City Seeks New Developer for Metro Center

Had everything gone as planned, the old Henry Wright Intermediate School property across the street from City Hall and the courthouse would have been transformed by now.

The dirt and trees would have been bulldozed and abandoned school buildings would have been razed, and in their places a thriving commercial center with a health spa, movie theater and retail stores would have arisen. Next to it, a restaurant would be bustling with hungry judges, lawyers and employees from Norwalk Superior Court. A six-story office building would be well under construction. The townhouses, looking like something straight out of Cape Cod, would be built and sold, filled with families and professionals who could afford the $130,000 minimum price. Sales taxes of up to $1 million a year would have been flowing into city coffers.

But from the start, almost nothing has gone right. Today, four years after the project was approved, the massive 20-acre, $70-million development known as the Metro Center and Sycamore Village townhouses is still mostly dirt and trees. Only the hotel and about two-thirds of the townhouses have been built.

This week, city officials, tired of waiting and frustrated by the developer’s financial problems, began negotiations to acquire most of the undeveloped portion of the former school site, City Manager Richard Powers said. About 12 of the 20 acres are undeveloped.

London Pacific Investors bought half of the property and was to pay the district $4.8 million for the other half, but could not come up with the money by the March 17 deadline. To get the project back on track, the redevelopment agency is offering to buy the land upon which the office building, restaurant and commercial center were to be built. Powers said the city would find another developer to build the office building, commercial strip, and one or two restaurants.

London Pacific would be given a chance to raise $1 million by July 31 to buy about two acres to build the rest of the townhouses.

The negotiations come on the heels of a redevelopment agency vote to declare London Pacific in default of its redevelopment agreement because it consistently had failed to meet any of the construction deadlines.

“This project has been fraught with a number of problems since its inception,” Powers said. “London Pacific has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines set by the agreement. Not one shovelful of dirt has been turned to build the office or the restaurant or the retail center.”

The city gave London Pacific Investors $3.5 million in redevelopment agency funds to begin developing the land, but no work has been done on the site since last spring because financing for the project has dried up, Powers said.

London Pacific Investors is a limited partnership of developer Jules Walder and Uni-Cal, a subsidiary of Union Federal Savings and Loan, based in Brea. Representatives of Uni-Cal and Walder declined to comment on the project. Walder told the City Council that Uni-Cal has refused to give him financing to complete the project, and that he had been unable to attract other investors, Powers said.

The Metro Center and Sycamore Village development was to include 168 condominiums, a 178-room hotel, a commercial complex, a restaurant and a six-story office building. According to the development agreement signed by the city and London Pacific Investors, the commercial center and the restaurant were to be completed in April, 1990. The condos were to be ready by last fall, and construction of the office building was to begin last January.

Today, 119 of the 168 Sycamore Village townhouses have been completed, but even that has not been without its complications. The Sycamore Village Homeowners Assn. has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that the homes were shoddily built.

The only part of the Metro Center project that has been finished is the hotel, a Sheraton, which opened for business last year, Powers said.

With London Pacific Investors unable to pay the $4.8 million it owes the school district and the city declaring the developer in default, Powers said, city leaders are hoping to assume ownership of the commercial and office building portion of the site. If the city does not step in, Powers said, the developer may be forced to declare bankruptcy, throwing the whole project into a legal quagmire and delaying construction indefinitely.