Computer Whiz Cooper Plans to Lure Pro Teams With ‘Cultural Palace’

Harry G. Cooper says he habitually does “some of my best thinking” in the quiet, post-midnight hours, when the distractions of his palatial La Jolla home--ranging from stunning ocean panoramas and an equally stunning girlfriend to waterfalls and endless high-tech gadgetry--are at a minimum.

“That’s when my mind’s clearest, most focused,” said Cooper, a 56-year-old computer technology innovator who parlayed the millions that he made in that industry into tens of millions through shrewd land dealings and other investments. “That’s when everything comes together. It’s a good time for thinking and making decisions.”

Enveloped by the familiar, comforting overnight solitude, Cooper in recent weeks pondered a decision that, even by the standards of his extraordinarily successful business career, eclipsed all others in magnitude and import.

Last week, Cooper’s midnight musings resulted in citywide attention as he and a partner revealed that they had acquired, for an estimated $13 million, the lease to the San Diego Sports Arena. More significantly, the pair announced that their long-range plans do not include continued operation of the 23-year-old Midway area arena. Instead, they plan to replace it, on a downtown or Sorrento Valley site, with “the finest sports palace in the world” in hopes of attracting professional basketball and hockey franchises to San Diego.

“This is going to happen--I feel it,” Cooper said, thumping the arm of a leather chair in his study during an interview. “I’m feeling nothing but positive energy. The numbers are there. It can work. It will work. My vision of this project has me as excited as I’ve ever been.”

The aureole in that vision highlights a 22,900-seat, $120-million arena that Cooper promises will rival the Sydney Opera House in both architecture and acoustics, a facility as well-matched to the needs of screaming sports event crowds as to those at a Pavarotti concert. Once in place, Cooper’s arena will be a powerful--and, he insists, eventually successful--lure for franchises in the National Basketball Assn., the National Hockey League, or both.

Seeking Major Statement

“It’s unfair to even call it a sports arena, because what it’s going to be is a cultural palace,” Cooper said, his eyes twinkling at the prospect. “What I’m interested in is seeing a major architectural statement. I really believe that San Diego is America’s Finest City, and this palace will be worthy of the same description. Very simply, there will be none finer.”

Cooper’s plan, which calls for the arena to be built entirely with private funds, is as ambitious as it is familiar. Over the past decade, other bold proposals holding out the promise of new, sparkling arenas and sports franchises to follow have occasionally been put forth. None made it off the drawing boards--if they got even that far--and Cooper says that he understands why some skeptical San Diegans might suspect that his proposal will inexorably limp toward the same inglorious conclusion, leaving the city with no new teams and a much-maligned 13,000-seat arena.

Those who know Cooper best, however, say they believe that this is one time when the let’s-build--an-arena-and-attract-a-team story will have a happy ending--even though Cooper concedes that his deal hinges on some fairly major ifs at this stage.

“If Harry makes a statement that something is going to happen, then he’s done his homework and knows it can be done,” said Joe Famme, a former Convair president who nurtured Cooper early in his career. “That’s the way he operates.”

Richard Esquinas, Cooper’s 33-year-old partner in the arena deal--he owns 33% to Cooper’s 67%--offered a similar perspective of Cooper as a cautious businessman who “crunches the numbers pretty good” before making a major move.

Partner Married His Niece

“It’s not that he’s afraid of taking risks,” said Esquinas, who heads a nonprofit educational foundation that Cooper founded and is married to Cooper’s niece. “It’s just that, before Harry crawls out on a limb, he looks around carefully and knows how sturdy it is. That’s how he got where he is.”

To get “where he is,” Cooper traveled an improbable course, one in which his abiding ambition, intuitive genius for computer technology and charitable instincts served as the key signposts.

Born on a farm near Quitman, Miss., a town of about 2,600, Cooper was the third youngest of eight children--a heritage that has left him with a gentle Southern accent and what friends describe as “Southern gentleman” manners.

Never a good student but with a strong aptitude for mathematics, Cooper said his consistently poor grades and trouble with reading caused him to occasionally wonder whether he was retarded. Later, he was diagnosed as a dyslexic, an impairment that he learned to live with and that did nothing to slow his later success.

Married at the age of 17, the since twice-divorced Cooper moved in 1950 to Ft. Worth, Tex., where he hoped to study mechanical engineering at Texas Christian University. Once there, he learned that his only choices were studying for the ministry or pursuing a degree in business administration.

“I hadn’t checked it out very good,” Cooper admitted, chuckling at his recollection of a valuable early lesson that has served him well in business--and, he hopes, in the sports arena proposal.

