Just one look is all it took

Dave Brooks

Joe O’Connor and his now-defunct company Community Parks Foundation

won a nearly $1-million contract with Huntington Beach by meeting one

simple qualification -- he applied for the job.

The Salem, Ore. contractor at the center of Sports Complex

controversy was the only person to submit an application to build

phase two of the project, which included batting cages, a soccer

arena and roller hockey rinks, retired Community Services Director

Ron Hagan said.

Hagan, who helped facilitate the project for the city, said

complicated financing requirements mandated that only a contractor

with nonprofit status be given the job.

“When we put out a request for proposal, Community Parks

Foundation was the only group that applied,” Hagan said Thursday at

his Corona del Mar home.

Community Parks Foundation, however, was not actually a registered

nonprofit, nor were the six other dissolved corporations that

O’Connor had listed on the Oregon Business Registry.

O’Connor’s qualifications are coming under increasing scrutiny as

Huntington Beach city attorneys try to determine the truth about the

self-proclaimed soccer visionary. The city is suing O’Connor, who

abandoned the sports complex project he was paid $950,000 to build.

The city may now have an opportunity to learn where their money

was spent. O’Connor is required to attend an Aug. 31 hearing in

Oregon to disclose his assets after two years on the lam from a

soccer club owner in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Chris Keenan hired O’Connor to build a pavilion, but said he

became worried when O’Connor stopped returning his phone calls and

failed to pay his subcontractors. O’Connor went back to Oregon, and

Keenan filed a lawsuit, first in Michigan, and then again in Oregon,

where he eventually secured a felony warrant for the contractor’s

arrest. O’Connor, who once worked as an attorney, never showed up for

any of his hearings.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Department reported O’Connor turned

himself in on Aug 6. but now say that he was actually arrested by

police at his home. Deputy Kevin Rau said he misread a computer

report on O’Connor’s detainment.

But before Surf City can recover any of its money, it will have to

wait behind Keenan, who says that O’Connor owes him $800,000 on the

botched Kalamazoo deal. Ironically, Huntington Beach was expecting to

save money by hiring O’Connor.

By bringing a tax-exempt contractor on the job, Hagan said the

city hoped to lock in special financing with just 4% interest.

“Not having a nonprofit would have jeopardized the project and

gotten it financed at 7% or 8%,” he said.

O’Connor presented the project as a testing ground for his indoor

pavilion idea and brought on several other vendors who would work on

the project to boost their name recognition. He told Hagan that he

had worked on several pavilions in Mexico and Ireland, but never to

the scale of what was planned for Huntington Beach.

“They didn’t have a track record, but they had a good proposal and

it sounded good,” Hagan said.

O’Connor never told Hagan about the fiasco in Kalamazoo or two

other disastrous projects in the late 90’s in Salem and Yakima,

Wash., both of which were plagued with regulatory and financial

difficulties. The Salem project, known as the Sundome Soccer

Pavilion, eventually fell over in a windstorm.

City officials are also looking into the process used to award

bids to ensure contractors are checked out thoroughly, Assistant City

Administrator Bill Workman said. He plans to meeting with Community

Services Director Jim Engle to discuss problems and consider

implementing mandatory background checks and pre-employment

screenings, he said.