Man Critically Injured In North Hollywood Shooting

Apr 16, 2006 2:41 am US/Pacific

Man Critically Injured In North Hollywood Shooting

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― A man was critically injured in a shooting in North Hollywood Saturday night, just two miles away from a shooting outside a birthday party on Lankershim Boulevard.

The shooting happened in the 7000 block of Coldwater Canyon Avenue at about 9 p.m., Los Angeles police Sgt. Tom Wich said. The victim, whose name is being withheld, was in critical condition with two gunshot wounds.

There were no immediate arrests, Wich said.

Even though the shooting happened just 30 minutes later and in close proximity to a shooting outside a banquet hall birthday party, police do not believe the two incidents are connected.

http://cbs2.com/local/North.Hollywood.Shooting.2.515571.html

COMING TO LIFE BILLION-DOLLAR PLANS SET FOR 'TIMES SQUARE WEST' ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX PICTURED AS DOWNTOWN HUB

COMING TO LIFE BILLION-DOLLAR PLANS SET FOR 'TIMES SQUARE WEST' ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX PICTURED AS DOWNTOWN HUB.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/COMING+TO+LIFE+BILLION-DOLLAR+PLANS+SET+FOR+'TIMES+SQUARE+WEST'...-a0136178958

In a bold bid to brand Los Angeles as a world-class live entertainment center, the owner of Staples Center detailed plans Tuesday for a $1 billion, 5.5 million-square-foot sports-entertainment-residential complex that would be one of the largest developments in downtown history.

The LA Live development by the Anschutz Entertainment Group - scheduled to make the formal announcement Thursday at the project's groundbreaking with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other city leaders in attendance - would include retail, live theater, premiere movies, restaurants and housing.

It is envisioned as becoming ``Times Square West'' and the permanent home for a variety of award shows with a Grammy museum that could include an annual ``induction'' ceremony, in addition to facilities for a major sports/entertainment broadcasting company yet to be disclosed.

``We think L.A. should be the event capital of the world,'' Timothy Leiweke, president of the company owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, said in an interview with Daily News editors and reporters.

``Award shows, tourism and content are going to be the most important industries we have. We're not going to be the steel city, we're not going to be the chip city, we're unfortunately not going to be the new technology city, because we missed that boat.''

Leiweke said LA Live - a complex with the square footage of downtown Long Beach - is envisioned to dovetail with a proposed 1,100-room, 56-story Hilton hotel adjacent to the ailing Convention Center.

The hotel has become controversial since developers Apollo Real Estate and Wolff Urban Development entered into a proposed deal with the city that includes a $16 million loan from the Community Redevelopment Agency, $4 million in fee waivers and the forfeiting of nearly a quarter-billion dollars in room taxes the hotel is projected to generate over 25 years.

Leiweke said while LA Live doesn't hinge on the hotel's development - most of the complex would be completed within the next two to three years - it would be a ``crime'' if the city passes on the private capital committed to the hotel.

The Convention Center costs the city more than $30 million a year in debt service and net operating losses, and trails even Des Moines, Iowa, in convention business.

``(The center) will never come back. This is our last, great shot at getting a private entity to put up what is going to be $400 million-plus in cash to build a hotel,'' he said, adding that the center ultimately should be privatized to reduce the burden on taxpayers.

Plans for the hotel and the massive complex - which AEG hopes to use as a model for its international ventures, including London's Millennium Dome - have renewed debate over downtown development, as well as Villaraigosa's promise to bring similar economic energy to the San Fernando Valley and other underserved areas of the city.

Robert ``Bud'' Ovrom, deputy mayor of housing and economic development, said while LA Live is being focused on, 50 to 75 projects throughout the city, including the Valley, are getting just as much attention.

``We're pushing major projects throughout all the areas of Los Angeles,'' Ovrom said. ``Yes, LA Live is one of them, and they're very big, but we're equally pushing all projects in South L.A., East L.A., the Valley, Hollywood and the Westside.''

He said projects such as Valley Plaza, NoHo Commons and the Panorama Mall in the Valley, a biomedical campus at USC, and several major retail outlets in East and South Los Angeles are among the projects being pursued aggressively.

``We're putting equal if not greater effort in other areas ... it takes more to get it done. LA Live is basically doing their own thing.''

