Deadline Passes, so Port Officials Meet With 2nd Todd Shipyards Suitor

The bidding war for the old Todd Shipyards site in San Pedro raged anew Wednesday as one suitor pledged to keep fighting for the property and another held talks with port officials about reopening the yard for ship repairs.

Although Los Angeles Shipyards Corp. did not meet a 5 p.m. deadline for posting a $250,000 non-refundable deposit with the Los Angeles Harbor Department, LAS officials said they will continue to pursue their $20-million plan to start up a new shipyard at the site.

“We are continuing with our maximum effort to sign a lease, occupy the yard and start building ships,” said LAS spokesman John Chernesky.

At the same time, however, port officials said the company’s decision not to post the deposit by Wednesday meant the port would entertain other proposals for the site. And to prove their point, port officials held talks Wednesday afternoon with officials of Los Angeles-Long Beach Shipyards Corp. That company, like LAS, is a fledgling venture hoping to win a port lease for the property.

Wednesday’s developments followed a contentious week of public and private meetings between port and LAS officials, who have been in exclusive negotiations since last November over the 110-acre site.

Those negotiations officially ended Monday when the Harbor Commission, in a special meeting, said it would no longer wait for LAS to prove its financial wherewithal. To do otherwise, the commission said, would prevent the port from talking with others about the site.

“Part of our responsibility is to look at the viability of any group that comes to us,” said commission President Ronald Lushing, visibly angered by LAS’ requests for more time to post the deposit and retain exclusive negotiating rights.

“To set the record straight, we gave them a 90-day period for negotiations with a condition that there be a deposit” posted during the period, Lushing said. “If the group was not willing to go forward on that basis, they should have said something” when talks began, he said. The negotiations began Nov. 28.

But LAS officials--joined at the port meeting Monday by a phalanx of attorneys, accountants and potential investors--countered that the company was unwilling to post the deposit before reviewing a proposed lease for the property. Further, they and one of the investors accused the port of bad faith bargaining by halting talks before an original March 1 deadline for reaching an agreement.

Harbor officials are “either amateurs not qualified to negotiate or they are negotiating in bad faith. And they are not amateurs,” said Roy Allenstein, who is heading a group of prospective investors in the company. Those potential investors, it was learned Wednesday, include former Harbor Commissioner Fred Heim.

Since negotiations between the port and the company began to stall last week, LAS officials have charged that the Harbor Department was pursuing a “hidden agenda” for the property, intending to use it for a container terminal or something other than a shipyard.

Although port officials have repeatedly denied that claim, several local union leaders on Monday urged the Harbor Commission to keep the site for shipbuilding--recalling how thousands of jobs were lost when Todd closed operations in 1989.

“There used to be a lot of industries in the harbor where a guy could go to work . . . and provide for his family,” said Rene Herrera, president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, Local 13.

Today, Herrera said, many former Todd workers are hoping to return to employment. “All they want to do is work. They want to work where they grew up,” he said. “And they have a right to do that.”

Herrera’s remarks were echoed by representatives of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, who have been in talks with both LAS and Los Angeles-Long Beach Shipyard officials about returning the shipyard to operations.

Late Wednesday, however, leaders of the local shipbuilders’ union said they would be in talks only with the Los Angeles-Long Beach officials, convinced that LAS cannot deliver a shipyard. “We are no longer convinced that LAS has a viable proposal,” said the union’s Kevin Sullivan.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-Long Beach officials pushed their plan on Wednesday for a less-ambitious proposal than the one advanced by LAS.

Under the Los Angeles-Long Beach proposal, only about half of the Todd site would be used, and its workes would repair, not build, ships. Like LAS, however, Los Angeles-Long Beach officials contend their proposal would employ an estimated 2,000 workers within two years.

“They (LAS officials) have had their time on stage and the curtain is down,” said Stuart Platt, a retired admiral leading the Los Angeles-Long Beach proposal. “Now it’s our turn.”