Developer Seeks Former Radio Studio Site

In another sign of growing development interest in Hollywood--and its potential conflict with historic preservation--a Beverly Hills company wants to build a large retail and entertainment complex on the site of ABC’s early radio studio.

The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency is expected to go the City Council today, seeking permission to enter exclusive negotiations with Regent Properties to develop a three-acre parcel on Vine Street between Sunset Boulevard and Selma Avenue.

The land is now a hodgepodge including a mini-mall, parking lots, offices and the badly damaged former studio, which also housed “The Merv Griffin Show” in the 1970s.

Empty for the last several years, the 1930s Streamline Moderne building was gutted by fire two years ago, although much of the exterior, including friezes depicting film scenes, is intact.

“We love the history of the building,” said Ann Marie Gallant, the CRA’s deputy administrator of economic development, who recalled that as a child she attended a taping of Joey Bishop’s show there.

Nonetheless, it is unclear how much, if any, of the onetime broadcasting home of radio personality Tom Breneman and Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons would be retained.

The Regent project, called Hollywood Marketplace, has the backing of Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and the CRA, which sees it as another indication that developers are finally paying attention to Hollywood.

It is the third major development proposal to emerge this year in a community that has yearned for revival for decades.

The CRA is in negotiations with the Toronto-based TrizecHahn Corp. to build a $145-million retail and entertainment center just east of the historic Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. In October, Pacific Theaters announced its plans to develop a retail-entertainment complex next to the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, across the street from the marketplace site.

Predicting swift negotiations with Regent, Gallant said the TrizecHahn proposal has served as something of a catalyst.

“The nature of everyone in Hollywood now is: ‘I want to start and I want to build,’ ” she said. “The market is hot.”

A representative of Regent, which is developing similar projects in Glendale and Westwood, said the company was not ready to discuss the proposal.

According to city documents, the Hollywood project would consist of a two-level complex, including a multimedia electronics store, a major record and bookstore, clothing shops, neighborhood-oriented restaurants and movie theaters.

The development would be done in phases, Gallant said, with the first encompassing the Vine Street block. The second phase would move the project west, across a narrow side street that would probably be turned into a pedestrian promenade, into the adjacent block on Sunset. The CRA has also asked Regent to draw up plans for a plot just to the north on Selma, now used for parking.

Gallant praised the design, which incorporates 1930s and 1940s architectural elements. “We don’t want it look to look like suburbia,” she said. “We want it to have a Hollywood flair.”

Although there is little left of the studio building’s interior, Goldberg economic development aide Roxana Tynan said Regent is willing to explore the possibility of keeping some of the facade.

“We don’t yet know how much of the facade structurally they could include,” Tynan said. “The goal is to try to incorporate as much of the facade as we can.”

Hollywood preservationist Robert Nudelman said the structure next to the studio, on the corner of Selma and Vine, is also historically significant. Now smothered under a blanket of stucco, the 1924 Spanish revival building housed a rooftop ballroom and later a Latin club called La Conga that featured a revolving bandstand and attracted the likes of Dick Powell and Martha Raye.

“If someone restored these two buildings to how they looked, it would give a spectacular entrance to the project,” said Nudelman, a member of the nonprofit Hollywood Heritage group.

Neither Gallant nor Tynan would predict precisely what assistance the CRA would offer to Regent. But Gallant mentioned a need for public improvements for the promenade, and Tynan said the city is interested in developing more parking in the vicinity.