Save The Queen president Jeff Klein is the Queen’s newest paladin–but he brings a litigious history with him

PHOTO by JEFF BONNER

Less than two weeks before the Queen Mary is supposed to get her storybook rescue, a look beneath the shining armor of the man who has cast himself as the ship’s savior reveals a backstory told in a seven-inch stack of lawsuits and tax liens. Reading this stuff before bedtime is enough to give you nightmares about Joe Prevratil.

“None of it is relevant,” insists Jeff Klein, the handsome 57-year-old president and front man for Save The Queen development consortium, shrugging off court documents that chronicle an assortment of business, tax and family travails over the past quarter-century. “If you’ve been in the development business as long as I have and you don’t have litigation, well, you really haven’t been in business.”

So Klein has been in business. The evidence begins with in court documents from his early days in Fresno, leads through his work in Kern and Los Angeles counties, to his later years in Orange County. The trail leads all the way to this year, when Klein was sued—and reached a confidential settlement—in a $1.6 million case, while simultaneously facing three tax liens—one state, two federal—totaling nearly $190,000. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Questions about these records exasperate Klein. He is working furiously against an Oct. 22 deadline to secure the $43 million he bid for the Queen Mary lease two months ago in bankruptcy court. If he doesn’t find the money, Save The Queen will lose the lease to the original $40.1-million bid by O&S Holdings.“

I’m just buried trying to close this thing,” Klein says exhaustedly. “We’re on schedule, but the punch list is eight pages long, single-spaced. The stuff you’re asking about has nothing to do with the Queen Mary projects, and I don’t understand why it is important for the public to know my personal business. Unless this is an attempt to be salacious, in my mind there is no reason to publish any of it. We’re very much looking ahead here.”

Here, too. Because if Klein closes the deal, Save The Queen will have the right to develop the 55 acres of property around Long Beach’s most prominent civic symbol—and operate the Queen until 2064. And as locals try to see 57 years into the Queen Mary’s future, they can’t help using its 40-year history as a guide.

Taxpayers have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the rusty old legend since she pulled into port in 1967, and they have only a rustier, older white elephant to show for their money. They paid $3.45 million to save the ship from a British scrap yard, spent another $100 million over the next 25 years to trick her out to tourists, footed the bill for nonstop subsidies and watched corporations—from Diners Club to the Walt Disney Co.—try and fail to make their investments in the ship pay off. Nobody wants to make another mistake.

At this point, even the slightest whiff of problems is going to set off the stink alarm—even if it’s just leftover reek from the 13-year reign of Prevratil, whose oversight of the Queen Mary amounted to building a financial empire for himself and his family while closing his eyes as the ship sunk into disrepair . . . and finally into bankruptcy.

“You’re right,” Klein acknowledges. “But no one is alleging anything about me—not the city, not the bankruptcy trustee, not the lenders—and believe me, they all put me through the wringer before I could even bid. They went through all this stuff with a fine-toothed comb and found nothing wrong.”

That apparently includes a suit filed against Klein on Feb. 15, 2007, by a man named Anthony Hoover, who was still trying to collect on a judgment of more than $1.6 million from a 1999 suit over some gas stations and car washes that went bad. Interest had been accruing at $442.70 per day. Over the years, Hoover had won other judgments and placed various liens on Klein’s property, but had yet to receive a cent.

In this new suit, Hoover charged that Klein had been hiding his assets in the names of his children and businesses, alleging that those were “mere subterfuges employed . . . for the illegal and fraudulent purpose and general plan of allowing Klein to escape liability.” In other words, Hoover was asserting that Klein had been hiding his assets in the names of his children and businesses to avoid paying up. Klein reached a confidential settlement with Hoover on May 4, 2007, but he adamantly denies he was hiding his assets with his children to avoid Hoover’s suit.

“The fact is, all my assets have been in my kids’ trust since 1994—long before Hoover’s suit,” says Klein. “That’s the way we did our estate planning.

”That aspect of his estate planning is also the reason Klein argues that his various legal predicaments have no bearing on his role with Save The Queen, LLC.“I have no personal ownership—none, zero—in Save The Queen,” he maintains. “I am the face of the project, but the 50 percent of the company that I manage is owned by my kids. Of the $65 million budget, $45 million comes from our senior investor and the other $20 million is equity of friends and family investors. So the entities that have ownership have nothing to do with the stuff you are talking about—no liens, no taxes, no nothing.”

Klein pauses for a moment, and when he resumes his tone has changed.

“This project is run by a business partnership, but I don’t know . . . you want to attach my personality to it, okay,” he says softly. “I’m just saying it’s annoying. It’s a personal irritation. But I’ve always been open, and I won’t dodge questions, ever.”

Klein offers to e-mail The District a copy of a four-page letter that his attorney sent to Long Beach counsel Steven T. Gubner on July 25, 2007. The letter answered 21 questions regarding Klein’s various legal cases.

Long Beach deputy city attorney Charles Parkin acknowledges that Klein passed a rigorous examination from his staff. “The city thoroughly vetted every potential candidate who expressed serious interest in acquiring the Queen Mary,” says Parkin. “I don’t want to go into the personal stuff, though.”

Yet when it comes to the Queen Mary, it’s hard not to get personal. No matter how a British luxury liner and World War II transport came to represent a Pacific Rim seaport, no matter what the ship has cost in money and dignity, the people of Long Beach have come to accept the Queen Mary for what she is—one of them.

Klein is the new keeper of that legacy, a rescuing knight, like it or not. He’s gonna need that armor, and it’d be nice if he keeps it shiny.

Tags: Queen Mary