Obscure Prince Lobbies for Quixotic State Rail Plan

A little-known Belgian prince, who championed an improbable scheme to build an elevated transit line along portions of the Los Angeles River from the San Fernando Valley to the sea, now is promoting an even more ambitious statewide railway proposal.

Prince Charles-Antoine de Ligne is lobbying to help finance a multibillion-dollar plan the state is considering to build a high-speed rail line from San Diego to San Francisco, which is expected to pass through the San Fernando Valley.

The prince and his associates have conducted a well-orchestrated public relations campaign. So far, it has been highlighted by a state lawmakers’ visit to the prince’s ancestral castle outside Brussels, where legislators dined on pheasant the prince shot himself. The prince was later given the royal treatment at the state Capitol, where he was accorded the unusual honor of addressing both houses of the Legislature.

“There is a major need in California for a rail system, and we in Europe have the technology,” De Ligne said during a telephone interview from Paris. His role would be to put together a team to construct the rail line and, to the extent that private financing was needed, find investors for the project.

With his visit to the Capitol in late April, the prince gained the ear of state officials and emerged as one of the most prominent public promoters of the north-south rail line project, which is beginning to take shape.

Last October, the Bush Administration designated an inland California route as one of five high-speed rail corridors, making it eligible for federal funds. And tucked inside the state budget approved last week by the Legislature is $4.2 million to study the feasibility of the rail proposal which, if built, is still years away.

The extraordinary access granted the 46-year-old prince shows how a title--even one held by an obscure European nobleman--can open doors along the corridors of power in Sacramento, where officials are eager to woo overseas investors to boost California’s sagging economy.

While there was apparently nothing improper in the recognition given the prince, he seems a curious choice to be singled out for such red carpet treatment.

Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, who has sought legislative oversight for the proposed high-speed rail project, dismissed the nobleman’s lobbying effort, calling De Ligne “just another guy coming through trying to sell you something.”

A tourist brochure for his castle quotes De Ligne as saying that members of his illustrious family have no background in business. It says they “were above all soldiers until the end of the last century, and then in the modern world we were neither industrialists nor businessmen because, (as nobility) we didn’t have the right to be, and I believe that remained the tradition.”

Even though De Ligne, by his own admission, has no expertise in rail transit, he seems to be trying to reverse that tradition in California. His entry in the Belgian “Who’s Who” says he studied law at the Institute Catholique de Paris and hotel administration and management at Cornell University. But De Ligne said he went to Cornell only for a summer course on hotel administration in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Born in Boulogne, France, he is married to Princess Alyette de Droy-Roeulx and has two sons.

De Ligne’s current job, as he describes it, is to manage his properties, which include his castle in Belgium and two estates in France.

A onetime paratrooper who is not in line for the Belgian throne of King Baudouin, De Ligne said he was drawn to the rail project by Christopher Harriman, whom he described as a personal friend he met in Paris.

Harriman, who accompanied De Ligne on his recent trip to the Capitol, has made a number of claims about his own background and business dealings that have not been possible to verify. Among other things, he said he is related to the late diplomat Averill Harriman, a claim disputed by the Harriman family in Washington. He cited business ventures with the prince, including a luxury hotel in Thailand with a grandson of the Thai king, but the Thai Embassy said it had no knowledge of De Ligne or Harriman.

Harriman also claimed that the prince’s name, De Ligne, means “of the line” and proves him to be a member of the royal family of Belgium. But the Belgian Embassy in New York said De Ligne is part of an old, noble family but is not in line to the throne.

The De Ligne family has been European nobility for about 800 years--Belgium has been a country only since 1830--but the name has no special meaning. It has no connection with Belgium’s royal family, which was imported from Germany in 1830. In fact, in Belgium, unlike Great Britain, the title “prince” does not imply royalty, but merely nobility.

In the Capitol, the prince’s name surfaced last summer in connection with legislation by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) to establish a Los Angeles River Conservancy to promote economic development and environmental restoration along the channel. It directed the conservancy, state officials and a little known private nonprofit group headed by Harriman to determine the viability of a high-tech elevated transit system from Griffith Park to San Pedro.

Larex, a privately held company controlled by De Ligne, would have been one of the prime beneficiaries of the Los Angeles River measure because it was set up to tap business opportunities along the proposed rail line.

