Development And Redevelopment

NEAR the 18th hole of the Bighorn golf course in Palm Desert, publishing tycoon Duane Hagadone laid out his vision for a dream home to his architect. It would be set high on the bald mountain rising near the green yet be so inconspicuous that he'd have to point it out even to golf buddies.

Chris Robbins could be a poster child for mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti's vision for Los Angeles. Each morning, Robbins straps on a backpack, cues up his iPod and sets out on a short walk to the subway, which whisks him to his downtown public relations job. He and his wife share one car. On the weekends, they like to stay local, savoring their neighborhood's array of new restaurants and bars. Over 12 years as Hollywood's councilman, Garcetti has emerged as a leading champion of "smart growth," which aims to entice residents like Robbins out of cars by densely concentrating new development along transit lines.

Plans for a 45-story, wisp-thin tower of ultra-luxury condominiums between Beverly Hills High School and the Los Angeles Country Club are set to be unveiled today. Developers say it would be one of the most expensive residential buildings in the West. The $400-million tower along one of the area's toniest corridors would be the first building in California designed by renowned Paris architect Jean Nouvel, known for his daring designs.

Nearly everyone in Newport Beach thinks they need a new City Hall. Getting them to agree on where to put it is another story. On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to locate a new civic center on a 12-acre site in Newport Center that was slated to become a park. The fiercely contested ballot initiative has led to more than $800,000 in campaign spending, an amount almost unheard of for a local issue in a city of its size, including donations of more than $600,000 alone from one restaurateur.

Once home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of dairy farms, the Inland Empire's $500-million dairy industry is rapidly evaporating as dozens of farmers sell out to real estate developers. In the last two years, more than 160 dairies -- nearly 80% of those operating just a year ago -- have either been sold or are in escrow, according to the Milk Producers Council, a trade association based in Chino. The industry could be virtually gone within five years.

Irvine officials promised Tuesday to honor a commitment by Tustin to offer 14 homes at the former Tustin Marine base as temporary housing for poor families. The homes are on an area of the base within Irvine's boundaries. The bulk of the base is in Tustin. The homes, transitional housing, will be operated by Families Forward of Irvine, formerly known as Irvine Temporary Housing.

In another sign that commercial real estate is thawing in choice markets, construction will officially get underway Thursday on a $350-million residential and retail development on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The complex, called the Village at Santa Monica, which mixes luxury condominiums and affordable apartments, has been in the works for more than six years. The project is being built by New York developer Related Cos. on a 3-acre site once owned by think tank Rand Corp. The Village is the first major residential development to be built on Ocean Avenue in two decades and one of only a few condominium complexes under construction in Los Angeles County.

Sunland-Tujunga, long known as Los Angeles' rural outpost of craggy canyons, secluded houses, horse trails and a onetime motorcycle gang hide-out, is in the midst of an identity crisis: Build a Home Depot or shop at a mom-and-pop hardware store? Hilltop McMansions or open space? Support a revitalized main street or promote more tract home developments?

The Figueroa Street corridor in downtown Los Angeles is already thick with hotels, restaurants and office towers. So is it ready for the vast project announced this week on the site of the Wilshire Grand hotel? The $1-billion proposal by owner Korean Air calls for demolishing the 1950s hotel and an adjoining office building and replacing it with two skyscrapers: a 60-story office tower and a 40-story hotel. It's just the latest in a series of projects that have been remaking the corridor.

It is an impressive gift: 85 acres and a historic building to boot. But Orange County officials aren't quite sure it is a windfall. The county is scheduled to inherit a portion of the closed Tustin Marine base -- including one of its two massive World War II blimp hangars -- for use as a specialized county park with a private operator. But county officials say they are in no rush to take ownership. "People think it's free land," said Michael W.

For two decades, Dee Tuntkavep has enjoyed a view of pine-shrouded Chandler Boulevard from the upstairs reading room of her Sherman Oaks home. Now all she sees are concrete walls two stories high -- the still-in-progress expansion of an Orthodox Jewish house of worship. In fact, plans for the upgraded Chabad of North Hollywood are for a structure nearly nine times the size of the prayer house it replaces. On its website, the Chabad gives thanks: "Divine Providence has finally shined down on this long-awaited project.

