Riordan Ends Mission With Port Deal OK

Mayor Richard Riordan climaxed his Asia mission Thursday to the sound of popping champagne corks, as he signed the first of an anticipated two deals expected to generate thousands of jobs and bring more than $1 billion to the growing Port of Los Angeles.

The agreement signed Thursday ended three years of negotiations with Evergreen Marine Corp. If approved by the City Council, the deal will keep the port’s largest customer in Los Angeles for 32 more years despite efforts by harbors in Long Beach, Seattle and elsewhere to lure the company away.

“It’s incredibly important,” Riordan said after signing a declaration tentatively agreeing to the deal with the Taiwanese shipping giant. “This cements us far into the future.”

Robin Kramer, the mayor’s chief of staff, and Leland Wong, president of the city Harbor Commission, agreed.

“This is a great day,” Wong said, as the mayor signed the agreements in a hotel suite high above the bustling streets of Taipei, where Evergreen’s signature green office buildings and trailers are omnipresent. “It’s a highly competitive business. They could have decided to go to Seattle or Long Beach, but they stayed with us.”

The Evergreen deal is the first of two slated for the mayor’s signature. The other, with Yang Ming Transport Corp., is still being finalized, but officials expect it to be finished Saturday. Both require the approval of the Los Angeles City Council, whose backing is likely but not assured.

Foes of the port’s expansion have raised environmental and other concerns. They have mounted a small but steady drumbeat in the harbor area, warning about such things as dangers from particulate matter stirred up by some of the ship-loading activities. Supporters have countered by citing the jobs, economic growth and income that the port expansion is helping to generate.

In the case of Evergreen, those numbers are striking. According to city statistics, 4,873 workers owe their jobs directly to the company’s port operations, and city officials estimate that nearly 20,000 more people work for Southern California manufacturers and distributors that benefit from Evergreen’s use of the port.

Two years ago, Evergreen became embroiled in a scandal when William Wang, one-time manager of its Los Angeles operations, was indicted along with his brother-in-law, former City Councilman Art Snyder, and two others on charges of conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions to state and local politicians. Evergreen paid a record $895,000 fine after admitting that its employees had laundered more than $170,000 in illicit campaign funds.

Still, had the company chosen another port for its huge and growing operation, many local jobs and millions of dollars in city revenue would have disappeared with it.

George Hsu, president of Evergreen, said the company had been tempted by other offers but elected to stay with Los Angeles because of the improvements being made at the harbor and because of long-standing relationships with port and city officials.

“Evergreen has a philosophy,” he said. “We stick with our friends. Relationships are important to us. . . . Long Beach gave us a lot of attraction. She’s a beautiful girl. But we’re married.”

On Saturday, Los Angeles officials hope to sign a second, slightly smaller but still significant deal with Yang Ming, another Taiwanese company, which is one of the port’s five largest customers. City officials hope to keep Yang Ming at the port another 25 years.

Together, the two deals are worth a minimum of $25 million a year to the port, though company and city officials predict that the actual business will be worth far more.

In fact, Hsu said he expects his company alone to do more than that much business a year in Los Angeles. That estimate, he added, is largely unaffected by the Asian economic crisis, which has reduced U.S exports to many countries there but has stimulated imports into the United States, as the falling value of Asian currencies makes those countries’ exports more affordable in America and elsewhere.

The two deals come in the final days of Riordan’s two weeks in Asia and represent the trip’s most tangible achievements. Mayoral aides say the agreements should silence critics who questioned the $460,000 price tag for the trip and diminish any disappointment that the mayor’s visit to Beijing did not produce a comparable agreement with Cosco, a major Chinese shipping company.

That deal is still being negotiated, and Riordan administration officials remain hopeful that they can snag the Cosco contract away from rival Port of Long Beach.

Los Angeles Port Director Larry Keller, who was visibly disappointed when city officials failed to seal an agreement with Cosco, bubbled with enthusiasm during the Evergreen signing ceremony Thursday.

“This is great, I swear to God,” he said as Riordan, Evergreen President Hsu and Harbor Commission President Wong all signed a declaration confirming their tentative agreement. “Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

Keller called the signing “a historic moment,” one that “we’ve waited for not for days or weeks, but years. . . . I couldn’t be more satisfied. It’s a feeling of elation.”

Riordan’s mission to Asia has been a three-pronged affair, with city officials lobbying for increased airport and port business at the same time that a large group of business executives used the mayor’s stature to try to create opportunities for their companies to expand ties with Asian counterparts.

The business successes have been hard to gauge, but several executives say they are pleased with what they have heard.

The airport business, meanwhile, has mostly involved checking on current and possible airport clients. Similarly, the mayor and port representatives have spent much of their time calling on longtime customers to see whether they are satisfied with their service.

The deals with Evergreen and Yang Ming, however, give the delegation clear accomplishments to bring home.

As they lobby shipping firms to come to Los Angeles or renew their leases, port officials are stressing the city’s investment not only in the harbor facilities but also in the Alameda Corridor, a rail line that will provide a swifter link between the port and downtown, and hence the national rail network. That is expected to speed up the unloading of ships and increase efficiency at the port.

Steven Soboroff, a special advisor to the mayor, has been the central player in the Alameda Corridor project, and he was on hand for the Evergreen signing. He echoed those who hailed the agreement and said he believed that, as the corridor makes progress, it will attract more customers to the port.

Hsu agreed that the corridor makes Los Angeles a more attractive place for shipping companies to do business.

“It will help everybody,” he said. “That’s beneficial.”

Although the two port deals cap Riordan’s trip, the mayor’s business in Asia is not quite finished. He plans to meet with Taipei city officials regarding a host of sister city affairs today, and he and Nancy Daly Riordan are scheduled to meet with Taiwan’s president. That will mark the fourth time in two weeks that the couple have met with a national leader.