DreamWorks Studio Stirs Rivalry of Civic Suitors : Hollywood: Mayor presses L.A.’s case. Burbank and Universal City also fervently woo new multimedia siren.

They popped the question last fall, starry-eyed suitors with competing offers of hearth and home.

They made flattering phone calls, wrote admiring letters, sent persuasive faxes. They pressed their individual claims over intimate lunches. Months later, they still jockey for favor, pouring on the charm as the object of their chase ponders a decision.

The attention is lavish--especially when the belle of the ball is actually a trio of middle-aged men, and those courting them include Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. But the royal treatment is not so surprising when the three elusive quarries turn out to be Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, whose new, highly touted multimedia venture, DreamWorks SKG, is looking to find a nice home and settle down.

Since the three entertainment moguls launched the company last October, cities such as Los Angeles and Burbank have shined their shoes and put their best foot forward to lure the nascent firm to settle within their borders.

The wooing has intensified in the last few weeks amid speculation that DreamWorks will soon choose a permanent site to set up shop. At stake is a potential payoff of thousands of jobs and bragging rights as the capital of the brave new world of interactive media, as well as increased prestige in the traditional arena of film and television.

The DreamWorks triumvirate is keeping quiet about location plans, preferring to keep even its own publicist in the dark as to details.

“I don’t have answers on any of this stuff,” said publicist Harry Clein of Clein & White in West Hollywood. “No one wants to sit down and talk about it until everything’s totally final.”

But that hasn’t stopped the barrage of calls Clein receives daily, some from as far away as Philadelphia, Long Island and Florida, offering free land and other enticements to attract the Dream Team.

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Industry insiders say the trio will almost certainly locate in Southern California, already the hub of filming and numerous new-media companies. On the rumored short list are Los Angeles, Burbank and Universal City.

To press Los Angeles’ suit as the perfect match, Riordan was on the phone within 24 hours of the Geffen-Spielberg-Katzenberg news conference Oct. 12, when their new company was born, but before it even had a name.

“The first day we heard about it, I called up David, Steven and Jeffrey and congratulated them,” said Riordan, casually dropping the first names of three of Hollywood’s most powerful players, whose combined net worth--more than $1.5 billion--exceeds the gross national product of Fiji.

Since that first call, Riordan said, he has met with each of the DreamWorks founders at least once and spoken to them by telephone several times. Lately, the mayor, who is also a multimillionaire, turned up the schmooze dial another notch.

On March 2, there was Riordan at the glittering American Film Institute tribute to Spielberg in Beverly Hills, working the room after dinner, smiling for the cameras with actress Kate Capshaw, Spielberg’s wife.

The next day, Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director of “Schindler’s List” and “Jurassic Park,” and Riordan, the savvy ex-businessman who used Barbie as a pitchwoman in his mayoral campaign, had a tete-a-tete over lunch at DreamWorks’ temporary headquarters, Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment office on the MCA lot in Universal City.

And last Tuesday, the mayor met with Michael J. Montgomery, the point man on DreamWorks’ finance team, over an egg-whites-only vegetarian omelet breakfast at Mort’s Palisades Deli on the Westside, said Noelia Rodriguez, the mayor’s press secretary.

Montgomery and the Riordan-organized L.A.’s Business Team have been in regular contact since the fall, discussing possible sites throughout the city.

The most discussed option thus far is the massive Playa Vista development near Marina del Rey, which the Dream Team members toured soon after announcing their partnership. Maguire Thomas Partners, the developers, have pushed the project as being ideal for entertainment firms, with 100 acres available, about the amount needed for an operation the size of DreamWorks.

(Coincidentally, Robert F. Maguire, managing partner of Maguire Thomas, bumped into Riordan and Montgomery at Mort’s on Tuesday. “This is just like out of a Woody Allen film,” the mayor reportedly said.)

Another, newer idea hatched by the city proposes a cluster of smaller sites near the Downtown Convention Center, said Steven MacDonald of L.A.’s Business Team. The abandoned General Motors plant in Van Nuys, though not a likely prospect, has also merited mention.

The business team has been busy crafting potential incentives that would accompany each site and assuring DreamWorks that the city can expedite an often-cumbersome development permit process. MacDonald, the team’s deputy director, is available by beeper to answer questions 24 hours a day.

“The bottom line is we’ll do what we can to get DreamWorks. We’ll do anything to get them,” MacDonald said.

But competition from Burbank is stiff, and comes amid growing complaints from some Los Angeles economists and industry analysts about an exodus of multimedia firms from the city, often to neighboring Burbank.

Not to be outdone by Riordan’s phone call, Burbank Mayor Bill Wiggins dispatched a congratulatory letter to Katzenberg, Geffen and Spielberg, also on the day of DreamWorks’ formation.

“As seasoned professionals, accustomed to dealing with large media development projects, we can work closely with you to turn your vision into reality,” Wiggins wrote.

City officials acknowledge that they do not boast the ready access to the three media titans that Riordan has. As yet, there have been no power lunches, no personal calls--although a handwritten response to Wiggins from Katzenberg, whose old digs at Walt Disney Studios are in Burbank, was encouraging.

“We don’t have those personal relationships that others do,” said Bob Tague, Burbank’s community development director. “We plan on not using the arm-twisting approach. We plan on selling the fact that . . . a very large number of industry people are focusing right now (on Burbank). We think they ought to be in the ‘in’ place.”

Pursuing the Dream Team is one of Burbank’s “very highest priorities,” according to a recent internal city memo titled “Full Court Press.”

The city has produced a glossy booklet showcasing possible sites, complete with aerial photos, to be sent to DreamWorks in the next two weeks. Tague plans to follow up with a “little surprise, something kind of fun and creative to keep our name in front of them.”

This week, city leaders reeled with joy upon reading in the Hollywood Reporter that DreamWorks had leased temporary office space in Burbank. But officials discovered the next day that the buildings are just barely outside Burbank city limits, on the L.A. side of the Los Angeles River.

Wiggins hastily revised a welcoming letter he had drafted to Katzenberg, amending “Welcome to Burbank” to “You’re getting warmer!”

“Being right on the border isn’t the same as being inside, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the Westside,” said Burbank City Manager Robert (Bud) Ovrom.

Property that the city has suggested for a permanent home includes the 103-acre Lockheed plant. Some space is also open on the Warner Bros. ranch.

But a potential spoiler of Los Angeles’ and Burbank’s courtship of DreamWorks is another studio, MCA, which sits on unincorporated county territory in Universal City.

MCA claims strong ties to Spielberg, whose Amblin offices are housed there, and Geffen, whose record company was bought by MCA. The studio’s back lot has plenty of space.

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Industry scuttlebutt has it that the Dream Team may be waiting for a dispute between MCA executives and MCA’s parent company, Matsushita Electric Industrial, to be resolved before it picks a new home.

If it does, and if the MCA site offers the best possibilities, then even Riordan is modest about what his access to the DreamWorks troika can accomplish.

“Having access to them, it’s good. Influencing them, they’re their own people, very much their own people,” Riordan said. “They’re going to decide what’s the best for their business. We just have to lead them to the light and show them our sites are best.”

But he and officials from Burbank agree that the MCA location would still be a huge asset to the region, generating jobs and momentum that would spill over Universal City’s borders.

“It won’t just be this business alone, it’ll be hundreds of other businesses both in and out of Los Angeles,” Riordan said. “If you had DreamWorks there tomorrow, it would attract all kinds of other companies.”