1st Job as a Tool Designer

Needing a job to support his bride, Cooper was hired by General Dynamics as a tool designer. Two years later, he transferred to San Diego, where Famme recognized Cooper as “one of the smartest guys I’d ever seen--in the tool department, of all places!”

With Famme’s backing, Cooper became involved with computer research, pioneering a number of innovations in computer-controlled tools, micrographics and data storage.

As computer technology blossomed in the early 1960s, Cooper, who then was working in New York, watched several friends start their own companies and make fortunes. By 1965, Cooper had decided to strike out on his own, too.

“I guess I liked the notoriety they were getting, and certainly the wealth,” Cooper said. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do my own thing, too. I couldn’t stand to miss all that action.”

The company that Cooper founded, General Computing, grew by 1970 to include 13 computer micrographic service centers that specialized in transferring data from computer magnetic tapes to microfilm and microfiche.

Noting that “the scientific world was really 15 years ahead of the business world” during those years, Cooper--who helped develop the first computer language--showed businesses how software breakthroughs could substantially reduce their costs. One of his first major clients was American Express.

Although his firm was a success, Cooper’s dreams of building it into a nationwide empire were derailed by an economic downtown in the late 1960s. In August, 1970, he sold the company to TransAmerica. The firm, since purchased by a company called Anacomp, now reports annual sales of more than $840 million.

“I wouldn’t say I regret selling it, but I’m a little envious that I wasn’t able to take it where I felt it could go,” Cooper said. “But at least someone did, and I’m glad for that.”

The seven-figure sale price meant that Cooper, then still in his late 30s, was financially set for life. Recognizing that “I never had to work again,” Cooper went to the Bahamas to ponder his future, and finally decided to return to San Diego.

16,000-Square-Foot Home

In 1972, he bought his present home, a luxurious 16,000-square-foot, two-level contemporary style house on La Jolla Farms Road--an area so posh that even other La Jollans envy it.

Situated on 4 1/2 acres overlooking Black’s Beach, the home features angled glass walls that afford a spectacular 180-degree view of the ocean and the cliffs that descend to the beach 375 feet below. Mirrored walls, stylish lacquered cabinetry and redwood floors complement tasteful, understated furniture and art work throughout the house. In the master bedroom, a button lowers screens to shade the room, as well as a large television monitor.

On the lower level, Cooper is building a 6,000-square-foot dance floor that he describes as a “disco grotto” featuring a cave motif. An 11-foot waterfall spills into a 25-foot pond that eventually will feed into an outside waterfall cascading down the cliffs. A Jacuzzi, meanwhile, features a motorized lift that, at the touch of another button, permits a champagne bucket to rise from the floor.

Likes to Play in Aspen

Such Hefneresque accessories, combined with his attractive female company and late-night, jet-set life style--”Alta is my favorite place to ski and Aspen is my favorite place to play,” he remarked casually--prompt descriptions of the house as the ultimate bachelor pad and have helped earn Cooper a reputation as a bit of a playboy. That reputation, he insists, is undeserved--but still, he seems to rather enjoy it.

“Well, now, about that champagne (lift) thing--I installed that to put towels and other things in,” said Cooper, showing a wry smile that broadened as he continued the story. “As it turns out, it’s also a nice place to have a little bar. I guess maybe there have been a few bottles of champagne there over the years. But that’s not what I’m all about.”

Besides his two marriages, Cooper said he has been involved in five other “serious, long-term relationships,” including his current 3 1/2-year one with 27-year-old Valerie Preiss, a blonde with the stature and features of a model. His son recently graduated from the University of Mississippi and plans to enroll in medical school.

“I’m really into relationships,” added Cooper, a dark-haired, mustachioed man who credits careful attention to diet for a fit appearance that makes him look a decade younger. “I’m a relationship kind of guy. I really don’t like dating. I haven’t been single more than six months in between my marriages and relationships. I like night life, but I don’t think you could consider me a playboy. But I guess it was during some of those times in between that I got that reputation.”

38 Acres in Sorrento Valley

Through various investments, primarily in land, Cooper built his computer wealth into a considerably larger fortune--which, while unspecified, reaches well into eight figures. His present holdings include 38 acres in the so-called Golden Triangle of Sorrento Valley, land that he bought for $400,000 and that is now valued at more than $23 million.

Eschewing an idle-rich life style, Cooper in 1972 founded the Kearny Mesa-based Career Guidance Foundation, where teachers are trained to provide occupational guidance to students. One of the nonprofit organization’s major undertakings has been the microfilming of college catalogues, a process that has helped make the information more readily and cheaply available to students and schools. A related organization, the Athletic Guidance Center, provides similar services to student-athletes.

