Key Long Beach Official to Quit

Long Beach City Manager James C. Hankla, who steered the economic revival of the state’s fifth-biggest city and gained a reputation as one of California’s most powerful municipal administrators, announced Tuesday that he is retiring.

Perhaps fittingly, Hankla’s announcement came just hours before the City Council, on his recommendation, wrapped up a major deal with the operator of the historic ship Queen Mary for a proposed three-phase, $200-million waterfront development. The Queen Mary lease extension will effectively tie up the last major piece of Long Beach’s waterfront well into the next century.

“He’s going to be a tough act to follow,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County and a longtime Hankla admirer. “With the downsizing at McDonnell Douglas, the pullout of the Navy and the recession coming to a head in the early 1990s, the city literally had to reinvent itself. With the guidance of Jim, it was very, very successful. There is going to be a huge void to fill.”

Hankla, 58, who served as Los Angeles County’s chief administrative officer from 1985 to 1987, is a career civil servant who has held the top job in Long Beach for 11 years.

But his talent for swinging multimillion-dollar deals made him appear more like a corporate wheeler-dealer than the government bureaucrat his resume would suggest.

Along the way, Hankla picked up numerous enemies, particularly neighborhood preservationists, who complained that he rolled over opponents, moved too fast and gave short shrift to such things as public hearings.

But Hankla, who will leave the job Dec. 30, has a legion of fans who credit him with helping bring back a city hit hard by the recession. One of Hankla’s projects--the Aquarium of the Pacific--already is on track to draw 200,000 visitors to the downtown waterfront site in its first 2 1/2 weeks, well above projections.

At a City Hall news conference Tuesday, Hankla said his job was “rebuilding the [city’s] economic engine,” not keeping neighborhoods happy.

“You’ve got to have a way to pay the bills,” he said. “It is my job to take care of the City Council. It’s the City Council’s job to take care of the neighborhoods.”

Hankla has been indicating for several months that he was preparing to resign and seek work in the private sector.

The successful opening of the aquarium presented Hankla with a good opportunity to step down, said Councilman Alan Lowenthal, a neighborhood activist who has sometimes chafed under Hankla’s style of management.

“He’s leaving on a high note,” Lowenthal said. “He set his goals and met them. Good city managers understand when the timing is right. This is a good time to move on.”

Hankla’s retirement announcement came on the same day that he was due for a performance evaluation by the nine-member Long Beach City Council. Although his pay hasn’t been raised from the $174,000 he received in 1997, elected officials indicated that he was not in trouble.

“I am sorry to see him go,” said Mayor Beverly O’Neill. “He is a real source of strength, knowledge, wisdom and stability for the city.”

Hankla’s tenure was marked by almost as many lawsuits as major land development deals. In recent years, residents filed suit to block a plan that would have put pay-for-play softball diamonds in the city’s El Dorado Regional Park, challenged the financial viability of the city’s Downtown Redevelopment Plan, and sought unsuccessfully to block Port of Long Beach plans to use an abandoned naval base property on Terminal Island for port expansion.

Most recently, the state Court of Appeal issued a ruling against the city that will require it to pay $3 million to $4 million into a fund to increase the supply of low- and moderate-income housing.

The decision, announced Monday, stems from a dispute over the withholding of redevelopment tax dollars that should have gone into a housing fund.

When asked about the court order at the news conference, Hankla in typical fashion indicated that no one should expect a check in the mail any time soon. “I don’t think it’s specific as to how it gets paid or how long it takes to get paid,” Hankla said.

Paying Hankla grudging respect, Dennis Rockway, one of the legal aid lawyers who sued the redevelopment agency, said, “He clearly is a smart, tough guy.”