Key Player in Bid for Santa Ana Project Has Left Trail of Controversy

H. Thomas Felvey knows how to pitch a World Trade Center project, but pulling one off is another matter.

Felvey, a Laguna Niguel architect, has played a key role in putting together a project team to develop a proposed World Trade Center complex in downtown Santa Ana.

Felvey claims his work is essentially finished, and other participants acknowledge that they have been careful to limit his involvement in the project.

Their cautiousness reflects concern about Felvey’s past business dealings, including an aborted effort to build a similar World Trade Center in Pomona, according to a representative of the Orange County group.

That two-year effort embittered Pomona city officials and prompted former associates to head for court.

Felvey’s past also includes a trail of unpaid debts, tax liens and unfinished deals.

Since 1977, for instance, he has failed to respond to 18 lawsuits filed against him and three corporations he heads. Former business associates claim in the suits that he walked out on deals and left them unpaid. Those suits resulted in default judgments totaling more than $270,000, but some of the plaintiffs said they doubt that they will ever collect what is due them. At least two other lawsuits are pending against him.

Felvey, 42, would not comment on his past business activities or discuss details of the Pomona project. He even refused to acknowledge any relationship with Urban Equities, his Laguna Niguel consulting firm.

He would say only that he believed the Pomona project was still viable and that he has been “talking to everybody” about trying to get it done, even though that city has ended its exclusive arrangement with him to develop a World Trade Center there.

He also played down the extent of his role with the Orange County world trade group, which wants to build a $100-million hotel-office complex devoted to world trade activities in downtown Santa Ana.

“I only worked for about four months as a consultant, and I didn’t take any payment because I want to further the cause,” Felvey said. “I’m a volunteer to the association. I have no further role in this project. My job’s done.”

Felvey said he merely gave the group “some ideas” to help them get a trade center built.

But others say his role was much more involved.

The staff at the Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency, which is seeking bids to develop the 5-acre parcel, consider him to be the prime mover behind a statement of qualifications filed on behalf of a team of developers involved in the project.

“It’s his submission,” said Josephine La Quay, an agency project manager.

Susan T. Lentz, executive director of the World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County, acknowledged that Felvey has played a pivotal role in the project.

“Tom’s done everything he said he was going to do, and he’s done a very good job,” Lentz said. “We wouldn’t have got as far as we have without him. He has been the spark.”

Though Felvey claimed that he worked only four months on the project, La Quay said he represented the association’s interests in talks with the city at least a year ago. Lentz said he has worked with her group on a volunteer basis for the past six months.

La Quay and other Santa Ana city officials said that regardless of Felvey’s past business history, his involvement would have no adverse effect on the association’s effort to win the right to develop the downtown site.

Richard J. Schwarzstein, a Newport Beach lawyer who co-founded the Orange County association 12 years ago, said Felvey is “very knowledgeable about the World Trade Center concept” and helped the association by assembling the development team.

“He wasn’t going to be the developer for us anyhow,” Schwarzstein said, “so it was a pleasure to work with him.”

Association members “had read all the stories” about Felvey’s unsuccessful efforts to develop a World Trade Center in Pomona, Lentz said. As a result, she said that the Orange County association elected to have Felvey serve as a consultant only.

“That’s why the agreement was predicated the way it was,” she added.

Others who have crossed Felvey’s path are less charitable in their assessments.

“Mr. Felvey’s involvement is like starting the project with a huge iron ball chained around your neck,” said Robert Clayton, whose consulting firm, R & R Clayton, worked on the Pomona World Trade Center and another Felvey project.

“Mr. Felvey’s credibility in the financial world is very slim,” Clayton said. “A whole number of people in Southern California have the skills to develop a project of that nature. . . . Mr. Felvey would be the last person I’d look for.”

Clayton said Felvey is best suited to be a promoter, not a developer.

“I think he makes a very good initial impression,” Clayton said. “I think that in the case of Pomona, for example, he was able to appear credible to the city. He has a friendly sort of outgoing manner that seems to work well. But when it got to the nitty-gritty of negotiations, he didn’t seem to understand a lot of the details.”

Pomona Mayor Donna Smith offered a similar assessment of Felvey’s strengths.

“I would say that he’s good at telling stories and trying to make those stories come true,” Smith said. “Mr. Felvey was a little ambitious and he did get ahead of everyone a few times. . . . (But) I can’t put all the blame (for the Pomona project’s failure) on Mr. Felvey. I wish him a lot of luck. Maybe a consultant’s position would be better for him.”

Clayton is seeking a default judgment in a lawsuit he filed to collect $22,000 in fees he claims that Felvey owes him. “I don’t expect that we’ll ever collect any money from him,” said Clayton’s lawyer, Timothy White of Costa Mesa.

Another unhappy litigant is Paul Singer Flooring of Sherman Oaks, which received a default judgment in 1985 for $17,000 in unpaid bills against one of Felvey’s former firms, Corporate Planning and Research.

“We haven’t gotten a quarter,” said Roger Licht, attorney for the flooring company. “He’s sworn under penalty of perjury that he had no assets of any kind.”

Felvey’s prior work has involved mainly interior design on restoration projects, former associates said. He also worked in New York for the Chicago architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a firm he persuaded to participate in the Santa Ana World Trade Center project.

He has had several successful projects to his credit, but former associates say he had never tackled anything of the magnitude of a World Trade Center when he got involved with the Pomona project in 1984.

Within a year, he had signed an exclusive agreement with the city to develop a $96-million project that would include a 12-story office building, a 260-room hotel with convention facilities, museums, theaters, and 50 retail stores and restaurants on 4.6 acres in downtown Pomona.

In early 1987, the Pomona City Council voted to issue $100 million in revenue bonds to finance construction.

When the council subsequently learned of Felvey’s numerous lawsuits, it insisted that he find a reputable development partner.

Felvey recruited Birtcher Construction to participate in the project. But the Laguna Niguel firm later backed out of the deal, telling the city in November that the project was “too ambitious and complex.”

Pomona officials said Felvey contacted them only occasionally after information about his legal problems surfaced.

They said they last heard from him on April 29, when they received a Telex from him requesting a four-month extension of a May 1 deadline to line up collateral for the bonds and commitments from tenants for the complex. The city decided to let the deadline pass and to end the exclusive relationship with Felvey.

With the expiration of Felvey’s agreement with the city, Mayor Smith said the city can now entertain other offers.

“We were very happy to see the agreement die, which meant we were no longer dealing with Mr. Felvey,” Smith said. “We are happy that Mr. Felvey is no longer involved in this project or with any project in the city of Pomona.”