Hedgecock Goes to Bat for Card Room Proposal : Gambling: Former mayor denies accepting a contract to help push plans for a large poker parlor in Mission Valley. But Chief Burgreen, others say Hedgecock has repeatedly met with city officials.

Former Mayor Roger Hedgecock has repeatedly called and met with high-ranking San Diego city officials during the last few months on behalf of a Los Angeles County gaming club hoping to consolidate a dozen local card rooms into a new $30-million gambling casino, The Times has learned.

Hedgecock, now a popular radio talk-show host, contacted city officials after the California Commerce Club offered to pay him a large lobbying fee and give him a cut of the profits to help put together the deal for a proposed Las Vegas-style gaming casino in Mission Valley, according to a document detailing the consolidation plan.

The document, which predicts the casino will make nearly $11 million a year, said that Hedgecock and card room owner Al Zennedjian of El Cajon could make $500,000 in fees and a 5% partnership share for assisting in negotiations with local card club owners and city officials.

Last week, Hedgecock said emphatically that he hasn’t signed a formal contract to lobby on behalf of the Commerce Club in San Diego. He said he was “appalled” that The Times had details of the offer.

“You have in your hands a document that is not executed, isn’t an agreement, no one signed it, it is a draft only, contemplated at one point in time some months ago that did not go forward because of my advice,” Hedgecock said.

He said he turned down the offer because his public involvement in the project would be a political liability at City Hall, where Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s intense dislike of him is no secret.

“I’ve told any and all clients that I’m on the mayor’s blacklist . . . ,” said Hedgecock, who beat O’Connor in a bitter mayoral race in 1983. “If I were to come forward as an advocate, she would vote ‘no.’ ”

At the most, Hedgecock said, he has offered advice to the gaming club and made one call to the Police Department to make sure Commerce Club representatives could “make their case to the right people.” He declined to say if he contacted anyone at City Hall.

But City Manager Jack McGrory and Police Chief Bob Burgreen say Hedgecock has been much more active. The former mayor, they say, has contacted them several times by phone or in person during the past few months in support of the proposed casino.

Burgreen, whose department is expected to complete an important background check of Commerce Club officials this week, said Hedgecock began calling him in April. He said the former mayor represented himself as the “behind-the-scenes consultant” for the Los Angeles County gaming club.

“He is working for a group of people and he is trying to impress upon us their sincerity and reliability,” said Burgreen, adding that he has talked or met with Hedgecock six times about the proposed casino.

The police chief also said Hedgecock has been in “constant communication” during the past three weeks with one of his assistant chiefs, Ken Fortier.

McGrory said he has met twice with Hedgecock over the Commerce Club project--once with Burgreen at a restaurant in the Westgate Hotel, across from City Hall. McGrory said he last talked with Hedgecock about the proposal a couple of weeks ago.

The city manager also said that Hedgecock has delivered documents to his office on behalf of the Commerce Club. One was a document signed by gaming club members showing the “numbers” on the project. The second was a “package” containing “proposed amendments to the municipal code for the siting of a large casino.”

City records show that Hedgecock, who registered as a city lobbyist in 1986 for developer Roque de la Fuente, has not notified the city clerk’s office that he is now trying to influence top officials on behalf of the Commerce Club. The city’s municipal advocacy code requires a lobbyist to report each new client within 10 days of trying to influence officials on the client’s behalf, even if the lobbyist is not being paid. An exception is made for attorneys representing their clients.

City elections officer Joyce Lane said that Hedgecock should have, at the least, sent a letter to the clerk’s office publicly disclosing his activities on behalf of the Los Angeles County gaming club. “In terms of updating us on the clients he is lobbying for, he would have to do that, “ Lane said. Violation of the code is a misdemeanor.

Lane also said that, if Hedgecock spent a minimum of $25 in lobbying for the Commerce Club during the past fiscal quarter--April 1 through June 30--he would have had to file a financial disclosure report with the city last month. She said he filed no such report.

