County Faces Decisive Vote on Long-Term Future of Marina

The financially strapped Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will pause from crisis-management-as-usual today and attempt to decide what to do with one of America’s most valuable but under-performing public assets--Marina del Rey.

If the board votes as expected, control of the marina will probably remain in the hands of a small group of developers--who also happen to be among the supervisors’ more generous and reliable campaign contributors--until at least the midpoint of the next century.

The supervisors’ progress toward a decision on the marina issue has largely occurred in private without discussion of the long and mutually beneficial relationship between most board members and the developers who built the harbor’s privately owned apartments, boat slips, hotels, restaurants, shops and offices on prime public land.

All of those marina holdings are operated through long-term, generally 60-year leases with the county. Without extensions, the leases first awarded in the 1960s will expire at an accelerating rate between 2020 and 2030. Some leaseholders are interested in 10- to 20-year extensions, which they say will enable them to raise investment capital to begin redeveloping the aging marina.

In fact, county officials and their consultants have devised a plan to turn part of the harbor into a kind of Universal CityWalk or Third Street Promenade on the water with intensive retail, restaurant and entertainment uses along with outdoor plazas and walkways that would attract tourists and local residents alike.

At the same time, the supervisors must cope with the fact that virtually all the $23 million in annual revenue from the marina goes to service bond debt incurred in 1993, when the board mortgaged the facility for 15 years to raise $189.5 million for a one-time infusion of operating funds.

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That, plus their political clout, gives the developers a lot of leverage with the board. Nowhere is that more apparent than in leaseholders’ ties to the county’s newest supervisor, Don Knabe, who has been a recipient of the marina developers’ largess as far back as his days on the Cerritos City Council. As chief of staff to former Supervisor Deane Dana, whose district included the marina, Knabe developed a close relationship with some of the marina’s most prominent leaseholders.

In 1984, when Knabe ran for reelection in Cerritos, marina interests were among the biggest givers to his City Council campaign. The same was true later when Knabe explored running for the state Assembly and ultimately waged a losing campaign for the state Senate.

When Dana announced in late 1994 that he would not run again and endorsed Knabe as his successor, one of the marina’s major leaseholders, developer and attorney Douglas R. Ring, wrote a $10,000 check to help launch Knabe’s campaign. Through the end of last year, Ring and his family’s business entities had given $31,500 to support Knabe, making them one of his biggest contributors after Dana’s own campaign committee and county employee unions.

But Ring was not alone. Marina leaseholder Louis Weider gave $7,750 to Knabe’s campaign while Unocal, which operates the marina’s boat fuel docks, gave $4,500.

Developers Robert F. Maguire III and James Thomas, whose vast Playa Vista project includes the only private land within the marina, gave $12,000, with additional amounts from their attorneys and consultants.

“It’s an unfortunate part of campaigning,” Knabe said, “but you have to do it.”

Board Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky collected about $10,000 from marina leaseholders and Maguire Thomas Partners over the last two years.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke also received $5,000 from Ring, $4,125 from Maguire Thomas Partners and $3,000 from Weider.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich received $14,500 from Maguire Thomas, and $2,000 each from marina developers Jerry Epstein and Weider, and $1,500 from Jona Goldrich. Unocal gave a total of $7,000.

Even Supervisor Gloria Molina, the only board member who has been an outspoken critic of the county’s handling of the marina, received $1,700 from Thomas, $500 from P & M Realty and $250 from Goldrich.

Molina has been vigorously questioning county officials about the redevelopment strategy. In a series of more than three dozen questions submitted to county Beaches and Harbors Director Stan Wisniewski, Molina pressed for answers about who will benefit if the plan is adopted. During a discussion last week on a longer lease extension deal negotiated in 1992 with Goldrich, Molina was openly skeptical about who got the better deal.

Knabe, who represents the marina, is a strong supporter of the strategy, calling it a blueprint for keeping the marina competitive.

“The asset management strategy is, simply stated, a business plan designed to take Marina del Rey aggressively into the 21st century as a strong, urban waterfront property,” Knabe wrote recently.

Wisniewski sees the strategy as being critical to the future of the harbor. “It became clear to me that we needed a vision for the marina.” As the county considers granting lease extensions to spur redevelopment or refurbishment of existing properties, “we need some central framework that would guide all lease extension negotiations,” he said.

Wisniewski said he believes the first of two so-called catalytic projects in the harbor is crucial to giving the marina a new identity. The first, on the east side of the harbor near Admiralty and Mindanao ways, would provide a family-oriented gateway to the waterfront with shops, restaurants and entertainment.

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He said the marina today is a very car-oriented place. A goal is to get the cars into parking structures on the interior of the marina so visitors can get out and walk. Wisniewski envisions a pedestrian promenade around the harbor. Ultimately, that walkway and water taxis would link the initial redevelopment project to another on the west side of the marina that is near Mothers Beach.

The supervisors’ decision on the strategy will be closely watched by the marina’s newest leaseholder, C.S. First Boston Mortgage Capital Corp. The firm acquired some prime marina parcels in the immediate vicinity of the planned eastside project during bankruptcy proceedings involving Saudi Arabian businessman Abdul Aziz al Ibrahim.

“There has been both national, international and local interest” in the leaseholds, said David Westcott, C.S. First Boston’s representative. “We are very, very actively trying to plan what has to happen for a development to go forward.”