Harbor Panel to Study Sale of Todd Assets : Shipyard: The action follows more than two years of negotiations for returning the site to shipbuilding or repair.

The fate of the old Todd Shipyards site in San Pedro may be decided next week when the Los Angeles Harbor Commission considers a plan to sell off the property’s assets--a move that would dash hopes of reopening the once-bustling, 110-acre site as a shipyard.

The action, proposed by Harbor Department staff members, follows more than two years of negotiations with prospective investors interested in returning the site to shipbuilding or repair. Those talks began shortly after the 80-year-old shipyard, once among the nation’s busiest, went bankrupt and eventually closed in August, 1989, displacing about 3,000 workers.

“It’s the beginning of the end” of talks about a new shipyard, said Tay Yoshitani, the port’s deputy executive director. “One way or another, it’s going to come to a head.”

News of the port’s plan to sell off the shipyard’s millions of dollars in assets--property that includes everything from office staplers to giant cranes--was viewed with indifference by one longtime suitor of the property and anger by another.

John Chernesky, general manager of Los Angeles Shipyard Corp., said the port’s sale or auction of the assets would not affect his company because it is within days of completing an agreement with an investor to finance a new shipyard at the site.

“For us, it means very little because by (next week) we will have our financing in place,” to win a lease for the site, said Chernesky, whose previous predictions of such financing have not materialized.

But while similarly optimistic about another company’s chance of securing investors, William Trejo, a shipbuilders union official, said he and other former Todd workers were stunned and troubled by the port’s sudden move to sell the site’s assets.

About 100 members of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, Local 9, have invested about $500,000 in support of another fledgling company’s proposal to reopen the yard for shipbuilding and repair, Trejo said. That company, Los Angeles-Long Beach Shipyards Inc., is headed by retired Navy Rear Adm. Stuart Platt.

“We are not going to take this standing still, that’s for sure,” said Trejo, executive secretary of the local. Union members will lobby the port and Los Angeles politicians to forestall the sale of assets, he said.

While the port’s announcement this week was unexpected, officials there have made it increasingly clear in recent months that they were unwilling to indefinitely wait for bidders for the Todd site to prove their financial wherewithal to open and operate a shipyard.

Indeed, several months ago, the port’s executive director, Ezunial Burts, and Harbor Commission President Ronald Lushing both said the port was reviewing other uses for the property, including converting it to a container facility or a storage yard for new automobiles.

Still, the pending meeting by the commission could set in motion the most significant action taken on the property since its closure led to the layoffs of about 3,000 Todd workers, many of whom have been hard-pressed to find other steady employment, the shipbuilders union said.

Since the shipyard’s closure, several potential investors have come forward with proposals to reopen the site. But none have reached agreement with the port on a long-term lease for the property and adequate compensation for its assets, which were appraised at $6 million to $9 million in 1990. The appraisal did not include a one-of-a-kind ship-repair platform that cannot be moved and was built in 1982 at a cost of $50 million.

In November, 1990, the port agreed to negotiate exclusively with Los Angeles Shipyards for a lease of the site. But those talks ended abruptly six months later when the company missed a deadline for posting a $250,000 non-refundable deposit toward its $20-million shipyard proposal.

At the time, port officials complained that the shipyard had not proven its financial stability, while company officials charged that the port had set impossible financial standards because it had no interest in returning the site to shipbuilding.

Officials of both Los Angeles Shipyards and the union-backed Los Angeles-Long Beach Shipyard have blamed their inability to find investors on the slumping economy and what they say are the port’s unreasonable financial requirements.

Port officials have maintained that they remain open to proposals for a shipyard but are unwilling to move forward with any company that, like Todd, will close the yard and displace workers.

Moreover, they said this week, they cannot afford to hold the site for proposals that may never materialize.

“We have valuable city assets that are not only sitting there, not generating revenues, but in fact are costing us money” for security and maintenance, Yoshitani said.

Since Todd’s closure, port officials estimate that about $1.2 million has been spent on protecting the yard and maintaining its equipment.