Despite vociferous objections and legal threats, Los Angeles County transportation officials Thursday approved a plan to tunnel beneath Beverly Hills High School as part of a long-awaited Westside subway extension from downtown to the Westwood area. The $5.6-billion rail project will add nine miles of service west from the existing station at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue to the Veterans Administration hospital near the UCLA campus. The subway will mostly follow Wilshire Boulevard before veering southwest near Beverly Hills High to reach Century City.

Half a century ago, Walt Disney leased a horse ranch in Placerita Canyon to shoot episodes of "The Adventures of Spin and Marty" from the classic ABC series "The Mickey Mouse Club. " Disney liked the property so much, with its rich variety of meadows, oak groves and mountains, that his production company began buying up land, eventually accumulating 890 acres. Over the decades, the storied Golden Oak Ranch, located in an unincorporated area of northeast Los Angeles County, has been used as backdrop for countless Disney TV shows and movies, including "Old Yeller" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. " Now Walt Disney Co. is moving closer to transforming part of the historic movie ranch into one of the largest high-tech production developments in Los Angeles in the last decade -- and the public will soon get its first say on the project.

Most mornings, when the slanted dawn light hits the nearby Tower Palace luxury high-rises, Cho Su-ja can't help but stare, struck by their grandeur. The 72-year-old grandmother lives in a two-room shack with plastic flooring, sandwiched between other shacks built from planks of wood, corrugated tin, castoff door frames and bamboo screens, like a jumble of shipwrecks. But Cho doesn't envy her wealthy neighbors, not one bit. She's proud to be one of the original inhabitants of Guyrong village, a ramshackle shantytown sprawling alongside the exclusive Gangnam area, the highest-priced real estate in South Korea.

In another sign that commercial real estate is thawing in choice markets, construction will officially get underway Thursday on a $350-million residential and retail development on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The complex, called the Village at Santa Monica, which mixes luxury condominiums and affordable apartments, has been in the works for more than six years. The project is being built by New York developer Related Cos. on a 3-acre site once owned by think tank Rand Corp. The Village is the first major residential development to be built on Ocean Avenue in two decades and one of only a few condominium complexes under construction in Los Angeles County.

Traffic crawled at an infuriating pace Monday morning on the 10 Freeway. But at a groundbreaking ceremony for the last leg of the Expo light-rail line to Santa Monica, dozens of Southland officials proclaimed a different future. "People get stuck coming into this area in the morning to go to work ... and get stuck going home when they leave," L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said at the ceremony in the beach city. The Expo Line is "not going to solve the traffic problems of the Westside, but it's going to give people an alternative to being stuck with the problems on the Westside.

The pink lady of Hollywood Boulevard will soon be ready for close-ups again. Built in 1917 for actors because landlords routinely posted signs saying "No Actors, No Dogs," the Hillview Apartments is about to be reborn with the help of a $10.7-million project that is restoring the pink Mediterranean Revival structure to its former glory.

The historic Arcade Building in downtown Los Angeles will be converted into 142 loft-style apartments as part of a $15-million renovation to the mixed-use complex, according to property owner Fifth Street Funding Inc. The 195,000-square-foot structure features two towers and a cavernous interior arcade that stretches from Spring Street to Broadway.

These days, there are plenty of "green" buildings, with solar heating, insulated windows, self-generated electricity. But what would it take to construct an office building at competitive leasing rates that generated its own energy and processed its own waste -- for 250 years? That's what they're trying to find out in Seattle, where groundbreaking began Monday on a six-story building billed as the greenest commercial building on earth. The Bullitt Center -- which eventually will use only its own rainwater, generate its own power and compost its own sewage -- is the first big office building designed to carry its own environmental weight.

After years of grumbling, Nevada has thrown down the gauntlet to its neighbor across the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed legislation last month that amounts to a political ultimatum to California: Make it easier to approve development in the Tahoe basin or the Silver State will pull out of the compact that has tightly regulated land use around the famous mountain lake for decades. "Every time we'd go before the [compact's governing board], the votes were always there to destroy what Nevada was doing," said the bill's lead sponsor, state Sen. John Lee, a Clark County Democrat who contends California's members are in thrall to environmentalists.