Downtown L.A. real estate is drawing N.Y. investors' interest

Downtown Los Angeles, once disdained by Wall Street as a weak collection of office buildings with no pizazz, is drawing newfound fascination from New York firms, many of which are sinking money into the Southland's resurging commercial district.

L.A. County has seen a 23% increase in the dollar volume of investment from the Empire State this year compared with 2013, real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley said.

New York investment in the county has surpassed $4.4 billion since the beginning of 2012, when local real estate experts noticed a surge in interest from New Yorkers. That's equivalent to buying 12 U.S. Bank Towers, the tallest building in the West.

Buyers are picking up or developing all types of commercial properties, including office buildings, hotels, warehouses, apartments and raw land suitable for development. Among them is the July purchase of a long-vacant 1920s office building by a hotel developer and a new high-rise luxury apartment tower about to open on Bunker Hill.

Downtown reminds New York investors of what their neighborhoods looked like before redevelopment swept through Manhattan and into the other boroughs, analysts and longtime developers say.

"Los Angeles has hit critical mass in downtown," said Greg Vilkin of New York real estate giant Related Cos. "Firms from New York show up and say, wow, I see the potential I saw in Hell's Kitchen a decade ago. I watched TriBeCa, and the High Line, and I see what's going to happen."

While investors from China and South Korea have been grabbing attention with high-profile purchases of real estate, big New York players have been on their own Southland spending spree.

One particularly notable deal is the $130-million purchase in August of the former May Co. department store on Broadway. It was the first L.A. purchase for New York investors Waterbridge Capital and Jack Jangana, who vowed to make over the enormous building in the style of high-end Chelsea Market in Manhattan.

Chelsea Market was built in the husk of a sprawling brick 19th-century factory and is now a successful food sales hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility. The nine-story May Co. building at Broadway and 8th Street is considered one of the largest properties available for a similar conversion on the West Coast.

But the building is a daunting candidate for a pricey makeover, given its sheer size, at 1.1 million square feet, and its location in a neighborhood that has been economically depressed for decades.

"Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in and see what can be done," Vilkin said.

Firms based in New York have snatched up some of Southern California's best-loved historic buildings, including the elaborate Fine Arts Building downtown, the Art Deco-style Clock Tower office building in Santa Monica and the glamorous El Royale apartment tower in Hancock Park.

Most New York money managers disdained downtown Los Angeles for years. They thought of it primarily as a big office park with persistently high vacancy, said L.A. developer Christopher Rising. Investors balked two years ago when Rising tried to obtain funding to buy an old office complex by Pershing Square and convert it to offices for tenants in creative businesses.

"We called 150 equity groups," he said.

Most listened for a few minutes, then hung up. "The only one who believed in us was Mount Kellet," he said.

New York investment firm Mount Kellet Capital Management had recently entered Los Angeles with a big investment in a troubled local commercial real estate company. "They had educated themselves on how L.A. is changing," Rising said.

Los Angeles is also at an earlier point in its real estate cycle than many other cities, industry observers said, and there is more time left to invest before it hits its peak.

"L.A. is one of the seventh- or eighth-largest and most dynamic metro areas in the U.S., but is a bit of a laggard in terms of its regional economic recovery," said Dean Rostovsky, director of West Coast acquisitions for Clarion Partners, a New York firm that invests billions of dollars in real estate on behalf of its clients.

"Houston, Seattle and San Francisco have expanded much more quickly," Rostovsky said, and are probably closer to what will be peak values in the current real estate cycle. L.A. might have more room ahead for real estate price growth.

The region also has certain markets, such as downtown, that have other growth factors working in their favor.

"Downtown has multiple dynamics: residential, hospitality, sports and entertainment," Rostovsky said, "and a burgeoning retail and restaurant" scene.

When those growth factors are strong enough, he said, it's apparent that those neighborhoods are becoming something different from what they were in the past.

"That excites real estate guys like us," Rostovsky said. Downtown is experiencing that kind of dynamic change, he said, as are Hollywood, Culver City and Playa Vista.

Clarion Partners is heavily committed to the Los Angeles region, where it owns nearly 11 million square feet of office retail and industrial property, along with the massive Palazzo Westwood apartment and shopping complex.

One of the earliest to see downtown's potential is Related, which recently hired Vilkin to head a new division in charge of building upscale residential projects in the state. Related is putting more than $2 billion worth of development in the company pipeline — not including a $350-million oceanfront condominium and apartment complex Related just finished in Santa Monica.

The company is deeply invested in downtown L.A., where it built sprawling Grand Park between City Hall and the Music Center along with a high-rise luxury apartment tower nearing completion on Bunker Hill. Both are prologue to the long-awaited hotel, residential and retail complex designed by architect Frank Gehry that Related has agreed to build across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Density will make downtown more vibrant, which will attract still more investment, Vilkin said.

"I think that more is better in Los Angeles," he said. "People want to live in an urban market where they have services and can walk to things."

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Downtown L.A. real estate is drawing N.Y. investors' interest

Downtown Los Angeles, once disdained by Wall Street as a weak collection of office buildings with no pizazz, is drawing newfound fascination from New York firms, many of which are sinking money into the Southland's resurging commercial district.

