David Copley Retains High-Priced Downtown Influence Peddler

It wasn’t so long ago that David Copley enjoyed free rein at city hall, easily convincing the City’s Planning Department to allow him to combine a cluster of adjacent houses on La Jolla’s Virginia Way into a sprawling residential complex and party venue he called Fox Hole, a takeoff on Fox Hill, his mother Helen’s historic estate on Country Club Drive. A quick call by Herb Klein, then editor in chief of Copley’s Union-Tribune, to whoever was mayor was all that was necessary. But May 3 will mark the second anniversary of Copley’s sale of the U-T to Beverly Hills–based Platinum Equity, forcing the onetime newspaper magnate, now retired at 59, to seek power and influence elsewhere. According to a City lobbying disclosure filed December 30, he’s found it in lawyer Paul Robinson, a high-priced downtown influence peddler who has been retained by Copley Press, Inc., to attain “entitlement and development of the property” located north of Nautilus Street and west of Via Valverde in La Jolla, the approximate neighborhood of Fox Hill.