Fortitude Is Leimerts’ Watchword : Family Engaged in Business for More Than Century
The staying power of the Walter H. Leimert Co.--a small, low-profile Los Angeles-based real estate development firm--is attributable to fortitude and lots of patience, says its chief executive, whose family has been in the field for more than a century.
President Walter (Tim) Leimert Jr. cites the firm’s Cambria Pines development near the fabled Hearst Castle which, he said, required more than eight years of wading through a bureaucratic maze before obtaining approval for the subdivision.
The firm, headquartered in its own building at 606 N. Larchmont Ave. and the largest owner of office space along that main commercial artery of Hancock Park, is a recipient of the Centennial Business Award of the California Historical Society in recognition of its lasting achievements.
The Walter H. Leimert Co. developed Leimert Park, Beverlywood, parts of Baldwin Hills and Beverly Highlands in Los Angeles; the Piedmont and Lakeshore Highlands in the East Bay area of Oakland, and St. Hubert Wood in Orange County.
“My grandfather, Louis Leimert, came to California in 1862, and though trained as a candy maker in his native Germany, he developed a taste for real estate in the Gold Rush era of California,” Tim Leimert said.
Settling in Oakland, Louis built several commercial buildings, one of which housed a saloon known as “Timothy Muldoon’s” that became the local hangout for a young writer named Jack London.
“My father, Walter Sr., saw the opportunities of the east San Francisco Bay around the turn of the century and after serving a few years as an apprentice in an Oakland bank, formed the Walter H. Leimert Co. in 1902.
“Over the next two decades, he transformed the Oakland hills into some of the loveliest residential areas of all the East Bay,” Leimert continued, naming Lakeshore Highlands, Piedmont and Trestle Glen as his father’s earlier developments.
Sensing greater opportunities in Southern California, the senior Leimert took his family to Los Angeles in the early 1920s, and launched a real estate business with initial success in Glendale and on the east side of a fast-growing metropolitan Los Angeles.
Donated Park to City
Leimert bought a large ranch owned by Lucky Baldwin’s daughter Anita, on which he envisioned a complex of residential and commercial property. The project, which he named Leimert Park, was eventually expanded to about 600 acres, with rough boundaries extending west to Crenshaw Boulevard, north to Exposition Boulevard, south to Vernon Avenue and east to about Arlington Avenue.
Leimert Park was master planned by Olmstead & Olmstead, the firm that laid out Central Park in New York, and the development’s park was later donated to the city of Los Angeles and renamed, Leimert Plaza.
A number of Leimert Park homes were designed by other famous architects of the time, among them Sumner Spaulding, Roland Coate and Richard J. Neutra, who at the time were doing several of the large mansions in Hancock Park.
The unusual mix of multiple real estate uses with guidance from the homeowners’ association--an innovative concept at that time--led Life magazine to tag Leimert Park the Community of Tomorrow.
‘Wave of the Future’
“My father was very much influenced by the J. C. Nichols’ Country Club development in Kansas City, the Shaker Heights project in Cleveland and River Oaks in Houston. All had homeowners’ associations. Walter Sr. believed it would be the wave of the future and pretty much introduced the concept to the West Coast,” Leimert said.
Leimert Park was not a financial success at the start, he recalled. “With the Depression that followed the 1929 stock market crash, you couldn’t give real estate away, my father used to say.”
Close to bankruptcy, the company’s founder struggled along until the late 1930s, when Leimert Park became one of the most sought-after areas in the city.
Following World War II, Walter H. Leimert Sr. was joined by his son Tim, who had served on the famous Ed Murrow CBS news team as a war correspondent in the Pacific and participated in the first B-29 bombing run over Tokyo.
Volunteer UCLA Newscaster
Over the last 37 years, the younger Leimert has dabbled at his former profession as a volunteer newscaster known to thousands as the official UCLA voice over the public address system, first at games held at the Coliseum and now at the Rose Bowl.