Hoping to carry the catalogue program to the next technological plateau, Cooper now is nearing completion on a decade-old project aimed at placing the books’ data on compact discs similar to those now used in the music industry. His goal, perhaps several years away, is to find an economical way to include 250,000 pages’ worth of data on a single disc.

Enjoys Yard, Good Food

Though well-known in charitable and upper-echelon social circles, Cooper has enjoyed a largely quiet, low-profile life style that prompted “Harry who ?” questions among most of the public when the Sports Arena deal was unveiled last week.

That relative anonymity suited him just fine, said Cooper, who got a close--and, he said, unpleasant--look at celebrities’ effect on personal lives when his late brother Wyatt, a film editor, was married to clothing designer Gloria Vanderbilt.

“It’s seemed like every time they went out, they were inconvenienced to some degree. Wherever they went, there was always too much attention. It seemed like they could never be by themselves.

“Personally, I don’t need that,” said Cooper, a soft-spoken man with a self-deprecating sense of humor whose passions include tinkering in his yard and good food. “My house is my hobby.”

Last week’s events, however, hurled Cooper into the media spotlight, where he is likely to remain if his dreams for a sports “palace” become reality. That prospect, Cooper said, does not disturb him, although he expressed surprise that, at least during these early stages of his sudden celebrity, public interest in him has overshadowed the arena project itself.

“At the beginning, I said I wasn’t doing this to satisfy any ego thing, but now I don’t know--these last few days have been kind of fun,” Cooper said, laughing. “Still, this isn’t something I’m doing as a personal monument. True, I want it to be a monument, a statement. But I want it to be one for the city’s sake, not mine. The important thing is the palace. If I can bring that about and have a little fun in the process, that’s fine.”

Cooper’s enthusiasm for the project is so infectious that, at times, it obscures the fact that formidable obstacles remain--starting with selection of a site.

Initially, Cooper hoped to build the arena on his Golden Triangle property, both because construction could begin immediately and because a sports “palace” represents the kind of majestic use that he envisions for the site.

However, yielding to city leaders’ preferences, Cooper says that a downtown site now looks more likely, assuming that he gets City Hall’s assistance in assembling and acquiring an eight-block site for a price “in the neighborhood” of $20 million. In addition to that possible delay, parking for the downtown site also would increase the price tag by about $15 million, he said.

Nevertheless, Cooper says that the deal “pencils out,” provided that the city can attract either an expansion basketball or hockey franchise, or persuade another city’s existing team to relocate in San Diego. His preference, Cooper said--admitting that he follows neither sport closely--would be to gain an expansion team, “because it would feel more home-grown if we start from scratch.”

Bad Track Record

Well aware of the city’s dismal track record with both the NBA and NHL, however, Cooper realizes that he can ill afford to be picky at this stage. The city’s last professional basketball team, the Clippers, left the Sports Arena for Los Angeles in 1984, and four hockey teams that played here also folded, the last one 10 years ago.

“I think that has more to do with the arena than the teams,” Cooper said. “There just are too many problems with the Sports Arena. It’s too small and because of its condition, it’s not the kind of place that people want to come back to again and again. . . . This might sound silly, but it doesn’t have a winning feel about it. You could move a successful team like the Lakers into that place and the next year, they’d be losers.”

If Cooper’s plan succeeds, it is expected that the current Sports Arena would probably be razed, and the city-owned site where it sits put to another use.

Cooper professes optimism that, once professional hockey and basketball officials get a look at the plans for his “palace,” a franchise is likely to follow, whether via the expansion or relocation route. The arena will be designed by nationally recognized architect Gino Rossetti, who designed the newly opened 22,000 seat Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., where the NBA’s Detroit Pistons play.

That optimism aside, Cooper concedes that the financing for the arena “wouldn’t work” without a major-league franchise. For that reason, Cooper tempers his hometown enthusiasm for the deal with cautious business acumen, and has commissioned a preliminary financial analysis, expected in about six weeks, that will begin to answer some of the key questions regarding cost, timing and location.

Franchise Is Critical

His guiding tenet in the arena project, as in all major business deals, Cooper said, is this: “My attitude has always been, to make more money won’t change my life style much, but to lose it will. And to lose this would certainly change my life style. I couldn’t just write a check and walk away from this one.”

Underlining that concern, Cooper added: “I’d say we wouldn’t start construction unless we know we have a franchise,” he said.