Ballpark Pranks : Foes, Builders Play Political Games in High-Stake Battles Over Scarce Land

With the straw hats, helium balloons, lapel buttons and political slogans, the first day of baseball at the Northridge Little League field last month looked more like Election Day than opening day.

At one entrance, neighborhood residents passed out sodas and lambasted a developer’s proposal to use the league’s fields as the site of a 250,000-square-foot office complex, known as Evergreen Park.

In the league clubhouse, other adults handed out key rings bearing the slogan “We love Evergreen Park and Northridge Little League,” and argued that the only way to ensure survival of the fields was to build the complex and rearrange the diamonds.

In between--literally and figuratively--were the youths, unaware that their playing fields had become the turf for a high-stakes game.

It was no accident. Like scores of developers across Southern California, those proposing Evergreen Park were fighting community opposition with a sophisticated political campaign. Borrowing ideas and highly paid advisers from the world of ballot initiatives and congressional campaigns, Los Angeles-area developers are spending millions of dollars to counter public opposition through the use of opinion polls, direct mail campaigns, focus groups and “spin doctors,” who try to portray a project’s public perception in the best light.

“The old-style approach would be to deal with just a couple of council members and to lobby them,” said Hardy M. Strozier, an attorney and planner with the Planning Associates of Costa Mesa. “The person who thinks it works that way today is very naive.”

Instead, developers start wooing neighborhoods long before proposing projects. Later, they may try to convince elected officials that a project has neighborhood support, even though it might not exist.

Builders and their consultants say the approach emerged in the San Francisco Bay Area about eight years ago and has spread only recently to fast-growing Los Angeles.

Usually, according to consultants, the approach is merely a way to tell the builder’s side of the story or to find allies among neighbors who might not agree with the established homeowner groups. Often, they say, the effort to reach out to neighbors results in a project being altered to respond to the community’s concerns.

‘Good to Have Dialogue’

“It’s more a matter of developers getting their side of the story out, whether it be truth or fiction,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, whose district includes the Northridge baseball fields. “I don’t see anything unhealthy about the current process. It’s good to have dialogue on both sides.”

But others remain skeptical. In some cases, critics say, methods such as polling, mailers and hiring professional organizers are designed to convince rather than communicate, to distort the real issues in the neighborhood or to present the illusion of support for a project.

Flyers, mailers and door-to-door campaigns, when designed to manipulate rather than inform, are “just terrible stuff and, yeah, it goes on all the time,” said Allan Jacobs, a former San Francisco planning director who is a professor at UC Berkeley.

A handbook issued by the Urban Land Institute, a developer-oriented think tank based in Washington, emphasizes “the importance of pre-battle maneuvering; the gathering of intelligence concerning the enemy’s activity; the uses of deception, surprise and propaganda, and the launching of counterattacks” in winning a zoning change.

The book, however, also counsels builders to stick to the facts and avoid conducting large meetings that use fancy models and slide shows that could give the appearance of a high-pressure sales pitch.

The Northridge dispute, in which Little League opening day was but one chapter, is over a proposal by ASL Financial of Encino to build seven office buildings on 24 acres at Devonshire Street and Wilbur Avenue. Other chapters in recent months have included the use of mailers, petitions, lawn signs, bumper stickers, cocktail parties, sub rosa allegations and, some charge, dirty tricks.

Seven Little League diamonds occupy about 13 acres of the site. ASL has promised that approval of the office project would allow the league to stay put. It has also pledged more than $1 million to improve the fields.

Before a November public hearing, ASL had won the support of the Northridge Little League and Bernson’s Community Advisory Committee. At the hearing, however, the proposal met fierce resistance from homeowners, who presented a petition signed by 2,500 opponents. “We were caught unawares,” said Connie Levin, ASL’s project manager.

ASL then hired a well-connected West Los Angeles political consulting firm, the Dolphin Group, which immediately set about framing the issue as a battle between the Little League’s interests and those of the homeowners.

“The homeowners have become so sophisticated that the developer, usually in order to just keep up with getting his own information out, must resort to professionals as well,” Levin said. “I’m a developer and a planner. I’m not a politician.”

Fred Karger, a Dolphin Group executive vice president, is the point man for the ASL project. Karger could not have asked for a better ally in the ASL fight than George Hall, 68, a former test pilot and longtime champion of the Little League.

