A L E X A N D E R : the Good : As Mayor, He Steered Beverly Hills Through Rocky Year. Friends Say the Two Constants in His Life Are Public Service and Private Sacrifice.

He still has vivid memories of his first visit to Beverly Hills--the expensive cars, the stately mansions, the wide, tree-lined streets. But mostly he recalls the embarrassment.

There was Allan L. Alexander, staring up at the grand Beverly Wilshire Hotel from the back seat of his father’s car, when the tired Oldsmobile conked out in the middle of one of the city’s busiest boulevards. Cars all around were honking, people nearby were staring, and the city’s future mayor responded to the crisis by sinking down to the floorboards, trying to make himself quietly disappear.

“My reaction to my first event in Beverly Hills didn’t exactly show great leadership qualities,” he said.

He slinks no more. When he steps down as the city’s mayor this week, Alexander leaves the post with rave reviews from his fellow council members, his colleagues and even his former political opponents.

During a rocky year when the affluent city found itself facing a rare deficit, a public relations nightmare over its costly new Civic Center and an ongoing school-funding emergency, Alexander is credited with steadying a once-acrimonious council and generating fresh debate on timeworn city issues.

And in a place where the slightest annoyance can bring a convoy of millionaire property owners scurrying to City Hall, the worst criticism leveled at the 50-year-old Alexander is that he tried to do too much, that he allowed too much public discussion, that, heaven forbid, he tried to be too fair.

This, after all, is a man who recently responded to a personal attack on his character by an angry landlord--in front of a televised council hearing--by thanking the man for his comments.

“I think the best way to deal with problems is through the reasoning process,” he said in an interview. “Anger to me does not produce positive results, so I avoid it. I guess I have the kind of constitution that can absorb it. But I don’t feel like I have to lash out.”

Could this really be the same high-powered attorney who helped actress Kim Basinger buy an entire town in Georgia in a $20-million deal that received global attention? Or the same driven man who graduated with highest honors from Stanford University, excelled at Harvard Law School and then, deciding he lacked enough business acumen, convinced himself that he needed an MBA from UC Berkeley?

Yet the more telling moments were still to come. Right when he was perched to cash in on all that very expensive overachieving, Alexander took a U-turn and headed straight for the Peace Corps. Then, faced with a take-me-with-you-or-lose-me-forever proposition from his fiancee, Joan, he made was he thought was a very reasonable decision: They got married and they spent their honeymoon as volunteer teachers in the tiny town of Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Public service and private sacrifice: His closest friends say they are two of the constants in Alexander’s life. Brush away the celebrity clients, the high-profile office, the prestigious Century City entertainment law practice, and what you basically find, according to those who know him best, is Alexander the Good.

The good lawyer: He is a senior partner at Armstrong & Hirsch, one of the country’s top entertainment law firms.

The good citizen: He is a longtime board member of the Economic Resources Corp., a nonprofit organization that operates an industrial park in Watts and developed a highly successful shopping center there.

The good capitalist: He is a co-owner of the Bradbury Building, an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles.

The good father: When he was too busy to attend his sons’ tennis matches at Beverly Hills High School, he would watch them from the window of his 18th-floor Century City office.

The good son: He gave his father his Phi Beta Kappa key at his Stanford graduation because his father was forced to quit school after the eighth grade to start working to raise money for the family. Alexander said it was one of his proudest moments.

“He always treats you as an equal, no matter what your position is or what his position is,” said Lynne Molitoris, his aide-de-camp for the past 13 years. “He makes you feel that you are a part of a team, and he goes out of his way to be fair. I think that’s why he generates so much respect.”

“He is a person blessed with enormous intelligence, but also a real pragmatism and concern for individuals,” said Ira Yellin, an attorney and developer who roomed with Alexander at Harvard. “He’s just a remarkably able and a remarkably decent guy--and that’s a combination that you don’t find too often in our world today.”

“He really has a love for the beauty of land, and his knowledge of real estate has been priceless to me,” says Basinger. “He’s a great believer in overcoming the impossible, and since I also believe that nothing is impossible, we make a good pair.”

And from the leading authority, Joan Alexander, his wife: “His ambition has always been for his own personal growth; it’s never been an ego thing. He’s not avaricious at all. He doesn’t care about status, or money, or clothes. I know because he always wears this awful sweat outfit that I’ve been trying to get rid of for a long time.”

What he loves, he says, is problem solving. Getting things done. Tackling issues. He’s had many opportunities as mayor.

