Group’s Plan to Build Trade Complex in Santa Ana Is Dropped

The World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County said Monday that it has abandoned its efforts to develop a vacant five-acre site in downtown Santa Ana into a $100-million international trade complex.

A one-week deadline proved to be too short a period for the association to find a new developer to participate in the World Trade Center project, said Susan T. Lentz, the association’s executive director.

“We’re disappointed but not depressed,” Lentz said. “We worked really hard and learned a lot more about the process. We’ll continue on.”

Lentz said the association will begin to consider other possible sites for a World Trade Center, which would cater to the needs of small businesses involved in international trade.

In mid-July, the trade group submitted to the Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency a proposed project team to develop the vacant urban renewal tract, between 4th and 5th streets at Ross Street in downtown Santa Ana.

The team had been assembled by Laguna Niguel architect H. Thomas Felvey, who acted as an unpaid consultant on the project.

The principal players on the proposed team appeared impressive. A Chicago architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, agreed to design the complex, and the Bechtel Group construction firm in San Francisco agreed to serve as project manager to build it.

The third key team member listed in the July filing document was Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, a Boston-based developer that was supposed to finance the project or obtain financing from other sources.

But in late July, Cabot executives said they were not part of the trade center team and had not given Felvey permission to add the firm to the list.

The redevelopment agency then gave the trade group eight days to come up another developer. The deadline arrived last Thursday.

A week was simply too short a time period to find a developer, Lentz said Monday.

The redevelopment agency now must choose between two other groups that submitted proposals to develop the property or decide that no one is qualified, said Roger Kooi, director of the city’s Downtown Development Commission. While the city is eager to develop the property, he said, it “is not going to jump at the first thing that comes along.”

Lentz said her group has talked with developers for the other two proposed projects about working together on a trade center at another site.

One site could be within a huge Foreign Trade Zone adjacent to the railroad station, she said. The zone, which the city is beginning to market, is for importers and manufacturers who want to minimize customs duties on imported goods or components.

Lentz said that Bechtel and Skidmore Owings have agreed to continue with the association in its efforts to build an international center in Santa Ana.

The association’s board of directors is expected to meet later this month to go over the group’s efforts to build a center, she said.

“None of us is really quite sure why Cabot pulled out,” said Richard J. Schwarzstein, a Newport Beach lawyer and co-founder of the association. “Felvey makes a strong case of them having every intention of going through with it.”

He said Felvey blamed news accounts about the project and his role in it for causing Cabot to withdraw. Felvey, claiming he and others have been misquoted, refused to comment.

News stories published in late July detailed the association’s effort to build a center 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.