TOC Trouble in Whitley Heights, as a huge, unfinished building undermines its neighbors

Gentle reader,

When Hollywood was young, a quaint residential district sprouted above the commercial core, and the cinema set settled into an eclectic enclave of hillside homes and apartment buildings.

It might have been Whitley Heights that Christopher Isherwood had in mind when he wrote in his 1939 diary, “House hunting brought us into direct contact with the splendors and miseries of Hollywood architecture. Hollywood houses, especially those on the outskirts of the city, have an uncanny kind of artificiality, like movie sets. No matter whether they are Spanish, Mexican, Colonial, Tudor English, French Chateau or Cubist, they all look as if a gang of stage carpenters had put them up during the night and would take them apart again tomorrow.”

The Hollywood houses have had the last laugh, for many have survived a century, and what seemed vulgar in 1939 is vintage chic today.

Around 1950, the neighborhood took a blow, when the Hollywood Freeway sliced a diagonal across Franklin Avenue. But Whitley-ites loved Whitley Heights, and they stuck around, terracing the hills with fruit trees, descending to shop by public stair, and working to get the community on the National Register and locally designated as an Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ)—with carve outs on the map around Franklin and the freeway.

All was well for about 25 years, until L.A.’s corruption plagued City Planning Department chose to misinterpret the sneakily written, voter-approved “affordable housing” Measure JJJ (2017) as a permanent green light to demolish older rent controlled multi-family buildings and their mature landscapes, to be replaced by dense, ugly boxes built flush to the property line.

The planners christened this upzoning program TOC, “Transit Oriented Communities,” an excuse to eliminate parking and add units. It was obscenely profitable.

And TOC was coming for Whitley Heights, despite the historic protections afforded by an HPOZ designation. When the Whitley Heights HPOZ was designated, the freeway-split neighborhood was at war. Homeowners at the top of the hill had convinced the city to let them install electric security gates across public streets, and the renters below sued. Citizens Against Gated Enclaves (CAGE) won their case.

We don’t know if personal beefs influenced how the HPOZ map was drawn, but when it was, some obviously historic Whitley Heights properties were left out—and the line ran right down the center of Whitley Avenue!

Which was just too bad for 1920 Whitley Avenue, a charming rent controlled triplex built in 1922. In 2016, it sold for $1,000,000, a tear down price¹, and very soon the tenants were out.

When new owner Brian Prince (B.D.O.G. Inc) submitted plans for the parcel in 2017, the development project sparked alarm. Although spun as providing three affordable units along with much more market rate, there were already three rent stabilized apartments on site that would be destroyed. If Measure JJJ was supposed to help alleviate L.A.’s affordable housing shortage, then this project was a flop from jump.

Every booming city has its historic preservation MVPs: highly intelligent people with a love for their town’s cultural landmarks and a gift for parsing dry planning documents and communicating with developers and their land use consultants, city officials and the public. These folks could easily make a fortune in destructive development, but they prefer to use their talents for good, advocating for restoration and reuse. We’re all the better for it.

When we started doing this work, Hollywood’s MVP was Robert Nudelman of Hollywood Heritage—we were giddy when the big man unexpectedly showed up in City Hall to express support for landmark designation of Charles Bukowski’s bungalow. After his unexpected passing in 2008, John Girodo took up the torch at Hollywood Heritage, and later with the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

You ought to read what John told Curbed LA in August 2018, shortly after City Planning rubber stamped the Whitley project, leaving the sharpest preservation policy wonk we know scrambling to form a strategy.

Ultimately, despite an appeal by the neighbors to the south, City Planning’s discretionary policies around TOC permitting determined that there was no way to save 1920 Whitley or its three naturally affordable units. The demolition permit was issued on January 28, 2022—one hundred years and 23 days since the triplex first welcomed tenants. Happy birthday, beautiful… and goodbye.

On Valentine’s Day 2022, the historic triplex was swiftly demolished with no protective debris fencing, only a guy with a hose failing to keep the dust down. Neighbors slammed their windows shut and complained to the AQMD (1-800-CUT-SMOG) about several days of heavy dust, headache and a metallic taste in their mouths.

And soon the old building and its vintage built-ins was trucked off to the landfill and the new building was going up. But something wasn’t right.

We get a lot of tips about land use shenanigans in Los Angeles, and recently got a wild one: careless crews on the 1920 Whitley project were doing serious damage to surrounding buildings and their owners were suing. Since we were already in the courthouse to watch a councilman get arraigned, we checked the free PACER machine for filings. Bingo!

• To the north, filed April 2022: Maximum Management Corp. and El Camino Investment Co. vs B.D.O.G. Inc and associates WJK Development Co. and Sahara Contractors, a demand for jury trial for Negligence and Trespass.

The owners of the 20-unit rent stabilized apartment house next door to the project allege that during the initial demolition in February 2022, a worker operating a backhoe “smashed a hole into the kitchen wall of Unit #3 on the 1926 Whitley property. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ negligent actions, the hot water vent… to the building was damaged and released asbestos. This caused Unit #3 to become inhabitable. The tenant was forced to be relocated to a hotel and later to another unit as Unit #3 remains uninhabitable due to Defendants’ negligent operation of the backhoe.”

