Drexel suitor likes breaking ground

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Angelo Tsakopoulos has become wealthy configuring the landscape of California's capital, developing communities of thousands of homes. Few people since the gold rush have had more influence on reshaping the region.

But before the 71-year-old developer departs the planet, he wants to do something really big: attract a private university to this expanding region of 2.2 million people, which has few such institutions. He and his partners are willing to donate nearly two square miles of land north of Sacramento to entice the right school.

"We are the capital of the seventh-largest economy in the world," Tsakopoulos said in an interview at his office this week. "We have everything here. We have great water. And we have open land. . . . We need sharp minds to keep things going, to do research, so our people will live better."

Tsakopoulos believes he has found the right school in Drexel University, which has grown dramatically in the last decade under president Constantine Papadakis. Papadakis visited community leaders here two weeks ago to promote the idea of building a western campus of Drexel, which he sees as a "great opportunity" to expand into a growing market.

Today, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, the developer's son, who is managing the university project, will visit the Philadelphia campus for the first time. "I really am very hopeful about this partnership," he said.

Drexel would be joining forces with one of northern California's most ambitious clans, whose developments in the Central Valley's farmlands have provided homes to thousands, but also created queasiness among opponents of urban sprawl.

An immigrant from Greece at age 15, Tsakopoulos (pronounced Cha-KOP-puh-loss) embodies the rags-to-riches American dream. He is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he and his children sit on the boards of universities and museums in recognition of their philanthropy.

Compact, tanned and fit, he exudes a courtliness rooted in his appreciation of Hellenic culture. After immigrating, he settled with an uncle on a farm south of Sacramento. Before he finished his studies at what is now California State University, Sacramento, he was introduced to real estate and started his first subdivision.

Old World charm and enthusiasm have served Tsakopoulos well. He is modest about his accomplishments, and quick to credit others for inspiration.

But when salesmanship fails, he and his family have been unafraid to exert political and financial muscle to get things done.

They are huge Democratic Party supporters. During the Clinton presidency, Tsakopoulos was among the big rollers invited to spend a night at the White House. Kyriakos Tsakopoulos was a delegate to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Last year, the family donated millions of dollars to support a Democratic challenger to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Critics say Tsakopoulos has the shrewd ability to buy farms and then influence local governments to approve development, accelerating sprawl. With local government support in hand, Tsakopoulos is able to exert more pressure on state and federal environmental regulators to approve his projects with minimal mitigation, said Terry Davis, coordinator of the regional Sierra Club chapter.

"It's a disturbing pattern. He expands aggressively," Davis said.

But Tsakopoulos said that many of his projects were aimed at areas where development was practically inevitable, and that he acted responsibly.

"The environmental community accuses me of taking farms and turning them into houses, and what a rotten guy I am for doing that," he said. "They should know, and they do know, that most of the projects we have done were approved by others. They could not just bring them together, and we took them over."

One project that he started from scratch was Laguna West, a 3,300-unit community built in the 1990s in Elk Grove, south of Sacramento. The developers designed the community to be pedestrian friendly - the houses had porches and hidden garages. "We got international acclaim for trying to do smart growth years ago when nobody was talking about smart growth," Tsakopoulos said.

Even the Sierra Club's Davis conceded that Laguna West was "cutting edge at its time."

Nevertheless, Davis said that he had noted another pattern in Tsakopoulos' efforts, that even the proposals branded as purely philanthropic have a business purpose.

Davis said the developer's offers of land for public projects - hospitals, schools, a center for stem-cell research - were frequently sweeteners linked to approval for projects that would earn him millions.

"His altruism always seems to be good for his personal business interests as well," Davis said.

Such is the case in Roseville, the Placer County community about 17 miles northeast of Sacramento where Tsakopoulos and several partners have offered to give 1,136 acres to build a university. Roseville's population has grown 66 percent in 10 years to nearly 105,000.

The university tract is on agricultural grasslands outside city limits. Six hundred acres would be used for the campus, and 536 acres would be sold to builders to finance construction of the campus. The developers added the extra acreage after prospective colleges said they needed more than land to build an institution.

The donated land is surrounded by several thousand acres of Tsakopoulos-controlled farmland that would will increase enormously in value if the university project is approved.

Environmental groups and some local officials say nobody is opposed to a university. But they are troubled by the loss of open space.

"It's a provocative location," said Robert Weygandt, one of five Placer County supervisors in the staunchly Republican county whose approval a university would require.

Weygandt expressed skepticism five years ago when Tsakopoulos selected its first choice to build the university: De la Salle Christian Brothers, a Catholic order whose local district operates St. Mary's College of California in the Bay Area.

But the Christian Brothers pulled out in 2005, complaining about the slow regulatory process.

Without a partner, the developers continued to push for zoning approval. At the urging of Tsakopoulos, the Placer County supervisors put a nonbinding question on the ballot in 2005 seeking public opinion about the university site. More than 60 percent of the voters approved.

But Weygandt publicly remained skeptical. He experienced the Tsakopoulos wrath the next year when he ran for reelection in the Republican primary.

Angelo and Kyriakos Tsakopoulos spent more than $200,000 to finance an opposing candidate. Kyriakos appeared in TV ads challenging Weygandt's commitment to education.

"I would describe their behavior as ruthless," said Weygandt, who got more than 70 percent of the vote.

Kyriakos Tsakopoulos sidestepped a question about the wisdom of his actions.

"We're not looking backward. We're looking forward, and we think the future is very bright," he said.

"We hope that people don't lose sight of the fact that what we're proposing will result in an enormous higher-education opportunity for the future of our kids rather than focus on being cynical and focus on how it might benefit the donors," he said. "I think it is also very important on how this will benefit the community."

Weygandt said that Drexel seemed like a fine university, but that he wanted a firm commitment before approving any zoning changes. "There has to be an extremely good reason to develop in this area," he said.

The Tsakopoulos family appears to have been largely unharmed by its political venture.

"I like the concept of having higher education in our area," said Susan Goto, a Roseville school board member who supports the project. "Right now, we have to send our children out of the area. Having a university here would be a feather in our cap."

She also remains impressed by Tsakopoulos.

"He is a gigantic person. He has a lot of plans. He's very powerful, is all I can say. I think he has done a lot of good for communities."

As with his philanthropic efforts, Tsakopoulos maintained that his political involvement was motivated by a desire to improve the community rather than to enhance his business.

"We get involved to make sure enlightened human beings are our leaders and also human beings that will follow the vision of our founding fathers, that the rule of law is the critical thing," he said.

At Angelo Tsakopoulos' office in Sacramento, where the wall is covered in a patchwork of maps and aerial photos and where golf balls rest on the floor against the wall, the patriarch was dressed in a dark suit. He was attending a funeral that day.

"I'm 71 years old," he said. "How many summers do I have left? . . . Maybe it's because of the age - in the last few months, I've had half a dozen friends die. You go to their deathbed and say goodbye. We never talk about money. What do we talk about? The good times we have, the beautiful country we have, the children, the nice things."

There is an urgency to get the Drexel project moving. Once it's going, he hopes a dozen more universities move in.

"Why shouldn't we be the Athens of the Pacific Rim?" he said.

Drexel's Papadakis, a friend who said he had known Tsakopoulos for a decade in the Greek American community, told him that the Philadelphia region had more than 80 private colleges, many built during an era when the city's industrial economy was growing dramatically. Of course, there was no expectation then that one day the population of students would shrink, causing administrators to consider moving westward in pursuit of the migration.

"Now we want to be like the Philadelphia of the west," Tsakopoulos said.