Q&A; : The Mansion Fight’s Leading Man : He describes it as ‘Jurassic Park II.’ It’s a 46,000-square-foot estate, and it looms large in the minds of many in a Beverly Hills neighborhood who have banded together to fight the development.
* Jack Lemmon, 68, actor and Beverly Hills community activist.
* Claim to fame: Where to start? Oscars for best actor (“Save the Tiger”) and best supporting actor (“Mister Roberts”); eight Academy Award nominations; a career in movies, theater and television career that began in earnest soon after he graduated from Harvard in 1947. The Boston-born actor is known for his comedic and dramatic roles in 48 films, including “The China Syndrome” and “Missing,” both of which earned him the Cannes Film Festival award for best actor. Other credits include “Some Like It Hot,” “The Apartment,” “The Odd Couple,” “Tribute” and last year’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
* Background: Lemmon and his family have lived in a 6,000-square-foot home in the hills of Beverly Hills for more than 30 years, generally shunning publicity. But last year, he and three other residents banded together to fight a 59,000-square-foot estate complex proposed on their narrow, winding street, Tower Road. The property owner, a low-profile London financier named Robert Manoukian, has since scaled back the project to about 46,000 square feet (with 18 bedrooms) to get city approval, and the city Planning Commission has imposed 81 conditions governing construction and use. But Lemmon and his neighbors insist the project is still much too big. They have filed an appeal with the City Council, which will be heard next Tuesday. * Interviewer: Times correspondent G. Jeanette Avent.
Question: You’ve described this project as “Jurassic Park II” because of its size. Why is your group opposed to this one, which will be built on almost four acres of land, when there are other very large houses in the city that sit on less than an acre?
Answer: I think that being human and like everybody else, you wait sometimes (before saying anything), even when things are going on that you don’t like. Then it finally hits you right in the face.
When I first came out here over 35 years ago we bought a little house in Brentwood. All the
neighbors kept saying, there really ought to be a stop sign or a light at the corner. Somebody kept saying, “No, they won’t put a light in until somebody’s killed.” I complained once or twice, and we sent a petition to the appropriate officials. Nothing happened. Then somebody was killed, and one week later there was a light. I thought to myself, why did you just say, “OK, I don’t like it”? I should have been screaming.
For years now I have been screaming about (what happens to an established neighborhood), with homes that have been here for 40 years or more, when suddenly there’s a tear-down and they rebuild with a thing that looks like it could house 100 people.
When you have these fortresses stuck in among the neighborhood, the whole quality of life is diminished. There’s a kind of aesthetic pollution. If someone puts a horrible, huge, ugly building right next to your home, your whole feeling when you’re out on your lawn is affected. This damn thing is looming up there, and in some cases, blocking the sun out. You can hardly walk through Beverly Hills without seeing one or two of these things, and nobody stops it.
Q I gather you think it’s gotten worse lately?
A When I moved into Beverly Hills over 30 years ago, I thought this is one of the most beautiful small towns that I’d ever been in, including Europe. It has done nothing but become uglier and uglier, thanks to the government of Beverly Hills, which has been concerned with everything except the needs and the desires of the citizens. And that I firmly believe. If it puts some noses out of joint, I’m sorry.
They’ve been obsessed with making money and building up the business sector. In the residential areas, they have been allowing bigger and bigger, inappropriate bulk buildings. Now the citizens are really teed off about it.
I admit I was remiss before, like with the stoplight. Then when this project came up, I got really teed off. Enough is enough! That’s when a group of four families got together--Sidney Sheinberg (MCA president), Fred Rosen (Ticketmaster chairman), Stuart Ketchum (developer) and myself.
Q Wasn’t the scale model that Ketchum presented to the Planning Commission unfair? It showed the size of the buildings, but not the landscaping that will surround them. According to the plans, not much will be visible from the street.
A I don’t care whether you can see the house, it’s what’s happening to us by the very existence of it. I’m worried about the danger on Tower Road. It’s a dead-end street that is a former bridle path paved over.
The other day, our garbage wasn’t picked up because there were three little trucks (that belonged to people working on a house there) parked on one of the hairpin-turn curbs. The entrance was gated, and the garbage collectors couldn’t get the attention of the people inside. After about 40 minutes of waiting, they went away and never picked up the garbage. They couldn’t get up as far as Manoukian’s property.
But the construction trucks, the dirt trucks, cement trucks and other trucks carrying the materials that will go into the project all are going to try to come up and down Tower Road. It is the most stupid, nonsensical, idiotic inconvenience ever foisted on a neighborhood.
Q Are you saying that construction traffic is a big part of the problem?
A Coldwater Canyon and Benedict Canyon drives (the major roads leading into the area) are really like freeways with back-to-back traffic as it is. By their own admission, there will be a minimum of 4,200 construction-related trips in the next two years that will pass up and down Tower Road, Benedict Canyon and Sunset Boulevard. ( Editor’s note: In the current plans, construction trips are actually estimated at 3,500 over two years. ) Just because the zoning laws might allow something, the neighbors shouldn’t scream? Then what rights do we have? We have to scream.
