Broker Jerry Asher Cold Called Century City’s Earliest Tenants

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Jerry Asher, now executive vice president and partner at the CB Richard Ellis office in Century City, remembers well when Century City was better known as a place where celluloid dreams were made than where multi-million dollar business deals were consummated. Working for a real estate brokerage, Asher was part of the team that in 1959 represented a struggling 20th Century Fox as it attempted to raise cash by selling its 260-acre movie lot to real estate developers. Once ground was broken, Asher stayed on to lease some of its first office and retail space in what was considered a cutting-edge, multi-use development, the forerunner of today’s trendy urban villages. Ten years ago, Asher and his wife also became Century City residents by purchasing their first condo there.



Question: How did you get in on the ground floor of developing Century City?


Answer:

In the early 1960s, I was in my early 30s and part of three-person Los Angeles office of Milton Meyer Co., a San Francisco firm that later became the Shorenstein Cos. We represented the studio when 20th Century Fox property went under contract with Bill Zeckendorf to develop the property. The deal was for 260 acres, with the studio leasing back 80 so it could continue making movies there. I remember when they put together the scale model of the site about as big as this conference table and then boxed it all up and shipped it to New York so we could make the presentation to Zeckendorf.



Q: What was your role after the development was under way?


A:

We did a lot of the marketing of the property, and the sale of land for some of the early buildings and the residential portion south of Olympic. Fred Gerbers was hired away from Milton Meyer to become the first executive director of Century City Inc. He hired us to do the leasing of the shopping center, which originally was called Century Square, in 1964. I also did leasing for the first office building, Gateway West.



Q: Was the development a success from the get-go?


A:

It actually was disappointing in the beginning because I was out there cold-calling people for office and retail space who didn’t even know that the 20th Century Fox studio was right next door to Beverly Hills.



Q: Were there other factors that made it a more difficult sell to potential tenants?


A:

As far as the shopping center was concerned, there was a problem with Broadway being the first major tenant. It was a deal that was signed before I started. It wasn’t the type of upscale department store that would attract people from Beverly Hills. We would have preferred a Nieman Marcus or a Sachs. It took the Joseph Magnum chain from San Francisco coming in two years later to really upgrade the image of the center.



Q: What was your first lease there?


A:

The supermarket, which eventually became Gelson’s. It’s still there, but my second lease, Century House restaurant, was razed during renovations. There’s probably only two, at most a handful, of the original tenants still there.



Q: Was there one event that signaled that Century City had “arrived” as a business address in Los Angeles?


A:

It was a culmination of things over the first five years. It took a long time for a major, multi-floor tenant to come in. The first two buildings, 1800 and 1801 Avenue of the Stars, had a lot of smaller tenants. It wasn’t until the third office building, 1901 Avenue of the Stars, that we had our first two-floor lease. It took the third and fourth office buildings coming on line, the shopping center filling up and the opening of the Century Plaza Hotel to really draw people’s attention.



Q: What was it about Century City that turned it into the premier center for professional firms in Los Angeles?


A:

The location and the modern look of the buildings and streets, which gave the community an air of exclusivity. You have all the amenities and controlled parking with no street parking allowed. In earlier years, a business could find big floors and big spaces at affordable rents especially compared with Beverly Hills.



Q: What was the importance of Alcoa becoming a partner with Bill Zeckendorf and eventually taking over the entire development?


A:

Alcoa wanted to build buildings that would show the world how aluminum could be used as building material. Century City was to be one of their showplaces there’s probably more aluminum here than concrete. They had the financial resources to support that goal, and their presence probably accelerated the pace of getting things built.



Q: What’s the story behind the space-age theme to the street names? An outsider might think Avenue of the Stars was inspired by Hollywood, but then you have streets like Constellation Drive and Galaxy Way.


A:

The marketing guys the developer hired came up with that idea the space race was just getting started but after the streets were named that marketing campaign never went anywhere. There were several things in the original plans that never came to fruition. The first hotel was supposed to be built across the street from where the Plaza is now, and have a big lake with gondola rides. And where the MGM complex is at one time was going to be a transportation center, with a large parking garage and a helipad on the roof where you could take a helicopter to the airport, or down the San Diego.



Q: Was traffic that bad even then?


A:

I didn’t start noticing it being a big problem until the 1990s. Even though Century City is a little ways from the freeways and it is harder to go north and south, you have three major boulevards Olympic, Pico and Santa Monica moving traffic east and west. The renovation that was just completed on Santa Monica Boulevard is one of the finest things the city has done to improve access through the Westside. It finally accomplishes what the old Century Freeway was supposed to do before Beverly Hills blocked it.



Q: How well has Century City aged?


A:

Very well. It really doesn’t look like a development that’s more than 40 years old, and that’s because the design was ahead of its time. All the buildings have been renovated over the years, the shopping center just completed a major renovation and now you have the expansion of Santa Monica Boulevard. In the last five years particularly, it’s become more of a place where people can live and work and shop without getting into their cars, which is trendy. More of my neighbors work here, like me.



Q: What led you to become a Century City resident yourself?


A:

The lure of being close to my work. I was tired to traveling the freeways. I don’t walk to work every day, but when I have to drive, it’s just straight to the office. Plus, this is a phenomenal location. Living in Century City, even though you’re in the middle of an urban area, you still feel set off from the rest of the city. And unlike almost all my earlier homes, this is an area where I can live, walk to work, walk to the market and entertainment and shopping.

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