L.A. County has seen a 23% increase in the dollar volume of investment from the Empire State this year compared with 2013, real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley said.

New York investment in the county has surpassed $4.4 billion since the beginning of 2012, when local real estate experts noticed a surge in interest from New Yorkers. That's equivalent to buying 12 U.S. Bank Towers, the tallest building in the West.

Buyers are picking up or developing all types of commercial properties, including office buildings, hotels, warehouses, apartments and raw land suitable for development. Among them is the July purchase of a long-vacant 1920s office building by a hotel developer and a new high-rise luxury apartment tower about to open on Bunker Hill.

Downtown reminds New York investors of what their neighborhoods looked like before redevelopment swept through Manhattan and into the other boroughs, analysts and longtime developers say.

"Los Angeles has hit critical mass in downtown," said Greg Vilkin of New York real estate giant Related Cos. "Firms from New York show up and say, wow, I see the potential I saw in Hell's Kitchen a decade ago. I watched TriBeCa, and the High Line, and I see what's going to happen."

While investors from China and South Korea have been grabbing attention with high-profile purchases of real estate, big New York players have been on their own Southland spending spree.

One particularly notable deal is the $130-million purchase in August of the former May Co. department store on Broadway. It was the first L.A. purchase for New York investors Waterbridge Capital and Jack Jangana, who vowed to make over the enormous building in the style of high-end Chelsea Market in Manhattan.

Chelsea Market was built in the husk of a sprawling brick 19th-century factory and is now a successful food sales hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility. The nine-story May Co. building at Broadway and 8th Street is considered one of the largest properties available for a similar conversion on the West Coast.

But the building is a daunting candidate for a pricey makeover, given its sheer size, at 1.1 million square feet, and its location in a neighborhood that has been economically depressed for decades.

"Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in and see what can be done," Vilkin said.

Firms based in New York have snatched up some of Southern California's best-loved historic buildings, including the elaborate Fine Arts Building downtown, the Art Deco-style Clock Tower office building in Santa Monica and the glamorous El Royale apartment tower in Hancock Park.

Most New York money managers disdained downtown Los Angeles for years. They thought of it primarily as a big office park with persistently high vacancy, said L.A. developer Christopher Rising. Investors balked two years ago when Rising tried to obtain funding to buy an old office complex by Pershing Square and convert it to offices for tenants in creative businesses.

"We called 150 equity groups," he said.

Most listened for a few minutes, then hung up. "The only one who believed in us was Mount Kellet," he said.

New York investment firm Mount Kellet Capital Management had recently entered Los Angeles with a big investment in a troubled local commercial real estate company. "They had educated themselves on how L.A. is changing," Rising said.

Los Angeles is also at an earlier point in its real estate cycle than many other cities, industry observers said, and there is more time left to invest before it hits its peak.

"L.A. is one of the seventh- or eighth-largest and most dynamic metro areas in the U.S., but is a bit of a laggard in terms of its regional economic recovery," said Dean Rostovsky, director of West Coast acquisitions for Clarion Partners, a New York firm that invests billions of dollars in real estate on behalf of its clients.

"Houston, Seattle and San Francisco have expanded much more quickly," Rostovsky said, and are probably closer to what will be peak values in the current real estate cycle. L.A. might have more room ahead for real estate price growth.

The region also has certain markets, such as downtown, that have other growth factors working in their favor.

"Downtown has multiple dynamics: residential, hospitality, sports and entertainment," Rostovsky said, "and a burgeoning retail and restaurant" scene.

When those growth factors are strong enough, he said, it's apparent that those neighborhoods are becoming something different from what they were in the past.

"That excites real estate guys like us," Rostovsky said. Downtown is experiencing that kind of dynamic change, he said, as are Hollywood, Culver City and Playa Vista.

Clarion Partners is heavily committed to the Los Angeles region, where it owns nearly 11 million square feet of office retail and industrial property, along with the massive Palazzo Westwood apartment and shopping complex.

One of the earliest to see downtown's potential is Related, which recently hired Vilkin to head a new division in charge of building upscale residential projects in the state. Related is putting more than $2 billion worth of development in the company pipeline — not including a $350-million oceanfront condominium and apartment complex Related just finished in Santa Monica.

The company is deeply invested in downtown L.A., where it built sprawling Grand Park between City Hall and the Music Center along with a high-rise luxury apartment tower nearing completion on Bunker Hill. Both are prologue to the long-awaited hotel, residential and retail complex designed by architect Frank Gehry that Related has agreed to build across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Density will make downtown more vibrant, which will attract still more investment, Vilkin said.

"I think that more is better in Los Angeles," he said. "People want to live in an urban market where they have services and can walk to things."

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Actors ready for close-ups in 'Styling the Stars'

A dashing and debonair Cary Grant posing in his swim trunks for a photographer on the set of his 1957 tear-jerking romantic drama "An Affair to Remember."

Doris Day, dressed in pajamas and fuzzy bedroom slippers, mugging for the camera on the soundstage of her 1967 spy comedy "Caprice."

