Measure M’s Streets Are Paved With Gold : Transportation: $3 billion for road and rail projects is up for grabs, and scores of businesses are looking for the green light.

Since the November day voters approved a sales tax that will generate $3 billion for transportation projects in Orange County, Stan Oftelie’s telephone hasn’t stopped ringing.

Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission, has a stack of 200 unanswered phone messages from would-be suitors eager for a slice of the Measure M pie. Suppliers, construction contractors and traffic consultants all want a piece of the action, and they know Oftelie’s agency will help dictate who gets it.

“I’ve never seen so many $1,000 suits,” Oftelie confided one recent day after receiving a steady stream of emissaries from firms eager for Measure M work.

When Oftelie attended a recent business association luncheon devoted to Measure M, guess who was in the audience? Suppliers. Contractors. Consultants. Indeed, when a moderator asked how many people were from firms hoping to reap some of the Measure M windfall, virtually everyone in the audience raised his hand.

“I’ll just stand by the door and write checks,” Oftelie quipped as he surveyed all the hoisted hands.

So it goes these days as Orange County gears up for a virtually unparalleled boom in road and rail construction. The national economy may be dipping toward recession, but the next few years promise a bull market for transportation folk in these parts.

There will be plenty of obvious winners: the private road builders, the engineering designers, the environmental consultants and others. Some firms that hardly touched Orange County in years past promptly set up shop after news about the passage of Measure M spread.

Other beneficiaries of Measure M will reap less tangible rewards. Many development firms and businesses backed the measure in hopes it would ease the pangs of traffic congestion that have gripped the county like a bad toothache in recent years. They know full well that congestion is the biggest factor behind any lingering anti-growth sentiment in the region.

The list of Measure M campaign contributors provides a ready roll-call of the cross-section of companies and individuals who stand to benefit. Though only time will tell whether contributions to Measure M amount to a quid pro quo for firms wishing to get new contracts, there already have been some interesting developments.

An early bond underwriting contract, for example, went to Kidder Peabody, which donated $5,000. Initially, the company was to be awarded the contract without competitive bidding, but then a consultant warned Oftelie and other officials at the county Transportation Commission that such an action could ignite a public relations disaster if the media learned of it. The contract was promptly put out to bid, 11 firms gave it their best shot and Kidder Peabody was chosen.

It’s unlikely that that sort of Byzantine scenario will become standard operating procedure as Orange County perfects the art of doling out Measure M money. Most of the $3.1 billion to be raised during the next 20 years with a half-cent sales tax hike will find its way into construction contracts awarded by Caltrans, and the giant state agency by law must give the work to the lowest responsible bidder selected through a carefully scrutinized process.

In turn, the money will trickle down to asphalt and cement suppliers, and the laborers who drive the backhoes and tractors.

“The same contractors doing much of the work in the county right now will probably throw their hats in the ring for the new jobs coming up,” said Frank Weidler, a Caltrans deputy district director in Orange County.

Among the road construction firms now occupied in the county are the E.L. Yeager Co., which is extending the Costa Mesa Freeway and working on other projects, the Kasler Co., Brutoco Engineering and Steve Rados Inc., which is helping add lanes to the Santa Ana Freeway and upgrading Coast Highway in Newport Beach.

But there are others standing in line, such as Anaheim-based C.W. Poss Inc., which recently was selected by the county to build Pelican Hill Road across the Irvine Co.’s new Newport Coast development.

Poss not only contributed $7,500 to the Measure M campaign, but the firm also helped raise $22,500 from 10 other construction-related companies.

“I talked to the (various construction companies) who would certainly benefit by it to some degree,” said Charles Poss, the firm’s founder. “We are in the construction business, but we also believe vehemently that something has to be done about traffic or else there will be real chaos in the economy.”

Most of the big highway firms, however, did not contribute to the Measure M campaign except through the Fund for Construction Industry Advancement, which plopped down $50,000, and the Southern California Contractors Assn. Political Action Committee, which donated $2,000.

In fact, transportation officials point out that the number of companies that did not give anything to the campaign far outnumbers those who did, and many of those that failed to contribute are likely to receive Measure M dollars too.

Oftelie said a number of the phone calls he received after Measure M’s approval were from strangers who will be given every chance to win contracts on their own merit. Indeed, so many people have called that OCTC plans to hold a workshop early next year to familiarize companies with the agency’s contract procedures.

While newcomers are in the running for some contracts, the odds-on favorites are those that have an established track record with OCTC, Oftelie conceded. Among those is Willdan Associates, a firm that recently did the planning for installation of car-pool lanes on the Orange Freeway, a project due to go to construction by March.

Within days of Measure M’s passage, Willdan’s Charles Lake met with Oftelie to “find out what the commission’s plans are, seeing if there’s some way we can help the commission achieve its goals,” Lake recalled.

