the multi-billion-dollar L.A. Live and Grand Avenue projects forward, even though both got their start years before he took office. “If you ask (Related Cos. chief executive) Steve Ross and (AEG president) Tim Leiweke who played a critical role in keeping those two projects alive, they will tell you it was the mayor,” he said.

He is also supporting the controversial NBC Universal master plan for a major mixed-use development on the back lot around Universal Studios. Business leaders and consultants agree that Villaraigosa has been out front.

“One can always say that these projects were in the works long before he took office. But in the past, projects like those have gotten clogged in the pipeline and died. This mayor and his team are making sure that projects that enter the pipeline come out the other end,” said Richard Lichtenstein, owner of Marathon Communications, an L.A.-based consulting firm.

Villaraigosa administration officials also point to other key development projects, including the North Hollywood Commons project and several mixed-use developments at transit stops. Those mixed-use projects have been a key factor behind the 15,000 units added to the city’s housing stock in the 2006-07 fiscal year ending last week, the same level as in 2005-06 and up from 12,000 units in 2004-05.

“We are outperforming the rest of the region and the state when it comes to housing starts,” said deputy mayor for economic development Bud Ovrom.

Calling CEOs

Recently, Villaraigosa’s economic team has identified a new mission: bringing more big-box retail outlets to the city to stem the outflow of sales tax revenues to surrounding communities like Burbank, Calabasas, Culver City and Santa Monica.

About two months ago, Villaraigosa met with Costco Wholesale Corp. chief executive James Sinegal and persuaded him to build nine new Costco stores in the city over the next several years. Similar meetings are in the works with the chief executives of Target Corp., Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos. Inc.

Villaraigosa has also moved to restore the city’s sagging convention business by urging meeting organizers and major trade organizations and associations to come to Los Angeles. “I personally call organizations to book conventions and I have done that from day one,” he said.

The efforts have met with some success as convention bookings have increased five-fold from abnormally low levels during the Hahn administration.

All of this activity has pleased business interests, as has the mayor’s high profile. Villaraigosa is constantly promoting Los Angeles or advocating for more federal and state funds. He’s made repeated trips to Washington D.C. and to Sacramento, where he salvaged funding for a carpool lane on the San Diego (405) Freeway that would ease commuter traffic.

“The average business person feels slightly better about the city because they see the energy of the mayor and the visible spokesperson for the city that he has become. They feel we are making process,” said Gary Toebben, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

However, Toebben and other business leaders say the Villaraigosa administration has not done as much as it could have in helping small businesses navigate City Hall and cope with the high cost of doing business. Villaraigosa has supported the business tax cuts that were enacted just before he took office and he’s taken other small steps, such as waiving fees for filming on city properties.

But Toebben said that’s not enough.

“For businesses, working with the city is no better than it was under James Hahn,” he said. “City Hall must still become more customer-friendly, whether it’s getting a city contract or getting a permit.”

Adds longtime City Hall critic Jeff Kavin, owner of Greenblatt’s Deli on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood: “I really think he’s trying to make Los Angeles a better place to do business. The trouble is the City Council is looking to follow the state Legislature on an anti-business jihad.”

Last year, Villaraigosa convened a committee on jobs and the economy; removing obstacles for small business will be one of the panel’s top recommendations later this year.

Ovrom conceded that more needs to be done to help small businesses: “I’ll be very candid: being responsive to small businesses is hard. We have not done as good a job of this as we could.”

To help with that effort, Villaraigosa earlier this year hired economic development specialist Helmi Hisserich, who said last week that she is conducting a top-to-bottom review of the city’s economic development policies.

One of the major steps: bringing together the general managers of all the departments that touch on economic development in a regular series of meetings. “We’re rethinking how economic development services are delivered, whether it’s loans for minority businesses or help with getting permits. This is going to be a major focus over the next year.”

Airport delays

A key area where business critics say Villaraigosa has fallen short is in modernizing Los Angeles International Airport. While they commend him for reaching a settlement with neighboring communities in late 2005 that allowed work on expanding the south runway and the Tom Bradley International Terminal to proceed, there has been no overall master plan released detailing how the airport is going to meet the aviation needs of the 21st century.

“What we’ve seen at LAX so far is not quite what business was hoping for,” said Huffman, of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.

While business interests universally praised Villaraigosa’s hiring of Seattle-Tacoma airport chief Gina Marie Lindsey as someone who has shown the ability to move forward with an airport modernization, they fear several more precious months will be lost as she gets up to speed. Already, there’s evidence that some international carriers are bypassing LAX in favor of more modern facilities in San Francisco and Las Vegas, draining tourist dollars from Los Angeles. Passenger traffic also has dropped at the airport.