Port Officials Told to Submit Plan for San Pedro Project

In an effort to prod the Port of Los Angeles into building a long-overdue downtown redevelopment project in San Pedro, the city Community Redevelopment Agency has demanded that the port submit basic plans for the project by the end of November.

But, despite the wishes of San Pedro business people who are angry about four years of delays, the CRA’s chairman says his agency will not threaten to use the only real weapon it has--revoking the Harbor Department’s right to develop the site.

“That may be the relationship people want us to have,” said CRA Chairman James Wood, “But that is a coercive relationship and that is not the relationship we have had with the Harbor Commission. . . . I feel they are a sister city agency and they should be treated as a member of the city family.”

The CRA could have taken the property away from the port 10 months ago, when the port defaulted on its agreement to develop the land. The port has received three extensions--for a total of two years and four months--from the CRA. The last extension expired Dec. 15, 1986, three years after the port bought the land from the CRA.

Letter of Demands

Despite the need for repeated extensions, Port Executive Director Ezunial Burts said he sees no problem meeting the demands of the CRA, outlined in a Sept. 25 letter from the agency’s administrator, John Tuite.

In the letter to Burts, Tuite cited “the need to get the project back on a realistic schedule,” and insisted that within 60 days the port agree to a schedule for development and to submit basic plans.

“The agency acted in good faith when it entered into the agreement with the port, conveyed the property and approved the last three (extensions),” Tuite wrote. “However, after four years of inactivity there are those who are questioning not only the port’s intentions, but its ability to successfully develop the property within the near term.”

Earlier this week, Burts said he had yet to respond to the letter, but was preparing a reply in which he would ask for a meeting with CRA staff. In the meantime, Burts said, negotiations are continuing with HCT Inc., the developer the port picked for the $29.8-million, 12-story office building.

Members of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, who have been critical of the port’s progress, say they are pleased with the letter but upset that the CRA will not consider revoking the port’s right to develop the property. They want the port to be treated like any other developer, and said they will write the CRA chairman to tell him so.

Said Gordon Inman, chairman of the chamber’s CRA Overview Committee: “If you’re playing with our chips, then everybody plays by the same rules in this game, including the Harbor Department.”

The chamber and others are looking to the port’s development as well as other proposals within the Beacon Street Redevelopment Area to spur an economic revival of San Pedro business district.

In addition to the chamber members, area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores has expressed her dissatisfaction with the port’s progress, said a spokeswoman.

“She has talked to the port director and indicated to him that she would like him to proceed as quickly as possible,” said Ann D’Amato, aide to Flores.

D’Amato said Flores only reluctantly supported the last extension.

The port’s involvement with the CRA began Dec. 23, 1983, when harbor commissioners paid the CRA $4.3 million for 2.6 acres of prime property in the Beacon Street Redevelopment Area, an urban renewal effort launched by the CRA in the late 1960s. The property, on Harbor Boulevard, adjoins a parcel the port had already purchased on the open market.

The harbor commissioners bought the CRA property with one idea: to prevent any development that, they said, would have ruined the panoramic waterfront view from their fifth-floor offices.

Reasons for Delay

But the deal came with a catch: the port had to select a developer and submit basic plans to the CRA by Aug. 7, 1984, and adhere to a development schedule.

Now, more than three years after that deadline passed, the port still has not reached a final agreement with the developer and has not submitted plans that satisfy the CRA.

Burts, the port executive director, attributed the delays to a number of reasons, chief among them market conditions that prevented the port from proceeding with its original plans for a 200,000-square-foot office building, twice the size of the one now proposed.

“It is not enough to simply construct an office building and have it stand empty,” Burts said. “We need to make sure that we’re going to be able to fill that thing. I don’t want the port in the position where we’re simply putting up white elephants.”

Although the port was accused early on of dragging its feet to preserve the view, Burts said the view has not been a factor in the delays. He said the developers, HCT Inc., will fulfill a requirement in the port’s project specifications that calls for the view not to be “screened by the development.”

However, the issue of the view remains a sensitive one in San Pedro. It cropped up again when the CRA held its biennial hearing in September on the status of the San Pedro redevelopment project. Members of the Chamber of Commerce, which by that time had already written to the CRA to suggest that it might be time to find another developer, packed the hearing to make sure that the CRA heard their complaints about delays plaguing the entire Beacon Street project.

Inman, the chamber member, told Burts that four years was a long time to sit on a piece of property.

“I agree it’s a long time,” said Burts, “and I have to come to work every morning and look out the window and see a vacant lot.”

Replied Inman tartly: “We understand you folks like that.”

Monday Deadline

At that hearing, Burts outlined a schedule by which the port would complete negotiations with HCT by Oct. 26. Then, according to Burts’ plan, after a series of internal reviews and approvals by the Harbor Department, the CRA, the mayor and the City Council, the construction proposal would be made final on March 18, 1988.

Burts this week declined to say whether he would meet the Oct. 26 deadline, which is Monday. “That’s the schedule we’re shooting for,” he said.

Approvals from the city cannot go forward until the Harbor Department concludes its negotiations with HCT.

In his letter to Burts, Tuite said it might be possible to cut through red tape by having the various arms of city government approve the proposal simultaneously.

The chamber, Flores and the CRA staff are all watching to see if the port has an agreement for its 12-story project on Monday.

Gerald Grimaldi, who manages the Beacon Street Redevelopment Project for the CRA, said the agency staff is frustrated.

“We had an agreement, they signed it, they agreed to do the things that were in the agreement, and they haven’t met any of the required time schedules yet,” he said.

Referring to Wood’s position that the CRA should not penalize the port as it would a private developer, Grimaldi said, “We’re in a difficult position. You heard what our chairman said. . . . We don’t have the same kind of leverage with the Harbor Department that we would with another developer.”

It was at the CRA biennial hearing that Wood initially said that the CRA would not penalize the port. He reiterated those views in an interview this week, although this time he said that if Flores instructed the CRA to declare the port in default of its contract “then that would weigh heavily with us.”

But a spokeswoman for Flores said the councilwoman would support such action only if the delays continue and are “unreasonable,” and for now Flores is simply waiting to see what happens.