The Hollywood Reporter building is slated for destruction, but an application to name it a historic-cultural monument will be considered by an L.A. City Council committee Tuesday and could stop or delay the demolition.
In June, the Cultural Heritage Commission agreed to accept the application and consider the site a local monument, which meant the property cannot be destroyed as long as the city has the application under review.
The building at 6713 Sunset Blvd. was home to the Hollywood Reporter entertainment trade news publication from 1931 into the 1990s. It is slated for demolition as part of a plan by the Harridge Development Group to build a hotel and two residential towers at the site.
The Planning and Land Use Management Committee is scheduled to consider the building’s status before the issue moves to the full City Council. If it is approved as a monument, the building could still be demolished, but city officials can delay it for a year while preservation options are considered.
The building, also home to the L.A. Weekly for about a decade until 2008, is historically significant for its Regency Moderne architecture, its association with publisher and businessman William Wilkerson, and its connection to the Hollywood Reporter, according to the application for its landmark status, which was filed by the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.
The Department of City Planning recommended the building be preserved because it “reflects the broad cultural, economic, or social history of the nation, state, or community as the headquarters for Hollywood’s first daily entertainment trade newspaper,” but it did not find the building architecturally significant. However, the commission added an architectural designation to its ruling in a 3-1 vote.
“Without a doubt, from our perspective, this has incredible significance to Hollywood and greater Los Angeles in terms of telling an important story and arc within Hollywood heritage that can’t be told without this building in place,” Adrian Scott Fine of the Los Angeles Conservancy told the commission in June. “We do strongly believe that it is significant for its cultural, social and historical, but also architectural significance.”
Attorney Jerry Neuman, representing Harridge Development Group, argued that the building was not significant, and said, “There is no special sense of this structure. It was in effect a warehouse structure that would lend itself to look as though it was part of a printing facility. It is merely a large box.”
Neuman did say that the building’s use as home of the Hollywood Reporter was significant, but that due to decades of alterations “little is left.”
—City News Service