Standing Their Ground : Holdouts: Maybe they’re sentimental, but some folks just don’t want to sell.

For 50 years, Carolyn Carter lived in her modest Burbank home, surrounded by friends and neighbors.

Her neighbors have all moved away, however, selling their houses to a developer, and now Carter is virtually surrounded by a new five-acre apartment complex.

Rather than join more than two dozen neighbors who sold their properties adjoining Hollywood Way to the Chandler Group, Carter held out. “I didn’t care about the value of my property,” she said. “I didn’t want to move.”

Carter, who won’t talk about her age (“I’m as old as my teeth” is all she’ll say), turned down several lucrative offers from the developer. The bulldozers left her home untouched and now she has 246 new neighbors on three sides of her one-story house.

Even in real estate-crazy Southern California, there are people, like Carter, who just won’t sell. They are strong-willed folks, these holdouts, with an equally strong attachment to where they live or work.

Those who stand their ground have their own reasons. Some are just sentimental about their property. Others may prefer not to see the character of their neighborhood change. A few just held out for a better offer that never came.

Holdouts are easy to spot. They are homes and small businesses overshadowed by larger developments, obviously redesigned to straddle the one small parcel a builder couldn’t acquire.

A classic holdout stands shrouded in a cluster of trees in front of West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center at Melrose Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard.

In the shadow of the Cesar Pelli-designed blue glass behemoth is a dingy wooden shack with a tar-paper roof, home of Hugo’s Plating--a brass plating service run by Hugo Castaneda in the same location for almost 20 years.

In the early 1970s, Castaneda’s neighbors disappeared to make way for the 16-acre designers’ mecca. But Hugo’s landlords, the Diaz family, refused to sell their small parcel.

“They wouldn’t have a dialogue,” recalled Ron Birtcher, chairman of Birtcher Real Estate Ltd. of Laguna Niguel, the PDC’s lead developer.

Brokers for the PDC made repeated efforts to buy the Diaz property, said Birtcher. But the family wasn’t interested. Finally, Birtcher gave up and decided to build the project without the Diaz family parcel.

“It took a lot of courage,” he said, “for us to say ‘the hell with it.’ ”

Castaneda watched as Birtcher built the 750,000-square-foot center, along with extensive parking facilities and a bricked-paved plaza that now surrounds him.

His shack is “a really strange place,” conceded Castaneda, who, like his landlords, is a native of Durango, Mexico. But, he added, “Why move?” His rent hasn’t been raised by the Diaz family for about 12 years and he says he hasn’t heard from the owners for at least five years.

Meanwhile, Castaneda and managers of the PDC have achieved an amicable relationship. “The company never bothers me,” Castaneda said. “We’re good friends.”

Redondo Shores Construction Co. knows about holdouts.

The company has encountered tenacious property owners at two of its projects--a shopping center in Redondo Beach and an office building near its headquarters in Lawndale.

Abutting the new Redondo Shores Shopping Center on Pacific Coast Highway, two different owners refused to sell their properties.

Bernie Paine, project director for the developer, charges that the neighbors “have been anything but cooperative.”

“They wanted a whole bunch of things that just weren’t possible,” said Paine. He and the neighbors have locked horns over property lines, construction noise, alleged threats against workers at the site and claims of adverse possession.

One of the two holdouts in Redondo Beach is a retired couple now living in Salem, Ore. Their son, Otto Ernst, runs Redondo Cyclery on PCH and lives in an apartment above his modest bicycle shop. He has been living and working at the same location for several years and he just didn’t want to move.

The holdout seems to have exacerbated a rift within the Ernst family. Brother Ted Ernst Jr. charges Otto with misleading his parents by persuading them not to sell.

“I think my brother made a very big mistake,” said Ted Jr. Meanwhile, Otto and Ted Jr. aren’t talking to each other.

Redondo Shores ended up building around the stores owned by the Ernsts--as well as around a small apartment building owned by a doctor who refused to sell.