And Marilyn Monroe modeling the back of her original — and suggestive — costume for her "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number in 1953's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," which was considered too risqué and replaced with the pink gown.

The three screen legends are among the more than 150 stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood represented in the lavish new book "Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures From the Twentieth Century Fox Archive." The book was written by artist-author Angela Cartwright, the former child star of "Lost in Space" and "The Sound of Music," and actor Tom McLaren, with a foreword by celebrated actress Maureen O'Hara, who was one of the studio's top stars in the 1940s.

These eye-catching images from the 1930s through the early '70s were known as the studio's "continuity" photographs. They were taken once the actors were camera-ready to make sure their costumes, hair and makeup looked the same throughout the production.

Actors were often placed next to a placard that had pertinent information such as the character and scene. Sometimes, they were photographed holding a comb or a brush if the picture was headed to the hairstyling department or a powder puff if the image had been shot for makeup continuity.

Cartwright came up with the idea for "Styling the Stars" when she was in the Fox archives in Century City, looking for pictures for the 2011 book "The Sound of Music Family Scrapbook."

"I came across continuity pictures from the movie and was really taken by the level of the photography and by the actual photographs themselves," she said. "They were crystal clear and shot with a large camera. I can actually remember shooting them. While I was in the archive, I said, 'Wait a minute, every picture had continuity shots.'''

She called McLaren, whom she had known for several years, and invited him to work on the book. "I knew what a huge undertaking it was, and I knew that I would not to be able to do it alone," said Cartwright.

The two gave the archivist a list of favorite movies and stars they wanted in the book and soon began to pore through old, dusty boxes to find the photographs.

Though posing for continuity photographs was part of an actor's job, that didn't mean they were happy having to do it. Frank Sinatra looks like the Chairman of the Bored in two pictures from his 1968 film "Lady in Cement." And Bette Davis seems to be taking her role a bit too seriously as Queen Elizabeth in a series of photographs from 1955's "The Virgin Queen."

But there are other actors like Paul Newman who were playful. "There was really no straight shot of Paul Newman," said Cartwright. "He was pulling a face in every single picture."

Dean Martin photo-bombs Cyd Charisse in a still from the uncompleted 1962 Monroe comedy "Something's Got to Give," and even Marlon Brando can't keep a straight face in his photographs for 1958's "The Young Lions."

"The men are often more relaxed and casual," said McLaren. "What I found was the women tended to take it a bit more seriously. They would like to strike a pose of a graceful, elegant woman."

Because a lot of these images were taken on the fly, the backdrops were often anything but glamorous. There's a photo of Ann-Margret vamping it up in a sultry gown in front of a hodgepodge of studio equipment on the set of 1964's "The Pleasure Seekers."

Some photographs were taken on the set, but others were done in an old portrait studio before filming began for the day. Included in that group are pictures of Cartwright and some of her costars in 1965's "The Sound of Music," including Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the six young actors who played her Von Trapp "siblings."

Cartwright and McLaren end the book with images from the mid-1970s. After that, studios switched to Polaroid pictures. Digital cameras are now used to shoot continuity photographs.

Even though these photographs were taken only for use within the studio, the stars managed to look perfect.

"None of these pictures are photoshopped," said Cartwright. "To see these people shot on the fly and still look so good, you realize that the actors had a magic about them."

Twitter: @mymackie

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Downtown L.A. real estate is drawing N.Y. investors' interest

Downtown Los Angeles, once disdained by Wall Street as a weak collection of office buildings with no pizazz, is drawing newfound fascination from New York firms, many of which are sinking money into the Southland's resurging commercial district.

L.A. County has seen a 23% increase in the dollar volume of investment from the Empire State this year compared with 2013, real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley said.

New York investment in the county has surpassed $4.4 billion since the beginning of 2012, when local real estate experts noticed a surge in interest from New Yorkers. That's equivalent to buying 12 U.S. Bank Towers, the tallest building in the West.

Buyers are picking up or developing all types of commercial properties, including office buildings, hotels, warehouses, apartments and raw land suitable for development. Among them is the July purchase of a long-vacant 1920s office building by a hotel developer and a new high-rise luxury apartment tower about to open on Bunker Hill.

Downtown reminds New York investors of what their neighborhoods looked like before redevelopment swept through Manhattan and into the other boroughs, analysts and longtime developers say.

"Los Angeles has hit critical mass in downtown," said Greg Vilkin of New York real estate giant Related Cos. "Firms from New York show up and say, wow, I see the potential I saw in Hell's Kitchen a decade ago. I watched TriBeCa, and the High Line, and I see what's going to happen."

While investors from China and South Korea have been grabbing attention with high-profile purchases of real estate, big New York players have been on their own Southland spending spree.

One particularly notable deal is the $130-million purchase in August of the former May Co. department store on Broadway. It was the first L.A. purchase for New York investors Waterbridge Capital and Jack Jangana, who vowed to make over the enormous building in the style of high-end Chelsea Market in Manhattan.