But the dream of turning the river channel into parkway with a transit line was shattered when such downstream cities as Downey objected to the bill, prompting Gov. Pete Wilson to reject the proposal last September.

Just two months later, however, Torres persuaded two top aides to the governor and five other lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), to join him for a half-day visit with the prince while they were in Belgium. The Sunday excursion was part of a European trip financed in full by a nonprofit San Francisco foundation that regularly underwrites overseas trips for state lawmakers. One main purpose of the trip last year was for lawmakers to meet with members of the European Parliament.

De Ligne said he had met Torres two or three years ago, and he invited the lawmaker and the state delegation to the picturesque castle of Antoing. It is quite striking: red brick, ivy-covered, dotted with towers, interior walls covered with relics and animal heads. Some of the foundation dates to 1180, but most of the structure is a good deal newer--15th Century. For several decades at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, the castle was used as a Jesuit school.

One of its students was longtime French leader Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Lawmakers marveled at the prince’s estate south of Brussels, where they met with business leaders and lunched on pheasant that De Ligne had just shot. “I can guarantee that they were fresh,” he said.

“It was quite a novel experience. I had never dined at a palace with a real live prince,” acknowledged Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who, like the other officials, disclosed on state-required reports that the cost of the entire trip last November was $7,200. It was underwritten by the California Foundation on the Environment and Economy, a business-oriented group.

Sen. Robert G. Beverly (R-Redondo Beach) conceded that “overall, the prince is a mystery figure to me” and that he did not know the nobleman had a role in Torres’ Los Angeles River legislation until the prince addressed the Senate in support of the measure. Others who went on the trip last November were Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-San Jose), Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) and gubernatorial aides George W. Dunn and William Hauck.

Sen. Torres characterized De Ligne as a serious-minded conservationist with an interest in making European rail technology available in California and providing financial backing for such a venture. He described the visit with the prince as a social occasion, and said he cannot recall any discussion of business.

Torres said the prince has not given up on the transit line along the Los Angeles River, which is a largely concrete-lined channel that runs from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro. Instead, he envisions a river rail line as intersecting with the state-sanctioned high-speed railway that would run up the spine of inland California.

Such a north-south line “is definitely a project that’s up for grabs for anybody who has the technology and the financing,” Torres said.

In late April, Torres escorted De Ligne around the Capitol. Introducing him, Torres noted that his great-great-grandfather presided over the Belgian Senate for 30 sessions. The nobleman drew standing ovations after addressing both houses and hailing the high-speed rail line as “ultimately the largest public works project in the United States.”

With wavy brown hair and a well-tailored gray, double-breasted suit, De Ligne cut a dignified figure as he delivered his remarks. He was greeted by lawmakers who feted him at a luncheon. Later, he held a private meeting with Transportation Department Director James van Lobensels.

Tom Quinn, a Washington lawyer who considers De Ligne an old friend, described the Sacramento trip as an effort by the prince to get acquainted with California officials and test their seriousness in building the rail line.

At stake in the lobbying effort are lucrative construction and engineering contracts for a project that--if it ever gets off the ground--would probably reshape the way Californians travel up and down the state.

Last year, the federal government designated the San Diego-Los Angeles-San Joaquin Valley-San Francisco corridor as one of five federal demonstration high-speed rail routes. With that label, rail improvements along the route are eligible for federal funds, including a significant share of $1.3 billion the Clinton Administration has set aside for high-speed rail.

In addition, when California voters approved Proposition 116 in 1990, the initiative included $5 million to study how to route a train over the Tehachapi Mountains, possibly paralleling Interstate 5 through the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

While government seed funds are available, the state would need to attract private financiers to underwrite costly environmental studies and help get the project started. Along with the prince, a number of large engineering firms privately have voiced an interest in the project, but none with De Ligne’s visibility and panache.

“They don’t have anyone as high-profile as the prince,” said one legislative aide familiar with the rail-line maneuvering. He said the line is likely to traverse the San Fernando Valley. Another Capitol aide said De Ligne may be using the rail proposals as a launching pad for other business interests.

Quinn, the lawyer who accompanied De Ligne and Harriman to the Capitol, acknowledged that large amounts of money are riding on the future of the inland rail line. “I think he (the prince) sees it as one of the potentially giant public works projects in the United States,” he said.

This story was written by Mark Gladstone from Sacramento with contributions from Richard Lee Colvin in Los Angeles and Joel Havemann in Brussels.