Willdan contributed $2,500 to the Measure M campaign. Dan Hile, the firm’s president, said the money was anted up only after Willdan officials were convinced that the donation would not merely be seen by others as an attempt to grab more contracts. He explained that the company has grown dramatically in recent years--it now employs more than 700 people in several Western states--and work generated by OCTC is only a small part of its business. “I also became convinced that Orange County really needs this,” Hile added.

But firms occupied with roads and freeways won’t be the only beneficiaries of Measure M. Some $775 million will be spent on transit. Millions of dollars will go for new locomotives and railroad cars, sparking intense competition among manufacturers of those vehicles.

OCTC officials, who plan to spend $44.4 million on new rail equipment in order to expand commuter service along the Amtrak line between Orange and Los Angeles counties, hope to dodge lobbyists from vehicle manufacturers by allowing their Los Angeles counterparts to purchase the trains. That’s being done, officials said, because Orange County service is expected to be part of a regional rail system composed of compatible equipment.

No U.S. manufacturers are expected to receive contracts for rail cars, transportation officials said, either because they’re not interested or they can’t compete with foreign firms that already supply equipment to the vast European and Asian rail systems. Passenger locomotives are manufactured by General Motors, but only in Canada.

And if Orange County officials eventually decide to build a $1-billion central or “urban core” light rail or monorail system through five or six cities, as is being studied, European and Japanese firms are once again expected to receive the rail equipment contracts.

In fact, the Monorail name is owned not by a U.S. company, but rather by a subsidiary of the Montreal-based Bombardier Corp., which produced the vehicles now carrying visitors at Disney World in Florida.

There are, of course, many indirect beneficiaries of the Measure M windfall.

The Irvine Co. and Disneyland, for example, loaned or contributed about $250,000 each to the $1.1-million Measure M campaign account, and they--along with other developers and businesses--could reap millions of dollars in profits from new projects made more feasible by Measure M’s freeway, road and transit improvements.

“It’s not so much a help to sell new homes,” explained Hugh Fitzpatrick, the Irvine Co.’s chief transportation planner. “It’s that now it’s more appropriate to grant approvals to build additional residential and commercial projects because transportation capacity is being provided. Before, the argument was that there’s too much existing congestion. Now we can say it’s being taken care of. . . . Transportation is sort of a critical element in people believing that development can be sustained.”

Besides, Fitzpatrick added, the Irvine Co. had always supported tax increases for transportation improvements since the early 1980s in the belief that the need was genuine.

Money from Measure M to widen Interstate 5 south to San Clemente and for the reconstruction of the Santa Ana-San Diego freeway confluence, known as the El Toro Y, will ensure “superb regional access” to the Spectrum, the Irvine Co.’s master-planned office and industrial complex that straddles the interchange, Fitzpatrick acknowledged.

Disney officials also concede that Measure M will finance road and rail projects that should help ease the travel burden for employees and tourists trying to reach Disneyland and a second theme park that has been proposed for Anaheim. After all, much of the Measure M money will go to improve the Santa Ana Freeway, which runs past Disneyland’s front doorstep, and other funds will surely be tapped to upgrade the traffic-choked thoroughfares surrounding the park.

“We certainly can’t deny that it’s going to be a help for us and make it a better experience for guests visiting Disneyland,” said Ron Dominguez, a Disney executive vice president. “Nobody enjoys the traffic troubles we all experience in Orange County right now.”

But he also noted that Disney officials saw Measure M as an investment in Orange County as a whole, not just as a way to improve only the roads that lead to their theme park.

“Our position was that we’ve been citizens of Orange County now for 35 years,” Dominguez said. “We felt that Orange County has been good to Disney, and we needed to put something back into the community. It’s not only a good investment in our future, but the county’s future as well.”

Real estate experts, meanwhile, say the road and rail improvements ushered in by Measure M could prove a boon for some property owners. But a wider freeway past an office building or an upgraded intersection near a commercial complex can be a subtle thing, the sort of improvement that hardly causes the sales price for a piece of property to rocket through the stratosphere.

“I don’t see this thing as a boon to anyone in particular except all of us who drive cars in Orange County,” said John Simon, a Newport Beach-based real estate lawyer. “I guess I’ve just never viewed the transportation problems as really affecting property values very much.”

The light rail or monorail being eyed for central Orange County could have the greatest impact, hiking the price of parcels all along the path it takes, suggested Scott Perley, an Irvine-based vice president at Cushman & Wakefield, a nationwide commercial real estate firm.

Perley noted, however, that Orange County has typically lacked the political will to accept the kinds of high-density office buildings that would cause land values to skyrocket along a central county light rail line.

Moreover, parcels around stations along the existing Amtrak route, which is being eyed for a fleet of Los Angeles-bound commuter trains, will hardly become a land speculator’s dream, he said.

“I don’t think any of our rail stations have proven to be a great real estate location,” Perley said.