Council Supports Private Effort to Save Ambassador

The Los Angeles City Council decided Friday that the historic Ambassador Hotel should not be declared a historic monument, and instead gave tacit approval to a private agreement that was billed as an even better way to save the hotel.

The 10-3 decision denying historic status to the Ambassador came after a debate that focused on an array of legal technicalities concerning the impact of the council’s decision on an agreement between the preservationist Los Angeles Conservancy and the hotel’s owners.

Under city laws, historic monument status provides up to a one-year moratorium on demolition of a building. But newly elected Councilman Nate Holden, in whose district the Ambassador lies, persuaded a majority that the agreement he helped forge between the Conservancy and Ambassador Hotel Properties provides stronger protection than the city’s laws.

Pledge of Cooperation

Under that pact, the owners have agreed not to pursue demolition for up to a year and to cooperate with the Conservancy in efforts to sell the sprawling, earth-tone-painted building and its 23-acre mid-Wilshire site to a buyer who would restore the hotel. Moreover, the owners agreed not to demolish the building until a development plan receives City Council approval.

“I’m just trying to do what’s best for my district,” Holden said.

The Ambassador--known to older generations as a playground of the rich and famous, and to more recent generations as the site of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy--has been losing $100,000 a month in recent years, Holden told his colleagues. The councilman said he was fearful that, should the council declare the building a monument, the owners would begin demolition proceedings after the one-year moratorium elapsed, leaving an empty lot in its place.

Wary council members found it ironic that they were being asked not to declare historic status for the renowned Ambassador only three days after the council’s controversial decision to allow historic status to the “Jesus Saves” church on Hope Street. At one point, Councilman Marvin Braude said that the Ambassador is “100 times” more deserving than the church--and he supported the church’s designation.

Braude and several other council members were reluctant to go along with Holden’s plan. They noted that the approach deviated from normal practices, and called into question the integrity of the process. The dilemma was such that Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky at one point said, “I cannot vote to suggest the Ambassador Hotel is not a historical monument”--and later did just that.

Further complicating the council’s decision was the opinion of the city attorney’s office that the agreement between the Conservancy and Ambassador owners would potentially expose the city to a lawsuit.

In the course of the debate, the council took two votes, each with the same result. It first voted against a motion to grant historic status, 6 to 7, then voted for a motion disallowing historic status, 10 to 3.

Plea for Preservation

Ruthann Lehrer, director of the Conservancy, asked the City Council to grant historic designation status. She said it would “clarify the city’s position” and enhance the marketing of the property to preservation-oriented buyers.

But attorney Richard Volpert, representing the owners, fought the declaration. “We don’t agree with the argument (that) it is architecturally significant or should be preserved,” he said. A historic designation “probably chills the market,” he added.

The council heard Friday from one interested party. James Sochin of San Francisco-based Standard Hotel Developers said the company had begun talks to purchase the Ambassador. Sochin, who directored the restoration of the historic Claremont Resort Hotel in the Berkeley hills, said the company envisioned restoring the hotel as a conference center and “urban resort” with a health spa and tennis club.

However, Volpert said he had recently talked with the hotel’s owners and they were unaware of such a proposal.

The 65-year-old Ambassador is held in a trust of the family of hotel magnate J. Myer Schine. Business Week magazine in 1986 estimated that the family’s hotel and theater empire is worth about $1.5 billion.