Bel-Air Still an L.A. Oasis of Cachet

When a development of multimillion-dollar houses was constructed along Mulholland Drive about a decade ago, the builders had one goal that stood out among all others: inclusion in one of the world’s most prestigious postal zones.

The magic number was 90077. To most people the figure is meaningless. But to the Fortune 500 executives, studio chiefs, film stars, entertainers, marketing demographers and a former U.S. President who live there, the figure represents the Los Angeles real estate mecca of Bel-Air.

For the residents of Stoneridge Estates, acceptance into the famed Los Angeles post office area meant more than just instant cachet and heightened social standing. It also ensured that no matter how the real estate market plummeted around them, their property values would remain rock solid. Technically, they were only one block outside of Bel-Air, but without the ZIP code, they might as well be miles away.

Stoneridge Estates got its wish, although it would later lose the precious designation following a management change at the post office.

That developers would so value a five-digit series of numerals speaks volumes about Bel-Air, a community of few equals in California. Today, while Stoneridge Estates is on the outside looking in, Bel-Air remains a prestigious enclave largely insulated from the rest of Los Angeles, as well as many of the woes triggered by the current economic downturn.

“A market like this is really a market of perception,” said Jon Douglas, president of the large real estate company bearing his name. “It’s really hard to understand sometimes, but the cachet of a place like Bel-Air means that there will be a certain (home) appreciation each year and it won’t have the same kinds of problems as other areas.”

Paradoxically, while Bel-Air is among the most renowned communities in the world, it is also among the least known. For nearly 70 years, the residents of Bel-Air have fought to keep it that way.

For certain people whose great wealth or fame is still tempered by a modicum of discretion--say, Howard Hughes, Elvis Presley, Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor and Ronald Reagan--Bel-Air is the place that offers the ideal mixture of luxury and privacy.

According to a demographic study by the National Planning Data Corp., Bel-Air is the richest community in the city of Los Angeles. The study estimates its average household income this year at $168,000, a figure that is expected to rise to $220,000 by 1995. By comparison, the 1990 average household income in San Marino was estimated at $102,000, while Beverly Hills weighed in with a mere $76,000.

The figures help explain why Bel-Air always has been considered the last word in wooded retreats. It is a place where a tear-down in a choice area goes for upward of $5 million. The Reagans’ 6,500-square-foot ranch house--modest by neighborhood standards--is located on a 1 1/4-acre corner lot and was considered a steal when it was purchased for $2.5 million in 1987 by friends of the former President.

The Reagans’ St. Cloud Road residence is located next to the Kirkeby Estate, one of the more lavish mansions in Southern California and known to millions as the television home of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Producer/developer Jerry Perenchio bought it a few years ago for $13 million.

Until recently, such prices have kept real estate speculators from operating on a large scale in Bel-Air. Most of the large properties are never placed on the open market, and transactions are undertaken through a multitude of business agents and private secretaries. Real estate agents say discretion and patience are the main ingredients for success.

Lannie Mott, an agent with Jon Douglas’ estates division, said that on many transactions, brokers must deal with half a dozen people before they get an appointment with the property owner.

“Bel-Air has always been a quiet area, it’s not flashy like Beverly Hills,” said Connie Wulffson, a longtime resident. “Things have just been done differently here.”

That was the goal of oil millionaire Alfonzo Bell, who bought 4,500 acres of land between Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, Sepulveda Boulevard and Beverly Glen Boulevard in the early 1920s. Bell, who wanted the area to be the “crowning achievement of suburban development,” saw Bel-Air as a sanctuary for the horsy set.

Everything in Bel-Air was designed to distinguish it from the rest of Los Angeles. It was one of the city’s first subdivisions to put utility lines underground, avoiding unsightly overhead electrical lines. The streets were laid out and fully landscaped before the first 200-acre section was developed. And it was the first community in Los Angeles to have its own security patrol, which escorted visitors to home sites from the imposing entrance gates.

The street names--Bellagio, Perugia, Stradella, Portofino--were taken from the favorite European haunts of Bell’s wife.

When Bel-Air opened in 1922, there was a steady stream of affluent Angelenos eager to build on the lush one-plus-acre sites. Today, it remains somewhat of an anomaly because of the way it was laid out: The biggest estates are located on the flats close to Sunset Boulevard, near where Bell built his lavish country club. That’s why, unlike most communities, the most expensive homes are located at the bottom of the hillside, in “old” Bel-Air, rather than at the top.

Given its current status as a celebrity haven, it seems ironic that Bell originally prohibited sales to film industry people. He said he wanted to avoid turning the hillside enclave into another Los Angeles tourist trap.

That Bel-Air’s famous entrance gates are open to the public at all seems hardly to matter. The gates may be open, but Bel-Air isn’t. Tour buses come and go, but the celebrities are rarely seen. In the daytime, the only inhabitants appear to be servants, nannies and ubiquitous construction workers busily knocking down multimillion-dollar mansions to make way for even larger palaces.

