Richie Leases Store to Fashion House
Lionel Richie has leased the Beverly Hills store he bought a year ago in July to the fashion line by the unusual name: (ixi:z).
The company plans to open its gallery there in mid-October after about $500,000 in remodeling, which will include three distinct areas for (ixi:z) formal and daily wear and the classic styles of the 100-year-old British clothier, Kent & Curwen.
The gallery will also have a bar offering one of the most extensive collections of international bottled drinking waters in the United States.
The store, at 474 N. Rodeo Drive, is 5,775 square feet in size, including a mezzanine.
Before Richie bought it, the building was known as the Doubleday Bookstore. Earlier, it was familiar as Martindale’s, a bookstore that was also a meeting place of movie industry literati. Some of the biggest stars had charge accounts there.
The Grammy-winning singer/songwriter bought it for $3.5 million from the estate of Walter and Mary Virginia Martindale, who were killed in a plane crash in June, 1983. Walter Martindale founded the store in 1929. He sold the business to Doubleday in 1974, but continued to own the real estate.
Richie also owns an office building at 145 S. Rodeo Drive, next to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Diane Freis, an internationally known dress designing and manufacturing company, is relocating its headquarters from Hong Kong to Beverly Hills.
That per Phyllis Lake of Grubb & Ellis, who also said that the Freis firm purchased for its headquarters an unoccupied retail building at 450 N. Camden Drive from Camden Shores Properties.
The 5,500-square-foot structure will be expanded and refurbished into a showroom, boutique, executive offices and warehouse. Occupancy is expected in October.
Freis established her first boutique eight years ago in Hong Kong, where the company has a 25,000-square-foot factory that employs 200 people. The firm does business in 14 foreign countries and already maintains offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and Brisbane, Australia.
Piazza del Sol, a Sunset Strip landmark built in 1927 at 8439 Sunset Blvd. as the Hacienda Arms Apartments, has been spruced up, and GHI Architects/Planners/In-terior Designers of San Francisco earned the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s Certificate of Commendation as a result.
The building was owned briefly a few years ago by rock singer Rod Stewart, but Westcap Financial Group of San Francisco bought it in 1983 and rehabbed it, turning it into a luxury office building. The chamber called it “a model of commercial property.”
The Los Angeles Conservancy granted a facade easement to permanently protect its classic exterior, and the building also has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
When built, the structure housed many of Hollywood’s early stars, and now an estimated 75% of the building is occupied by film, TV and fashion industry tenants.
A newer landmark, this time in Pacific Palisades, has also gone Hollywood.
Known when built six years ago at 17351 Sunset Blvd., at Pacific Coast Highway, as the Sunset Pacific Building, it is now being called the Fox Entertainment Centre. Its newest owners, J. Paul Fox and Gary Polizzi, changed the name to reflect the tenants who are taking occupancy this summer.
Among them: Tom Hulett and his Concerts West Organization and Tom Hulett & Associates, his management wing representing the Beach Boys.
Also, Rock Hard Attractions, which just opened “New York,” a dance club open from 10:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. at 9th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.
Besides the restaurant J. Paul’s (scheduled to open in late fall), other tenants are expected to include a casting agency, film production corporation and a limousine service.
Fox also sees the building as contributing to the L. A. Chamber of Commerce’s “Shoot L. A.” campaign. The Cannon film “Dutch Treat” was filmed there in June, and the Marquis Productions movie, “Under the Gun,” is tentatively planned to be shot there on Sept. 8 and 9.
Fox and Polizzi bought the six-story, terraced, concrete structure--which now sports a lavender and pink neon sign--about a year ago, but it’s taken this long to get it ready for occupancy. Until now, the interior was unfinished. Though owned by two other developers who had put about $10 million into the building, the structure had gone into foreclosure before Fox and Polizzi bought it.
Carolco Pictures Inc., probably best known for its films “First Blood” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” both starring Sylvester Stallone, has purchased a new, 17-story building at 8800 Sunset Blvd.
The 70,000-square-foot interior will be designed to house Carolco’s corporate and production offices. The company recently finished production of “Angel Heart,” starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Charlotte Rampling and Lisa Bonet, and is currently in production on “Extreme Prejudice,” starring Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside, Maria Conchita Alonso and Rip Torn.
The firm is currently at 9255 Sunset Blvd. but plans to move into its new facility by the end of the year.
As part of its expanding operation, the company also recently acquired substantial interest in the NCB Entertainment Group of Woodland Hills, a videocassette manufacturing, sales and distribution conglomerate.
Now that it may become more prudent tax-wise to invest in first and second homes, how about a house on Millionaire’s Row, also called The Bishop’s Avenue, in the London suburb of Hampstead?
Targeted at Americans, five new homes are being built there by H. B. Construction Co., directly across the street from Kenstead Hall, the suburban London palace of Saudi Arabian King Fahd. Indeed, both Kenstead Hall and the new houses, known collectively as Arden Court Gardens, were designed by the same architectural firm: London-based deBrant, Joyce & Partners. The U.S. representative is Bentley-Leek McMullen in New York.
Features in each new home: six bedrooms, five baths, a morning room, drawing room, study, and a circular tub, whirlpool, gold-plated fixtures and floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the master bath.
Architecturally, the builder says, each home will “reflect the American penchant for the eclectic.” To illustrate this, the builder cites such items as a marble entryway, grand staircase, skylight, French doors opening onto terraces, a marble fireplace, bedroom dormers and Scandinavian double-glazed windows “that make drafty halls and cold-running hot water faucets obsolete.”
All this for a measly $2.25 million for the first home. Succeeding homes will go for more.
