The High Life

It was the coyotes, finally, that drove Dory Given, 68, and her husband, Sherman, 79, from their Sullivan Canyon home to the Blair House, a luxury high-rise condominium building on the Wilshire Corridor in Los Angeles.

Not just the coyotes, of course. There was also the traffic getting to and from the Westside and the fact that two of their children live out of state, which means the Givens often find themselves away from home.

“But when the coyotes got to our cats, that really made me ill,” Given said.

So she and her husband, a retired general contractor, traded a half-acre of rustic living next to Topanga State Park for a 3,800-square-foot condo that they bought in 1991 for a little more than $1 million.

“It’s like going from the country into Manhattan,” she said. “One thing I do have to say for condo living: It’s very convenient.”

The Wilshire Corridor is a roughly one-mile stretch of 30 tony high-rises along Wilshire Boulvard between Westwood and Beverly Hills. “The Golden Mile,” as the corridor is sometimes called, is bordered on the east by Comstock Avenue and on the west by Malcolm Avenue.

Some of the condo buildings are as recent as 1992; others date to the 1950s and ‘60s. But the older buildings don’t generate the buzz that emanates from the newer, high-end buildings.

According to those whose business it is to make such distinctions, there are four A-list high-rises on the corridor--the Blair House, the Wilshire, the Wilshire House and Latour--so designated because they’re the newest of the new, offering upscale amenities and service, with a staff of 25 or more at each building.

“You can call from South Dakota and have the valet warm up your car so it’s running when you get back,” is how Catherine Lacy, a broker with Wilshire Realtors, describes the service at the Wilshire.

Stuck in a sales funk as recently as a few years ago, the Wilshire Corridor has enjoyed a comeback of late, with Realtors pronouncing the high-end condo market in good condition.

For most, the corridor is just a winding stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, where tall buildings loom over the traffic, the landscape of high-rises interrupted every now and then by a church, temple or hotel.

But high above the traffic, paradise can be found. For a price. If you want to live on the corridor, it’ll cost you--anywhere from $600,000 to $3 million in the luxury condo buildings, Realtors say.

A 3,600-square-foot unit on the 23rd floor of the neo-Deco Wilshire, for instance, is listed at $2.65 million and features two master bedrooms, two master bathrooms with Jacuzzi tubs and a living room with a 20-foot ceiling.

Marilyn Dunn lives on the 11th floor of the Wilshire House, in a unit that features a wrap-around terrace and rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows.

“What I liked about this building is that every home is on a corner, so you have a panoramic view,” said Dunn, an 11-year resident of the corridor and an agent with Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas.

Not so long ago, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, the viability of these ritzier high-rises was somewhat in question, say Realtors. Hit hard by the real estate recession, high-end units sat vacant; meanwhile, owners at the older, less glamorous buildings like the Wilshire Holmby saw their home prices slipping away.

But that has changed. “The market for high-end condos is healthy again,” said Steve Heiferman, an agent with Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas, “because it coincides with the good market right now for high-end single-family homes. This is the first time in a long time that there hasn’t been enough inventory.”

Celebrities like Placido Domingo and Rodney Dangerfield undoubtedly like the exclusivity and privacy. Other typical corridor residents, say Realtors, include singles and couples downsizing their lives after years spent in Beverly Hills or Brentwood and those with international business concerns who might spend only three months a year in Los Angeles.

When Walter and Helga Oppenheimer were condo-shopping in the mid-’80s, they weren’t particularly interested in the penthouse unit at the Wilshire House, although they did get a kick out of the fact that its out-of-sight asking price included a Rolls Royce.

Instead, the Oppenheimers bought in at the low end, a $600,000 sixth-floor unit.

“We moved from an apartment off Sunset Boulevard, on Shoreham Drive,” said Oppenheimer, 82, retired from the apparel business. “We were concerned about security.”

And security is tight in the luxury condo buildings on the corridor. Even residents can’t simply travel freely from floor to floor. A security guard downstairs has to identify you before allowing access to other floors in the building.

“High-end condos represent a maintenance-free lifestyle,” said Heiferman, who has been selling condos on the corridor since 1978. “I lock my door, I leave, I don’t worry about someone breaking in. The only thing that’s missing is room service.”

Such frills wouldn’t have mattered as much a few years ago, when “the Golden Mile” was hammered by the realty recession. The Blair House, for instance, sat frozen in its steel-frame stage between 1980 and 1988, construction halted because the investors couldn’t come up with the cash to finish the project.

“In the early ‘90s, because of the excess of inventory, even if the market had been good, you still would have had too many units,” said Lynn Borland, president of Wilshire Realtors. “But then the bottom dropped out of the market.”

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To help fuel a rebound, home exchange programs were established, in which houses could be traded for condo units.

“That made it more palatable than that thing of sticking your house on the market,” said a resident of the Wilshire who asked that her name not be used. She and her husband moved to the Wilshire after 45 years in a Westside home.

“We’re safer, and it’s an easier way of life,” she added. “I thought it would bother me a tremendous amount. But I think it’s cute now that I say hello to people in my building.”

Abe Shapiro, who lives on the 26th floor of the Blair House, has an expansive view. The exposure is mainly to the south and east, offering top-of-the-world views of the Century City and downtown Los Angeles skylines--with Catalina Island off in the foggy distance.

From way up here, any house would look small--even television mega-producer Aaron Spelling’s sprawling Holmby Hills mansion.

“I wouldn’t take that house if you gave it to me,” joked Shapiro, 71, an architect who designed the Blair House as well as the Longford and the Diplomat, two other high-rise condo buildings on the Wilshire Corridor. “What do I need all of that room for?”