On the road to getting approval for a new project, who you are can be as important as what you’re proposing to build.

Take Ira Smedra, whose name has become almost synonymous with controversy in recent years, thanks to his hotly debated projects in Westwood and Studio City.

“His reputation precedes him and makes people react with fear, rather than, ‘Oh, good, this is going to be great,’ ” said Polly Ward, vice president of the Studio City Residents Association and an opponent of Smedra’s retail project on Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards.

Will Smedra’s name raise red flags as he goes about gaining approvals for future projects in other communities? Smedra doesn’t think so. He notes that he’s developed some 50 projects and only two were controversial.

“I don’t look at it as baggage at all. There are very few projects where you get 100 percent support,” Smedra said. “In-fill projects in dense urban areas have a tendency of attracting more interest than in outlying communities. People are adverse to change.”

But then there’s Rick Caruso, whom almost everyone seems to love. While his Farmer’s Market project did draw some opposing comments at a hearing last week, Caruso has earned a reputation of working with neighborhood groups.

“This is a man who keeps his word and has communities happy,” said Laura Lake, a neighborhood activist in Westwood (and vocal opponent of Smedra’s proposed retail-theater complex there).

“With community associations, these people talk to each other. They go and look at projects,” Paul Novak, a land-use consultant and principal at Glendale-based Novak + Associates. “It takes a long time and work to build a good reputation, and very little time to establish a bad one.”

Not only do neighbors get the lowdown on developers, so do key government officials.

“It’s a small network of politicians and staff and land-use consultants, and we all talk to each other. We all know who the good developers are and who the bad developers are. I’m going to look at a project more closely if I don’t trust the applicant,” Novak said.

Larry Kosmont, president of real estate consulting firm Kosmont & Associates, agreed that reputation matters greatly.

“There are developers who have created a good public persona and others that have baggage. That’s a distinctive measure of a developer,” Kosmont said. “Some have treated cities shabbily. It’s hard for them to get deals. No one will say who they are, but they get known.”