W. Hollywood OKs $250-Million Hotel, Office Complex on Sunset
West Hollywood has approved construction of a $250-million hotel and retail-office complex on the Sunset Strip, backing a developer who promised the city nearly $20 million in fees and street improvements .
West Hollywood’s City Council endorsed the so-called Sunset Millennium project 4-0 late Monday, with Mayor John Heilman abstaining because he lives adjacent to the development, which is one of the biggest ever proposed for the famous Strip.
The approval, which came over the objections of some West Hollywood residents and Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer, marks a crucial win for developer Mark Siffin, principal of Indianapolis-based Maefield Development Corp.
Siffin plans to build in a joint venture with Leon Black, once a top aide to junk-bond king Michael Milken at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert investment house. Siffin declined Tuesday to discuss the structure of the venture.
The project would rise along the southern edge of Sunset Boulevard west of La Cienega Boulevard, and would include a 371-room, 10-story hotel, about 155,550 square feet of new retail and restaurant space, and 158,000 square feet of new office space, along with a two-auditorium live theater.
Local residents opposed a much smaller project by developer Raleigh Enterprises in the early 1990s on much of the same site, which includes the former Playboy Enterprises tower and the Tiffany Theater.
Opponents of the new project contend it will worsen traffic on already crowded Sunset Boulevard, create safety hazards and ruin the views of hillside homes on the north side of the street.
“It will forever destroy Sunset Boulevard,” said G.G. Verone, a former actress and critic of the project who lives above Sunset, just outside the West Hollywood city limits.
Verone’s organization, Save Our Strip, will likely sue, she said. Los Angeles city officials may also file a lawsuit contending West Hollywood strayed from its own environmental plans.
“The developer’s trying to get what he can get, but the developer is not the decision-maker here,” Feuer said. “It’s the city of West Hollywood that is rushing headlong into this irrespective of the meaningful consequences” on traffic congestion.
Siffin said he wants “an equitable resolution of the concerns” short of scaling back the project, the largest in West Hollywood since it adopted a specific plan for the area in 1996--an ordinance that raised building heights and densities allowed on the Strip.
He said he has so far pledged close to $20 million to the city, including about $4.7 million in permit fees, $5.2 million to build a library, $7 million to widen La Cienega Boulevard and install a traffic control system, and $3 million to erect a pedestrian bridge over La Cienega.
