Cheers and Jeers for a Queen-Sized Task

Businessman Joseph F. Prevratil, a onetime amusement park entrepreneur who now operates the Queen Mary, was laying ambitious plans to move the famed ship from Long Beach to Tokyo in a deal valued in the tens of millions of dollars, even as he was fighting off creditors in a bankruptcy in Riverside.

The fusion of blue-sky dreams and bankruptcy comes as no surprise to those who have followed Prevratil’s career. As the gray-haired, 59-year-old Prevratil himself says, his career and reputation have come from his success--or failure--in dealing with money-losing ventures.

“I am usually brought in to manage something that isn’t working and I try to make it work,” Prevratil said in an interview. “Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t. Most of the time I succeed.”

But with the fate of the Queen Mary--Long Beach’s much-beloved icon--resting largely on his shoulders, critics are questioning whether the business executive has the track record or financial wherewithal to carry off what is his biggest project: overhauling the Queen Mary and building a $60-million entertainment complex on a 55-acre parcel at the mouth of the Los Angeles River.

Saying that the Queen Mary is in need of $40 million in repairs, Prevratil shocked the city with a proposal to tow the historic ship across the Pacific and operate it as a hotel-casino in Tokyo Bay for three to five years.

The proposal has run into serious opposition in City Hall. The ship is owned by the city but operated by Prevratil under a long-term lease. The City Council is scheduled consider the proposal Tuesday and appears ready to vote to keep the ship in Long Beach.

But Prevratil is not dismayed, believing it is still a good deal for the city.

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With his characteristic optimism, Prevratil believes the Japanese will so enthusiastically fill up the ship’s hotel rooms and banquet parlors that the Queen Mary will make back the $40 million for repairs in less than two years. He promises that money, plus another $5 million to the city each year the ship is gone, plus a special endowment fund for future repairs, just for the right to take the ship to Japan.

Prevratil also wants a new 66-year lease on the valuable 55-acre Long Beach bay-front property to build an entertainment complex based around a maritime museum and an attraction called “Future Port.” He also is asking for broader authority to market the Queen Mary name and to pursue the possibility of building a major casino in Las Vegas in the shape of the Queen Mary, tentatively called “Queen of the Desert.”

As he moves about Long Beach, engaging in negotiations with Japanese business interests, fending off local critics and trying to sell his plan while keeping most of his financing a mystery, Prevratil and his dream are the source of constant debate.

Is he a savior, some ask, possessing just the right mix of unbridled optimism and hard-nosed business skills to save the 61-year-old onetime flagship of the Cunard Line?

Or is he a pied piper, leading the city into a risky venture with a ship that has already sucked up more than $100 million in public and private dollars and proven to be a vexing, money-losing problem.

His record gives critics and supporters alike plenty to draw on.

The most recent success has been to turn around the Queen Mary itself.

Operating it under an exclusive lease from the city, Prevratil has the ship and its hotel operating at a small profit, which is no small feat after corporations ranging from the Diners Club to the Walt Disney Co. were unable to make their investment in the ship pay off.

But a failure came last year in Riverside, when the 296-room Holiday Inn hotel he and some business partners owned went broke, resulting in a bankruptcy action that dragged out over most of 1996 and left behind a trail of creditors who are still owed money. Among other things, court documents show that the Prevratil partnership owed more than $700,000 in unpaid taxes.

Prevratil said that when he and his partners bought the hotel in 1990 for $15 million, they thought they were getting a good deal because the previous owners paid more than $20 million for it. But then the hotel market collapsed and by 1996 the hotel’s value in Bankruptcy Court was only about $5 million.

“When the value of a property falls from $15 [million] to $5 million there is just no way to recover from that,” Prevratil said.

But while there are some hard feelings about Prevratil in Riverside, in Long Beach he’s highly regarded in the business community.

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Prevratil, a member of the network of Long Beach developers and business executives who for years have been engaged in high-powered commerce in the city, is someone who has been involved in multimillion-dollar real estate deals and moved in and out of board directorships and powerful jobs with surprising ease.

Prevratil is equally at ease volunteering to help bring the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra back from the brink of bankruptcy as he is moving in as chairman of the board of a once high-flying Long Beach real estate development firm, IDM Corp. after it already had sunk into bankruptcy.

