Westside

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

A former Los Angeles County property appraiser accused of improperly slashing the value on more than 100 Westside homes and businesses was taken into custody in Oregon on Monday, marking the first arrest in the wide-ranging corruption probe into the assessor's office. Prosecutors say Scott Schenter, 49, falsified department documents and unlawfully lowered property values by $172 million for multimillion-dollar homes and businesses. Schenter allegedly secured campaign contributions from the owners for Assessor John Noguez, authorities said.

The comments by Daniel Garcia, president of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, in the April 14 Times regarding Westside motives about growth limitations raise serious questions about his qualifications to hold such a sensitive appointive office. The issues affecting growth on the Westside are totally different than those in East Los Angeles. I seriously doubt that anyone would oppose a major development of any type on the Eastside and indeed would welcome the attention of developers being diverted to that area.

"Chinatown" writer Robert Towne has listed his estate on the Westside at $12.995 million. Built in 1926 and designed for grand entertaining, the restored English country-style mansion and guesthouse have seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 10,000 square feet of living space. The nearly three-quarter-acre property is wooded and includes a swimming pool, a rose garden and a spice garden. Towne, 77, won an Oscar for original screenplay in 1975 for the Jack Nicholson-starring film about land and water rights disputes.

In reading "The Westside Real Estate Wars," I felt that a glaring omission was the concern for the buying and selling public. People rely on real estate agents to handle one of the most important financial decisions in their life. This places a tremendous responsibility upon the agent. Agents or companies that do not place a great emphasis on caring for their clients will not succeed in the long run. I would like to have seen less emphasis on greed and more information on today's professional salespeople, who work long hours but who derive a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that they are serving the public well.

Since Proposition U was passed, there are only two remaining sites in the Westside where a significant office building can be built. Proposition U effectively doubled the cost of land, since a builder can only put one-half as much building on a site. The economics of development dictate what can be paid for land instead of vice-versa. Property owners who had invested in commercial property for future development just had the value of their holdings reduced by 50%. Land costs can be double if amortized over a 30-story building instead of a 15-story building.

Writer and L.A. native Kevin Roderick says, "Wilshire technically doesn't go to the Eastside, if you think of the Eastside as east of downtown, which I do." Thank you, thank you, thank you. Although I am very much from elsewhere, and live in Pasadena, I get really cranky when I read or hear of some far, far western denizen referring to, say, Western Avenue as being "on the Eastside." The name of the city is Los Angeles. The geographical center of the city is the point at which all of the street numbers begin, which is the corner of 1st and Main.

Early morning commuters in Brentwood got a surprise Monday as they traveled along San Vicente Boulevard. Hanging from the trees outside the Mezzaluna restaurant were signs with a hand-made message: Guilty. Los Angeles police officers caught two women putting up the signs before 7 a.m. and asked the women to remove them. But by 8:30 a.m., Jill Jennings, general manager of Mezzaluna, said she saw about 50 of the "guilty" placards still hanging.

As the Metro bus lumbered through South Los Angeles carrying passengers headed to work or school, Jesus Navarro could barely keep his eyes open after finishing a graveyard shift in Westwood. The slender 30-year-old security guard with a long, black metal flashlight poking out of his backpack wasn't worried about nodding off. Line 305, which zigzags diagonally for about 20 miles across Los Angeles, carries him home, and he doesn't have to change a seat. "It's a blessing that you have one bus … that can take you from point A to point B," Navarro said.

I found your article, "Invasion of Agents" (July 21,) to be so disrespectful to the many fine professional real estate agents on the Westside. When agents from our firm "caravan" a new listing, we are always courteous and view the home in a professional manner. Professional agents are not there to gossip, but to do an invaluable service to the seller, which is to expose their property to the best, most successful agents in real estate. JOSSI GRIMES Beverly Hills

Cuningham Group Architecture's office is situated a few blocks from the water in Marina del Rey, where some workers like to run, bike or skateboard to work. In June the firm will be moving seven miles inland to an office compound in Culver City. The draw? The nearby Expo Line station. "We wanted to be in Culver City because of the rail line," said Jonathan Watts, a firm principal. "We end up being in downtown Los Angeles a lot dealing with the city and permitting, and we have a number of employees living east of downtown.