Chelsea Market was built in the husk of a sprawling brick 19th-century factory and is now a successful food sales hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility. The nine-story May Co. building at Broadway and 8th Street is considered one of the largest properties available for a similar conversion on the West Coast.

But the building is a daunting candidate for a pricey makeover, given its sheer size, at 1.1 million square feet, and its location in a neighborhood that has been economically depressed for decades.

"Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in and see what can be done," Vilkin said.

Firms based in New York have snatched up some of Southern California's best-loved historic buildings, including the elaborate Fine Arts Building downtown, the Art Deco-style Clock Tower office building in Santa Monica and the glamorous El Royale apartment tower in Hancock Park.

Most New York money managers disdained downtown Los Angeles for years. They thought of it primarily as a big office park with persistently high vacancy, said L.A. developer Christopher Rising. Investors balked two years ago when Rising tried to obtain funding to buy an old office complex by Pershing Square and convert it to offices for tenants in creative businesses.

"We called 150 equity groups," he said.

Most listened for a few minutes, then hung up. "The only one who believed in us was Mount Kellet," he said.

New York investment firm Mount Kellet Capital Management had recently entered Los Angeles with a big investment in a troubled local commercial real estate company. "They had educated themselves on how L.A. is changing," Rising said.

Los Angeles is also at an earlier point in its real estate cycle than many other cities, industry observers said, and there is more time left to invest before it hits its peak.

"L.A. is one of the seventh- or eighth-largest and most dynamic metro areas in the U.S., but is a bit of a laggard in terms of its regional economic recovery," said Dean Rostovsky, director of West Coast acquisitions for Clarion Partners, a New York firm that invests billions of dollars in real estate on behalf of its clients.

"Houston, Seattle and San Francisco have expanded much more quickly," Rostovsky said, and are probably closer to what will be peak values in the current real estate cycle. L.A. might have more room ahead for real estate price growth.

The region also has certain markets, such as downtown, that have other growth factors working in their favor.

"Downtown has multiple dynamics: residential, hospitality, sports and entertainment," Rostovsky said, "and a burgeoning retail and restaurant" scene.

When those growth factors are strong enough, he said, it's apparent that those neighborhoods are becoming something different from what they were in the past.

"That excites real estate guys like us," Rostovsky said. Downtown is experiencing that kind of dynamic change, he said, as are Hollywood, Culver City and Playa Vista.

Clarion Partners is heavily committed to the Los Angeles region, where it owns nearly 11 million square feet of office retail and industrial property, along with the massive Palazzo Westwood apartment and shopping complex.

One of the earliest to see downtown's potential is Related, which recently hired Vilkin to head a new division in charge of building upscale residential projects in the state. Related is putting more than $2 billion worth of development in the company pipeline — not including a $350-million oceanfront condominium and apartment complex Related just finished in Santa Monica.

The company is deeply invested in downtown L.A., where it built sprawling Grand Park between City Hall and the Music Center along with a high-rise luxury apartment tower nearing completion on Bunker Hill. Both are prologue to the long-awaited hotel, residential and retail complex designed by architect Frank Gehry that Related has agreed to build across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Density will make downtown more vibrant, which will attract still more investment, Vilkin said.

"I think that more is better in Los Angeles," he said. "People want to live in an urban market where they have services and can walk to things."

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

23.50 | 0 komentar | Read More

Downtown L.A. real estate is drawing N.Y. investors' interest

Downtown Los Angeles, once disdained by Wall Street as a weak collection of office buildings with no pizazz, is drawing newfound fascination from New York firms, many of which are sinking money into the Southland's resurging commercial district.

L.A. County has seen a 23% increase in the dollar volume of investment from the Empire State this year compared with 2013, real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley said.

New York investment in the county has surpassed $4.4 billion since the beginning of 2012, when local real estate experts noticed a surge in interest from New Yorkers. That's equivalent to buying 12 U.S. Bank Towers, the tallest building in the West.

Buyers are picking up or developing all types of commercial properties, including office buildings, hotels, warehouses, apartments and raw land suitable for development. Among them is the July purchase of a long-vacant 1920s office building by a hotel developer and a new high-rise luxury apartment tower about to open on Bunker Hill.

Downtown reminds New York investors of what their neighborhoods looked like before redevelopment swept through Manhattan and into the other boroughs, analysts and longtime developers say.

"Los Angeles has hit critical mass in downtown," said Greg Vilkin of New York real estate giant Related Cos. "Firms from New York show up and say, wow, I see the potential I saw in Hell's Kitchen a decade ago. I watched TriBeCa, and the High Line, and I see what's going to happen."

While investors from China and South Korea have been grabbing attention with high-profile purchases of real estate, big New York players have been on their own Southland spending spree.

One particularly notable deal is the $130-million purchase in August of the former May Co. department store on Broadway. It was the first L.A. purchase for New York investors Waterbridge Capital and Jack Jangana, who vowed to make over the enormous building in the style of high-end Chelsea Market in Manhattan.

Chelsea Market was built in the husk of a sprawling brick 19th-century factory and is now a successful food sales hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility. The nine-story May Co. building at Broadway and 8th Street is considered one of the largest properties available for a similar conversion on the West Coast.