Leiweke said city leaders historically have ``failed us miserably'' in luring developments to various areas of the city and that regions such as the Valley need ``to fight back and help find these private-public partnerships.''

``Why can't we find these big projects and spread them out a little bit?'' said Leiweke, who suggested that Villaraigosa set up a panel of the city's top leaders to develop ``a master vision'' for how private-public partnerships can be used ``to get things done all over the city.''

Bruce Ackerman, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, said he agrees the Valley hasn't pursued projects on a ``grand scale,'' but cited incremental gains such as the Children's Museum at Hansen Dam, a project AEG contributed $250,000 toward and that is set to break ground next month.

Ackerman blamed NIMBYism and the absence of a central business hub for some of the Valley's difficulties.

``Where is the downtown in the Valley?'' he said. ``There isn't a single area ... you can focus attention to generate the attention downtown gets.''

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said the Valley and other regions need a ``godfather'' to push projects aggressively.

Kyser said that after LA Live, the envisioned but yet unfunded $1 billion Grand Avenue development, and a project along First Street into East L.A., ``you start to run pretty thin on ideas.''

``You need leaders in the San Fernando Valley to say, 'OK, this has a lot of currency for the Valley,' and then you have to get community buy-in,'' Kyser said.

But critics including Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, continue to question the need for government help in financing the hotel.

``People make these kinds of predictions about revitalization, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't,'' Coupal said. ``Why can't (AEG) make the pitch to the hotel developers, 'I'm dropping $1 billion - why not find venture capitalists to build the hotel?'''

Acknowledging the risk in the sports/entertainment complex, Leiweke said the city stands to make $25 million to $50 million more annually in property and sales tax.

At the heart of LA Live, Leiweke said, is a ``dream'' to create an immediate impact on the image of L.A. and Southern California by interlocking a number of venues, events and attractions in the complex around Staples, including:

--The 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre Los Angeles, aimed at capturing award shows ranging from the Emmys, Latin Grammys and ESPYs to the MTV Music and BET awards, as well as concerts, comedy shows and other events. AEG plans to spend more than $100 million on the theater.

--The Grammys Museum, which has been agreed to ``in principle'' with the Grammy organization, to honor not only winners, but also to try to secure L.A. as the permanent home of the Grammys, possibly by adding a second ``induction'' ceremony. AEG hopes the museum will attract 1 million tourists a year.

--A 3,700-seat cinema complex with 15 screens, including a 750-seat theater for movie premieres and screenings.

--Nine high-end restaurants and bars, and a smaller Club Nokia, as well as 400,000 square feet of retail space to serve tourists, USC students and downtown residents.

--Offices for AEG's headquarters, as well as some companies it does business with, including attorneys and architectural and design firms.

--Housing, including lofts and condos accounting for about half the project.

Leiweke said LA Live only works downtown because of the synergy with Staples Center and the Convention Center, but that private-public partnerships that don't put taxpayers at risk are needed throughout the region.

``Our project should be the rally cry to answer the need everywhere.''

Beth Barrett, (818) 713-3731

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo, map

Photo/Map:

(color) LOS ANGELES SPORTS-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

Photo by Gus Ruelas/Graphic by Gregg Miller

NoHo project could be model for valley

NoHo project could be model for valley.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NoHo+project+could+be+model+for+valley.(Special+Report--Real+Estate...-a0114006196

You can hardly hear anyone talking about the NoHo Commons without hearing the word "catalyst" follow close by--catalyst for the city's fledgling public transit system, catalyst for developing urban cores throughout Los Angeles, catalyst for a radical transformation in the way folks five.

The redevelopment project, on 16 acres of land in North Hollywood, will bring about 716 new units of housing to the community, but the numbers hardly tell the story.

Thought to be the largest urban residential redevelopment project ever attempted in Los Angeles, NoHo Commons will also be the first urban village built around mass transit and it will be among the first large-scale projects to bring together a diverse group of residents ranging from the working poor to affluent professionals.

The mixed-use development, which will combine apartments and other rental housing with neighborhood retail shops like grocery stores, entertainment centers like movie theaters and offices, is so unusual, it's difficult to imagine what NoHo Commons will look like when it's completed.

Think of almost any neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. Then add groceries, movie theaters and shops in walking distance and imagine it all sprouting up at once, in a single cohesive whole.