Re "Clear the tracks, Beverly Hills," Editorial, April 21 Ever since Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) prevented our subway from being finished by pushing though a ban on federal funds for tunneling under Wilshire Boulevard on the Westside, we have lost our chance to have an efficient way of getting around our city. New York has one of the most efficient transportation systems in our country, and yet we who live and work in Los Angeles continue to wait for our subway to be finished.

Almost 60 years after the Pacific Electric Railway stopped running trains to Santa Monica, the resurrection of passenger rail service to the Westside will begin with the grand opening of the $930-million Expo light rail line. Saturday's start of service marks the first step in an effort to bring rail service back to one of the region's most traffic-clogged areas, something transportation experts have long said is crucial to developing a workable rail network for Los Angeles County.

The "Subway to the Sea": By now the words have an almost mythical ring to them, with the Westside extension of L.A.'s subway system so long delayed and so much desired that it has almost come to seem like the stuff of legend, akin to the Stairway to Heaven or the Low Road to Loch Lomond. Yet now that the funding to build the line is in place -- if not to get it all the way to the sea, at least to run it as far as Westwood -- and it's finally poised to become a reality, the city of Beverly Hills is putting up costly and pointless roadblocks.

A former county appraiser who secretly and improperly slashed tens of millions of dollars from the taxable values of Westside properties in late 2010 said he did it in the hope that wealthy homeowners receiving the reductions would contribute money to Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez. Scott Schenter, the former employee at the center of a criminal investigation roiling the assessor's office, said Noguez had promised him a promotion in the summer of 2010 in the midst of Noguez's successful election campaign.

After numerous delays and cost increases, Los Angeles County transportation officials Friday said the first segment of the long-awaited Expo Line will finally open to the public April 28. The light-rail line will carry commuters 7.9 miles between downtown Los Angeles and the eastern edge of Culver City in about half an hour. "Some of us didn't think we'd live long enough to see this day, but we made it," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who is also a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member.

The first time I received the newly formatted Westside section of the Los Angeles Times, I wanted to rip it up and send it back to you. Whose bad idea was this? What possible reason could allow the degradation of a valued section into such a poor excuse for a community section? To begin a tiresome list of complaints, the printing is atrocious with heavy bleed marks from dark ink on page after page. Often one has to turn the page countless times to read a single article on those weenie little pages.

Re "Westside driving: 10 miles in 60 minutes," June 21 It is reassuring to know that Los Angeles transportation officials have spent years collecting traffic data at hundreds of gridlocked Westside intersections. As a commuter, I too have been collecting data. Driving east from Santa Monica to Sepulveda Boulevard is slow on weekdays from 3:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. On rare occasions, it is not. How can the city properly analyze traffic patterns when frustrated motorists are trying different methods and routes to keep their appointments and sanity?

Last month, I watched three cars wheel around a chic bayside restaurant in Santa Monica, vying for first position at the valet station. The cars, all mink-black, with four rings on their grilles, screeched to a three-way standoff in the middle of the street. And that's how I discovered that Audi is the hottest car in Los Angeles. Now I can almost hear legions of car lovers howling in protest, but look: Your Aston Martins, your Bentleys and your Bugattis are swankier, and custom Camaros are edgy and underground.

After months of impasse, Blue Shield of California and UCLA finally have a proposal on the table to settle a contract dispute that's caused worry and confusion for thousands of patients seeking treatment at one of the state's premier medical facilities. But don't expect a breakthrough any time soon. The two sides remain far apart over how much Blue Shield should pay for members' visits to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and the nearby Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital.