Century City has long been a place of dreams sometimes fulfilled, sometimes stymied and sometimes spinning out of control.

From its days as a ranch to its time as a studio back lot to its rebirth as a “second downtown” showcasing aluminum technology and now as a premier business address the area’s prime Westside locale has long drawn both dreamers and hardnosed businessmen.

“It was and remains a prime piece of real estate, next to Beverly Hills and close to the increasingly affluent Westside,” said John Bauroth, a 43-year Century City veteran who is now project accountant for Constellation Place LLC, also known as the MGM Tower.

But like much of the land outside downtown L.A., Century City’s beginnings were humble enough. During the early 1920s, it served as a ranch for silent movie star Tom Mix.

Mix, who had recently joined nickelodeon operator William Fox at his new studio near Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, had bought 176 acres of hilly grassland bounded by Beverly Hills and what would become Santa Monica and Pico boulevards in the late teens.

However, by 1925, Fox was looking to expand his studio, while Mix was struggling to maintain his lavish lifestyle. So a deal was struck, which included Mix selling his L.A. ranch to Fox in exchange for hundreds of acres of Fox’s holdings in Arizona.

Fox built his new studio on the Westside property, complete with some of the first true sound stages for the “talkie” era. A decade later, the Fox Studio Corp. by then renamed 20th Century Fox was at the peak of its power in the industry under operations chief Daryl Zanuck, turning out such films as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “How Green Was My Valley” and “Laura.”

Fox sale

However, the land was not destined to remain a filming location forever; the studio decided to sell its holdings in the late 1950s. Contrary to modern legend, 20th Century Fox did not decide to sell its back lot because of production cost overruns for the epic film “Cleopatra,” starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The real reason lay in the breakdown of the old studio system in the 1950s. Production costs steadily rose as unions gained more power and demand for more realistic and expensive location shoots increased, prompting many of the old-line studios to look into selling their back lots.

In 1956, 20th Century Fox hired Edmond Herrscher as director of property development. It was Herrscher who coined the name “Century City” for Fox’s back lot holdings. A few months later, 20th Century Fox hired premier architectural firm Welton Becket and Associates later the designer of downtown’s Music Center and real estate financial consultants Milton Meyer & Co. to examine developing the property. They came up with a master plan that envisioned an entire city virtually self-contained with commercial, retail and residential space.

The decision to sell the property was made in May 1958, just as pre-production for “Cleopatra” began and long before its production cost overruns threatened to bankrupt the studio. “Cleopatra” was originally budgeted for $6 million, but by the time it was released in 1963, it had cost $37 million. So the spiraling production costs weren’t the reason for the sale, but they did add a sense of urgency.

William Zeckendorf, a New York developer, was the first bidder, putting a $5 million option on the property. Eighteen months later, the Aluminum Co. of America, known as Alcoa, interested in diversifying its holdings outside the cyclical aluminum industry, offered $38 million for the property. In March 1961, after purchasing the property, Alcoa and Zeckendorf’s firm entered into a joint venture called Century City Inc. to market and develop the back lot.

The new venture, with Alcoa in the lead role, retained Welton Becket, who drew up plans for 75 acres of residential units and 85 acres of commercial space, all arranged in what he called “super blocks.” Unlike downtown L.A., Becket designed for the auto age, with wide boulevards including Avenue of the Stars, which was modeled on the Champs Elysees pedestrian bridges and a large shopping center.

Essential to the project was the construction of the planned Beverly Hills Freeway along Santa Monica Boulevard, which would provide commuters and residents with easy access. “The shopping center and the two gateway buildings were all planned with enough setbacks for a freeway and the shopping center itself was supposed to be next to a freeway off-ramp,” said Bauroth, part of the shopping center’s initial marketing team.

But the freeway never got off the drawing boards, setting up the new city early on for a traffic nightmare. Thousands of commuters and shoppers would have to get to the area on busy surface streets, eventually spilling over onto quiet residential streets and stirring up anger among neighbors.

Golden age

As the first set of buildings went up, tenants began to migrate in from downtown and the mid-Wilshire district. Many of these were professional and financial firms, lured by the proximity to Beverly Hills and following the westward migration of their wealthy clients, who were settling in places like Bel Air and Brentwood.

Meanwhile, the first residential buildings the Century Towers Apartments went up, and immediately gained star status as comedian Jack Benny moved in.

In 1966, one of Century City’s most famous landmarks the Century Plaza Hotel opened. It would play host to several presidents, especially Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. A few years later, ABC Entertainment Inc. inked a deal to move into a new entertainment complex that would eventually include the Schubert Theatre and a Playboy Club.

Meanwhile, Alcoa was working on a set of two buildings that would become a showcase for its aluminum products and L.A.’s answer to the World Trade Center, which was then being built in New York City. The 44-story triangular Century Plaza Towers were completed in 1975, instantly becoming icons.

But the completion of the towers marked the end of the so-called “golden age” of development. By that time, complaints from nearby residents about traffic had reached the ears of city officials, who responded with a novel specific plan to limit development by assigning a finite total number of vehicle trips resulting from all future construction.

“The specific plan essentially cut the development potential for Alcoa in half versus what had been allowed before,” said Richard Wilson, who worked for Alcoa in Century City during the late 1970s.

Meanwhile, Alcoa had difficulty in finding the right combination of leadership to continue with the development of Century City. “Either they would bring out someone from Alcoa headquarters who knew little about real estate or they would hire someone from the real estate world who knew nothing about Alcoa’s corporate culture,” Wilson said.

When the steep recession of the early 1980s pulled the rug out from under the aluminum market, Alcoa began looking for a buyer for its Century City holdings. In 1986, Alcoa sold its share to Chicago-based JMB Realty Corp., ending an era in Century City history.

Century City would continue to attract star tenants, including top flight law firms and Eli Broad’s SunAmerica Corp., but its days of vigorous expansion were over until recently.