Hopes for Pomona Trade Center Fade : Promoter Faces Deadline With Partner Gone, City Council Skeptical

The proposed Inland Pacific World Trade Center appears to be dying a slow death, according to both proponents and foes of the $96-million project.

In recent months, Birtcher, the center’s main development partner, has withdrawn its support for the project, and Grubb & Ellis, the real estate firm that was to have marketed retail and office space for the complex, has stopped advertising for tenants.

The lone remaining catalyst for the project is still promoter H. Thomas Felvey, who proposed the idea of a world trade center to city officials in 1985. At that time, his firm, Urbanetics Inc., received the exclusive right from the city to develop the 4.6-acre parcel, across the street from Pomona’s Civic Center.

Last April, the City Council voted to issue $100 million in revenue bonds to finance the construction of the 12-story office, hotel and retail complex that many hoped would spark an economic and cultural rebirth in Pomona.

The city gave Felvey until May 1 of this year to obtain sufficient credit guarantees and other means of security for the bonds.

Council members have been increasingly skeptical of Felvey’s ability to line up financial backers since last May, when a report published by The Times revealed that he had been the target of numerous lawsuits in connection with unpaid debts and unfinished projects.

In the three months since Birtcher informed the city that it had determined the project to be “too ambitious and complex,” Felvey has been keeping a very low profile.

Receptionists at Birtcher’s Santa Ana office, where Felvey maintained an office last year, said they do not know where he can be reached and no longer accept messages for him. Wayne Soldano, vice president and sales manager for the San Gabriel Valley office of Grubb & Ellis, said he has been unable to reach Felvey for several months.

“I just don’t know where the guy is,” Soldano said.

Last month, Grubb & Ellis removed a sign advertising office and retail space in the trade center from the vacant lot at Garey Avenue and Mission Boulevard where construction had been scheduled to begin last spring.

“As far as I’m concerned, there is no world trade center project at this point,” Soldano said.

However, Sanford A. Sorenson, Pomona’s director of community development, said Felvey has called him twice in the last month to report that he is negotiating with a firm to succeed Birtcher as the major partner in the venture.

“We’ve notified Mr. Felvey that we’re not moving forward until there is a qualified development partner for the project,” Sorenson said. “He indicated that the principal firm he was dealing with would be making its decision during the month of February.”

But Sorenson said that his office does not have Felvey’s phone number and that he does not know where the promoter is conducting his business.

“I think he was calling from his car phone,” Sorenson said.

For Felvey to meet the May 1 deadline, Sorenson said, he would have to have firm commitments of financial backing “no later than the middle of March.”

“It’s an awfully short time to interest someone in a project of this magnitude,” he said.

If Felvey cannot put together a trade center project by the deadline, ownership of the property will transfer to Kajima International Inc., which last April paid the city $1 million for the land, which had been priced at $500,000.

Kajima would then be obligated to build some type of project worth at least $10 million on the site within five years or ownership of the land would revert to the city’s Redevelopment Agency, Sorenson said.

Mayor Donna Smith said she remains hopeful that Felvey can arrange financing for the trade center before the deadline.

“The project is not dead,” Smith said. “We still have until May 1, and the council is not ready to give up the ship. . . . We’ve waited this long, and a couple more months won’t hurt.”

Councilman Mark Nymeyer agreed it is too early to give up hope on the project.

“I know a few things that are going on behind the scenes, but I’m not at liberty to say what they are,” Nymeyer said. “It is not over, by any means.”

But the other three council members were not as positive in their assessments.

Councilman E. J. (Jay) Gaulding, who said the project had a 90% chance of going forward after Felvey’s history of financial and legal problems came to light last May, said this week that the probability had fallen to “something less than 50%.”

“Though I guess miracles can happen, I don’t expect this will be one of them,” Gaulding said.

Councilwoman Nell Soto, who has been very critical of Felvey’s involvement with the venture, also expressed a gloomy outlook.

“I’m hoping they will be able to salvage it, but I don’t know how possible that will be,” Soto said. “To get another firm for a world trade center at this late date would almost be an impossible thing.”

Pomona’s business leaders, who have strongly supported the trade center proposal, are guardedly optimistic in their appraisal of the project’s chances.

“I’m still hoping that it will happen, but I have no idea,” said H. S. (Biff) Byrum, president of the Pomona Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote economic development in the city. “It would be a glorious thing for Pomona. It would give us visible success.”

“From what we hear, the developer’s still out there making the contacts,” said Al Correia, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not going to have a negative impact if it doesn’t happen, but it could have a very positive impact if it does.”

Not Holding Breath

Soto, however, said she is not holding her breath for Felvey to return with a solid proposal.

“I don’t think (Felvey’s) going to come back. To be honest with you, I hope he doesn’t come back. I just don’t trust him.”

When Felvey first proposed the Inland Pacific World Trade Center, the project was viewed by city officials and business leaders as a potential godsend for a fiscally pinched city that had been bypassed by much of the economic development in the area.

Consultants predicted that the complex--featuring a 12-story office building, 260-room hotel with convention facilities, museums, theaters and 50 retail stores and restaurants--would create 3,000 jobs and generate millions of dollars for Pomona’s general fund.

“The fiscal impact is rather extraordinary,” Felvey said in September, 1985. “In the first 10 years, the city will reap $37 million in taxes.”

Magnet for Firms

Felvey said the center, located in one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions and convenient to freeways, rail lines and Ontario International Airport, would be a magnet for international trade brokers and high-tech electronics firms.