Hall’s name and address have appeared on several letters financed by ASL and mailed to Little League parents seeking support for the offices. Hall is not an employee of Dolphin or ASL, but both have referred questions about the office project directly to him.

Hall said his only interest is in seeing the Little League stay where it is. “I’ve been accused of being a pawn in the hands of ASL,” he said. “But I don’t give a damn about the developer.”

Hall has done research, on his own time, showing that 10 San Fernando Valley Little Leagues have lost fields or been forced to move in the past 25 years, some by neighboring homeowners. That demonstrates that homes and Little Leagues don’t make good neighbors, he says.

The developer’s opponents prefer homes to office buildings on the site. The residents, who call themselves the North Valley Homeowners Federation, contend that all the debate over the Little League’s fate diverts attention from such issues as increased traffic and a land-use ill-suited to a residential area.

“Using a fine, nonprofit organization deeply involved in the community as a vehicle to achieve personal financial gain is wrong,” said Jack Cox, the homeowners’ chief spokesman and a former reporter and political adviser.

Fields Protected

Cox argues that a 1984 agreement that gave ASL the right to build 50 additional homes on an adjacent piece of land protects the Little League fields forever, whether or not offices are built.

“They have simply not told the parents of the Little Leaguers what the truth is,” he said. “The Little League in no way, shape or form is in danger from this.”

Cox said dirty tricks have been used against his group. Several hundred of the group’s lawn signs disappeared March 14, and Cox alleged that the incident was an attempt to squelch opposition.

On April 1, a man requested permission from the assistant manager of a nearby Lucky grocery store to sign up youths for the baseball league. In fact, the man and Debbie Goff, a Dolphin Group employee, were collecting petition signatures in support of the office complex, according to David Rascia, the store’s assistant manager.

Asked about the incident, Karger said Goff and the man had permission to gather petition signatures.

The homeowners have portrayed themselves as innocents in the battle. But, led by Cox, a former aide to former Republican Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr., they have shown savvy in building their case. A homeowners’ campaign that misrepresented ASL’s proposal was the main reason the Dolphin Group was hired, Karger said.

Moreover, several people associated with the ASL proposal have talked of homeowners’ darker motives, intimating that Cox is trying to use the battle as a springboard to challenge Bernson for City Council. Cox says that isn’t true.

Bernson told The Times that he has asked the city attorney’s office and a private law firm for an opinion about whether the Little League is guaranteed the use of the fields without the project. If Cox is right and the league is protected, Bernson said he will oppose offices in favor of single-family homes. The city’s Planning Department has a public hearing scheduled Tuesday on the ASL proposal.

Professor Edward Blakely, who chairs the city and regional planning department at UC Berkeley, said developer campaigns can be constructive if used in an ethical way to explain a project to a community. But he said they can easily be subverted to serve the needs of a developer rather than the interests of the neighborhood.

A common tactic, which Blakely said he has seen several times recently in the San Francisco Bay Area, is to tell opponents that if the project fails, the land might be used for something that they would like even less.

Developers “bring up issues that are scary or frightening to people, which will divide the community,” he said. “When the community is divided, they can win at the Planning Commission because . . . the community is so divided it can’t fight it.”

He suggested that such campaigns should be regulated as part of the planning approval process, should be conducted according to an agreed-upon ethical code by licensed planners and should be subject to public scrutiny.

Blakely, who is helping a developer make a case for a $500-million industrial park in the San Bernardino County community of Loma Linda, said the campaigns are costing developers $2,000 a month to as much as $10,000 a month.

Los Angeles developer Jack Spound said he has spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” campaigning for his proposal to construct office buildings near Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

Just as a political candidate might walk the streets seeking votes, Spound spent eight weekends going door-to-door in the neighborhood during 1987 and 1988 trying to build support for his $150-million proposal, known as Warner Ridge.

The campaign also included 18 mailers sent to 1,500 nearby residents and dozens of kaffeeklatsches, cocktail parties and other events. It even won a 1988 Prism Award from the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America as the year’s “Outstanding Community Relations Program.”

Before going door-to-door, Spound was booed and not allowed to present the merits of the project at public meetings, said Sydney Knott, his Malibu-based public relations consultant. Afterward, Spound revised the project and won the backing of a smaller homeowners’ group, nearby condominium dwellers and the local Chamber of Commerce. Joy Picus, the council member who represents the area, however, remains opposed. A Planning Commission hearing is scheduled on the project Thursday.

