Early-Spring Flowering on Spring St.

“Spring Renaissance” was announced last week, on the second day of spring, as the theme of the Spring Street Assn.’s campaign “to change the perception” of Spring Street, L. A.’s answer to Wall Street until the destitute moved in and the brokers moved out.

The Community Redevelopment Agency has been trying for years to change the perception of Spring Street, whose building owners are still complaining about “the scuz and the scum,” but change is not only in the wind now. It’s taking root, as even the most jaded Spring Street observer can see.

Just look at the construction going on: At 3rd Street, there’s the $108-million, 825,000-square-foot Ronald Reagan State Office Building, which will bring 3,000 new workers to Spring Street in the next 18 months to 2 years. Across the street, there’s the $24-million, 10-story garage for the office workers’ cars as well as 35,000 square feet of ground-level space for shoppers. South of 2nd Street, The Times is building a $14-million, eight-story parking garage.

But these projects aren’t the only new things happening on Spring Street, where the struggling Los Angeles Theatre Center opened in 1985 and the trendy nightclub, the Stock Exchange Club, served its first customers last year.

With “Spring Renaissance” will come 33 bushy green gem trees with twinkling white lights in terra cotta pots in front of buildings from 4th to 7th or 8th streets, said CRA Commissioner Dolly Chapman at a Spring Street Assn. meeting at the Design Center, one of several recently restored buildings on Spring Street.

Brightly painted curbs, colorful graphics, signs saying “Spring Street--The Historic District,” baskets of flowers on street posts, and cleaned-up light standards are also part of the campaign, funded by the CRA with $90,000 this year and another $100,000 for 12 months starting in July.

As for crime, an ongoing problem, LAPD’s Capt. Jerry Conner indicated that there has been a decrease in recent months with beefed-up private security programs, but Chapman added, “Something like 14 security companies work the street. It might be better to have one with block captains and a foot patrol. We’re still talking about that.”

They’ll likely talk about street safety for awhile. A tenant of Premier Towers, a Spring Street condo building that opened in ‘84, expressed a common fear that won’t be changed with fresh paint. “I don’t care how nice the ferns are,” he said. “I’m not going out around here at night.”

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A landmark single-family sale--the biggest ever in Bel-Air, probably the second biggest in the United States--closed escrow last Tuesday.

It was the home built for Alexander Haagen, shopping center developer more widely known as the controversial former president of the L. A. Coliseum Commission, and his wife, Charlotte. The Haagens continue to live in their longtime Palos Verdes mansion, but they sold their new Bel-Air place for $14.75 million, including furnishings.

Only The Knoll, Marvin Davis’ home, sold for more, as far as I know, when it went a few years ago for $20.25 million. The Kirkeby Estate, in Bel-Air, sold a couple years ago for $13.5 million.

What’s extraordinary about the latest sale is that the house is only on 1 3/4 acres. The Knoll is on 11; the Kirkeby Estate on 6.6. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Like the beach, Bel-Air has only so much land.

The buyers, represented by Bob Ryan of the Jon Douglas Co., are Americans from Hong Kong. The sellers were represented by Bruce Nelson of Asher Dann & Associates.

The house was designed and built by Budd Holden.

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Comedian Rip Taylor has a home in Las Vegas and a co-op in Greenwich Village, but he just bought a condo in West Hollywood: a three-bedroom penthouse with a living room that has a 23-foot-high ceiling and an Art-Deco chandelier that is said to have originally hung in the Wiltern Theatre. Taylor paid $685,000.

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The late actor Walter Brennan once owned an 11-acre ranch in Moorpark, which has belonged for some time to writer/producer/director Dale Wasserman. Now, because he travels so much and there is a lot of maintenance on a ranch, Wasserman has put it on the market for $1.1 million with Jeff Rosenblum at Fred Sands’ Westlake Village office.

The ranch has avocado and grapefruit orchards as well as a main residence, two guest houses and a studio/projection building.