Cypress OKs $100-Million Development

The Cypress City Council has approved plans for a major, 160-acre business park that will result in closure of Los Alamitos Golf Course, prompting threats by angry golfers to seek a special election to block the development.

The council voted 4 to 1 shortly before midnight Monday to approve the $100-million project, which would include office, light industrial and commercial buildings, and possibly a hotel on land next to Los Alamitos Race Track.

City planners had endorsed the project, saying it would generate about $750,000 annually in revenues for the city, provide about 7,500 new jobs, and result in public works improvements in the area.

Representatives of the Men’s Club, a 550-member organization based at the golf course, said they would launch a referendum drive to halt the development, although city officials were seeking to locate a replacement course at the nearby Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center.

Roger Geyer, a golfer who is spearheading the drive to prevent development, said that he would favor such a replacement course plan but that he was skeptical that it would ever become reality.

“So far, no one has showed me how it’s going to get done,” Geyer said.

Mayor Otto Lacayo said he was still optimistic about the plan, which has received tentative verbal approval from the base commander, U.S. Army Col. Robert Brandt.

Bernard Winsberg, an attorney for the golfers, charged that Hollywood Park, which owns both the golf course and the adjacent Los Alamitos Race Track, eventually may close the race track to develop it as well. Winsberg claimed the loss to the city’s tax base will not be compensated by replacing the track with commercial space. He added that the track is a losing venture for Hollywood Park.

Hollywood Park owner Marge Everett told the council that those allegations were being made by outsiders and “are founded on nothing.”

Everett said the company plans to make $5 million worth of improvements at the track. She said the development project is “the means to the end” to generate the necessary funds. Hollywood Park incurred more than $60 million in debt when it bought the race track and golf course in 1984.

The business park development was proposed by Hollywood Park Real Estate Investment Trust, a subsidiary of Inglewood-based Hollywood Park. Neil Papiano, attorney for Hollywood Park, said the project would cost an estimated $100 million, but, he added, “that’s a ballpark figure.”

As part of the development agreement, Hollywood Park has agreed to spend part of the business park’s profits for public improvements in and near the project site, Mayor Lacayo said.

Councilman Cornelius M. Coronado Jr. cast the only no vote. He said $5 million in promised improvements would not be enough to turn the race track into a major facility, as the owners have promised.

Beside the golfer’s concerns, the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn. is suing Hollywood Park to block development, which it alleges will take place on land itcurrently leases with the track facilities.

In a lawsuit filed Sept. 12 in Orange County Superior Court, the association claimed that the business park development would “discourage patronage.” The association fears that it will lose patrons during the 10 weeks each year that it rents the track for quarter horse racing.

Association vice president James S. Smith and attorney George Manfredi told the council Monday night that the business park project calls for too few parking spaces. They also said the project proposal to close entrance gates would create bottlenecks for track patrons.

Everett disputed their claims, saying that plans include adequate provisions for traffic flow and parking. “We know that the person who doesn’t park doesn’t return,” she said. “We are prepared to put in a racing facility that will be a credit to the city.”

Papiano charged that the quarter-horse association was suing either as “harassment” or because its members “don’t understand what’s being proposed.”

City Manager Darrell Essex and Lacayo said before the meeting that the lawsuit-- reviewed by City Atty. Mark J. Huebsch-- does not affect the city’s approval of the project.