The residents here have done their best to keep the public at bay--hiding behind security gates, high walls and elaborate alarm systems.

The same goes for the salaried staff of the community’s homeowners association, which won’t answer even the most rudimentary questions about the community, instead referring the curious to a stock history book. Elaine Gerdau, executive director of the Bel-Air Assn., declined repeated requests for an interview.

Many residents laugh at such guarded secrecy, likening Bel-Air to little more than a nice, quiet, tree-lined, very expensive neighborhood that they chose for its convenience. For actors and film industry executives, it offers quick access to the studios on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley. For other professionals, the central location and relative lack of congestion make it preferable to the nearby streets of Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills--the other two parts of what has become known in real estate circles as the “platinum triangle.”

“Even when it wasn’t that expensive here it was always desirable because of its location,” said veteran film producer A. C. Lyles, a 35-year resident of Bel-Air. “It’s fairly isolated and you don’t have to worry about things like door-to-door salesmen--they just get lost here.

“For some of the famous people that lived here, Bel-Air always offered a sense of security because there were only (a few) ways in and out,” Lyles said. “And, until the traffic got bad, it was always like living in the country.”

Lyles acknowledged that Bel-Air isn’t much of a neighborhood in the traditional sense; it’s hard to chat with the folks next door when the fence is 15 feet high. “The way it’s set up, you don’t get the sense of community you find in other places.”

Coyotes still roam the brush-covered hillsides and some of the homes atop the canyons offer spectacular views of the Santa Monica Mountains and the city. Near the top of Roscomare Road, there is a neighborhood market stocked for expensive tastes. With the exception of a mini-mall near Mulholland Drive and Beverly Glen Boulevard, there is almost no commercial business.

Besides real estate, the only business that has flourished in Bel-Air is the Bel-Air Hotel, which was originally built as the sales office for Bell’s home sites in 1925. The Spanish-style building was renovated, and when the hotel opened in 1946, it quickly became a favorite hangout for that day’s film stars.

Its celebrity clientele, sweeping gardens, private bungalows and ever-attentive service helped transform it into one the most famous hotels in America. It was one of the area’s first hotels where guests could order out to Kentucky Fried Chicken--and have it picked up by the hotel limousine.

Humphrey Bogart was a regular at the hotel bar, and Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and other Rat Pack members caroused there. Tyrone Power honeymooned there. It was the favorite hotel of Princess Grace, David Niven and Sir Laurence Olivier. The dining room was one of the sites of the original power breakfast, where film deals were made and broken.

For all of its celebrity guests, the name Bel-Air did not make international news until 1961, when it became synonymous with disaster. The Bel-Air fire, the worst in the city’s history and the most devastating blaze in California since the 1906 San Francisco fire, destroyed nearly 500 homes and buried the lush canyons from Mulholland to Sunset in a deep pile of ash.

Connie Wulffson’s English-style country house on Roscomare Road was saved by her husband, Bob, who stayed on the roof with a garden hose. When the inferno was over, all the surrounding homes had been destroyed as well as others in neighboring canyons. Dozens of shaken homeowners moved away. Signs of the 30-year-old blaze--several exposed house foundations on nearby hillsides--can still be seen.

Encroaching development is probably the biggest concern of residents today. Hundreds of acres within Bel-Air remain untouched, mostly because access is difficult and residents have fought against new roads.

Residents are eyeing with concern a proposal by developer Paul Zahler to construct four estates on lower Linda Flora Drive next year on one of last remaining undeveloped hilltops in the area.

It isn’t Zahler’s plan to build four homes over 10,000 square feet that bothers residents--Bel-Air is a place that understands private property rights. They are insisting, however, that the new subdivision be gated, so it doesn’t create a new thoroughfare that commuters could use between the city and the San Fernando Valley.

“I moved here because of the views and the hills, it’s a beautiful area,” character actor Don Gordon said. “But those views and those hills are slowly being destroyed. What’s happened here and throughout the city has been a disaster. In the future, people won’t even believe us when we tell them how beautiful it once was.”

Most residents believe that in terms of natural beauty, the community of Bel-Air still has no peer in Los Angeles. Neighbors Wilt Chamberlain and Farah Fawcett can still enjoy spectacular views of the city and canyons below from their homes off Antelo Road, while upper and lower Stone Canyon Reservoir offers hillside residents the feel of lakeside living.

Epilogue: Up on the ridge of Mulholland, the illusion of residing in Bel-Air turned out to be short lived.

Mail carriers were told a few years ago that they should no longer deliver 90077 mail on the north side of Mulholland. The new mailing address for Stoneridge Estates is Sherman Oaks, Ca. 91423.