The residents at the Sunset and Gordon tower in Hollywood are packing their bags and moving out for good after the city invalidated the building’s permits and temporary certificate of occupancy on Sept. 9. The California 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of a 2014 order requiring all occupants of the 22-story apartment building to vacate, drawing a three-year lawsuit to a close.
(photo by Jessie Lingenfelter)
The La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the building owners, CIM Group, for razing the façade of the Old Spaghetti Factory. CIM Group was supposed to maintain and preserve the façade of the building, La Mirada alleges, but instead tore it down without the proper permits.
In 2014, the Los Angeles Board of Building and Safety Commissioners invalidated occupancy permits for the building, ordering it to be vacated. An appellate court then issued a stay, allowing tenants to remain in their apartments while the court issued a ruling.
Following the court’s decision to uphold the original decision last week, CIM Group issued eviction notices to its 51 tenants over the weekend. Previous orders to comply from the department of building and safety allowed tenants seven days to vacate the premises, so the newly evicted tenants may be out of the building by this weekend, according to David Lara, assistant inspection bureau chief and public information officer for the department of building and safety.
“Just like any order, though, they do have the right to appeal,” Lara added.
CIM Group maintains that it met all conditions from the city and its agencies including permits, inspections and approvals from the building and safety department.
“We are disappointed with the appeal court ruling on Sept. 9 because we believe it creates an unfounded legal precedent and bad policy that usurps the authority of the responsible city agencies. In light of the ruling, CIM has made a difficult decision, requesting our residents to relocate, shuttering the building and closing the new public park,” CIM Group said in a statement.
CIM Group said the closing of the building and accompanying park adversely affects residents and the community. They had no comment on future plans for the building.
Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, 13th District, said the Sunset and Gordon building is a glaring example of the problem when large businesses or residential buildings sit empty in Hollywood.
“What I focus on is making sure the developer gets the building permitted legally and moves forward without this cloud of uncertainty for all future tenants. The silver lining is that the only way they’ll be able to title that building is to title it with an affordable housing bonus. At the end of the day, we may end up with units that are available to low and moderate income families,” O’Farrell said.
If the company were to come up with an alternate proposal for the space, it would have to be presented and approved through the court, according to Lara. In addition, they would have to go through the entire permit approval and environmental impact report process again.
Doug Haines, of the La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association, said he is not confident the city will be effective in enforcing codes moving forward with this or other developments.
“I don’t know that this is going to provide an example for other instances, as we had hoped,” Haines said. “The city doesn’t seem to have an effective understanding of enforcing the laws or punishing those who break them.”
A similar scenario played out last year when a judge ordered a stop on construction on a Target store that takes up an entire block in Hollywood. The project sits unfinished at Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue after the permits for the project were overturned. Currently, the Target project is in litigation in the court of appeal.
3 Comments
If this were an innocent developer, I suspect the Judge would have ruled the opposite. With California courts, the facts “A” and “Not A” are fungible. If the courts do not like the facts, the simply change them. The law means whatever the judges wants it to mean at any particular moment.
From the court record, however, CIM Group is not innocent. It under a court order not to demolish the facade and then it demolished the facade. Garcetti, as councilmember for CD 13, got the demolition permit late Friday so that demolition would be finished before a court could issue a TRO.
Then, the developer thumbed its nose at the court by building the project during balance of the litigation, and Garcetti gave CIM Group $17.4 Million dollars in tax dollars.
http://bit.ly/1sWvhW7 May 13, 2014, CityWatchLA, Big Developer Looking for Another Handout from LA Taxpayers by Ziggy Kruse
If the tenants are financially harmed, they can sue CIM Group for failure to disclose material facts which the reasonable renter or buyer would have wanted to know before living at the Project.
The City still operates in this arrogant manner. Councilman Krekorian pulled the same ploy in having Marilyn Monroe’s old home demolished a couple days before the preservation hearing without an asbestos sign-off by SCAQMD. The City Council unanimously approved of this exact same ploy in demolishing Marilyn home a couple before it would have been declared historic.
http://bit.ly/1KRzyNo August 27, 2015, CityWatch, Marilyn Who? Ask Councilman Krekorian or Mayor Garcetti
How many more law suits before the city stops breaking laws to accommodate developers.
How many more elections where the politician criminal who gives the go ahead to break these laws gets elected.
Stop the insanity at the ballot box.
Demand the city start obeying laws and demand and vote for candidates who will obey the laws.
End this reign of developer corrupted politicians starting at the top.
Negotiations went on for years with the community and neighborhood councils to preserve the original facade. The benefit to the community that gave permission to the developer to build taller..more floors, more rentals means more money for them. CIM violated that agreement and like grave robbers in the middle of the night, (it did literally occur in the middle of the night), demoed the original facade while the CD13 councilman, now mayor, approved it .
And didn’t CIM move people in at their own risk while the case was in litigation? Whose to blame here?
Communities wanted Target, but not to be built violating their SNAP laws, again the CD13 councilman, now Mayor, lied to Target, betrayed his own constituents, that they wanted above ground parking and the overscale horror sitting there now. Target went against SNAP laws at their own risk with encouragement from the councilman, now Mayor. Would he have dared do this in a wealthier area?
It’s sad how the pathetic current CD13 councilman, O’Farrell, will also never stand up for his constituents. Instead he blamed them on TV news for Target being shut down and whined they are getting in the way of construction jobs. That’s what you get when the Hollywood Chamber developer funded PAC gets their candidates elected.
The Mayor, the City, CIM, are constantly breaking laws that protect communities who are ignored by those elected to represent them, and chastised publicly by them for seeking justice..whose salaries they are paying, and whose only recourse is suing for justice. Every one of these cases brought to court, are won by the people.
Our CEQA laws are in jeopardy because instead of obeying laws that protect communities, developers, developer proponents, and developer corrupted politicians are trying to weaken, and dismantle CEQA, and Garcetti is leading ‘Re:code L.A.’, the final nail in the coffin for any legal standing L.A. communities now have to protect themselves from obscenely overscale, overdense and environmentally harmful projects in their neighborhoods..