In another recent controversy, political consultant Paul Clarke, the husband and ex-chief of staff of former Republican Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, was hired by developer Nathan Shapell to promote a proposal for about 3,000 residences and 7.5 million square feet of commercial space in the Porter Ranch area of Chatsworth. But Clarke, who is also a paid campaign adviser to Bernson, declined to discuss the political tactics that he is planning.

“This is smart legislative advocacy,” Clarke said. “You don’t want to let others know what you’re doing until you’ve done it.”

Clarke, a seasoned political pro, played the role of “spin doctor” after a crowd of about 700 attended a February public hearing, loudly cheering opponents and booing proponents. Clarke told a reporter that it is easy to whip up the emotions of a large crowd and noted that despite the hostile atmosphere, several residents had spoken in support. He later acknowledged that Porter Ranch Development had called on supporters to attend.

‘Contact Supporters’

“You have to make sure that you contact your supporters in any situation,” Clarke said.

Some developers resort to organizing “focus groups” to find out how best to respond to residents’ concerns. In other cases, opinion polls are used.

Arnold Steinberg, a Sherman Oaks pollster and political consultant, said polls costing $7,500 to $25,000 are useful for identifying community concerns and preempting sources of attack. “The developers who are more seasoned and mature know that spending time and money in advance of the battle pays dividends,” he said.

One of the most comprehensive Southern California campaigns for a controversial project was put together by a political consultant hired to build support in Santa Monica, which at the time had an anti-development City Council, for a 194-room luxury hotel now under construction.

The consultant, Richard Lichtenstein, provided substantial poll data that he had gathered earlier to R. E. International, the hotel’s developer. He knew, for example, that residents were concerned about homeless people and drug dealers using the vacant lots where the Santa Monica Beach Hotel was to be built. So he promised the project’s neighbors that, if the hotel were built, 24-hour security guards would be hired.

Early Involvement

“We got involved . . . early on,” said Lichtenstein, owner of Marathon Communications of West Los Angeles. Lichtenstein’s firm assisted the developer through rounds of public hearings and worked to mollify neighbors’ complaints even after the start of construction.

“No. 1, you never lie,” Lichtenstein said. “You tell people what’s going to happen. Be as honest as you can be. You can be selective about what you say. You don’t have to tell all, but you have to tell enough so that people know what’s going on.”

But to some people, a selective use of facts is itself manipulative. Developer Brian Heller has been accused of trying to shape public opinion by presenting selective facts in an effort to win Los Angeles County approval to build 150 homes on the former site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura.

Heller told the Board of Supervisors that “the community overwhelmingly endorses this project,” citing the strong support of the 50 or so households in an adjacent Medea Valley area.

But those 50 households did not include the strongly opposed Malibou Lake neighborhood about two miles to the south. That neighborhood of about 125 homes uses the same access--Cornell Road--as the project would; most of the Medea Valley neighborhood uses Kanan Road to the west.

“Heller worked that one very skillfully,” said David Brown, a project opponent and vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation. Supervisor Mike Antonovich “ended up believing the relatively small number of people who lobbied actively for the project,” Brown said. Antonovich maintained that he listened to the project’s closest neighbors.

Yet overly aggressive campaigns might backfire, some observers said.

“A political candidate wants one thing and that’s to win,” said Mary Kushner, owner of Venice-based Dieden & Associates. “The only way to win is to get the most votes. But if you are abusive of the techniques and not straight and honest with people in how you use polling and door-to-door work, it’s going to backfire on you on Election Day, and Election Day is when you go to a public hearing and have 300 people who feel ripped off by the process.”

But it is local elected officials, not public hearing participants, who ultimately judge a project. It is their job to know the community’s sentiments and to decide whether a proposal fits what Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky called a “common-sense” notion of appropriate land-use.

“Usually what a developer wants when utilizing organizers and public relations firms is to get something he’s not entitled to,” Yaroslavsky said. “If that something doesn’t make sense, all the consultants in the world aren’t going to make a difference.”

Jacobs, the UC Berkeley professor and former San Francisco planning director, said: “The issue is often . . . whether it’s just a game or whether you’re going to pay attention to the neighborhood, whether you’re trying purely to persuade or whether you’re going to listen.”