Under Felvey’s proposal, the city would be a partner of sorts in the project, paying for the construction of a $13-million parking garage, spending $1.5 million for a promotional campaign and obtaining a $5.2-million loan from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Yet some on the City Council were wary of the project. One source of concern was a $550-million world trade center being built in Long Beach, which caused many to worry whether the Los Angeles area could support two international trade complexes.

Granted Membership

But the proximity to the Long Beach center did not prevent the Pomona project from being granted official membership in the New York-based World Trade Center Assn., which recognizes 54 trade centers worldwide.

Much of the uncertainty about the project seemed to be quelled in September, 1986, when Felvey announced that Birtcher, the nation’s 10th largest development firm, had become a partner in the project, had secured financing and was launching a massive marketing effort to fill the center with tenants.

The project hit a snag a few months later, however, when a representative of Mitsubishi Trust and Banking Corp., a potential investor in the trade center enterprise, visited Pomona. City officials, including four of the five council members, attended a reception for Makoto Ozeki, the firm’s vice president of finance.

C. L. (Clay) Bryant, a strident opponent of the project who was later elected to the City Council, tried to have the four council members arrested for violating the Brown Act, which requires elected officials to conduct virtually all business in public.

Got Cold Feet

Although no legal action was ever taken against the council members, the incident apparently so embarrassed Mitsubishi officials that they got cold feet and backed away from the project. Former Mayor G. Stanton Selby said this was probably the beginning of the end for the trade center project.

Another setback occurred in March, 1987, when Selby, one of the trade center’s strongest proponents on the council, lost his bid for reelection. A runoff was scheduled between Smith, a moderate supporter of the project, and Bryant, one of its most vehement foes.

The week before the runoff, the council voted unanimously to have the city issue $100 million in taxable revenue bonds, which would provide the means to finance the trade center but would not be a financial obligation for the city.

But less than a month later, the proposal suffered another major blow when it was revealed that Felvey had failed to answer 12 lawsuits that clients and creditors had filed against him and three corporations he owned.

A story in The Times disclosed that Felvey owed more than $230,000 in default judgments, including $96,000 to a Malibu couple for leaving unfinished a six-unit apartment project and more than $45,000 in county, state and federal tax liens.

Prime Mover

In light of these revelations, council members last summer said their continued support for the trade center was contingent on Birtcher, not Felvey, being the prime mover in the project.

But in November, Donald B. Talcott, president of Birtcher Real Estate Inc., wrote Sorenson to inform him that the firm had decided not to be involved in the project, in part because the massive trade center was viewed as “too ambitious and too complex.”

“We could not find the demand for the whole project at one time,” Talcott said last week. “Our feeling was that a smaller, phased project had a better chance of success.”

Talcott said Birtcher has severed all ties to the project and will not seek to be involved in an alternate project proposed by Kajima.

“I made it perfectly clear that Birtcher was not trying to leave its foot in the door,” Talcott said. “I went to great lengths to make sure that we wouldn’t be the actor that destroyed a lot of people’s ambitions and then hang around like vultures.”

Blames Ex-Colleagues

Selby, who championed the proposal while in office, said the project appears dead, and he blamed Smith and council members Soto and Bryant for killing it.

“Since the new council was elected, the kiss of death has been on the trade center,” Selby said. “We almost had it. We were that close. We’re going to lose it, and I think it will be a tragic loss for the City of Pomona.”

Although Felvey still has more than two months to resurrect the project, council members have already begun referring to it in the past tense and assessing the reasons for its downfall.

“I think it was too ambitious a project for Pomona,” Soto said. “It might have been nice for another location, but for Pomona, at this time, I think it might have been too complex.”

Smith disagreed with the view that Pomona was not a suitable location for a trade center.

“I think it’s still a valid concept,” Smith said. “I honestly feel that a world trade center in the City of Pomona would be terrific for our community.

Partner’s Reputation

“(It) really needs someone who’s been successful with a project of that magnitude to really pull it off. . . . Obviously, it has a lot to do with the reputation of the developer and who his partner is. With a partner with a reputation like Birtcher’s, it’s a very easy thing to do. Otherwise, you just have a man with a dream running around trying to convince people.”

Nymeyer said that not only is a world trade center in Pomona feasible, but that if Felvey cannot get it built, another developer will propose a similar project for the same site.

“I believe by comments that I’ve heard that if Mr. Felvey failed to assemble the project, someone else will succeed,” Nymeyer said. “I think that’s very, very possible.”

Smith also stressed that even in a worst-case scenario, the city cannot come out a loser in the trade center deal.

‘Not Out Anything’

“I think we’ve been very careful in this in that the city won’t be out anything,” she said. “If we get a project built on the land, we’ve won. If we get the land back, we’ve won. We’re not out anything except some time.”

Council members have different views on what type of project should be built on the site if the trade center proposal does not survive. Smith said she would like to see a cultural center across the street from City Hall. Bryant said he wants a post office. Soto said she would like “anything that would improve that corner and bring in some revenue.”

After four years of deriding the trade center proposal, Bryant finds it difficult not to gloat a little over the way things have turned out.

“I’m not crowing about it, but I think it was a bad idea to start with,” Bryant said, adding that those on the council in 1985 were duped by Felvey.

“We had a City Council that was so eager for development they took whatever was offered,” Bryant said. “They didn’t ask enough questions. . . . There wasn’t a bit of business acumen in any of these people. They were sold a bill of goods. They were gullible. The Pied Piper came to town, and all the rats followed.”