But the building is a daunting candidate for a pricey makeover, given its sheer size, at 1.1 million square feet, and its location in a neighborhood that has been economically depressed for decades.

"Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in and see what can be done," Vilkin said.

Firms based in New York have snatched up some of Southern California's best-loved historic buildings, including the elaborate Fine Arts Building downtown, the Art Deco-style Clock Tower office building in Santa Monica and the glamorous El Royale apartment tower in Hancock Park.

Most New York money managers disdained downtown Los Angeles for years. They thought of it primarily as a big office park with persistently high vacancy, said L.A. developer Christopher Rising. Investors balked two years ago when Rising tried to obtain funding to buy an old office complex by Pershing Square and convert it to offices for tenants in creative businesses.

"We called 150 equity groups," he said.

Most listened for a few minutes, then hung up. "The only one who believed in us was Mount Kellet," he said.

New York investment firm Mount Kellet Capital Management had recently entered Los Angeles with a big investment in a troubled local commercial real estate company. "They had educated themselves on how L.A. is changing," Rising said.

Los Angeles is also at an earlier point in its real estate cycle than many other cities, industry observers said, and there is more time left to invest before it hits its peak.

"L.A. is one of the seventh- or eighth-largest and most dynamic metro areas in the U.S., but is a bit of a laggard in terms of its regional economic recovery," said Dean Rostovsky, director of West Coast acquisitions for Clarion Partners, a New York firm that invests billions of dollars in real estate on behalf of its clients.

"Houston, Seattle and San Francisco have expanded much more quickly," Rostovsky said, and are probably closer to what will be peak values in the current real estate cycle. L.A. might have more room ahead for real estate price growth.

The region also has certain markets, such as downtown, that have other growth factors working in their favor.

"Downtown has multiple dynamics: residential, hospitality, sports and entertainment," Rostovsky said, "and a burgeoning retail and restaurant" scene.

When those growth factors are strong enough, he said, it's apparent that those neighborhoods are becoming something different from what they were in the past.

"That excites real estate guys like us," Rostovsky said. Downtown is experiencing that kind of dynamic change, he said, as are Hollywood, Culver City and Playa Vista.

Clarion Partners is heavily committed to the Los Angeles region, where it owns nearly 11 million square feet of office retail and industrial property, along with the massive Palazzo Westwood apartment and shopping complex.

One of the earliest to see downtown's potential is Related, which recently hired Vilkin to head a new division in charge of building upscale residential projects in the state. Related is putting more than $2 billion worth of development in the company pipeline — not including a $350-million oceanfront condominium and apartment complex Related just finished in Santa Monica.

The company is deeply invested in downtown L.A., where it built sprawling Grand Park between City Hall and the Music Center along with a high-rise luxury apartment tower nearing completion on Bunker Hill. Both are prologue to the long-awaited hotel, residential and retail complex designed by architect Frank Gehry that Related has agreed to build across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Density will make downtown more vibrant, which will attract still more investment, Vilkin said.

"I think that more is better in Los Angeles," he said. "People want to live in an urban market where they have services and can walk to things."

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Author behind TV's 'Love Boat' lists Glendale home port

Jeraldine Saunders, whose book "Love Boats" spawned TV movies and series, has listed her longtime home in Glendale for sale at $1.999 million.

The house, built in 1951, sits on a more than half-acre knoll with panoramic cityscape, canyon and hillside views.

The 3,036 square feet of living space includes formal dining and living rooms, three fireplaces, a wing with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, an office and a second-story family room.

A swimming pool, deck and fountain sit at the back of the house.

Saunders started gathering anecdotes for her 1974 book when she worked as a cruise ship director. Producer Doug Cramer turned the book into a TV movie, and Aaron Spelling went on to make "The Love Boat" series (1977-87). The idea was revisited more than a decade later in "Love Boat: The Next Wave" (1998-99). The show's run also included several other movies and specials. Saunders wrote dozens of the episodes.

An astrologist, she pens the Tribune Media column Omarr's Astrological Forecast. She was married to the astrologer Sydney Omarr in the 1960s and he selected her as his replacement.

More recently she appeared on TLC's "Extreme Cougar Wives."

David Kramer and Steven Medina of Hilton & Hyland/Christie's International Real Estate are the listing agents.

Twitter: @LATHotProperty

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Author behind TV's 'Love Boat' movie, series lists Glendale home port

Jeraldine Saunders, whose book "Love Boats" spawned TV movies and series, has listed her longtime home in Glendale for sale at $1.999 million.

The house, built in 1951, sits on a more than half-acre knoll with panoramic cityscape, canyon and hillside views.

The 3,036 square feet of living space includes formal dining and living rooms, three fireplaces, a wing with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, an office and a second-story family room.

A swimming pool, deck and fountain sit at the back of the house.

Saunders started gathering anecdotes for her 1974 book when she worked as a cruise ship director. Producer Doug Cramer turned the book into a TV movie, and Aaron Spelling went on to make "The Love Boat" series (1977-87). The idea was revisited more than a decade later in "Love Boat: The Next Wave" (1998-99). The show's run also included several other movies and specials. Saunders wrote dozens of the episodes.