"We're going to be a really comfortable place to call home," said Bud Ovrom, chief executive officer of the Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles, which helped to deliver the project land. "We're going to have our own movie theaters and restaurants and stores, and it's going to be a nice place to live."

For decades, the knee jerk reaction to redevelopment was to build commercial properties--high rises, civic centers, shopping complexes--and North Hollywood was just a knee jerk away from the same fate, if not for J.H. Snyder Co. and Cliff Goldstein, a partner at the Los Angeles based development company.

The CRA, which deemed the site a project area decades ago, had worked with several developers before Snyder came along. They built the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a local shopping center, and still the area remained blighted.

The CRA hung out banners heralding the NoHo Arts District and sponsored theater groups and sidewalk fairs and still the area was more identifiable by its rows of dilapidated industrial buildings and empty storefronts.

"When it wasn't going to be these high-rise buildings, I don't think anybody had a vision of what it was going to be," Ovrom said. "I think Snyder changed that vision."

Using the Red Line

Goldstein had watched for years as traffic worsened and the quality of life soured in his native Los Angeles. But he'd also spent time in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, where he grew accustomed to mass transit. He saw in the opening of the Red Line an opportunity to turn the tide.

"The idea of what I wanted to build there really came to me as an evolution of my thinking on what the future of Los Angeles needed to be," Goldstein said.

The opening of the Metropolitan Transit Authority's metro rail system has yet to turn Los Angeles into a city of strap hangers, but Goldstein figured a residential community built around the transit hub would help encourage just such a transformation.

"Without the transit link, I don't know how this site would have stood out above other sites," Goldstein said.

All eyes are on the $218 million development bordered by Lankershim Boulevard to the east, Weddington Street to the south and Cumpston Street to the north. If the city's first large-scale transit village works here, it will surely be exported to other parts of L.A.

"It's one of the most significant things happening in the city," said Jane Blumenfeld, principal city planner. "The whole North Hollywood NoHo area development is going to really show what that can be like in L.A."

Dense residential areas are important to the development of mass transit for several reasons. It takes concentrated population hubs to support a mass transit system, and by encouraging greater use of the system, focal points develop that, in turn, make the system more efficient as a way of moving people.

"When everything is spread out everywhere, jobs and people, it is just a train wreck for congestion, and so it's in all of our interests to fully develop a few locations like that, Warner Center and others so you can reduce congestion," said Blumenfeld.

Then too there is the prospect of an emerging new way of life spawned by NoHo Commons.

It isn't just those who will choose to live in NoHo Commons and ride the rails to work downtown or in Hollywood. The development will be laid out as a self-contained community where folks can walk to the local grocery store or a movie, even if they still drive their cars to work.

Studies show that most families make eight to 10 car trips a day, and only two of those trips are made for work. Cutting down on even those non-work related trips can have a huge impact on congestion, smog and quality of life.

Already, NoHo Commons is shaping up to become a kind of petrie dish for a new model for the city. Other developers have begun to build in close proximity to the Metro station and other investments are poised to begin.

"The exciting thing about NoHo is not so much what I'm doing, but what is happening around me," said Goldstein. "It has even surprised me how quickly it has spurred people to come into the NoHo area and start to invest. Finally, something you read in textbooks is happening."

LARGEST INDUSTRIAL SALE

Transaction: 29011 Commerce Center Drive, Valencia

Buyer: Patrick Sammons Managing Member Bay West Equities LLC, San Francisco

Brokers: Craig Peters, Executive Vice President CB Richard Ellis. Sherman Oaks Doug Sonderegger, Executive Vice President CB Richard Ellis. Sherman Oaks Patrick Scruggs, Vice President CB Richard Ellis, Newport Beach

WHAT brought a well-established private real estate investment trust into the greater San Fernando Valley for the first time?

The same one-two-three punch that has fueled acquisitions of industrial real estate all year', strong, credit-worthy tenants, low interest rates and high barriers to entry.

Bay West Equities LLC acquired a 164.188-square-foot facility at 29011 Commerce Center Drive in Valencia for $12.7 million in a deal that gave the company not only a choice property, only two years old, but also a strong tenant, Bertelsmann AG, which operates its fulfillment division in the building.

Most of the company's portfolio is located in Northern California and Hawaii. The purchase marks an emerging interest in the North Los Angeles County region.