“I thrive on work and I enjoy the responsibility,” he said. “I like to feel that what I do benefits the community. I thrive on diversity. And I’ve always felt that you improve yourself in one area, such as work, by getting involved in other activities. Moving matters forward for a client, or the community as a whole, is a real reward to me.”

Among his biggest accomplishments he lists getting the controversial Civic Center completed and occupied, and adding more parking in the city’s bottlenecked business district, particularly the addition of the Rodeo parking structure.

But the Civic Center played a key role in an issue he has pursued during a 25-year-career in public service: openness in government.

When he became mayor a year ago, his first order was to call for a report on the Civic Center, to explain once and for all why the $120-million project ultimately cost twice as much as originally planned. Alexander--who said he always believed that the Civic Center was excessive in design, in size and, most important, in cost--said it was important for citizens to understand exactly how the city got to a point where it was projecting a deficit when it should have had millions to pour into the city’s reserves.

“It was critical for the community to understand that we were all in this together and so that no one would feel that the city government was trying to hide behind a series of mistakes,” the mayor said. “If there were mistakes, and there certainly were, then the community should be made aware of them.”

His desire to take secrecy from government, however, didn’t always win him fans among the residents. Or for that matter, among the council members. His insistence that everybody be given a chance to speak at council meetings, even if they were repeating something 20 times in succession, resulted in some extremely late evenings.

For example, before the council unanimously agreed this month to put a school parcel tax before voters on the June 4 ballot, Alexander allowed 27 pro-tax people to testify, even though the panel’s vote was never in doubt. Up to 90 minutes at the beginning of each session was spent on announcing resolutions and praising community groups.

“The guy with the gavel has got to put a stop to it. You can’t have meetings until 2 a.m. and expect to be effective,” said Councilman Max Salter, a former mayor. “Allan is a wonderful guy. He’s very bright, gentle, kind, affable . . . but he and I have had untold discussions about the conduct of the meetings. We shouldn’t be trying to make important decisions when it’s way past beddy time.

“He’s just too nice of a guy. In my view he tried to do too many things, and even though he did a lot, it’s hard to be effective that way.”

Alexander does not mind the criticism. If anything, he said, it confirms his stand on the openness issue.

“It’s always a judgment call how long you should allow people to speak, but if you’re going to err, it should be on the side of people going on for too long,” he said. “My feeling is that many people were speaking in the public for the first time, and if they care about an issue enough, then I believe we have to give them a shot.”

He also won fans among some former doubters by creating several new commissions and committees to grapple with the city’s problems. Environmentalist Ellen Stern Harris, who ran for the council against Alexander three years ago, said she was surprised when he appointed her to the Parks and Recreation Commission.

“He’s always been very receptive to new ideas, and I think that has been a big plus for the council,” she said.

Alexander says the steady 18-hour days haven’t fazed him, even though he has had to constantly juggle to meet the scheduling demands of his practice, his council post and, most important, his wife and three sons. Although there have been rumors that time constraints might force him to not seek another four-year term on the council, he said he expects to run for one more term.

Through it all, he has retained the same steady, contemplative demeanor that his fellow Peace Corps volunteers said he had when he was a young New Frontier idealist. Jeff Hanna, a Tokyo-based managing director of Salomon Bros., who worked with the mayor in Bolivia 25 years ago, said that even then, Alexander was interested in the nuts and bolts of government.

“He really does enjoy it,” he said. “Muddling your way through contracts and legal briefs and planning documents is not my idea of a good time, but Allan always liked it.”

About the only thing his wife admonishes him for is his apparent failure to accept his own success. She says his deep-seated humility--rooted perhaps in his small-town upbringing in Watsonville, Calif.--sometimes makes it appear as if he has not actually accomplished any of the things that he says have so enriched his life.

“For better or for worse, I thrive on the work,” he said. “I love the early morning hours and I like the late evenings. So I kind of just keep going. That’s what makes me tick. I enjoy responsibility and an active life.

“I’ve had a wonderful year as mayor. It’s challenged me in many ways. But a year is enough. The year as mayor, with all the functions, really stretches you. But I don’t have any regrets.”

Still, whenever he drives on Wilshire Boulevard, he thinks of the time his father’s car pooped out and how he tried to remove himself to a place far, far away.

“If anyone had even suggested then that I might one day be mayor of Beverly Hills, everyone in that car would have fallen down laughing,” he said. “But it just shows you that anything can happen. And, hopefully, I’ve picked up a few more leadership qualities since that day.”