Faded Hollywood Blvd. Faces a Tough Comeback

The grand vision for a rejuvenated Hollywood first emerged seven years ago during a luncheon for wealthy businessmen at the Brown Derby.

By the end of dessert and coffee, broadcaster Bill Welsh had collected thousands of dollars in pledges for the feasibility study that later would qualify the tattered movie capital for an enormous, government-subsidized make-over. The new Hollywood that Welsh and others envisioned was one of gleaming office towers, posh hotels, high-rise condominiums, trendy restaurants, first-run theaters and vibrant shopping areas.

“I told them that we are building the Hollywood of the 21st Century,” recalled Welsh, who headed the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce at the time. “I meant that it would be in place by the 21st Century.

“Now, I am afraid that we won’t even be building a lot of it until the 21st Century.”

The heart and soul of Hollywood’s dream for revival, the renaissance of once-glorious Hollywood Boulevard, has fallen on hard times. Four years after the city of Los Angeles officially launched its $922-million Hollywood redevelopment effort, no major development has risen on Los Angeles’ most famous--and, some say, disappointing--thoroughfare.

“There is a psychology of pessimism that we have to break,” said Christine Essel, vice president of Paramount Pictures Corp. and a member of an advisory panel on Hollywood renewal. “There is this sense that this whole thing has stagnated.”

Signs of renewal are few and far between. The elegantly restored Roosevelt Hotel, once regarded as a symbol of the boulevard’s resurgence, is in bankruptcy. The recently relocated Brown Derby, for decades a famous gathering place for Hollywood’s upper crust, has gone out of business. The historic Ontra Cafeteria, a fixture at the legendary intersection of Hollywood and Vine, had deteriorated into a refuge for transients before being gutted by fire in March.

“Hollywood is a world treasure, and what has happened here should never have been allowed to happen by any management of any city,” said Bob Goldfarb, whose distinctive McDonald’s restaurant is one of the boulevard’s few new success stories. “There is a great deal of indifference.”

Once a popular entertainment district with movie palaces, live theaters, nightclubs, restaurants and clothing stores, the boulevard deteriorated over the last few decades into what one planning consultant described as an “unimaginative . . . quick-stop tourist destination.”

T-shirt shops, fast-food restaurants, Hollywood memorabilia shops and inexpensive clothing stores dominate the tree-lined roadway, which also features boarded-up storefronts, graffiti-strewn facades and several businesses offering X-rated magazines and movies.

“When you drive down the boulevard you see a derelict eating out of the trash can and a lot of vacant stores,” said Michael Kellerman, owner of Hollywood Fantasy Tours, a local sightseeing business. “You don’t want to stop. You’d rather see Disneyland.”

Several proposed large-scale developments intended to turn around the thoroughfare have fallen victim to financing difficulties, bureaucratic obstacles and a prevailing uneasiness about whether Hollywood truly is ripe for recovery.

“There was an amazing amount of speculation at the beginning, where people bought land thinking it would go up in value and all kinds of things would be happening,” said Jim Wood, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which runs the revitalization effort for the 1.7-square-mile area. “They have now become very frustrated.”

Most notably, construction of the much ballyhooed Hollywood Promenade, proposed to wrap around Mann’s Chinese Theater, has yet to begin despite three groundbreaking ceremonies--the most recent more than a year ago. Rumors that the project may never get built recently swept Hollywood when a construction trailer and chain-link fence were removed from the project site.

The $300-million complex of museums, offices, movie theaters, shops and a hotel has long been looked to as the physical and psychological cornerstone of the boulevard’s road to recovery. Developers Melvin Simon & Associates, one of the nation’s largest shopping center developers, said the 5-year-old project “is going to happen,” but described it as “very, very financially difficult.”

Simon Vice President Michael Marr said it will be at least three years before the Promenade opens.

“You can’t build money losers,” he said. “It has been a major issue for us to find ways to make this into something that we can put on the boulevard. We are going to do it, but, boy, it has not been easy.”

Hollywood real estate broker Bruce Canfield, who helped assemble the eight-acre Promenade site, said property values continue to climb, but he said big investors are waiting for “something to happen” before building. No one, he said, wants to be first to take the plunge and potentially wind up with a costly white elephant.

“The people that are buying are not the big developer types,” Canfield said. “It is the smaller types just trying to make an investment for themselves. They want to see something good happen, but they don’t have any plans of their own.”

