Hooch Homage

0

Speakeasy-style Hollywood Club 86 is ready to open this summer after three years of not-so-easy construction.


The nightspot is in the basement of the Hillview Apartment building at Hudson Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, and the site was a Prohibition-era speakeasy owned by silent film star Rudolph Valentino.


“There were skeletons jumping out at us everywhere,” Steve Adelman, the owner, said of the project. “Every time you think you solved a problem, another one popped up, and it took forever. It was definitely a labor of love.”


Adelman, who also owns Hollywood nightclubs Avalon, Spider Club and restaurant Honey, has spent roughly $2 million converting the site into what he hopes will be an intimate, underground jazz lounge and supper club.


The structure has a long history which became part of the problem as construction progressed.


“They had to re-support the whole building so it wouldn’t fall into 86,” he said. “It cost a lot, and we went over budget. We’re going to recoup the money once we open, but the time lost, man that was hard.”


The Hillview is a key part of Hollywood’s ongoing makeover from a seedy corridor to what merchants and residents hope will be a cleaner, safer and nightlife-intensive area.


Once an eyesore, the restored Hillview building in 2005 became the first residential property to open on that historic stretch of Hollywood Boulevard in almost a century. A number of other mixed-use projects are scheduled for completion by the end of next year, which will open up thousands of residential units.


Built in 1917 by Paramount Pictures founders Sam Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky, the Hillview was home to scores of house actors and a number of the era’s silent film stars. It continued as a residential site after its heyday, but damage from the 1994 Northridge temblor, subway construction and a fire about five years ago left the building vacant, dilapidated and facing condemnation.


Great Lakes Cos. and real estate developer Jeff Rouze took over the building in October 2002, sparing it from the wrecking ball and starting an extensive $20-plus million, five-year remodel to open the building as a 54-unit apartment building.


The 6,000-square-foot basement club will be the final element of the building to come online. Club 86 will join Adelman’s eatery Lift, a high-end take-out restaurant on the Hillview’s ground floor that offers healthy fare like raw foods, and the Joint, an upscale personal training gym and cycling class studio.


Once completed, the club will have a side-alley entrance and a huge steel speakeasy entry door with a narrow sliding panel for a peephole, a bit of homage to the original, which had an unmarked door and hidden staircase, which still exists in the rehabbed structure.


The club’s capacity will be between 200 and 250 guests and Adelman intends to maintain an exclusive but low-key lounge vibe, rather than trying to compete with the area’s already-saturated big-nightclub scene.


“This is a different concept and there’s not a space like this in Hollywood,” he said. “There is an integrity and history that you can’t build or fake.”

No posts to display