Investors Buy a Bit of History : The Ambassador Hotel has been sold. But whether the L.A. lanmark will survive intact is in doubt.
The historic Ambassador Hotel, which closed its doors in January, has been sold to an investment group headed by a New York developer, but the fate of the 68-year-old hotel, once an oasis for Hollywood’s rich and famous, remained unclear Wednesday.
Anglo-Wilshire Partners, a California general partnership, reached an agreement over the weekend to purchase the 23.5-acre Mid-Wilshire hotel property from Ambassador Hotel Properties for an undisclosed price, but the sale was not disclosed until Wednesday.
The property, valued at $65 million to $75 million, is considered one of the last open spaces in urban Los Angeles available for large-scale development. The 510-room hotel, which occupies about one-third of the property, was put up for sale in 1986 by the heirs of the J. Myer Schine family. Schine, who died in 1971, was a theater and hotel magnate who bought the Ambassador in 1946.
Mixed-Use Project
“We can’t say what will happen to the hotel; it has not yet been determined,” said Scott Malkin, president of S. D. Malkin Properties, in a telephone interview from New York. His firm, which also has offices in Beverly Hills, is acting general partner of Anglo-Wilshire Partners.
He said the initial development concept calls for a mixed-use, residential-commercial project that may include a hotel. “We are not ruling out a hotel project,” he said. His group, which has been working on the purchase for a year, will work on the development concept once escrow closes on the property in mid-September.
In its heyday, the Ambassador Hotel hosted Hollywood stars and movie moguls, U.S. presidents and European royalty. It was home for the once-famous Coconut Grove night club. Marion Davies once rode a horse through the Ambassador lobby to amuse her lover, William Randolph Hearst. Marilyn Monroe attended class in the hotel at the Emmaline Snively Blue Book Modeling Agency. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated there June 6, 1968, the night he won the California Democratic presidential primary.
Renovation Costs Prohibitive
The hotel, which cost $5 million to build in the late 1910s, is not officially designated as a historic landmark. However, the Schine family had an agreement with the City of Los Angeles that protects the hotel buildings from speculative demolition without full and final city approval on a replacement project. The agreement runs with the title to the new owners.
The Schine family had studied the possibility of renovating the hotel, but the costs--estimated at $10 million to $30 million--were prohibitive. The hotel lost about $7 million between 1983 and 1987, according to a spokesman for the Ambassador Hotel Properties.
The site was explored by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a possibility for a new high school and commercial development, but again, the costs were prohibitive. Another possible use of the hotel involved converting it into senior citizen housing.
Urban Innovations Group, an affiliate of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA, has recommended a mixed-use commercial and residential project for the property that would include a 40-story office tower and a six-story hotel along with upscale to low-cost housing.
The Wilshire Stakeholders Group, a nonprofit Mid-Wilshire community organization, and the city of Los Angeles have funded the study to determine how to develop the property into an anchor and catalyst for the revival of the Mid-Wilshire area.
“We understand and appreciate the important role this property will play in the revival of the Mid-Wilshire corridor,” Malkin said. “In developing our plans for this exceptional property, we will be seeking input from all members of the community and city officials, and we intend to work closely with all interested parties, including the Wilshire Stakeholders Group, toward the creation of an urban master plan that will be the right project in the right place at the right time.”
Malkin is a member of the New York Malkin family, which has interests in more than 20 million square feet of commercial space nationwide, including the Empire State Building. In Los Angeles, S. D. Malkin Properties is a partner in Two Rodeo Associates, which is building a 130,000-square-foot retail project anchored by Tiffany & Co. at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
