A Civic War Is Brewing Over ‘Tara’ Estate
Is a West Hollywood historic district about to become, well, history?
Some residents worry that is what will happen if a $4.2-million apartment building is constructed on the wooded grounds of the Colonial-style estate they call “Tara.”
Critics of the redevelopment say it’s a betrayal of the woman who gave the Laurel Avenue estate to the city when she was 101, thinking it would be maintained as a cultural resource.
It was the city, after all, that slapped the “historic” designation on Elsie Weisman’s property in 1994 to prevent Weisman and her family from turning it into an apartment building back then.
The estate is shaded by a forest of 66 trees and 44 tropical shrubs. Weisman described the place as “a veritable jungle and bird oasis in a desert of apartment buildings that have superseded the lovely homes that once stood on this block.”
But now, municipal officials and two development partners have obtained a grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to build 35 apartments for low-income senior citizens there.
Officials propose wrapping a three-story apartment building around part of Weisman’s house. Her two-story white clapboard dwelling would be turned into a common area for tenants and a community meeting place.
A small public “pocket park” would be carved out of a corner of the front yard of the estate at 1343 Laurel Ave.
City redevelopment administrators say the apartments would help ease a severe shortage of affordable rental units for senior citizens in West Hollywood.
Critics complain that the project would wipe out the oasis that Weisman so loved by covering much of the only large estate to survive from West Hollywood’s orchard era.
“This cheesy senior citizen housing would dwarf the house. There are so many other things the city could do with this property,” said floral designer Allegra Allison. “The city needs a library. This place would be a perfect library.”
Allison knows the Weisman property well. She has lived there 25 years. Two others also live in apartments created in the huge house by Weisman’s family in 1941. A fourth rents the estate’s onetime chauffeur’s cottage at the rear of the property.
Tenant Kent Woker, a chef who has lived there 10 years, said arborists surveying the double-wide, 160-by-190-foot deep lot for redevelopment have tagged only five of its 66 trees to be saved.
The foliage had been one of the selling points for Elsie Weisman’s father, Adolph Linick, when he moved the family to Los Angeles from Chicago in the early 1920s. Linick, an amusement arcade owner, purchased the estate in 1924 for $35,000.
In her memoir “A Journal of Remembered Years,” Weisman explained that the property reminded her family of their home in Illinois. The house, built in 1915, was framed by deodara cedars and, in the rear, “10 huge eucalyptus trees, then already more than 50 years old, planted to form a windbreak when this district was farmland.”
Weisman described the Lombardy poplars, a grape arbor, pepper trees (“two with red pepper berries, two with green”), apricot and tangerine trees, and black acacias. Over the years, overhead utility lines were sometimes engulfed by some of the larger trees. But “I have always adamantly resisted their removal,” she wrote.
By 1988, real estate developers were eyeing Weisman’s property. Although she refused to sell, she and family members were rattled when West Hollywood officials talked of writing a landmarks ordinance that son Richard Weisman feared would make the property “next to worthless.”
Richard Weisman, a retired developer who lives in Calabasas Park, said that a few years later he proposed building a 55-unit project on the site.
But the city rebuffed him, moving instead to make the estate “a local cultural resource.” It is now designated a city historic landmark and is listed as a state historic resource.
“We didn’t think the place should be on the list. But since they put it there, it should be protected,” said the 77-year-old Weisman, who was born in the Laurel Avenue house.
“I feel betrayed by the city. Part of their argument back then was these trees are 75 years old and shouldn’t be destroyed. My mother would turn over if she knew what was happening.”
Blocked from redeveloping the site, Elsie Weisman donated the property to the city in 1997 in exchange for tax benefits, permission to continue living the remainder of her life there and a pledge that her tenants could stay after her death, he said. She died in 2000.
“I’m waiting for the first chop,” her son said of the trees. “I have my attorneys ready.”
Although the City Council has not signed off on the project, officials are moving ahead with redevelopment planning. Relocation fees of about $40,000 were discussed last week for each of the four tenants -- who include 26-year-resident Sandy Dugas, an office administrator, and 83-year-old Sandy Linick, a relative of Adolph Linick who has lived there 27 years.
Jeff Skorneck, housing manager for the city’s Rent Stabilization and Housing Department, said he had not seen the arborists’ tree-removal report.
“What would really disappoint me was if the project was sunk through misinformation,” he said.
Project designer John Mutlow, a private architect and a professor at USC, said the proposed three-story apartments would not rise higher than the Weisman house’s peaked roof.
The 575-square-foot apartments would rent to low-income senior citizens for about $200 a month. Although HUD rules specify that poor senior citizens from across the country could sign up for the units, they would probably be claimed by Los Angeles-area residents picked through a lottery, said Paul Zimmerman, executive director of the nonprofit West Hollywood Community Housing Corp., one of the city’s partners in the project.
The apartment plan and HUD’s involvement have drawn fire from City Councilman Sal Guarriello, who at 84 is a longtime advocate for West Hollywood’s senior citizens.
“It’s unconscionable to think we have a great piece of historical property here and the West Hollywood Corp. doesn’t go out and do the right thing,” Guarriello said. “It should be left alone. Build a three-story U-shaped building around it? No way.”
Public hearings on the project will be scheduled.
But for now, people in West Hollywood are wondering whether “Tara” will follow its namesake and end up gone with the wind.