• To the east, filed October 2023: Cal-York Real Estate Holdings, LLC, A California Limited Liability Company Vs B.D.O.G. Inc., A California Corporation, Et Al. a demand for a jury trial for Negligence, Trespass To Land, Private Nuisance, Violation of California Civil Code Section 832, Negligent Retention and Supervision.

The owners of the 11-unit rent stabilized apartment house at 1917 Grace allege that “throughout the Project, Defendants have performed improper and negligent shoring, excavation, and pile driving along the property line between the Whitley Ave. Property and the Grace Ave. Property, including the complete removal of a retaining wall between the [properties]…. did not provide proper notice to Plaintiff regarding the true extent and depth of the excavation… implemented an improper water management system during the construction…. [causing] the Grace Ave. Property [to suffer] serious damage, including but not limited to: consolidation and displacement of the bearing soils of the… rear parking lot area, which has in turn led to settlement, cracks, and craters… [and] damage and disturbance to the foundation of the building.”

They also allege B.D.O.G.’s sole owner Brian Prince has used fraudulent liens—we do not know if they are referring to this recent one—to protect his assets from creditors.

Cracking pavement behind 1917 Grace Avenue (credit: Jeff McDonough)

The real estate blog Curbed LA, which reported on community concerns when the 1920 Whitley Avenue project was first proposed, shut down in 2020, and comments have been closed on the Whitley post. To monitor what happened after the city approved the TOC project, you’d need to be subscribed to the local NextDoor portal, talk to neighbors, keep an eye on the court docket and call up the LADBS portal.

Here’s a snapshot of where city permitting stands as of February 2, 2024, with dozens of inspections not yet performed.

And here’s the state of the Whitley Avenue side of the project as of January 22, 2024 (these photos courtesy a little birdie).

Assuming the new building does receive its certificate of occupancy, let’s do the housing crisis math:

For three newly built units set aside for residents earning under 30 percent of the area’s median income—units with expiring affordability covenants that replaced permanent RSO units and displaced tenants—it’s alleged that construction has threatened the habitability of the 20 RSO units at 1926 Whitley and the 11 RSO units at 1917 Grace, as well as dispersing toxic asbestos dust into the community. What a mess!

Meanwhile, down in South Los Angeles, a whole block has been devastated after an unguarded wooden framed tower was torched in the middle of the night, causing critical injuries to two people and rendering five buildings uninhabitable.

This upzoned tower, rushing ahead with minimal planning review under Mayor Karen Bass’ controversial Executive Directive 1 (ED 1), replaced a single story store with a small house in back.

And while news crews will race over and cover the immediate impact of an enormous fire, reporters don’t look deeper to understand the cause. Acronym laden planning jargon is not sexy or simple. City functionaries rubber stamp new projects, community members struggle to defend their homes and neighborhoods, speculators buy and evict and demolish and build, Angelenos like Hollywood Hills neighbor Mike Balog struggle to remain housed, and City Hall puts its big fat thumb on the scale to always make it easier to profit and harder to survive.

What’s happening on Whitley Avenue is shocking, but it’s not unusual. Anyone watching the docket or talking to locals could have broken this or a similar development disaster story. It shouldn’t fall to we historic tour operators to be the conscience of Los Angeles, and it will be a great day if and when the Los Angeles Times starts to do its job again, or is replaced by another serious outlet that will.

Until then, we’re rooting for the Fix The City lawsuit that seeks to void ED 1, and for all the engaged community members fighting back against what Robert Silverstein described to a judge last month as dictatorial behavior. We think it’s a braindead non-policy that takes all the planning guard rails off the development process and leaves community members with even fewer ways to be heard, and more opportunities to be harmed by reckless developers. It’s got to go!

And speaking of foolish land use policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many, tomorrow’s walking tour is Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive. Host Nathan Marsak has gone so deep into his study of the lost Victorian neighborhood that he has come to grudgingly respect and even love the modernist towers that replaced it. And we’re joined by Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison, whose story of growing up as an Angels Flight commuter should be heard by every Angeleno. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

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UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS

• Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive Walking Tour (Sat. 2/3) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/10) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/17) • The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 2/24) • SOLD OUT Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop Walking Tour (Sat. 3/16) • The Run: Gay Downtown History Walking Tour (Sat. 3/23) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood Walking Tour (Sat. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown Los Angeles Birthday Walking Tour (Sat. 4/6) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles Walking Tour (Sat. 4/13) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases Walking Tour (Sat. 4/20) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers Walking Tour (Sat. 4/27) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 5/4) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake Walking Tour (Sat. 5/11) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Walking Tour (Sat. 5/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 Walking Tour (Sat. 5/25) • POP – Preserving Our Past Downtown Los Angeles Walking Tour (Sat. 6/1)

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1. By way of comparison, 1926 Whitley, with 20 units (one uninhabitable according to the lawsuit linked later in this post) sold for $3,000,000 in January 2024. We hope the new owners will be good caretakers of this historic multi-family apartment house, and that the city will stop incentivizing speculators to buy, evict and demolish.