San Diego City Council members are scheduled to consider the club’s proposed amendments at their Aug. 10 meeting. If they go along with the changes, council members will be reversing a city policy set in motion during the early 1980s that was designed to thin out the ranks of gambling establishments throughout the city.

Participants at legal card clubs in California pay fees to sit at tables to play and bet. The games include draw poker, low-ball, seven card stud and pai-gow , a Chinese card game.

Police have long considered such clubs a magnet for crime, and, at their urging, the City Council voted in 1983 to sharply curtail such gambling establishments throughout San Diego. The hardest blow was prohibiting owners of gambling establishments from transferring their licenses, even to spouses.

The result: The number of card rooms, as high as 60 during the 1970s, dwindled to 12. They are scattered along El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue in the Mid-City area, and in Southeast San Diego, Point Loma and Mira Mesa.

Robert Moyer, co-chairman of the San Diego Cardroom Assn., said the city also slapped on other restrictions that have hurt business, especially since the emergence of large, 24-hour poker casinos at the Sycuan, Viejas and Barona Indian reservations. Each San Diego card room is limited to seven tables within 1,000 square feet; six days a week, and can offer only two of the legal card games: low-ball and draw poker.

To revive business, Moyer said, he approached the California Commerce Club in Los Angeles County to see if it would become a partner in a large casino. With 175 tables, the Commerce Club is one of the largest in California and grosses more than $80 million a year. The idea would be to build a similar operation in Mission Valley by closing all the smaller neighborhood card clubs and combining their licenses.

Moyer said the proposed casino would be 100,000 square feet, containing 100 tables. Along with gambling, it would hire Las Vegas-quality acts for a separate showroom, feature a gourmet restaurant and include a coffee shop and barber shop.

The project would create an estimated 1,500 jobs and a windfall for the city, which is having a budget crisis. Commerce Club officials have offered to pay San Diego $1 million as a franchise fee, $1 million when the club opens and a 13% take from gross revenues that could amount to more than $10 million annually. Currently, says Moyer, the 12 San Diego card clubs pay only about $70,000 in fees to the city.

But before that could happen, the city would have to lift its prohibition against the transfer of card room licenses. And, according to the recent document obtained by The Times, the Commerce Club turned to Hedgecock and Zennedjian for help in pulling together an agreement with the local clubs and city officials.

Hedgecock said the club had hired him to help push through a smaller card club consolidation plan in Chula Vista. However, the plan was rejected two weeks ago by the Chula Vista City Council.

Zennedjian, who once owned the area’s largest fleet of hot lunch trucks, bought two of the Chula Vista card club licenses and wanted to merge his business with the Commerce Club.

For their part in negotiating the San Diego project, the document said, the Commerce Club was willing to pay both men $100,000 when the City Council approved the casino, $200,000 when it opened and an additional $200,000 on the first anniversary of the operation.

In addition, the men would have a 5% partnership share. The document projects a $10.9-million annual profit for the proposed casino, which would put the take for Hedgecock and Zennedjian at $545,000.

That scenario was presented to Commerce Card Club members when they met to discuss the San Diego proposal on Thursday, said Steven Ledbedder, attorney for the gaming club.

“They (payments to Hedgecock and Zennedjian) were in there to illustrate the cost that may be incurred to move forward” with the proposal, Ledbedder said. “It was represented as a ‘maybe,’ subject to all sorts of unknowns.”

Ledbedder said the Commerce Club does not have a “formal arrangement” with Hedgecock but said the former mayor has “had discussions with various city officials” about the project.

“He will likely be paid something, but the exact amount hasn’t been negotiated,” Ledbedder said.

Ledbedder also said Zennedjian has assisted Hedgecock in making phone calls and attending some meetings. Zennedjian, however, said he has done nothing to further the San Diego proposal by the Commerce Club.