w.hollywood/12″/dt1st/mark2nd
By ELIZABETH HAYES
Staff Reporter
Three blocks of prime real estate on the Sunset Strip changed hands last week, setting the stage for a $250 million hotel-retail-office development in West Hollywood dubbed Sunset Millennium.
Developer Mark Siffin, in conjunction with Apollo Real Estate Advisors, purchased close to 290,000 square feet of property, including the Tiffany Theatre and Western International Media building, plus a 60,000-square-foot office building near La Cienega Boulevard, said Howard Sadowsky, executive vice president at Julien J. Studley, who represented the buyer.
The properties sold by Western International Media Chairman Dennis Holt and Petersen Publishing Cos. run along the south side of Sunset, from just west of the Park Sunset Hotel up to the tony Sunset Plaza boutiques and restaurants. Sources said the purchase was in the mid-$50 million range.
The Petersen Publishing office building will be refurbished, and a 100,000-square-foot office building will be constructed next door, Siffin said. The Tiffany and Western complex will be torn down to make way for a 370-room hotel (but a new theater could possibly be included in the project).
Western International Media is looking for a new headquarters, according to broker Blake Mirkin with CB Richard Ellis, who represents Western.
High-end retail, similar to the adjacent Sunset Plaza, would be built to the west of the Western complex. Siffin said he plans to make the retail portion as “tastefully done” as the Montgomery family’s Sunset Plaza.
“I’m attempting to emulate what the Montgomerys have created the ambiance, quality of shops and tenor of the area,” Siffin said.
Siffin said he has been meeting for the past year with the neighborhood homeowners to come up with a project that follows the criteria of the Sunset Specific Plan, an ordinance adopted three years ago by the city of West Hollywood that calls for certain building heights and densities. This will be the first large project under the plan, city officials said.
While the plan would allow up to 1 million square feet of development on the land owned by Siffin and partners, the proposed project will only be about half that size, Siffin said. A permit application has been filed for the project, which is being designed by the Santa Monica office of the architecture firm Gensler.
Another element of the project is “an excessive amount of parking, because invariably with urban sites, one concern is for there not to be an overburdening of the street system,” Siffin said. In all, there would be 2,500 parking spaces beneath the development.
Siffin said there are provisions to enhance traffic flow, such as adding lanes, and to make the development pedestrian-friendly. A pedestrian bridge will be built across La Cienega Boulevard and three pedestrian paseos would be spaced through the project, he said.
“It brings life to an area that’s predominantly office space,” said Donald Savoie, executive director of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a large segment between Sunset Plaza and the House of Blues and Mondrian Hotel, and this could tie the two together.”
