Good Deed : Boy Scouts Hope to Sell Office Building They Built at a Profit

Boy Scouts in the San Fernando Valley ended up in unfamiliar surroundings when they blazed a new trail toward financial independence two years ago.

They found themselves in a glitzy Ventura Boulevard office building.

The Boy Scouts developed the Sherman Oaks building themselves, figuring that they would use it both as a headquarters and as a rent-producing moneymaker. But officials of the Scouts’ Western Los Angeles County Council now want to sell the gleaming structure and return to more familiar, humble roots.

“This building doesn’t have the Scouting flavor,” said Gene Richey, who directs the Scout council. “People say this building doesn’t remind them of the Scouting experience.”

Richey was seated in the spotlight-accented conference room off his posh office on the second floor of the 50,000-square-foot, mirror-sided office building.

Scout leaders built the three-story building in partnership with two private developers. The idea was to use part of the space for the council’s administrative offices and rent out the rest.

Officials figured that the council would begin turning a profit from the rent by 1991. Those revenues would be funneled into the Scouting program--which annually serves about 70,000 youngsters in 800 Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs in an area bounded by Marina del Rey, Beverly Hills and Malibu on the south and the sprawling Antelope Valley on the north.

As it turned out, the building began making money this year. Not everyone is delighted, however.

“It’s commercial. It’s an office building,” Richey said. “It doesn’t have the homeyness, the atmosphere, that some people would prefer.”

Richey, who was hired as the Valley’s top Scout administrator this year after heading Scout programs in Nevada and Arizona, said he’ll be happy to give up his fancy office.

“I believe we have to use our resources for Scouting, not real estate management,” he said.

Former council President Richard H. Breithaupt Jr., a real estate developer who masterminded the construction project, said the Ventura Boulevard building has been a success for the Scouts.

“Certainly there are some who feel we should project more of an austere image,” Breithaupt said. “It’s not in keeping with the traditions of camping, I understand that.

“But you have to understand the financial benefits this building has made to the council. We took a hard-nosed business approach to solving the problem of getting a new administrative service center.”

The Scouts’ previous headquarters in Van Nuys was a ramshackle, termite-infested building where employees set out buckets to catch water dripping from the ceilings when it rained, he said.

The cost of the Sherman Oaks site and construction was $6.8 million, most of it borrowed. The Scouts put $1.5 million into the project, $1 million of that coming from a donation by record company executive and former lieutenant governor Mike Curb, for whom the headquarters then was named. The Scouts later exercised an option to buy out the private developers for another $1 million, Breithaupt said.

Scout officials say the Valley council’s joint-venture project was the first of its kind in the United States. In the last two years, Breithaupt has traveled across the country to explain to others how the deal was put together. As a result, Scout units in the Chicago and Dallas areas have undertaken similar projects.

The Scouts hope to sell their Sherman Oaks building for about $13.5 million, Breithaupt said. The profit will go into an endowment fund, with the proceeds to help finance future council activities.

In the meantime, a special committee is being formed to hunt for a new headquarters, according to Richey. He said he hopes that the next one is a free-standing, unimposing building with plenty of convenient parking.

His sentiment was echoed by troop leaders who visited the Scout center’s “trading post” this week to buy new uniforms, extra merit badges and camping equipment.

“I hope the new building isn’t so big,” said Libbern Cook, scoutmaster of Troop 101 in Reseda. “This doesn’t remind me of Scouting. The first time I came here, I thought this was a furniture building.”