Company Is Chosen for Major Mall Project in Monterey Park : Development: Firm with ties to Taiwan will negotiate with the city to build a shopping center.

The City Council on Wednesday selected a Los Angeles company with financial ties to Taiwan as the winner of a competition to develop an ambitious hotel and shopping center complex.

City officials said the project would be impossible to pull off in the current economic climate if not for Pacific Rim dollars. They said no taxpayer funds will be used in the $80-million development.

The company, BCTC Development, won a 90-day exclusive right to negotiate with the city for permission to proceed with the planned construction on North Atlantic Boulevard.

After the 90 days are up, the council will decide whether to allow BCTC to begin the actual construction.

If all goes as expected, Monterey Park in several years will be home to Sunrise Department Store, a 60,000-square-foot branch of the Taiwan-based chain that city officials compare to Neiman Marcus and other major U.S. stores.

The proposed center, to be located south of Hellman Avenue, also includes a shopping mall, a movie theater and an ice skating rink. Hilton Hotel Corp. is interested in operating an adjoining 196-room hotel, although city officials say they eventually may decide a hotel isn’t the way to go.

Council members had been agonizing over the past few months over whether to choose BCTC or a rival developer, Eagle International Investment Group in San Gabriel. Both are reputable companies with Far East ties and had promised to pay for the entire cost of the 6.9-acre redevelopment project, no strings attached.

Controversies erupted as the council mulled its decision. For example, in its original proposal, BCTC told the city that owners of the Sheraton Rosemead would be partners in the project.

But the hotel’s general partner, Ying Ou, denied he was ever involved, forcing BCTC to restructure its partnership without the Rosemead group.

Meanwhile, Eagle had told the city that a Hong Kong-based hotel chain, Regal Aircoa Companies Inc., would be a partner in their project. However, before the council vote Wednesday night, a Regal representative told the council his company hadn’t made a commitment yet.

The council unanimously picked BCTC, citing the fact the company already owns almost half the land, has had more experience with redevelopment projects and has built several upscale projects in Southern California, including 23 single family homes in Walnut, priced at $700,000 each.

Even Mayor Betty Couch, a staunch slow-growth advocate, heartily backed BCTC.

“It’s good to see a generation of Asian developers come into town and want to do quality work,” she said, complaining that earlier builders in Monterey Park had constructed poorly planned and overcrowded commercial strip centers.

At a time when American developers are shying away from big-ticket projects, and banks are tightening up lending policies, Asian developers may be the way to go, city officials said.

They cited another hotel project on Monterey Park’s Corporate Center Drive, which flopped recently when its Texas-based developer, GR Development/Robert E. Woolley Inc., couldn’t come up with the money to pay for the land.