When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti travels to Asia later this month, he’ll meet with government officials and business leaders to market the City of Angels, aiming to increase tourism and encourage companies to locate and invest here.

But rather than go with promises and platitudes, Garcetti will be armed with a brochure that includes a list of multimillion-dollar real estate investment opportunities being offered by clients of Ernst & Young.

That has raised questions both about the propriety of being seen as advancing the interests of a single firm as well as the signal it could send to potential investors.

“Why did he go to Ernst & Young and not everybody else?” said Bob Stern, former president of the now-defunct Center for Governmental Studies. “A lot of these trips are goodwill trips where nothing really happens, so obviously Garcetti wants something to happen. The issue is: Why these projects over others?”

Greg Karns, a partner at Century City law firm Cox Castle & Nicholson who manages the firm’s Pacific Rim group, said concerns go deeper than just who was allowed to hand-pick specific real estate opportunities. In China, for example, where Garcetti will spend the bulk of his time, having the mayor tout specific opportunities could be perceived by investors as an endorsement or an assurance that the projects will go through the city’s approval process unhindered.

“In a place where government involvement in development is much different than here, I think it may create a lot of interest that will be misguided once they realize that these aren’t government-sanctioned projects,” he said.

Not everyone thought bringing specific opportunities on the trip was a bad idea – if done right.

“It’s probably a good idea to have tangible projects that investors and even government representatives can look at,” said Larry Kosmont, chief executive of downtown L.A. economic development consultancy Kosmont Cos. “The issue is, you have to do it in a way so you don’t cross the line between representing private projects at the expense of excluding other private projects.”

C.Y. Wang, an L.A.-based partner and Americas area leader for EY’s China Overseas Investment Network team said the firm had received no special benefits.

“We didn’t get any preferential treatment,” he said “The mayor’s office did reach out to others but they didn’t bring anything to the table. We responded to a call for help, and we were the only ones.”

Indeed, Lew Horne, president of the greater Los Angeles and Orange County region for CBRE Group Inc., said he was not concerned about EY’s involvement. A former chairman of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., Horne will travel with the mayor on the China leg of the trip.

“I’m no stranger to what’s available in Los Angeles. I will be with the mayor and the group that’s there, and I’ll be bringing a lot more than four opportunities,” he said. “Frankly, to be posting sites on a brochure, to me that’s not the way you market these kinds of properties. (Investors) have got to buy into Los Angeles, and once they do, we’ll sell them the sites.”

Vicki Curry, a spokeswoman for the mayor who will be traveling with him, did not respond directly to requests for comment on the conflict issue.

“Mayor Garcetti is focused on creating jobs in Los Angeles by promoting our companies abroad and encouraging international companies to locate and invest in L.A.,” she wrote in an email, “and that’s evident in the broad range of companies we are showcasing in the brochure, at events, in meetings, and in person with the members of our business delegation.”

Sara Lo, a senior manager at EY and part of the firm’s China Overseas Investment Network team, said the Mayor’s Office came to EY because the firm has built a strong relationship with Garcetti since he took office and has a robust presence in China.

The 12-day trip, scheduled to begin Nov. 15, will include stops in China, South Korea and Japan. Garcetti is scheduled to meet with dozens of business and government leaders in China, including Wang Jianlin, chief executive of Wanda Dalian Group, which recently acquired the Robinsons-May site in Beverly Hills, and Zhang Yuliang, chairman of Greenland Group, which is developing the $1 billion Metropolis site downtown. Greenland is an EY client.

“During prior trips with Mayor (Antonio) Villaraigosa, they’d talk about how great Los Angeles is, but they didn’t have anything to showcase,” Lo said. “As they were thinking about how to improve these trips, they said it probably makes sense to showcase opportunities that are available today.”

Beyond borders

Not all of the four off-market real estate opportunities the firm came up with – all large-scale private development projects – are in the city. In addition to sites in downtown, West Los Angeles and the West San Fernando Valley, the package includes a Long Beach property. Each of the sites, the brochure says, could support project costs ranging from $250 million to several billion dollars. Most are mixed-use developments anticipated to include hotel, residential and retail space.

Lo said the mayor’s inclusion of specific investment opportunities in marketing materials shouldn’t be considered an endorsement. In fact, she said, the Mayor’s Office doesn’t know what the projects are, beyond vague bullet-point descriptions published in the brochure. None is identified by address or owner.

“Any inquiries people have, the Mayor’s Office is referring directly to EY,” she said. “They feel confident in our partnership, but they’re not making any assurances about these projects.”

The mayor will spend the first week or so in China, then spend three days in South Korea, and finally end the trip with a day in Japan.

Wang and Clara Tang, a senior manager at EY, will travel through China with the mayor and a delegation of L.A. business leaders. EY staff won’t accompany Garcetti to South Korea or Japan.

While the sites being marketed through EY were not specifically identified, at least two of the four projects were recognizable to people with knowledge of the L.A. real estate development scene.

Bill Townsend, president of Long Beach real estate firm INCO Commercial, said the Long Beach site, described in the brochure as a “large redevelopment site on the Pacific Coast Highway with access to beach, highways and downtown area,” reads as a dead ringer for the 11-acre Seaport Marina Hotel site at 6400 E. Pacific Coast Highway.

The brochure says the site was a “major mixed-use property with ability to include residential, hotel and retails space,” and had an “estimated equity requirement of approximately $75 million to $125 million.”

That site is owned by a unit of Miami-based homebuilder Lennar Corp. A call seeking comment was not returned.

Similarly, the West Valley project listed, described as being a “significant multibillion-dollar mixed-use development project” located “adjacent to Los Angeles transit station,” could describe the 32-acre Rocketdyne site, part of the Warner Center master plan at the terminus of the Metro Orange Line bus route in Woodland Hills.

That site, the brochure said, had a value of between $100 million and $200 million “as-is, as-entitled land only.” It is owned by a unit of United Technologies Corp. Calls seeking comment from the company were not returned.

Lo declined to disclose the identity of the investment opportunities and would not confirm speculation about which were included in the package the mayor was taking on the trip.

The other two – a “Class A high-rise residential tower with 500 units” in downtown and a mixed-use site “fully entitled and anticipated to include hotel, residential and retail space” in “the Beverly Hills-West Hollywood area” – are more ambiguous. Both carried an estimated equity requirement of between $75 million and $100 million.