IDM Corp., which built the city’s 27-story World Trade Center tower, was headed by Long Beach businessman Michael J. Choppin. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1992 after revealing it had $300 million in losses spread out among 15,000 Californians who bought IDM partnerships. Prevratil said he accepted the job with IDM as a favor to Choppin, a friend, and helped guide the company’s sale to a Texas firm. Choppin did not return a call from The Times.

Cindy Loeffler, marketing director of the Long Beach Symphony, said Prevratil’s service on the board of directors helped put the organization on track for what now has been 10 straight years of balanced budgets. “He did play a large and important role in our turnaround,” Loeffler said.

Other relationships with city business and political figures did not always work out so well, including the one that led to his taking control of the Queen Mary.

Prevratil’s history in the entertainment and theme park industry goes back to the 1970s, when he ran the now-defunct Japanese Village and Deer Park and the still prospering Movieland Wax Museum in Orange County. After a four-year run with his own company operating small entertainment attractions, Prevratil joined Wrather Corp. and began running one of its attractions, the Queen Mary.

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His ties with the Queen Mary were severed a few months after Disney bought Wrather in 1988, but Prevratil remained close to the ship as he held several powerful jobs in Long Beach, including serving for a year as executive director of the Port of Long Beach and then several years as project manager of the $100-million expansion of the city’s convention center.

Disney gave up on the Queen Mary in 1992. The ship closed and was in danger of being sold when Prevratil got together with Dr. Robert Gumbiner, the Long Beach-based founder of the pioneering managed health care company FHP International Corp.

With the physician putting up $2 million to start the nonprofit RMS Foundation, the two men set out to save the ship.

Gumbiner said he was so impressed with Prevratil that he recruited him to the FHP board of directors.

But the relationship quickly soured, with Gumbiner walking away from the ship and Prevratil siding with the FHP board majority that Gumbiner said forced him out of his own company.

Prevratil then started a new, for-profit company, Queen’s Seaport Development Inc., to run the ship--without Gumbiner.

“The guy has got a golden tongue and he is a great salesman,” said Gumbiner, strongly critical of his one-time manager. As for his ability to carry out his dreams of developing the Queen Mary property, Gumbiner said Prevratil is under-capitalized. “I put up all the money for the ship in the first place,” Gumbiner said. “The city already extended his lease once with orders to move forward and develop the property. In my view, he has not done it and he will never do it.”

Prevratil says Gumbiner is “a very bitter, vindictive man.” He said Gumbiner grew restless when it looked like the Queen Mary would take too long to turn a profit. “Now that it’s turned out OK, I’m sure he has some regrets,” Prevratil said.

Still, some in Long Beach are questioning Prevratil’s ability to undertake his latest ambitious proposal--including City Auditor Gary Burroughs, several members of the City Council, and members of the Historical Society of Long Beach and Queen Mary preservationists. The critics point to occasions when Prevratil has been late on legally required insurance payments and wonder if a major loan he took out pledging parking revenues as collateral is a sign of financial problems.

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City officials say Prevratil is current on his payments. Prevratil, in an interview, said he is paying off one loan and is in the process of taking out a larger loan of about $10 million. He said the larger loan was needed to begin developing the property. Burroughs said he is conducting an audit of Prevratil’s finances but refused to discuss specifics.

But Prevratil’s support remains generally strong.

“He is the one who stepped up when we were close to losing the ship,” said Ron Walker, a community development administrator who oversees the city’s contract with Prevratil.

So far, Prevratil has received highly favorable contracts from the city. His lease requires a $300,000 annual base rent for the entire 55-acre complex, including rights to all parking, the ship and its 300-room hotel, the dome that once housed the Spruce Goose airplane, and a small cluster of retail shops and restaurants. On the dome alone, Prevratil receives $1 million a year in rent from Warner Bros., which uses it to make movies.

But opposition is developing, at least over Prevratil’s plan to take the ship to Japan.

City Manager James C. Hankla is urging the City Council to keep the ship in Long Beach, although he supports a lease extension and Prevratil’s development plans.

Prevratil said he will carry on either way.

“I only want what’s in the best interests of the Queen Mary,” he said.