This man is building--it may be a fraction below or above--48,000 square feet in two huge buildings in an area where the average house is 4,700 square feet. That’s 10 times the size of the average house and 12 times the size of some houses directly below. The property overlooks about 20 houses. They look like tiny little closets compared to what this man wants. You can’t tell me that he’s going to have all of this room built to entertain and never use it. You don’t build it if you have no intention of using it.
Q Manoukian’s representatives have said that the home is only to be used about two months out of the year.
A Now here is a main point that I’m getting at: Manoukian kept saying to us that he really will be living in it with his relatives only for a couple of months a year, that’s all. He told us the entertaining would be done by his relatives mostly, his aunts and uncles and children. He says there will be no problem, and they’ll be very quiet neighbors.
OK, then we get into eight different meetings with various city commissions, and every time the traffic dangers and questions about the number of parties that might be given is brought up, Manoukian’s representatives object. They say (restrictions on the property) might hinder a future sale. Everything was always hinged on future sales.
God help us. Instead of very quiet Mr. Manoukian, who says he’s going to be quiet even though he’s going to have parties for 1,000 people, what’s going to happen if somebody else buys it and says, “Well, we’ve got three rock bands every night, come on up”? ( Editor’s note: The Planning Commission did limit the number of large parties--200 or more people--that can be held without a permit to no more than four per year. )
We have a lot to worry about. The whole quality of life in that neighborhood could be changed vastly by the desires of one man. You tell me how this got by the Planning Commission. There is a hillside ordinance in Beverly Hills that says: To grant a permit, it must be established that the project does not materially and adversely change the scale, the integrity and the character of the area. This certainly as hell does.
Q Have you ever actually met Manoukian?
A We had one meeting with this very mysterious man, a very nice man and very polite, so I’m not trying to cast aspersions. He is a very successful man, as was his father. Very reclusive, highly respected, lives a very quiet life.
It’s what he is doing, not who he is. Who he is enters into it only unfortunately because of the power and the money that he has.
At the one meeting we had with him, one of the first things Sid Sheinberg said, and I can remember this vividly, word for word: “Mr. Manoukian, you are obviously a man of untold wealth. Why in the world did you buy this little piece of property to try to put this massive undertaking on?”
Manoukian just dismissed it very rapidly. I remember him turning and walking as he said, “Well, I looked around and I couldn’t find a bigger parcel that I liked.” And then he immediately started talking about something else.
I have no right to tell that man what kind of a house to build. But I do think that the bulk of the house is important. If it was on (a 120-acre property on nearby) Angelo Drive then you wouldn’t hear a peep. Nobody would be inconvenienced. Nobody would see it. There isn’t room for the damn house on Tower Road, let alone the inconvenience. And can you imagine building all of this in two years? Come on! I tried to redo my john and it took nearly two years. This is Beverly Hills, folks.
Another thing that’s been bothering us is their attitude. Now when Jay Leno, who’s a neighbor and pal of mine, wanted to build that garage (for his antique cars), some of the neighbors objected. Three or four people were worried about the noise of the old motors. They also said it’s possible that it could increase (earth) slippage on the hill. So Leno wrote to God knows how many people in the neighborhood and said, “Look, this is what I was planning to do, but it’s come to my attention that some of the neighbors are objecting. I just want you to know there is no problem, I will not pursue this.”
If there were just a little bit of that attitude from Mr. Manoukian’s representatives, he might be in a better position. But instead, it’s as if he’s King Somebody-or-Other as far as his representatives go, although he’s not that way himself. We feel like little lackeys that are lucky to have a hut in the neighborhood the way we’ve been treated.
Manoukian’s representatives have very subtly and not so subtly said that it’s a case of the fat cats being mad at a fatter cat. That is not it. A 48,000-square-foot compound is totally out of character and inappropriate in a neighborhood of 5,000-square-foot houses. By the same token, a 10,000-square-foot dwelling is totally out of place on the south side, where you might have 2,000- and 3,000-square-foot dwellings.
Q City planners say that under a new hillside ordinance, Manoukian could build three houses with even more total square footage than he is allowed now under the old ordinance.
A I love that argument and I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Building three separate, smaller houses would be a vast difference on every level. Not only the ease of construction, but the ability to do it in more rapid fashion. Two houses were recently built across the street from me, but we had no problem. Sure, there’s some inconvenience. I don’t think you automatically have the right to start screaming because somebody is going to inconvenience you by building a house across the street. But when it’s on the scale of the Manoukian project, you have the right to scream like a stuck eagle.
Q Are you going to speak for the group at the City Council hearing on Aug. 3?
A Yes I’ll speak, but a lot of us will. I think there has been an advantage to the fact that I am a public figure. The access is easier and that’s helped us. But I have not been more politically active because my family and I try to live as quietly as possible. So, as a result, a lot of city problems have gone on that I haven’t been involved with.
