PHOENIX (By Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic) June 6, 2005 - The Grant Park neighborhood, just south of downtown Phoenix, needs to shake its longtime reputation.

It's a place that's filled with run-down houses and vacant lots. It's a place that could use some land speculation. That's what Phoenix is trying to accomplish by offering low-interest loans for new businesses in poorer neighborhoods. The program started accepting applications this year, and one was filed by Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, her husband, Earl, and a close associate of fraudulent financier Charles Keating.

Mary Rose Wilcox said there is no connection with Keating, that the deal is solely with his longtime personal secretary, Carol Kassick. "There is no business between Keating and Earl and I," she said. "If the perception was that, I don't want that perception."

That perception was enough to trouble the arm of the city that approves the loans. Wilcox said the board let her know her loan may have trouble getting approved because of the Keating tie.

Grant Park doesn't look like an area where you'd expect to find Keating, the man who built the opulent Phoenician resort. He had expensive tastes during his tycoon days in Phoenix during the 1980s, before he became the poster boy for the savings and loan scandal and for buying political influence.

Grant Park is an area close to the Wilcoxes. The couple believe in the Grant Park area. It's the neighborhood where Earl Wilcox grew up and where he and his wife have run a restaurant, El Portal, for eight years. It was one of the first businesses in a while to set up shop there, attracting a lunch crowd that used to studiously avoid the area.

The Wilcoxes hope to develop property directly across from their restaurant. "Commercial, retail and some condos," Wilcox said. "We have not finalized our whole plan yet."

Right now, the property is a fenced-in piece of blacktop. To help get it converted into a new multistory development, the Wilcoxes formed a corporation, Grant Park Enterprises II, on April 5. Joining them, as manager, was Kassick, Keating's secretary.

Wilcox said the couple tapped Kassick because of her experience in administration and contracting. She emphasized that there is no connection with Keating.

"Charlie's our friend," Wilcox said, "but we don't have any business dealings with him." Wilcox said she first met Keating when she was a Phoenix city councilwoman. Keating came before the council often with zoning cases. Wilcox said she hadn't seen him in 10 years or more until he came into El Portal for lunch recently. It was about the time she was starting the corporation with his secretary. A friendship soon sparked.

"He's very well versed in just all kinds of interesting things," she said. "He's always talking to us and other people in the restaurant about how great downtown is developing." But never about business, she said.

Keating does have an interesting past.

His name became part of a nickname for a group of U.S. senators, including Arizona's John McCain and Dennis DeConcini. The Keating Five all received campaign contributions from Keating and were rebuked by the Ethics Committee in 1990 for trying to intervene in investigations into Keating's business practices.

Those investigations eventually led to racketeering and fraud charges against Keating in state and federal courts. Prosecutors said his company pushed worthless bonds onto retirees and created a string of phony land deals to keep his corporation appearing profitable. Keating served prison time after federal and state juries found him guilty. Those convictions were overturned. Before his retrial, Keating struck a deal, pleading guilty to fraud and being sentenced to the four years he had already served. Keating left prison a free man.

But he's not free from the outstanding civil judgments against him. He owes $3 billion to bondholders. Keating has claimed bankruptcy.

Although Wilcox said Keating is not involved in their business, he does occasionally answer the phone number listed on Corporation Commission records for Grant Park Enterprises II.

"I have no interest in talking to you at all," Keating told me over the phone after I introduced myself as a Republic reporter. "Drop dead. You guys are the biggest liars in the country. Goodbye."

Keating might have remembered briefly meeting me on the warm afternoon before the phone call. Driving by the restaurant to look at the property the Wilcoxes wanted to develop, I spotted Keating sitting in the passenger seat of a white Yukon. It was parked along Second Avenue, across from El Portal, which had already closed for the day.

I parked on Grant Street and walked over. As I approached, a tinted back window rolled down, revealing the mustachioed face of Earl Wilcox. "We're talking right now," Earl Wilcox told me before rolling the window back up.

Earl Wilcox did not return a follow-up phone call. Mary Rose Wilcox said that her husband often walks people out to their cars after they eat lunch at El Portal.

The Wilcoxes are reorganizing their corporation. They are cutting ties to Kassick and are going to name a new partner. New paperwork should be filed in a few weeks, Mary Rose Wilcox said.

"When the city said they thought Carol was too close (to Keating), we said, 'OK.' We don't want that perception," she said. "We want this project to succeed."

If it does, it can help shake the longtime reputation of Grant Park. But as the Wilcoxes' new friend Keating can tell them, that's a tough process.