The Grand Promises Effusions of Grandeur

Whatever else might be said about the Sherman Oaks-based real estate developers known as the Lycon Group, they sure know how to carry out a theme.

Witness the advertising campaign surrounding the company’s most recent apartment project in the Sepulveda/Ventura Boulevard area, the Grand, right next to the northeast end of the Sherman Oaks Galleria, mere moments away from the Ventura/San Diego freeway interchange.

“You deserve THE GRAND life,” the direct mail flyers promise. Billboards, also touting “THE GRAND life,” picture a hot-looking babe in a black cocktail dress lounging atop a GRAND piano (get it?), while her tuxedo-clad partner tinkles the ivories. The eight-page leasing brochure invites prospective tenants to “let the city be your partner in the waltz of THE GRAND life,” to “let your dreams come true at THE GRAND, where life truly is GRAND.” Have a bad memory for phone numbers? No problem, just dial 50-GRAND.

When it seems that every apartment with indoor plumbing is advertised as a “luxury” building, consumers have a right to be cynical. Is it possible that the Grand’s claims are, well, grandiose?

“This is a very classy building,” Myron Montgomery, a soft-spoken, impeccably groomed and coiffed leasing agent, says as he guides a prospective tenant past the huge marble fountain and waterfalls of the lobby. Pausing for a moment at the white grand piano, he adds: “The lobby furniture is all permanent.”

Mini-Gym Included

Ground-floor amenities on the tour include a racquetball court, two dressing rooms with dry saunas, a glassed-in mini-gym featuring exercise bikes and weight machines, a one-bed “tanning center” and a cable-ready large-screen TV lounge. Outdoors are two swimming pools and four hot tubs, two of which sit atop the building’s roof.

As Montgomery ascends the marbled spiral stairs to the actual apartments, he continues his spiel. “We are attracting a certain type of clientele. We have a certain screening criteria. You have to make three times the market rate of the rent.”

We’re talking several grand. A 750-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment--the most modest in the Grand plan--rents for $950 a month.

That’s certainly “higher than average” for the neighborhood, according to Ginger Cromwell, chief executive officer of Investments International, a 23-year-old real estate and property management company specializing in San Fernando Valley properties. On the Grand’s fourth--and top--floor, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, separate sitting room “penthouse” apartment--featuring such luxuries as 15-foot vaulted ceilings, a marble entry hall and brass bathroom fixtures--rents for $1,750.

Business so far has been--you guessed it--grand. About three months after the Grand opened its doors, said Lycon Group partner Rob Franciscan, 50% of the project’s 243 units are leased. Franciscan estimates that the Grand is leasing “in excess of 30” units a month. “That’s excellent, . . . extremely good,” Cromwell agreed.

That’s right. Each month, more than 30 heads of household are choosing to pay unusually high rent to live next to the Galleria, one of the Valley’s busiest malls. According to Franciscan, the Grand is attracting “the professional business people along Ventura Boulevard” and “people who have homes in Sherman Oaks and Encino and are getting toward retirement age.” In other words, somebody who “may be able to afford home ownership, but because of the responsibility of the maintenance, they choose to rent.”

Are they crazy? Not necessarily. For those who qualify, “the Grand life” is synonymous with a new, improved L.A.--a land where you don’t have to get in traffic to get in shape and the hoi polloi need not apply.

Lamonte Brown, a 35-year-old restaurateur and his wife, Gidget, recently bought a home in Encino but needed a place to live for six to eight months while their new home is being readied. After looking at “probably 10” other buildings, they chose the Grand. In retrospect, they say, they appreciate the screening procedure.

“I like the fact that they don’t just let anyone in,” Brown said. “At first I was angry when I was asked for all this stuff, which I’d never been asked for. I mean, I had to produce bank statements, which I thought was a little private. . . . If you’re in business for yourself, you have to produce a profit-and-loss statement. I’d just never been through that to rent an apartment. I was kind of annoyed at first, but after I thought about it, I’m really happy they do this.”

Brown had previously lived in a series of apartments in West Los Angeles and had been burgled there. As big a selling point as the exercise bikes and the marble columns, he says, was the fact that the Grand has a security guard in the lobby overnight and a digital alarm system in his penthouse.

Ed Brzycki, a 25-year-old manager of the Target store in Woodland Hills, recently relocated from a home that he shared in Beverly Hills. He says he prefers Sherman Oaks because “the people in the area are not as . . . shall I say snobbish?”

He admits that he’s spending more on rent than he’d hoped, but he points out that the use of the exercise room and a racquetball court have saved him money that he would otherwise spend on a health club membership. Without a doubt, he says, this cocoon aspect of his new home is the grandest part of all. “I love it,” he said. “The only time I have to leave my home is to go get groceries.”