In Lawndale, Redondo Shores sought to build an office project near its current headquarters. After property owners demanded three to four times market value, Paine recalled, “we scrapped the entire project.”

Martha Gamble, owner of The Apple Pan restaurant on Pico Boulevard in Westwood, is another example of a holdout.

Her parents, Alan and Ellen Baker, opened The Apple Pan in 1947. “We worked very hard to make this the most perfect little sandwich and pie shop,” Gamble said. “We wouldn’t have thought of selling it . . . it would be unthinkable.”

Next door, at the northeast corner of Pico and Westwood boulevards, the Lewis Trust is building a $10-million retail complex, covering a full block--except The Apple Pan.

Gamble watched neighbors on the southeast corner sell out to developers of the Westside Pavilion. Now an addition to the Pavilion is replacing some of Gamble’s former neighbors at the southwest corner of Pico and Westwood.

“It was never our goal to make a lot of money,” Gamble said. “We’ve had so many calls from buyers, I can’t remember them all. . . . I don’t even care about listening to their dazzling numbers.”

Jill and Richard Riordan are, in many ways, unlikely holdouts. The couple refused to see the demise of their restaurant, The Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles.

The Riordans originally bought the cafe at Ninth and Figueroa streets, along with several other parcels, to make way for an office project covering the whole block.

The plans changed, however, when the Riordans developed a personal attachment to the downhome-style eatery.

The office tower did get built--but by another developer and without the Pantry parcel. In fact, the Riordans spurned an extra $6 million when they sold the block, just so they could save their beloved restaurant.

“I’d fallen in love with the Pantry and its employees,” Richard Riordan said in a recent interview conducted from a cellular phone on his golf cart. The attorney/venture capitalist/restaurateur has had the cafe declared a landmark by the City of Los Angeles.

“It’s pretty profitable,” Riordan said of his 24-hour-a-day restaurant. “But it’s not worth $6 million by a long shot.”

Some property owners end up as holdouts not because of obstinacy or sentiment--but because a developer simply cannot or will not pay them what they want for their real estate.

Take Guy Paonessa and his sound studio in North Hollywood.

Paonessa’s Entourage Studios is now surrounded by 1,400 apartments, along with retail and office space, part of a $41-million mixed-use project backed by the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles.

But because the two-story studio on Magnolia Boulevard just east of Lankershim Boulevard is so highly improved with equipment and soundproofing, the developers decided that acquiring the site would be too expensive.

“Nobody’s at fault,” said Kenneth Adkins, chairman of Kensley Corp. of North Hollywood, a general partner in the new home for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The improvements to Paonessa’s site were such that “neither the agency nor the developer could afford to pay the premium for the building,” Adkins said.

Paonessa has had to cope with noise from construction, dust, utility disruptions, and his front parking lot has been pared down to widen the street.

“We’re all trying to get along as best as possible,” said Paonessa. “It’s just a lot of frustration.”

Also holding out amid heavy construction was Leo Medwin of L. M. Insurance on Olympic Boulevard, just east of San Vicente Boulevard. Medwin’s 1,800-square-foot storefront stands adjacent to a much larger office complex that is part of Midway Medical Center, built in 1985.

Medwin recalls being visited by the office building’s architect, loan officer, hospital staff and even a so-called expediter. In the end, he turned them all down and decided to continue doing business at his current location.

The offers just weren’t high enough to entice Medwin to move. “I knew they’d build around me,” he said. And he has no regrets. The new offices have a 24-hour guard outside, and more office workers means more potential insurance customers.

Finally, imagine holding out on 58 acres in the face of offers possibly reaching $100 million.

Hiroshi Fujishigi continues to farm strawberries on his Anaheim farm, adjacent to Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center. Disney has been eyeing Fujishigi’s farm as part of a possible expansion.

But the 68-year-old farmer has no interest in selling. Even with an estimated value of at least $1 million an acre, Fujishigi believes that family land is sacred--and should stay within the family.

One prospective buyer recently approached Fujishigi with a $2 million-an-acre offer. Fujishigi, however, was unmoved. “I didn’t even get his name,” he said.