Small Southland Firm Part of Big Soviet Deal : Ventures: Pyramid Investment Co. is a leasing agent for a $1-billion complex planned in Moscow. But many Soviet projects never work out.

Once again, a small Southern California firm has hopes of playing a big role in a massive project in the Soviet Union.

Pyramid Investment Co., a tiny Woodland Hills real estate consulting firm, has landed the job of U.S. and Japanese leasing agent for Technopark, a vast $1-billion, multiuse complex planned in Moscow by a joint venture of Italian companies and the Soviet government.

Ambitious in scope, Technopark would include a 40-story office tower. Prospective tenants would be U.S., European and Japanese companies doing business in the Soviet Union. If all goes well, Technopark would also have 620 hotel rooms, 250 apartments, retail shops, a health club, a casino and even its own satellite station. And the development would be finished in six years.

It’s a grand idea all right. But big plans often turn into big nightmares for U.S. companies in the Soviet Union.

In fact, only about one-third of the 3,200 foreign-Soviet joint ventures registered with the Soviet government are now operating, according to Alan B. Sherr, associate director of the Center for Foreign Policy Development at Brown University.

So far, only 42,000 square feet of Technopark’s office space is under construction--and that consists of prefabricated buildings that will be shipped from Turkey.

Dan J. Lutkenhouse Jr., owner and president of Pyramid, said Technopark’s first phase will cost $5 million--the money has been funded through private investors, he said--but this represents less than 1% of the cost of the whole project. No hotel or telecommunications company has signed on for the project, and financing for the next stage hasn’t been completed.

Such problems are typical of Soviet joint ventures. Western banks are often skittish about financing ventures in the U.S.S.R., and the Soviet bureaucracy can be choking.

“Some of these projects are people’s ideas of what could happen, not what is happening,” said Tim Bruinsma, head of the international practice group at the Los Angeles law firm Fulbright & Jaworski.

Technopark will have its share of hurdles to overcome, agreed William Forrester, president of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade & Economic Council, a New York trade group.

But Forrester said the modern office facilities that Technopark would provide are badly needed by Western companies operating in the Soviet Union. And the project’s Soviet partners, including the Moscow city council, bring important influence to the deal.

Lutkenhouse is hopeful. “I feel fortunate to be involved at this stage,” said the 31-year-old UCLA dropout. His previous projects mainly have been small apartment houses and hotels in the Los Angeles area and in Europe.

Many ambitious Soviet ventures have been announced in a blaze of publicity, only to wither and die.

One such deal was an $8-billion joint venture announced by Irvine-based Phoenix Group International Inc. in 1989. Phoenix was thought to have scored a coup over larger U.S. computer companies when the Soviets chose it to ship personal computer parts to the Soviet Union, where the computers would be assembled and distributed to schools, factories and offices.

But Phoenix ran out of money and was unable to obtain financing to complete the deal. The company filed for liquidation in January.

Another local company, Americom International Corp. in Irvine, is also involved in an office-hotel-retail development in Moscow. The American Trade Center is a $125-million joint venture between Americom, Radisson Hotel Corp. and the Soviet tourist agency Intourist.

The Trade Center has been plagued with delays, mostly due to Soviet red tape, Tatum said. Part of the hotel is now open, and the rest of the development is slated to debut in September. But Tatum said that may be postponed.

“Everything takes two to three times the time frame that people expect to accomplish things here in the West,” Tatum said.