L.A.’s ‘Golden Mile’ May Sparkle Again
The Golden Mile--that stretch of high-rise condo projects that glittered along L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard between Beverly Hills and Westwood before the economic slump--may soon sparkle again.
The rusting skeleton that was to have been the $165-million, 114-unit Evian at 10490 Wilshire Blvd. has been sold to developers Goldrich & Kest, and activity has also picked up at some of the other towers that have been completed but have been standing nearly empty for up to two years.
No more $11-million penthouses! That’s what Jim Retz of Sotheby Parke Bernet International Realty Corp. says about the 67-unit Wilshire House at 10601 Wilshire Blvd., which his firm started marketing with Jon Douglas Co. in November. That asking price was “unrealistic,” he said.
The remaining penthouse is now priced at $5.3 million--still substantial. “But that is the only unit over $2 million,” he added. (The unsold 56 units start at $460,000.) Wilshire House was virtually completed in November, 1982.
And how about the Diplomat, the $50-million, 19-story tower finished in June, 1983? Only a handful of its 64 units were sold in more than a year, but two months ago, the project was taken over by a new partnership led by Chase Manhattan Bank with Asher Dann as listing broker. Since then, eight more units have been sold.
Mike Reyes of Urban Pacific Equities (which sold its interest in the 114-unit Mirabella at 10440 Wilshire Blvd. 2 1/2 years ago but has kept an eye on the Wilshire corridor with Reyes residing at the Mirabella) said that although only about a third of the units at the Mirabella have been sold, traffic is up, and units in many of the towers that haven’t been sold are now being leased. “There are also some new apartment buildings on the drawing boards for the area,” he added.
Will the Evian be turned into apartments? Said Goldrich: “We just acquired it through bankruptcy, and there are certain restrictions, so we don’t know what our plans are yet.” Singer Pat Boone and his wife, Shirley, bought a site in George MacLean’s 780-acre ranch enclave in Homeland between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, and the couple is now building an 8,000-square-foot home expected to be completed in June.
The Boones have been living in Beverly Hills. Why move to the boondocks? It’s one of the few places near Los Angeles where people can build in a security-gated environment on sizable lots (5 to 14 acres each), says Beverly Hills real estate broker Jack Hupp.
Hupp has known MacLean, who was a portrait artist before becoming an architect/contractor/developer, for more than 30 years. “One of the first houses he built was for D. K. Ludwig, one of the richest men in the world,” Hupp said. Since then, Hupp has built and designed homes for Elizabeth Taylor, Dean Martin, Robert Stack and Merle Oberon.
MacLean had a dream for a long time of developing a plush, private ranch community, and after a five-year search, he found the property where the Boones are building atop the Lakeview Mountains at an elevation of 2,600 feet. Hillside Ranch--an old Sonoma County dude ranch frequented in the ‘40s and ‘50s by many motion picture celebrities--has been sold for $4 million to a group of Southern Californian business people for recreational development.
The 6,000 acres of grazing and timber land is expected to be turned into a resort time-share campground and other uses compatible with the new Lake Sonoma, which Richard L. Burns, the Rolling Hills Estates broker who handled the sale, says will be “one of the finest bass fishing lakes in California.”
“It’s filling now,” Burns said of the lake, which has an estimated 70 miles of shoreline and could be ready for public use as early as this summer. “The 3,000-foot-long dam was just completed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.” The lake is about 10 miles northwest of Healdsburg.
“And several hotel and motel chains are developing operations there now in anticipation of the activity this lake will create,” Burns added.
