Hollywood Park Looking for Investors to Operate Card Club : Gambling: City of Inglewood stands to gain $10 million annually in tax revenues from a casino at the racetrack. But major legal barriers still remain.

Hollywood Park Race Track will try to become a landlord rather than a card club owner and operator now that Gov. Pete Wilson has blocked a bid by the Inglewood track to get its own card club license.

Wilson on Monday vetoed a bill that would have allowed the park, a publicly traded corporation, to apply for a card club license. Under California law, only individuals, not corporations with thousands of anonymous stockholders, may hold card club licenses.

Despite the veto, Hollywood Park officials continue to predict that the card club will become a reality. R. D. Hubbard, the park’s chairman and chief executive officer, said efforts now will focus on finding a group of individual investors willing to lease the card club facility being built in the racetrack’s Cary Grant Pavilion.

In a written statement, Hubbard said he expects the park will still “be able to offer . . . a world-class card club when we open in the park’s pavilion building in January.”

Among those hoping Hubbard is correct are officials with the city of Inglewood, which anticipates reaping as much as $10 million annually in tax revenues from a successful card club.

“The revenue from a successful card club is the same whether it’s from Hollywood Park or from someone else,” said Paul D. Eckles, city manager of Inglewood.

The hurdle facing the card club stems from a California law requiring that everyone with a financial interest in such an operation register with the state and undergo an investigation by the state attorney general.

A bill authored by Assemblyman Curtis R. Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood) would have made Hollywood Park the first publicly traded corporation considered for a gambling license. Both houses of the Legislature approved the Tucker bill weeks ago. But Wilson sided with Atty. Gen. Dan Lundgren, who hotly opposes the licensing of clubs owned by unknown stockholders in a state that does not have an investigative commission to oversee gambling on a full-time basis.

Despite the optimism expressed by Hubbard and others, there are still major legal barriers the park must overcome to operate even as a landlord of a card club.

It is unclear, for example, whether Lundgren will regard Hollywood Park--operating as a landlord--as having a financial interest in the club. It is unclear, too, if Hollywood Park would be allowed to put up any of the financing for a group of investors.

The park’s chief financial officer, Michael Finnigan, declined this week to speculate on whether the park had any plans to put up some or all of the financing.

Hubbard’s involvement in the venture also raises legal questions. State law says people who operate types of gambling in other states that are illegal in California cannot obtain card club licenses. Hubbard owns dog racing tracks in other states.

David Puglia, spokesman for Lundgren, said members of the attorney general’s staff expect to meet soon with Hollywood Park representatives.

“We are not in any way opposed to Hollywood Park operating (a card club) within the bounds of the law,” Puglia said Thursday. “This particular proposal (a lease arrangement), we haven’t examined that in detail.”

For Inglewood, the Wilson veto will be devastating if Hollywood Park cannot find another way to obtain a license.

“It certainly is going to be a setback if this doesn’t work out,” City Councilman Curren Price Jr. said.

He added, “We’re in this together,” insisting that he has full confidence in Hollywood Park’s ability to get a card club.

“It’s a real surprise, a real surprise to us,” Eckles said of the veto.

Inglewood voters approved the card club last fall, and the city has millions of dollars--maybe even its fiscal solvency--riding on the tax revenue it is supposed to generate. Also, city officials helped sell the club last year by saying it would create 2,000 jobs.

Caught up in an unrelenting recession and still suffering the economic aftershock of last year’s riots, Inglewood desperately needs new revenue sources, as well as new employment opportunities for its low-income, unskilled residents.

The city managed to balance its budget this year only after layoffs and a series of other financial maneuvers that included adding $4.7 million in anticipated card club revenues.

If the revenues are not forthcoming by next spring, the city will have to make deep budget cuts or be unable to go on paying bills to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 1994.

Meanwhile, some 6,300 people have applied for work at the club. The city has already placed hundreds of the job applicants in job training programs paid for with federal funds.

In all, about $150,000 in federal money, much of which came into the state as a result of the 1992 riots, has been earmarked for training card club workers, said Jan Vogel, the city’s job development and training czar.

People are being trained for such jobs as dealers, security guards and cooks in the casino restaurant, he said. In addition, the city plans to create a three-year chef training program at the casino, Vogel said.