Party on, Hef!
Neighbors' charges that Hugh Hefner is running a commercial party business out of his famed Playboy Mansion have been rejected by Los Angeles officials who say they inspected "every square foot" of the place without finding anything illegal going on.
Wednesday's announcement ends a nine-month city investigation. But it is unlikely to end the controversy over the seemingly nonstop series of nighttime soirees staged at Hefner's 31-room, Tudor-style Holmby Hills estate.
Attendance at the parties can range from a few dozen of Hefner's friends cavorting in the mansion's swimming pool and grotto to more than 1,000 guests dining and dancing beneath tents erected on the nearly six-acre grounds off Charing Cross Road.
The big blowouts bother neighbors, who counted 22 such parties during one three-month period last year.
In complaints filed with the city, nearby homeowners contended that Playboy Enterprises Inc., which owns the mansion, had turned it into a money-making business.
They asserted that the place was being rented out for corporate and trade functions and for political and charity fund-raisers staffed by Playboy's own caterers and parking valets.
Playboy officials denied that their corporation or Hefner profited from outsiders' use of the mansion, where the 75-year-old founder of the men's magazine has lived for three decades. They argued that the Playboy Mansion is a swinging bachelor's pad, not a business.
City zoning investigators agree.
"Inspection of the site revealed the building is used primarily as a residence," Dave Keim, the city's chief of code enforcement, said Wednesday.
"After doing fairly extensive investigation we could not find any evidence of zoning or building code violations with reference to the complaints. They allowed us complete access to the premises and we inspected just about every square foot."
Keim said Los Angeles building and safety ordinances do not regulate parties. "There is no definition in the zoning code how many parties you can have a year," he said.
The city initiated a series of meetings between Playboy and the Holmby-Westwood Property Owners Assn., Keim said, "to try to find a way for Playboy to mitigate" problems cited by nearby homeowners.
Playboy reports that it puts up a big curtain to tone down music at events and dispatches a technician armed with a sound-measuring decibel meter around the property.