I think that an actor certainly has the right like every citizen to stand up on a soapbox and scream “I’m for Clinton” or “I’m for Nixon” or “I’m for Bush”--who is a friend I went to school with. But I have always made sure that I have the knowledge of what I’m talking about before I try to influence other people. I don’t necessarily know more than the average guy.
Q What if your group wins on Aug. 3?
A Let’s say we are victorious. Manoukian either scales the thing way the hell down or he says the heck with it, it’s a headache, sells the property and builds it where he should on a bigger parcel where it’s not surrounded by so many houses. It would be fine if he did that.
But I think that this is just the first step. I think that there has to be a meeting with all of the homeowners associations, the Planning Commission and the City Council, and we’ve got to keep hammering on this. We have got to stop this overbuilding and start thinking about the people that are living here and the quality of life. There’s got to be some limits.
I’m as proud as hell of this box of petitions. There are over 8,000 residents that have signed our petition against this one project. That’s more people than voted in the last (municipal) election in Beverly Hills.
The whole city is responding. They realize that this is not just a case of some residents on the north side screaming because a guy wants to put up a bigger house than theirs. It’s because of the bulk building that is going on east, west, south and north.
Q Some would say that people simply live differently these days. They don’t have time for gardens and lawns, and that’s why large homes with limited yard space have sprung up. Aren’t you imposing your ideas of what makes a home on them?
A Yes, of course we are. What I’m saying is that where they are doing it is inappropriate. It ruins the rest of the neighborhood that is established there. People bought homes to live there, never expecting that this was going to happen to them. Then suddenly these huge fortresses were going up on either side of them and they’re dwarfed. It’s happening all over the place, not just in my part of Beverly Hills.
Q Isn’t it inevitable that there will be a gradual change in styles of homes as older homes built in the ‘30s and ‘40s are replaced by new homes?
A The character is going to change, but there’s a difference between a change and a volcano erupting. We’re talking about a project that is going to be 10 times the size of the average dwelling in the neighborhood. That is outrageous. People went into a certain neighborhood and were attracted by the general quality of the neighborhood. When you make a violent change in it, then it throws them. I agree with you that those changes may be irrevocable and that more of them may occur, but I think that there should be an upper limit.
Q What if your group loses?
A If the group loses, we lose. We’ll give it our best shot, but we won’t quit. If we have to sue, we will sue, we will continue. We will continue with every possible legal means and fight and fight and fight and fight. We will not stop.
Q Were you involved in the production of the campaign-style flyer that went out recently to Beverly Hills voters? In the graphic, the square footage figures for the project and other homes in the area are approximately correct, but the drawing is out of proportion and overstates the differences.
A We approved it. If there is an error, then it’s an oversight, because the graph is supposed to show that the project is 10 times the size of other homes in the area. If there’s a mistake, they shouldn’t have done it. If we had it to do over again, we would make the flyer simpler.
Q Are you politically active locally? Might you run for office after this is resolved?
A Oh, God no, not at all. I am merely a very concerned citizen. I’m more knowledgeable about this particular project because I’ve devoted myself to it.
I helped Gordana Swanson, who ran against (Los Angeles County Supervisor) Deane Dana and lost. I like the things that she had tried to do, but she was just fighting uphill against that machine of Dana’s.
In Malibu, when it became a city, I supported the people that are in office now because I agreed with their views. We’ve had a little house way out there for 20 years, and it’s wonderful to have the serenity, the peace and a little room around us. The people I supported were less for the expansion of Malibu. And I was against the overbuilding and the over-commercialization of Malibu. But I still vote here in Beverly Hills. If I want to vote in Malibu, I’d have to give up voting here; it’s one or the other.
Q Are you part of the national show-business political circuit?
A No, not really. People ask for money all the time. And I will give, but I’m not a big donor. I’m a Democrat, and I’ll get mail to support a Democratic senator, say in Idaho or wherever. But I won’t just tub-thump for somebody because they’re a Democrat.
In general, I have been really very quiet politically. I give more to environmental causes. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace and so forth, they’re all very worthwhile. There must be 14 of them that I give to on a regular basis. I’ve also given large amounts to education. I’ve given to Harvard to some extent, but much more to Phillips Andover where I went to school.
Q How much money has the group spent to fight the Tower Road project?
A I’m not dodging when I tell you I haven’t the slightest idea, but it is not very much. The cost has primarily been paying kids whatever it is, $5 an hour, to pass out the petitions, and the cost of the mailing lists.
We have gotten legal advice, free of charge, from George Mihlsten (attorney with Latham and Watkins), who’s a friend of Stu (Ketchum).
We used Cerrell Associates because Stu and I don’t know how to go out and hire some kids to hand out pamphlets so we could get the word out to the rest of the city. I don’t know how to put a flyer together, so they did. But (Joseph) Cerrell is an old friend too. He’s being paid something, but it is nominal. We’re not putting a million dollars into this or anything.
We’re just a bunch of families, and all kinds of things have happened because people cared. We’ve gotten great help.
