Major Developer Denies Agreeing to Role in Santa Ana Trade Center

The effort to build a World Trade Center complex in downtown Santa Ana has barely begun, but the project has already hit a snag.

H. Thomas Felvey, a consultant who put together a project team for the proposed center, did not have permission to add a major development firm to the roster, the firm’s officers said Tuesday.

Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, which is based in Boston, was never interested in the project and never agreed to become a member of the team, said Gary Toeller and William Dunlap, vice presidents in Cabot’s commercial division in Los Angeles.

As a result of the firm’s disclosure, the World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County is scrambling to find another developer to take Cabot’s place and help it build a $100-million office and hotel complex catering to firms involved in foreign trade.

Disappointment Expressed

“Yes, we were disappointed,” said Susan T. Lentz, the association’s executive director. “But this project has had its ups and downs. It hasn’t dimmed our enthusiasm.”

Felvey, a Laguna Niguel architect, claimed he did nothing wrong. But he declined to elaborate, saying only that the project team had not yet been formalized.

Felvey’s role as a consultant ended July 15, when he submitted the proposed project team’s qualifications to the Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency. The submission was the first step of the association’s effort to win its bid to develop the center.

The Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency, which owns a vacant 5-acre site on which the association wants to build a World Trade Center, has yet to decide if it will extend the deadline to allow the group to amend its filing.

Extended Deadline

The agency had already extended the cutoff to July 25 to allow Felvey to file information on Cabot and to allow another group bidding to develop the site to complete its package.

“If we extend our deadline, we’ll have to do it for everybody,” said Roger Kooi, director of the city’s Downtown Development Commission. “I’m not quite sure what our game plan is. It’s all still in such a conceptual stage. We’re not going to be so rigid with our process.”

Felvey’s proposed team included such major companies as the Bechtel Group in San Francisco and his former employer, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a Chicago-based architectural firm.

The filing named Cabot as the primary developer, but it contained blank pages that were to include information on the firm.

“We never told Tom (Felvey) we would be on the team,” said Toeller, one of the Cabot vice presidents. “We never responded in a positive way.”

Toeller and Dunlap said Cabot had been among about 150 developers solicited to bid on rights to develop the property. After evaluating the feasibility of new office and commercial space in downtown Santa Ana, they said, the firm decided not to bid.

Felvey Called Cabot

Felvey, who knew that Cabot was one of the developers solicited, called to see if the firm would join with Bechtel and others in building the World Trade Center, Toeller said.

Though he told Felvey he wasn’t interested, Toeller said, he agreed to listen to his pitch. Felvey’s July 11 presentation and a later effort to persuade Cabot to join didn’t persuade the firm to participate, Toeller and Dunlap said.

After stories on the trade center association and Felvey appeared in The Times Orange County Edition, a Redevelopment Agency employee, Josephine La Quay, began calling members of the proposed team to assure them that they would not be working with Felvey.

The stories detailed the association’s effort to get a center built and Felvey’s previous business activities, including an unsuccessful effort to build a World Trade Center in Pomona and a trail of unfinished deals and unpaid debts dating back 11 years.

Toeller, surprised to learn that Cabot’s name had been submitted as a team member, said he told La Quay the firm was not involved in the project.

“She was a little surprised to hear that,” he said.

So were members of the trade center association, Lentz said. She moved quickly check the status of other team members and take control of the effort.

“As far as the rest of the team goes, they still want to do it,” she said. “We’re going to go out and talk to other developers. There are two others that are pretty strong candidates.”