One large property owner said many financial institutions still consider Hollywood too risky because of its unproven market for office space--a big moneymaker in other parts of the city--and doubts about its ability to attract high-end retailers.

“You have to get the lenders to believe that something is really going to happen here,” said the owner, who asked not to be identified.

To date, the most significant new development on the boulevard--a cinema and 100,000-square-foot shopping center at Sycamore Avenue--has run into numerous construction and bureaucratic obstacles and remains little more than a large hole in the ground. The Hollywood Galaxy is not expected to open before the end of next year, said Michael Dubin of developers Kornwasser & Friedman.

“We will die very quickly if we are the only project there,” Dubin said. “Tenants aren’t knocking down doors to locate on the boulevard. What we are selling is the Hollywood Boulevard of the future. You can’t sell the Hollywood Boulevard of today. It looks like hell.”

Meanwhile, several sources said, Hollywood/Highland Partners--backed by the wealthy Bass family of Texas--has yet to move on a proposed two-block development at Highland Avenue because of jitters about the Promenade. Early versions of the Bass project envisioned as many as 1,000 apartments, an office tower and shopping center.

H. Cooke Sunoo, the CRA’s Hollywood project manager, acknowledged that many expectations have not been realized, but he blames some dashed hopes on overly optimistic projections when the City Council approved the 30-year redevelopment plan in May, 1986.

Under the plan, the CRA has jurisdiction over the 1,100-acre project area until 2016, including a two-mile stretch of Hollywood Boulevard between La Brea and Serrano avenues. The agency has the authority to spend up to $922 million in tax dollars to encourage revitalization in the area.

As an example, the CRA has budgeted nearly $100,000 in the coming year to monitor and provide technical assistance for the proposed Hollywood Promenade project. Several months ago, it bought $4,500 worth of street trees for a neighborhood near De Longpre Park, and next year, it plans to spend $2.4 million on affordable housing.

Sunoo said it is unfair to “string together unfortunate events” and then characterize them as “black eyes” for renewal.

“If you have ever eaten at the Brown Derby, it is clear that it wasn’t redevelopment that caused the demise of the restaurant,” said Sunoo. “All is not well in Hollywood, but how much of it is interrelated?”

CRA officials say the agency has spent most of the last four years developing detailed plans for the revitalization effort, a behind-the-scenes process that they say is time-consuming. Sunoo said the CRA has been carefully crafting a “road map” for renewal that will ensure that redevelopment--when it comes--follows strict guidelines and does not bring about “rash changes.”

The agency, he said, recently rejected a proposal by developer Alexander Haagen for a 430,000-square-foot shopping mall that would have incorporated the historic Egyptian Theater at McCadden Place. Sunoo said a self-contained, suburban-style mall was contrary to evolving plans for the area because it would have siphoned life from nearby streets. Haagen said it was the only type of project that would attract tenants and shoppers.

Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo, who represents Hollywood, said he has been disappointed by the slow pace of renewal, but he defended the CRA.

“A lot of what goes on with the redevelopment process is not very visible,” Woo said. “I don’t want to see some junky project come to Hollywood Boulevard just because we are desperate. We don’t want development at any price. This has been a difficult message to deliver.”

But even the plans, some CRA detractors point out, have not been on schedule. A comprehensive blueprint for Hollywood Boulevard, which will regulate such matters as building heights and sidewalk widths, is already two years overdue. Similarly, a traffic plan for the area, also due two years ago, still needs to undergo lengthy environmental reviews.

“Developers come in and go through tremendous frustration because they get different messages about what they can do here,” said architect Bruce Sternberg, a member of a citizens’ advisory committee on Hollywood revitalization. “So the word goes out that Hollywood is screwed up. It is a real bane for any developer to have to deal with unknowns.”

Some CRA officials lay much of the blame for Hollywood’s problems on a small group of critics who have fought the redevelopment effort since its inception. Some of the critics, organized as Save Hollywood, Our Town (SHOT), have sued to invalidate the entire 30-year renewal plan, alleging that it was illegally conceived and drafted.

Although the city and agency have prevailed in the lawsuit, an appeal by SHOT continues to tie up $9.7 million in so-called tax increment funds that would be available to the agency. Los Angeles County officials have refused to release the funds, which are generated when properties within a redevelopment area increase in assessed value, until the court case is resolved.

In the meantime, the CRA has been forced to borrow $12.5 million from other renewal projects and the city to cover expenses in Hollywood.