Winner of the coveted William May Garland Award in 1976, Tim Leimert became president of his firm in 1960 and president of the Los Angeles Realty Board in 1961. Under his leadership, a part of the West Hollywood hills was transformed into Beverly Highlands. Other developments followed in Orange County and San Fernando Valley.
In the 1970s, sensing the need for well-planned coastal development, Leimert joined developer Fred Marlow in creating Oxnard Shores. Also during the ‘70s, he purchased a 600-acre ranch in Cambria, where about 70 homes, valued from $250,000 to $600,000, already exist on lots previously sold by the Leimert Co. Currently, 52 one- and -1 1/2-acre lots are being offered for sale in the same subdivision for about $130,000, including all improvements.
Most of the lots of the original Cambria Pines, developed about 50 years ago, are extremely small, Leimert said. When the California Coastal Commission came into being, its restrictions and objections from environmentalists created a development impasse.
“One of the things that the pure environmentalist thinks is that you help the environment the most when you stop all development. That is not altogether true,” Leimert said.
“In Cambria Pines, where we have been subdividing, we had some beautiful pine trees and an oak tree forest which the commission originally thought shouldn’t be touched, but I was able to get some experts on Monterey pines to testify that if you thin them out, remove diseased trees and let more sunlight in to reach the younger trees, the forest is be better served than if you left it the way it was.”
Leimert believes that a reasonable compromise must be reached in governmental regulations and environmentalists’ concerns. “The developer is often caught in between, and he’s going to have to look at his yield and think carefully before going ahead and burdening himself with the risk of going after a piece of property.
‘Made Elitist Area
“I suppose we’re dealing with some philosophical questions here, but I’m not sure the Coastal Commission has always accomplished exactly what it set out to do. It was put in originally to make the entire coastal area more accessible to more people. In a way it has had a reverse effect--it has made the coastal area an elitist area.
“Curiously, some of the people who have been the most supportive of the Coastal Commission have not been the liberals but the conservatives, people who live in these communities and like it the way things are and don’t want anyone else living there. It’s the old saying: ‘Pull up the gangplank, I’m aboard.’ ”
Leimert recalled that Cambria’s earlier subdivisions were very small. Lots were priced at $100 and sold by the thousands. “Paper lots, we used to call them, because they were indicated on maps but never improved. What happened is that these 25-foot lots were so small that in order to build anything on them, they had to remove the trees and that’s how some regrettable denuding occurred.
“In our planning we have combined several lots to make them larger and set up certain building restrictions to protect and care for the environment.”
‘Scared of Debt’
Leimert favors a close-to-the-vest, diversified approach to his operation. “Family companies like ours are rarer nowadays, and we tend to shy away from the corporate mentality.
“My father was badly hurt in the Depression, and it scared me as a boy to see how agitated he was, trying to keep from getting bankrupt. I’ve been scared of debt ever since; of course you can’t be a developer without some debt but I am leery about too much leveraging.
“When I borrow money, which you have to do, younger bankers are amazed that we haven’t borrowed more. They are used to high-leveraging real estate developers and not used to seeing a developer that finances his projects through internal cash flow.”
Walter H. Leimert III, formerly with Coldwell Banker and Gruen Associates, joined the family business earlier this year as vice president and director of sales.
The younger Leimert, a University of California at Davis graduate in agriculture, feels it is helpful, though not essential to have his kind of “down to earth” expertise.
“Whether or not I have that kind of background, as a developer I have a need to incorporate the ideas of open space, proper land use and landscaping and to make an aesthetically pleasing and balanced environment. At the same time, any project must also make economic sense for the developer.”
Tim Leimert doesn’t hide his pleasure in having a new generation working side by side. “There is some truth to that old story that you shouldn’t be in the real estate business if you’re over 35 years of age because you’re too influenced by the prices of the past.
“Walter now sees more value sometimes than I do, and he has many decades ahead in which he will also see changes. For him there is more opportunity now in real estate than there ever was.”