An astrologist, she pens the Tribune Media column Omarr's Astrological Forecast. She was married to the astrologer Sydney Omarr in the 1960s and he selected her as his replacement.

More recently she appeared on TLC's "Extreme Cougar Wives."

David Kramer and Steven Medina of Hilton & Hyland/Christie's International Real Estate are the listing agents.

Twitter: @LATHotProperty

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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Clashes erupt in Hong Kong between supporters, opponents of protests

Screaming until they were red in the face, arguing until they burst into tears, supporters and opponents of Hong Kong's democracy protests faced off Friday afternoon in the dense commercial district of Mong Kok.

"Get out!" yelled dozens of men, pumping their fists and urging police to clear the intersection of Nathan and Argyle roads, a busy crossroads with banks on each corner and shuttered jewelry shops and restaurants nearby.

Police struggled to keep the situation from erupting into a riot as periodic punches were thrown, water bottles were lobbed and curses hurled. As the afternoon wore on, the crowd swelled to perhaps 10,000.

"This is kind of the last stand," said Adrian O'Sullivan, who moved to Hong Kong from Manchester, England, three years ago and has been joining in the democracy demonstrations all week. "This was the first spot on this side [of Victoria Harbor] where spontaneous protests broke out after people couldn't get to Hong Kong Island to join the demonstrations there. We have to hold this."

Mark Ledford, a tourist from Orange County, spent the afternoon taking in the scene at the intersection. "I don't have politics when I'm on vacation, I like to say," said Ledford, who runs a kids gym business in Rancho Santa Margarita and experienced tear gas earlier in the week when police clashed with protesters. "But I support what the students are doing out here."

Ledford said that as a business owner, he understood that some proprietors may be upset about how the ongoing demonstrations have curtailed cash flow. But ultimately, he said, the foundations of enterprise depend on the kind of government protesters are seeking.

At 5:30 p.m. local time, a red canopy tent at the Nathan and Argyle intersection was torn down and police, linked arm in arm, opened up a lane of traffic. Several buses, which had been halted in the intersection for days and covered with pro-democracy fliers, were driven out of the area.

A small group of democracy demonstrators seemed to be encircled in the main intersection by opponents and police.

In a bizarre turn of events, police were essentially protecting the democracy protesters in the intersection who were besieged on all sides by opponents.

Around 6 p.m., organizers started suggesting to supporters that they abandon the Mong Kok encampment, but a die-hard group refused to leave.

Franco Mella, a priest from Italy, shook his head as a man with a megaphone exhorted the crowd outside the intersection to move in and clear away the democracy demonstrators. "A lot of people here have strong memories of Tiananmen," he said, referring to the 1989 student protests crushed in Beijing. "This is strong in people's minds now."

Mella, who speaks fluent Cantonese, said some of the opponents in the crowd were local shopkeepers, but that he had heard others were paid the equivalent of about $100 by Triad gangs to turn up and shout slogans.

As he spoke, a man with a bloodied face was hustled under the protesters' tent for medical attention.

After nightfall, the three leading protest groups -- Hong Kong Federation of Students, Scholarism and Occupy Central With Love and Peace -- issued a statement saying the government must prevent organized attacks on protesters. The federation later said it was suspending for now plans to hold talks with top government aide Carrie Lam.

With demonstrations in their sixth day and a sense of exhaustion setting in among supporters, the protesters seemed to be facing a choice of giving up spots such as Mong Kok and Causeway Bay and consolidating in other locations, or staying and risking violence and a loss of public support.

The Hong Kong government closed its central office and asked civil servants to work from home or at alternative locations.

Intermittent rain sapped strength from the demonstrators' numbers, and a sense of uncertainty lingered over the movement after an offer Thursday night by embattled Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to hold talks with the student federation.

As of midday Friday, no date, time or venue for the talks had been announced. The students want the conversation to take place in a public forum with media present.

Some schools remained closed Friday, and many bus routes were still diverted. Protesters outside Leung's office on occasion blocked Lung Wo Road, the sole major east-west artery remaining open on Hong Kong Island's densely populated north shore.

A government spokesman condemned the protesters for blocking police in their attempts to deliver food and water to officers stationed in government buildings. A statement suggested that the protesters were being directed not by student leaders or the Occupy Central movement but by "radical social activists."

Police said the blockade was "almost paralyzing" traffic and was affecting emergency services. "This conduct is irresponsible and illegal," the force said in a statement, though officers apparently made no arrests.

While some shop owners have started to complain that business was suffering because of the protests, Hong Kong's stock market reopened Friday after a two-day holiday and was flat as of early afternoon.

In Beijing, the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily continued to condemn the protests in Hong Kong. The newspaper said the demonstrations are aimed at challenging "China's supreme power organ" and are doomed to fail.

"There is no room to make concessions on issues of important principles," the commentary said.

Hong Kong, a former British territory, returned to Chinese rule under a formula known as "one country, two systems." Those in the territory of 7 million were promised greater civil liberties than their mainland counterparts.