“These people have created a negative impression of redevelopment in Hollywood and I think that has been very detrimental,” said Wood, the CRA chairman. “It is another piece of uncertainty. It all contributes to the uncertainty about Hollywood’s future.”

SHOT members and their supporters, however, say they are not the problem in Hollywood.

“They have spent millions of dollars on Hollywood redevelopment,” said activist Ruth Goulet. “Where? On what? For what? We have nothing. That is not our fault.”

Concern about the boulevard’s malaise has caught the attention of residential groups, businesses and City Hall. In an unusual act of cooperation, several members of two competing--and often combative--community groups have quietly collaborated on a list of recommended short-term improvements to help turn things around.

The list, to be presented to the CRA this month, is expected to include such items as increased police patrols, social programs for the homeless, street sweeping, sidewalk landscaping and the like.

“People who visit Hollywood really see a lot of neglect,” said architect Sternberg, who has led the effort for the Hollywood Community Action Council, an advisory group appointed by Woo. “I think that registers with people. What we are trying to say is that that needs to change.”

Robert Nudelman, chairman of the Hollywood Project Area Committee, a competing citizens’ group that has been dominated by critics of the CRA, said both groups recognize that the boulevard cannot afford to wait for big developers to rescue it.

“It has gone from the boulevard of dreams to the boulevard of excuses,” said Nudelman, whose group contends that the CRA favors big-business interests over those of local residents and merchants.

Other neighborhood forces have helped young artists paint murals on fences and walls, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, traditionally the community’s most avid booster, has organized a crime watch to chip away at the boulevard’s reputation as being unsafe.

While still a popular tourist destination, the thoroughfare has become well-known for its late-night cruisers, gang activity, drug dealing and unruly crowds. The problems attracted nationwide attention on Halloween night in 1988, when revelers clashed with police and vandalized and looted shops.

The business watch, fashioned after highly successful neighborhood watch groups in nearby residential areas, convened for the first time last month. Chamber President Larry Kaplan said he hopes the group will evolve into a political force at City Hall, demanding more police officers, cleaner streets and other city services.

“Four or five years ago, the residential communities were no-man’s land, a lost cause,” said Kaplan. “But it is amazing how these community groups have made a difference. If they are making the residential communities safer, it is only a matter of time until we can make the business community safer.”

Woo said his office has encouraged the shift toward smaller improvements, which he called “short-term projects with an immediate impact.” The recommended CRA budget for fiscal year 1990-91 reflects the new priorities, designating $275,000 for improvements to the boulevard and $1.2 million for tree plantings, historic preservation and other projects in residential neighborhoods.

“A lot of people are wondering what is happening in Hollywood and why hasn’t Hollywood become a Century City overnight,” Woo said. “We are trying to show that while it is really difficult to turn a community around, it is possible to make some visible changes in the short term.”

One large developer dismissed the efforts as a “Band-Aid on a large, bleeding wound,” but others said Hollywood’s future may lie in such incremental changes.

Urban planner and preservationist Fran Offenhauser, who has served on various Hollywood renewal committees, said the CRA has floundered in Hollywood because “it has hitched its wagon to a star” instead of “getting down to earth and doing something real.”

Offenhauser, reflecting a common sentiment in Hollywood, said the CRA should follow the examples of Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena and Main Street in Santa Monica, where small-scale renovations of existing buildings--not blockbuster new projects--have anchored renewal efforts. She and other preservationists, for example, applaud Walt Disney Co.’s decision to restore the historic El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and use it to release new movies.

Some of Hollywood’s biggest dreamers, however, say they want more than restored buildings. They want the flashy buildings that many of them dreamed about seven years ago and that they still believe will return Hollywood Boulevard to center stage in modern Los Angeles.

And they are willing to wait.

“I am frustrated, but I realize nothing is going to happen as quickly as I wanted it to,” said Welsh, organizer of the Brown Derby fund-raiser that started it all. “I know now that the real changes are 10 years away. I am patient.”

Hollywood Redevelopment Site Maps shows the 1,100-acre Hollywood Redevelopment Project, which covers the core of Hollywood. The commercial portion of the revitalization effort focuses on a two-mile stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, which includes such landmarks as Mann’s Chinese Theater and the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. Up to $922 million in tax dollars can be spent over the 30-year life of the project, which was approved by the Los Angeles City Council in May, 1986.