Rediscovering Tinseltown’s Old Glory
Developer Robert A. Langer has a plan for the historic Broadway building at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street: He wants to make the nine-story tower look much as it did in 1927, when it was new.
In the next year, workers will remove the stucco from the lower floors of the Beaux Arts Classical-style building. The classical columns of the front facade, long hidden, will again see daylight. And the immense department-store windows, measuring 25 feet by 26 feet, will bathe pedestrians in the glow of store displays.
The $6-million restoration of the former Broadway building by Langer’s Meringoff Properties is one of several examples of a new Hollywood being created inside the ruins of old Tinseltown. Medical offices, courtyard apartment complexes, movie palaces and fast-food diners from other eras are being renovated to resemble the Hollywood of generations past.
The new-found potential for profit in aging buildings has turned many developers into Hollywood history buffs. Of the 37 commercial projects underway on Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard and surrounding streets, more than half are in historic buildings, according to Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Many of these buildings are wellsprings of movie-industry memories. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the Broadway was the swankiest department store in Hollywood, where stars working at the Warner Bros. studio (now the KTLA studio) or the old Columbia Pictures studio (now Sunset and Gower Studios) would walk over and buy suits and silk handkerchiefs. Inside the old shell, Meringoff plans to refurbish 60,000 square feet of space intended for high-end retail tenants; the upper floors will remain office space.
Another landmark is the Pig ‘n Whistle restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, whose historic decor was rediscovered above the lowered ceiling of a garish pizza parlor.
The old Hollywood Equitable building at Hollywood and Vine, originally a medical office building where many film personalities went for physicals, is being made over by Los Angeles developer Tom Gilmore as an office building, to be known as 6253 Hollywood at Vine. Gilmore has leased part of the ground floor to a restaurant, Hollywood & Vine Diner, which will feature “upscale Americana” cuisine. Upstairs will be Ultra Lounge, a night spot that will use the pre-rock sounds of Dean Martin and Keeley Smith for atmosphere.
Los Angeles developer CIM Group is restoring the facade of the former Woolworth Building on Hollywood, where the Hollywood Suit Store plans to open this summer. At Sunset and Vine, developers P&A; Erie of Chicago and Regent Properties of Los Angeles are building 300 market-rate apartments atop 85,000 square feet of retail space; the facade integrates the Art Moderne-style facade of the TAV Entertainment Center, the former broadcast studio for the “Merv Griffin Show.”
Hollywood is akin to an archeological site waiting to be rediscovered. Unlike much of Los Angeles, which has been demolished and rebuilt several times in the last century, almost 80% of the buildings on Hollywood Boulevard that existed in the 1930s have survived, even if many have been altered beyond recognition.
“If you drive down the street, you would never know the old buildings were there because they attached new facades in an attempt to modernize them,” said John Tronson, a principal in the real estate brokerage of Ramsey-Schilling. “The majority of the buildings have something very exciting behind the false facades.”
Historic preservation in Hollywood does not follow the same philosophy as, say, Colonial Williamsburg, which is intended to be a museum piece about a distant era. Instead, the owners of Hollywood’s historic buildings must balance a respect for history with practicality, said architect William Roschen, principal of Roschen Van Cleve Architects, which is designing both the Broadway make-over and the apartment project at Sunset and Vine.
Developers can recapture the glory of historic buildings, he said, through “careful design that integrates the intentions of the original buildings with new uses.”
If restoring old buildings can make a developer into a preservationist hero, the underlying business is still real estate, and profit remains the driving force, said Tronson, board chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
In the past, Tronson said, historic preservation was a “philanthropic activity.” Hollywood developers became interested in preservation when they realized that properties that rent for only $1 per square foot can fetch $2 per square foot if renovated.
“The creative fields and entertainment industry really love that kind of product, and they are willing to pay for it, so it doubles your revenue and justifies the cost of fixing up your building,” he said.
Hollywood has had a long and difficult climb to gentrification.
The first wave of investment came in the 1980s, when developers such as Mel Simon & Associates of Indianapolis Inc. and the Bass brothers proposed a large-scale office building near the present site of the Hollywood & Highland project. The Simon proposal aroused passionate protest among some Hollywood business owners who feared displacement by big developers, and the business owners tied up the project in a series of lawsuits. Both the Simon and Bass proposals eventually fizzled in the recession.
One project that was built in the late 1980s, The Hollywood Galaxy, a conventional suburban-style shopping center on Hollywood Boulevard, also failed. “It was not the right vision,” Gubler said. “Hollywood should not do any [project that is] garden variety and could be anywhere in the country.”
The neighborhood’s negative reputation was a hurdle for years.
“When I came here in 1992, people were very down on Hollywood,” Gubler said. “There had been many false starts.”
Worse for Hollywood’s image were the riots that year, when television viewers worldwide watched images of looters rampaging down Hollywood Boulevard and plundering Frederick’s of Hollywood.
City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg fostered a climate for investment in the early 1990s by helping form the Hollywood Entertainment District Property Owners Assn., which enabled owners to pool their money for street cleaning and security.
The second wave of investments were the risk-taking, trail-blazing projects, including the mammoth $615-million Hollywood and Highland project due for completion in November; the restoration of the El Capitan and Egyptian theaters; and the $90-million retail center being built around the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to be completed next spring.
Hollywood has also benefited from Metro Rail. Even though the construction of the subway system led to collapsed streets and ruined businesses, the long-term impact of the subway is mostly viewed as positive. “The fact that there has been this big investment in public infrastructure creates confidence in the area,” said developer John Given, a senior vice president at CIM Group.
Night clubs and theaters add to the credibility of Hollywood, and occasionally provide the crowded sidewalks and bustling restaurants of a fashionable urban district. “The Lion King” at the Pantages--the historic 1930s theater that owner Nederlander West Coast renovated last year for $10 million--brings about 34,000 people weekly to the area of Hollywood and Vine.
About two years ago, “Hollywood turned around,” said developer Langer, managing partner of Meringoff Properties’ Los Angeles office. “People who saw Hollywood only as hookers and pimps now saw that Hollywood could be a place that was trendy, chic and fun.”
Office rents continue to climb, from about $1.63 per square foot to more than $2.02, according to a February study by Economic Research Associates of Los Angeles and commissioned by the Hollywood Business Improvement Assn.
The new Hollywood, Gubler said, may be better than the original, which was less glamorous than generally believed.
“Even in its heyday, Hollywood Boulevard was never as glitzy or glamorous as people sometimes think,” he said. “Now we have the ability to create something that people always expected Hollywood to be.”
