Can The Hollywood Reporter Building Be Saved?

LOS ANGELES, CA — A Los Angeles City Council committee delayed a vote Tuesday on an application to name The Hollywood Reporter building on Sunset Boulevard a historic-cultural monument.

The Planning and Land Use Management Committee was set to consider the application, but delayed it again for the second straight week without explanation.

The building is slated for destruction, but if the application is approved by the committee and then the full City Council, its demolition could be delayed at least for a year while preservation options are considered.

In June, the Cultural Heritage Commission agreed to accept the application and consider the site a local monument. 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 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 "little is left" after decades of alterations.

"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," he said.

City News Service; Photo: Hollywood Reporter Building courtesy of Google Maps