Neighbor Takes a Dim View of Planned Sunset Strip High-Rise

On a clear day, G.G. Verone can see from the ocean to downtown Los Angeles through the living room window of her home above the Sunset Strip.

On Monday, Verone gazed out the window and saw red.

Her million-dollar view may soon be blocked by a $250-million commercial development proposed for a three-block stretch of famed Sunset Boulevard beneath her hillside home.

An Indiana-based development company has asked permission from the city of West Hollywood to build the combination hotel, office and retail project on the south side of the Sunset Strip from an area half a block east of La Cienega Boulevard to half a block west of Alta Vista Road.

The rambling Sunset Millennium project would span busy La Cienega with a pedestrian bridge and close off Alta Vista by turning it into a cul-de-sac.

The development would wrap around the existing Petersen Publishing and Playboy buildings. But a 10-story luxury hotel would replace low-rise buildings that include the Tiffany Theater.

It’s the 371-room hotel that has nearby hillside residents fuming that they are about to be walled off from one of the most spectacular city views in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately for people like G.G. Verone, they live 10 feet outside West Hollywood and may have little say in what’s built across the city border.

They’ll find out what kind of clout they have tonight when West Hollywood city planners conduct a community meeting to let neighbors discuss the proposed development with designers and executives of Maefield Development Corp. The 6:30 p.m. session will be held at the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel, 1020 N. San Vicente Blvd.

The West Hollywood Planning Commission is tentatively scheduled to consider the project June 3. If that panel approves it and no one appeals the action to the City Council, construction could begin in late summer.

The work would be complete sometime in 2001, said developer Mark A. Siffin.

Verone, a former actress whose credits include a role in the early TV series “77 Sunset Strip,” said hillside residents living north of Sunset Boulevard within Los Angeles have been kept in the dark about the planned project.

“Granted, I’ll lose my view. But a development like this will destroy the Sunset Strip as we know it,” Verone said as she surveyed the site from her living room window.

“There will be nothing distinctive about the Sunset Strip. It will look like every other high-rise conglomerate.”

Architects of Sunset Millennium dispute that contention. They say the development will enhance the boulevard and the hotel will be buffered by “a broad swath” of open space that will preserve much of the city view.

New shops will be one and two stories high, and three “view terraces” will be open to the public, they say.

“It’s going to be so much better than it is now,” said Ed Fredrichs, president of Gensler Architecture and Planning Worldwide, the designer.

“For the homeowners on the hill, frankly, these are fairly small impositions on the views. If anything, they will enhance the view,” he said.

West Hollywood city planner Jennifer Davis said the proposed project--the largest ever for her city--follows guidelines in a city master plan hammered out three years ago for the Sunset Strip. The boulevard’s so-called specific plan allows for tall buildings at strategic locations.

Davis said Sunset Millennium would provide 676,000 square feet of new footage while retaining 118,000 square feet of office space in the Petersen and Playboy buildings. About 30% of the site is to be open space, about twice what is required.

The Sunset-La Cienega intersection would be widened as part of the project. A pedestrian bridge south of the corner would cross over La Cienega’s steep southward incline.

Davis said the Tiffany Theater is not now being considered for relocation within the project. It is next to the site of the old Dino’s nightclub, which was the fictional setting of the “77 Sunset Strip” show in which Verone once performed.

That’s exactly where the 10-story hotel is to go.

Verone said Monday she and others plan to ask Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer, who represents the hillside area above the Sunset Strip, to consider legal action to block the hotel’s construction.

But that’s not likely to happen, said an aide to Feuer.

“I can’t imagine Mike getting in a lawsuit. That’s not his style,” field deputy Rochelle Ventura said Monday.

She plans to attend tonight’s meeting to see what the project looks like. But it is located in West Hollywood, not Los Angeles.

“The city of West Hollywood doesn’t always take our advice,” Ventura said.