3 Firms Lead Pack in Drive to Buy GM Site

The derby of developers hoping to build on the abandoned General Motors site in Panorama City has narrowed to three major Southland companies, including a Woodland Hills firm that lists actor Tom Selleck as a partner, and a Brentwood corporation headed by a close ally of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

Also on the short list is an Orange County company whose president once owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team, sources say. A fourth candidate, from Santa Monica, which is proposing a mammoth Wal-Mart store for the site, has apparently fallen behind in the running but remains an outside contender.

Observers have been expecting the imminent announcement of a sale by GM, which has been locked in negotiations for several months with potential developers. But representatives of the Detroit-based auto giant said Tuesday that no deal on the shuttered plant has been reached.

“We don’t have a definitive agreement with a potential buyer at this time, and I would not speculate as to a time when we will have one,” said Chuck Licari, a spokesman for GM.

Conjecture has been rife for months over a possible sale. The vacant auto assembly plant, which churned out millions of cars for nearly half a century, occupies 100 acres, 80 of which are on sale for a listed $30 million. Observers expect the ultimate price to hover around $20 million.

All four of the developers regarded as serious players have proposed a mix of industrial and retail businesses for the property, which would generate at least 1,000 jobs.

The short list of buyers includes Selleck Properties of Woodland Hills, Lowe Enterprises of Brentwood, Arnel Development of Costa Mesa and, as a dark horse, Rothbart Development of Santa Monica.

A GM executive met with each of the company’s suitors here in Los Angeles last week to discuss their proposals, but no decision was reached, sources said. GM, the developers and city officials who have helped expedite the process have been tight-lipped about the talks, afraid to jeopardize the sale of one of the city’s largest chunks of developed land.

“There has to be a sense of caution because of the sensitivity of the negotiations,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose district includes the GM plant.

Alarcon refused to name the short list of developers. “There have been other proposals that have been considered that did not ultimately result in a sale. So it’s premature to make any kind of announcement,” he said.

But speculation was renewed Monday when Riordan, whose economic development office has been working with GM to come up with a deal, dropped a reference to Selleck Properties in a joke about “the GM lottery” during an appearance before the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

Selleck has offered to team up with the Voit Cos. of Woodland Hills, the firm that developed much of Warner Center. Among the partners in Selleck Properties are the actor, his father Robert and two brothers, Dan and Bob.

The company is known primarily for building shopping complexes like the Gateway Shopping Center in Palmdale and a cluster of shops around a Lucky supermarket in Reseda.

Dan Selleck on Tuesday declined to speculate on a possible deal with GM, saying, “I’m not really at liberty to discuss the matter until General Motors makes an announcement.”

Competing with the Selleck-Voit pairing is Lowe Enterprises of Brentwood, which entered the most recent round of negotiations late--just about two months ago, said Lowe principal Ken Johnson.

The company, known for its development of the Sony Music complex in Santa Monica, had put itself forward soon after the plant closed down in 1992, but gave up when it appeared that GM had decided to sell the site to a Los Angeles-based publishing concern. When that company backed out, Johnson said, Lowe re-entered the race.

The firm’s president and chairman of the board, Robert J. Lowe, boasts close ties to Riordan from the mayor’s days as a businessman. Lowe’s wife, Beth, was appointed by the mayor to the Los Angeles Fire Commission and serves as president of the panel.

But company executives dismissed suggestions that Lowe’s relationship with Riordan unfairly weights the scales in the bidding war for the GM plant.

“Our efforts and our contacts have strictly been with General Motors on this,” Johnson said.

Johnson credited GM with running a “very professional” selection process and with making decisions based in part on the impact they would have on the community around the abandoned plant. The property, on Van Nuys Boulevard near Saticoy Street, sits near poorer sections of the San Fernando Valley that city officials hope to revitalize.

Sources said it was partly out of concern over the surrounding community that GM placed Santa Monica-based Rothbart Development at the bottom of its short list.

Rothbart, headquartered in Sherman Oaks before the Northridge earthquake, came to the table with a plan to build a Wal-Mart discount store on the site, which would be one of the first Wal-Marts in Los Angeles, said those familiar with the negotiations. The Arkansas-based corporation, with a huge chain of stores that dominate markets in the Midwest and South, is seeking to expand on the West Coast.

But officials in Los Angeles worried that a new Wal-Mart store would drive out smaller retailers in the area and also snatch away business from the nearby Panorama City Mall. GM executives heard those concerns and relegated Rothbart to an outside position, sources said.

The only short-listed candidate from outside Los Angeles County is Arnel Development of Costa Mesa, once one of Orange County’s largest developers of apartments.

With a fortune once estimated at $290 million, the company’s chairman, George L. Argyros, is the former owner of the now-defunct regional airline AirCal and the Seattle Mariners. Argyros declined to comment Tuesday.

To expedite a deal, city officials have floated the possibility of letting GM sell the Panorama City plant to a nonprofit organization set up by Riordan, the Valley Jobs Recovery Corp. (VJRC), which would allow the company to claim a tax deduction. The selected developer would in turn buy the land from the VJRC.

But sources close to the negotiations said that using the VJRC as a purchasing vehicle has become more unlikely, since it could be faster and more advantageous for GM to cut a deal directly with the developer.

City officials are pushing for the eventual plan to include infrastructure improvements, such as some road extensions, or to set aside property that could be used for a sixth Valley police station, which would be financed by a $171-million bond measure on the June ballot.

Demolition at the site has begun and should be completed around September. About 20 acres will be left for GM to keep a smog-testing lab there.

Times staff reporter John Schwada also contributed to this story.