F.A. Schnell; Mayor Bradley’s Economic Projects Chief
Frederick A. Schnell, veteran insurance executive and charitable fund-raiser who served the late Mayor Tom Bradley’s administration for nearly two decades as economic development chief, has died at the age of 91.
Schnell, who spearheaded such projects as expanding the Los Angeles Convention Center and the city’s wholesale produce and flower markets, died Sunday in his Los Angeles home, said his son, Richard Schnell.
Early in the mayor’s first term, Bradley stressed the importance of tapping business to assist with government’s problems. On Oct. 9, 1973, in what he described as “a historic step for this city,” Bradley introduced Schnell at a City Hall news conference, appointing him to the new post of executive consultant for economic development.
Throughout 1974, Prudential Insurance Co. paid Schnell’s salary and placed him “on loan” to the city. At the time, Schnell was senior vice president in charge of Prudential’s 13-state Western operation.
But in 1975, Schnell, then 65, left the insurance company to work officially in Bradley’s office as executive assistant to the mayor for economic development, remaining throughout the five-term mayor’s tenure.
“It’s not Fred Schnell,” the businessman told The Times shortly after moving into City Hall. “It’s the idea of having someone here in City Hall with entree to the business community. To be effective, it needs to be someone who comes from the top of an organization.
“I want to be a part of this city,” he said. “I love it.”
Schnell, who clearly had the top-echelon background, served as liaison between local government and business, working to keep companies from leaving town and to attract new ones.
“The primary thrust of what we want to do is provide more jobs for the citizens of Los Angeles,” he said at the time of his appointment.
Over the years, Schnell worked to create such projects as the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Regional Shopping Center, the Vermont-Slauson Community Shopping Center and similar complexes in Pacoima and Boyle Heights, and to foster commercial revitalization in Reseda, Van Nuys, Beverly-Fairfax, Hollywood, Westchester and San Pedro. He worked to keep the tuna industry in Los Angeles and to convert Fort MacArthur to local public use.
A former chairman of area fund-raising campaigns for the Red Cross and the United Crusade, Schnell, a Republican, also became a political fund-raiser for Bradley, a Democrat.
A native of Canton, Ill., Schnell graduated from the University of Illinois in 1932 and returned home to sell insurance for Penn Mutual at the height of the Depression. He served in the Navy as an air combat intelligence officer during World War II.
Graduating from the American College of Life Underwriters, Schnell was elected president of the Illinois State Assn. of Life Underwriters. He won the same post in California in 1951 after Penn moved him to Los Angeles.
Schnell joined Prudential in 1952, serving in its Newark, N.J., home office and transferring to Los Angeles in 1955. He headed the company’s Western states division from 1967 to 1974.
Among Schnell’s other civic and charitable endeavors, he served on the boards of the California and Los Angeles chambers of commerce, the Los Angeles County section of Boy Scouts of America, the Urban Coalition, the Greater Los Angeles Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, the World Trade Center Assn. and Orthopaedic Hospital.
A widower, Schnell is survived by his son, Richard, and two daughters, Barbara and Deborah.
A memorial service is scheduled at 3 p.m. Monday at the Los Angeles Country Club.
