The Grammy Awards may have drawn the most media attention, but the hottest ticket of the week was the MusiCares fundraising gala at the Los Angeles Convention Center, held to kick off the Grammys.
Nearly half of the 26 Grammy acts paid tribute to James Taylor, who was honored as person of the year by MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s philanthropic foundation.
The evening was as intimate as a 2,200-guest event could be, with the comfortable feel of many of Taylor’s ballads. Performing his songs were Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Sting, Carole King, Keith Urban, Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow, Jackson Browne and David Crosby.
Anschutz Entertainment Group’s Tim Leiweke sponsored the event, which raised more than $3 million.
As laid-back as the rest of the night was, the live auction was at times intense. Real estate executives John Bendheim and Robert Barth topped the heated bidding by putting up $120,000 for a three-day vacation aboard Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, Christina O.
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It wasn’t nearly as lyrical, but the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Summit did provide some high notes for property owners.
David Lereah, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, is convinced the local market won’t crash, and CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo agreed. She said that, much like New York, the demand for housing in Los Angeles had reached a level so far beyond the supply that the market had become crash-proof. Donald Straszheim, founder of Straszheim Global Advisors and Gary Schlossberg, vice president and senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co., kept the Beverly Hills audience of 350 grounded with a discussion of layoffs at General Motors and globalization.
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Former mayor Jim Hahn, who took a job at real estate advisory firm Chadwick, Saylor & Co. after leaving office, is finding out that civilian life can be far different from elected office.
“The ability to focus on one thing is a real luxury,” said Hahn, who is now chief executive of L.A. Development Partners, a closed-end investment fund that is in the process of raising $250 million from union pension funds to develop commercial real estate in Los Angeles.
Hahn, a champion of labor throughout his political career, has been talking to local operating partners that he hopes will form joint ventures and use union labor for the developments. Combined with debt, he’ll have roughly $800 million to play with. “This is an opportunity to put policy into practice,” he said.
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Staff Reporter Kate Berry can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 228, or at
[email protected]
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