INGLEWOOD : Council OKs Hollywood Park Card Club : Officials link the casino to the city’s financial salvation. They predict $4 million in revenues the first year.

Hailing the Hollywood Park card club as the fiscal savior of Inglewood, the City Council voted Tuesday to issue a license to the club, which officials expect will contribute about $4 million in taxes to the city for fiscal year 1994-1995.

“We’re elated to issue this license,” said Mayor Edward Vincent before the vote. “That card club saves us all--it saves the residents of Inglewood.”

The state attorney general’s office gave two former National Football League executives, Don Klosterman and Eddie LeBaron, preliminary permission last week to run the club.

City officials had counted on having $4 million from the card club to balance its budget, and the casino’s planned July 1 opening date means that Inglewood should make at least that much in taxes, said City Manager Paul D. Eckles.

“We put that budget together a few months ago when we didn’t have as good an idea of when the opening would actually be,” Eckles said. “But now that $4 million becomes really tangible. It makes me feel confident that that’s a realistic number.”

Vincent said the city’s deficit occurred because state and federal funds the city typically receives dried up during the recession.

Eckles has estimated that the card club eventually could contribute $10 million a year to Inglewood’s budget.

With the prospect of $4 million from the club plugged into the city’s finances, the council voted Tuesday to accept a $55-million budget for fiscal year 1994-1995 that does not expand city programs but contains no layoffs. The council is scheduled to vote on the budget next week.

“What I propose to do is watch the card club open and see how it does before increasing . . . the budget,” Eckles said.

The 200-table card club, which will include Asian games, is scheduled to be open around the clock, seven days a week. It is to be located in the track’s Cary Grant Pavilion, along with retail shops and restaurants.

Hollywood Park has hired about 1,500 people to work as dealers, security guards and cooks in the casino restaurant. In the last year, about 6,300 people have applied for jobs at the club.

The card club project has led to talks about reopening the Airport Park Hotel and building a 16,000-seat amphitheater, and it has renewed interest from development companies in revitalizing the Market Street-La Brea shopping district, Vincent said.

Two months ago, Hollywood Park made a deal with Klosterman, who was general manager of the Los Angeles Rams in the 1970s, and LeBaron, a former Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys quarterback and an executive for the Atlanta Falcons in the 1980s, allowing them to run the club, if the partners would pay the racetrack $3 million a month in a multiyear deal.

Unless the state attorney general’s office uncovers financial troubles or concerns with their backgrounds during a routine investigation, Klosterman and LeBaron will be granted a permanent gambling license by the state.

“We have some loose ends with regard to their background and the financial aspects, but generally those issues are pretty minimal,” said Debbie Wiley, chief of the attorney general’s gaming registration unit.

“We look at the big picture when we do this and try to have a comfort level with the applicants, and we already have that,” Wiley said.

The card club suffered several major setbacks before finally gaining state approval.

The Legislature approved a bill that would have allowed Hollywood Park to run the card club, but Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it. He agreed with Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who opposes licensing clubs owned by unknown stockholders because the state does not have a full-time investigative commission to oversee gambling.

The city then found investors, including Edward Allred, a partner in the Los Alamitos Race Course, to run the club, and it was scheduled to open in January. But the attorney general’s office refused to issue a license on the grounds that Allred previously owned stock in out-of-state gambling businesses.