Miracle Mile

When it comes to Miracle Mile buildings, what some see as historic others deem dilapidated. That, in essence, is the issue fueling an eight-year dispute between landlords and tenants over a proposal by city planners to turn the Miracle Mile South neighborhood into a "historic preservation overlay zone." Such a designation would force owners and developers to seek consent from a city-sanctioned association before altering or demolishing the buildings, some of which date to the 1920s.

When it comes to Miracle Mile buildings, what some see as historic others deem dilapidated. That, in essence, is the issue fueling an eight-year dispute between landlords and tenants over a proposal by city planners to turn the Miracle Mile South neighborhood into a "historic preservation overlay zone," or HPOZ.

Some people thought A.W. Ross was crazy when he said he could turn 18 acres of farmland dotted with barns and cows into one of the nation's premier shopping and business centers. In fact, they said it would be a miracle. In the late 1920s, Ross got his miracle and named a mile after it, the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between La Brea and Fairfax avenues that holds the highest concentration of Art Deco buildings left in Los Angeles. "It's one of those wonderful L.A.

Los Angeles police were looking for a woman Thursday who was captured on videotape choking a man to death last weekend at a crowded Miracle Mile park, apparently over a pack of cigarettes. The victim, a 50-year-old North Hollywood man, is shown on the videotape passing out during the Sunday afternoon attack, in which the woman was heard shouting that he had stolen her cigarettes. The victim was pronounced dead half an hour later at nearby Westside Hospital.

A mother, her 6-year-old son and a female housekeeper were found shot to death in the bathroom of their Miracle Mile apartment Monday evening, and two unidentified men were being questioned, Los Angeles police said. Police and residents of the complex were alerted to the killings when a visitor discovered the bodies and began screaming. Authorities described the victims only as Korean Americans and confirmed that at least one of the men detained for questioning was also Asian American.

On Friday nights, the Central Court at Los Angeles County Museum of Art is transformed into an extraordinary happening. Tables and chairs are laid out, and food and drink. The museum and its shop stay open, and a free jazz concert is open to all. People come to listen, shop, dine or stroll through the sculpture garden, soon to be expanded to connect with the adjacent grounds of Hancock Park.

Another wave of relocations by media and entertainment companies is quickly filling up the remaining vacant office space in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles. But some of the newest arrivals share one distinct difference from the show biz firms that moved to the historic neighborhood east of Beverly Hills in the early 1990s. The difference is the Internet.

Perhaps the Miracle Mile should be named Museum Central. Last month, it was reported that the Petersen Automotive Museum, a four-story facility devoted to automotive history, will open June 10 at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the George C. Page Museum.

The mystery surrounding the shooting deaths of a 30-year-old woman, her 2-year-old son and a baby-sitter in a Miracle Mile apartment intensified Wednesday when the mother's missing purse turned up at the church where she had lost it. Church officials said nothing was obviously missing from the purse, which was found in a choir loft pew at Berendo Street Baptist Church in Koreatown about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

When the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission voted last month to seek a Westside extension of Metro Rail along Pico Boulevard, it dropped two subway stations, like a pair of political plums, into the district of U.S. Rep. Julian Dixon. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), a longtime supporter of Metro Rail, said in an interview last week that he would have preferred to see the rail line routed along Wilshire Boulevard, the heavily traveled backbone that transportation planners consider ideal.