Chinese leaders have said Hong Kong voters can for the first time cast ballots in 2017 for the chief executive, now chosen by a Beijing-friendly committee of 1,200 people. However, authorities want to limit voters' choice to two or three candidates who pass muster with Beijing, which protesters say amounts to "fake democracy."

Follow @JulieMakLAT for news from China

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

9:20 a.m. This post was updated with a statement by the Hong Kong Federation of Students that it was suspending plans to hold talks with the government.

4:13 a.m.: This post was updated with a statement from the three leading protest groups.

3:36 a.m.: This post was updated with quotes from an Italian priest.

2:42 a.m.: This post was udated with details on arguments in Mong Kok.

1:12 a.m.: This post was updated with details from Mong Kok.

12:43 a.m., Oct. 3: This post was updated with a statement from the Hong Kong government and details on a group opposed to the demonstrators.

This post was originally published at 11:12 p.m. PDT, Oct. 2.

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Clashes erupt in Hong Kong between supporters, opponents of protests

Screaming until they were red in the face, arguing until they burst into tears, supporters and opponents of Hong Kong's democracy protests faced off Friday afternoon in the dense commercial district of Mong Kok.

"Get out!" yelled dozens of men, pumping their fists and urging police to clear the intersection of Nathan and Argyle roads, a busy crossroads with banks on each corner and shuttered jewelry shops and restaurants nearby.

Police struggled to keep the situation from erupting into a riot as periodic punches were thrown, water bottles were lobbed and curses hurled. As the afternoon wore on, the crowd swelled to perhaps 10,000.

"This is kind of the last stand," said Adrian O'Sullivan, who moved to Hong Kong from Manchester, England, three years ago and has been joining in the democracy demonstrations all week. "This was the first spot on this side [of Victoria Harbor] where spontaneous protests broke out after people couldn't get to Hong Kong Island to join the demonstrations there. We have to hold this."

Mark Ledford, a tourist from Orange County, spent the afternoon taking in the scene at the intersection. "I don't have politics when I'm on vacation, I like to say," said Ledford, who runs a kids gym business in Rancho Santa Margarita and experienced tear gas earlier in the week when police clashed with protesters. "But I support what the students are doing out here."

Ledford said that as a business owner, he understood that some proprietors may be upset about how the ongoing demonstrations have curtailed cash flow. But ultimately, he said, the foundations of enterprise depend on the kind of government protesters are seeking.

At 5:30 p.m. local time, a red canopy tent at the Nathan and Argyle intersection was torn down and police, linked arm in arm, opened up a lane of traffic. Several buses, which had been halted in the intersection for days and covered with pro-democracy fliers, were driven out of the area.

A small group of democracy demonstrators seemed to be encircled in the main intersection by opponents and police.

In a bizarre turn of events, police were essentially protecting the democracy protesters in the intersection who were besieged on all sides by opponents.

Around 6 p.m., organizers started suggesting to supporters that they abandon the Mong Kok encampment, but a die-hard group refused to leave.

Franco Mella, a priest from Italy, shook his head as a man with a megaphone exhorted the crowd outside the intersection to move in and clear away the democracy demonstrators. "A lot of people here have strong memories of Tiananmen," he said, referring to the 1989 student protests crushed in Beijing. "This is strong in people's minds now."

Mella, who speaks fluent Cantonese, said some of the opponents in the crowd were local shopkeepers, but that he had heard others were paid the equivalent of about $100 by Triad gangs to turn up and shout slogans.

As he spoke, a man with a bloodied face was hustled under the protesters' tent for medical attention.

After nightfall, the three leading protest groups -- Hong Kong Federation of Students, Scholarism and Occupy Central With Love and Peace -- issued a statement saying the government must prevent organized attacks on protesters. The federation later said it was suspending for now plans to hold talks with top government aide Carrie Lam.

With demonstrations in their sixth day and a sense of exhaustion setting in among supporters, the protesters seemed to be facing a choice of giving up spots such as Mong Kok and Causeway Bay and consolidating in other locations, or staying and risking violence and a loss of public support.

The Hong Kong government closed its central office and asked civil servants to work from home or at alternative locations.

Intermittent rain sapped strength from the demonstrators' numbers, and a sense of uncertainty lingered over the movement after an offer Thursday night by embattled Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to hold talks with the student federation.

As of midday Friday, no date, time or venue for the talks had been announced. The students want the conversation to take place in a public forum with media present.

Some schools remained closed Friday, and many bus routes were still diverted. Protesters outside Leung's office on occasion blocked Lung Wo Road, the sole major east-west artery remaining open on Hong Kong Island's densely populated north shore.

A government spokesman condemned the protesters for blocking police in their attempts to deliver food and water to officers stationed in government buildings. A statement suggested that the protesters were being directed not by student leaders or the Occupy Central movement but by "radical social activists."

Police said the blockade was "almost paralyzing" traffic and was affecting emergency services. "This conduct is irresponsible and illegal," the force said in a statement, though officers apparently made no arrests.

