Real Estate Developers

When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa arranged a reception celebrating trade with Mexico, two real estate developers stepped in to pay the $25,000 catering bill. One wants city approval for the 5,553-home subdivision known as Las Lomas. When Villaraigosa welcomed then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the mayor's mansion, four companies covered the $60,000 tab. One is building condominiums in Hollywood, and another wants the city's help in revitalizing a historic theater district.

A jury awarded developer Rick Caruso $15 million in punitive damages Tuesday on his claim that the owner of the Glendale Galleria illegally threatened a restaurant chain to prevent it from moving into Caruso's competing complex. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found that the Galleria's owner, General Growth Properties, engaged in "fraud, malice and oppression" to undermine Caruso Affiliated's Americana at Brand retail-and-residential center in Glendale.

Undaunted by recent discouraging news in the California housing market, condominium developer South Group is finishing up its third high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles and planning two more. The Portland, Ore.-based builder is the largest developer of new residential buildings downtown and it is gambling $750 million that demand for housing in condo towers in urban neighborhoods is still strong and that today's dip in the market will be brief.

A South Bay real estate developer and his wife announced Wednesday that they would donate $50 million to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign to run a group of public schools in what is believed to be the largest private gift to the school system.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to provide $8 million to a developer who is rehabilitating a 12-story residential hotel near skid row, infuriating homeless advocates who charge the developer is waging an illegal campaign to drive impoverished tenants out of another building nearby.

In the city of Los Angeles, it's often the neighborhood councils that complain that they are the last to know about big real estate development projects in their backyards. That notion was turned around this week when Councilman Greig Smith sent letters to neighborhood councils across the San Fernando Valley urging them to oppose the massive Las Lomas project that is proposed near the junction of the 5 Freeway and California 14.

The Los Angeles City Council took the first step Tuesday toward blocking a real estate firm from carving into a 110-acre hillside billed as one of the last undeveloped slopes in the northeast corner of the city. The council unanimously voted to review a recent decision by the Board of Public Works that allowed Monterey Hills Investors to remove dirt from a site in El Sereno known as Elephant Hill -- work that would prepare the land for construction of a 24-home subdivision.

The global credit crunch that has rattled financial markets the last few weeks is finally reaching the vast commercial real estate investment and development industry. Predictions by some analysts that prices are poised to drop for office buildings and other commercial properties are sending shivers through the business, driving down real estate company stock prices and delaying some deals.

USC joined in a federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, that alleged a developer of off-campus student housing was trying to squelch competition with intimidation, extortion and fraud. Conquest Student Housing, a firm that owns numerous apartments in the neighborhoods near USC, is illegally trying to stop construction of a rival's project, University Gateway, that would house more than 1,600 students and include retail stores, a fitness center and a parking structure, according to the suit.

Developer sean cummings envisions miles of parks stretching along the east bank of the Mississippi River. He envisions daring new architecture to complement the old: an amphitheater, cruise ship terminals, a hotel, a chapel. His design team has sketched pictures of elegant, glassy mid-rise residential buildings overlooking the historic, bohemian backstreets of the Bywater District.