While some shop owners have started to complain that business was suffering because of the protests, Hong Kong's stock market reopened Friday after a two-day holiday and was flat as of early afternoon.

In Beijing, the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily continued to condemn the protests in Hong Kong. The newspaper said the demonstrations are aimed at challenging "China's supreme power organ" and are doomed to fail.

"There is no room to make concessions on issues of important principles," the commentary said.

Hong Kong, a former British territory, returned to Chinese rule under a formula known as "one country, two systems." Those in the territory of 7 million were promised greater civil liberties than their mainland counterparts.

Chinese leaders have said Hong Kong voters can for the first time cast ballots in 2017 for the chief executive, now chosen by a Beijing-friendly committee of 1,200 people. However, authorities want to limit voters' choice to two or three candidates who pass muster with Beijing, which protesters say amounts to "fake democracy."

Follow @JulieMakLAT for news from China

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

9:20 a.m. This post was updated with a statement by the Hong Kong Federation of Students that it was suspending plans to hold talks with the government.

4:13 a.m.: This post was updated with a statement from the three leading protest groups.

3:36 a.m.: This post was updated with quotes from an Italian priest.

2:42 a.m.: This post was udated with details on arguments in Mong Kok.

1:12 a.m.: This post was updated with details from Mong Kok.

12:43 a.m., Oct. 3: This post was updated with a statement from the Hong Kong government and details on a group opposed to the demonstrators.

This post was originally published at 11:12 p.m. PDT, Oct. 2.

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'The Little Bedroom' a deft exploration of melancholy, loss

Hollywood may be shortchanging the adult audience, but the rest of the world has not followed suit. "The Little Bedroom," an unheralded film from Switzerland, is a small-scale gem of a movie, both dramatically aware and psychologically astute.

Starring 89-year-old master French actor Michel Bouquet ("Renoir," "How I Killed My Father") in what might well be his final leading role, "Bedroom" deals with the melancholy of different kinds of loss. Powerfully but delicately acted, the film concerns itself with the necessity as well as the limits of human connection as it introduces two individuals who find themselves at different, equally painful crossroads.

"It's only a visit, it doesn't commit you to anything" is the film's opening line, but it's enough to tell us that nervous middle-aged son Jacques (Joël Delsaut), who is about to move to Chicago, is taking his father, Edmond (Bouquet), on a trial visit to a nursing home.

Biting, irascible eightysomething Edmond is not going quietly, far from it. When his son tells him the move to the U.S. will be in September, Edmund snaps back, "I'll try and die in August so you can come to my funeral." And when they arrive at the facility, Edmond promptly locks himself in the car so he can listen to his beloved classical music uninterrupted.

The next day, back at the apartment he shares with his son, Edmond gets his first look at Rose (Florence Loiret Caille), the home care nurse newly assigned to his case. That meeting does not go well either.

Edmond icily addresses Rose as "Madame Nurse," resists her attempt to give him his diabetes shot with a brusque "I can do it myself" and sums up, as if he needed to, "don't tell me life is wonderful." Rose says nothing, but we can sense that her life is anything but.

Rose is married to Marc (Éric Caravaca), but their relationship has been under enormous strain. The couple, we soon discover, suffered through the tragedy of a stillborn child six months earlier, and neither one of them has been able to recover their footing.

Especially distraught is Rose, who refuses to let the baby's room — the little bedroom of the title — be touched, even keeping the baby clothes freshly laundered and folded. Caille is especially good at conveying Rose's beside-herself pain and despair.

While Rose has just returned to work — Edmond, who hates the thought of leaving the home he loves, is her first client — Web designer Marc has been collaborating with a partner, and they are close to landing the big energy drink contract they desperately need. But getting it means going to New York to make a presentation, and though the trip is essential, Marc fears leaving Rose at such a fraught time.

"The Little Bedroom" is the first feature for the Swiss writing and directing team of Stéphanie Chuat & Véronique Reymond, but you would never know it from the assurance they display here.

Friends since they were 15 and former actresses themselves, Chuat and Reymond have a thorough understanding of character development. Aided by magnificent but restrained performances by the veteran Bouquet and the younger Caille, their protagonists couldn't be more realistically conveyed.

Just as important is the unforced and carefully controlled way "The Little Bedroom's" plot unfolds. Circumstances will gradually create a complicity between Edmond and Rose, two people who are unknowingly desperate for essential solidarity.

Because filmmakers Chuat and Reymond have a gift for the subtle nuances of personality, it is this economical film's strength that while that relationship may sound schematic, in practice it persuasively develops into a bond we can believe in.

Though this wary connection neither Edmond nor Rose anticipates grows up and takes a kind of hold of them, "The Little Bedroom" is far too sophisticated to imagine it will solve everyone's problems in a classically sentimental movie way. Some things can be made better, but others cannot, and this deft film not only understands the difference between healing and simply helping but also honors it.

Follow me on Twitter: @KennethTuran

----------------------------------------

'The Little Bedroom'

No MPAA rating

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Music Hall, Beverly Hills; Town Center, Encino; Playhouse, Pasadena.

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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