A REAL-LIFE HOLLYWOOD HOLDUP CAPER.

Byline: DOUG McINTYRE

REMEMBER the millennium celebration?

As the 20th century surrendered to the 21st, television brought us joyous images of celebrants ringing in the new century with festooned international icons providing the dramatic backdrop: the onion-shape domes of the Kremlin, the Coliseum in Rome bathed in light, the Eiffel Tower in Paris transformed into a giant Technicolor sparkler, the London skyline aflame in happiness, an emphatic rebuttal to the Blitz of the dying century.

The party skipped across the pond to New York for huge crowds, Times Square, Dick Clark and another ball drop. Then it was our turn.

Los Angeles, California -- the port of entry for the new millennium! What did we bring to the party? Jay Leno and Dick Riordan bouncing a crummy laser light off the Hollywood sign.

"How lame was that?" said Leno in one of the most candid moments in the history of global television. And yet ...

The Hollywood sign. A cheesy hillside billboard thrown up in the 1920s by developers hoping for quick riches. Originally the letters spelled out "Hollywoodland," but the "land" part tumbled over after years of neglect and hence an icon was born.

The single most instantly recognizable emblem in all of Southern California. It might not have the majesty of the Golden Gate bridge, or the symbolic sweep of the St. Louis Arch, completing the work of Lewis and Clark by metaphorically linking the east with the west and making America one great nation. The Hollywood sign might have crass bloodlines, but can anybody even name a rival? The Hollywood sign is Los Angeles incarnate; cheap, self-promoting, yet magically attractive and it looks great on camera.

Which is why the caterwauling began instantly when some Chicago city slickers had the audacity to put a gun to our heads and demand $22 million or they'll plow up Cahuenga Peak with McMansions and condos -- the L.A. equivalent of putting aluminum siding on the Vatican.

The property owners, Fox River Financial Resources, bought the land for $1.67 million from the estate of famed oilman and legendary lunatic Howard Hughes. Apparently he wanted to perch his lovebird du jour, Ginger Rogers, on a hill where nobody (read: Sinatra) could get at her. Six years later, Fox River wants $22 million or it's "hasta la vista, vista."

Twenty-two million? Apparently they didn't hear the housing bubble pop in Chicago. The 138-acre property is zoned for five luxury homes or a single giganto mother-of-all-palaces.

Either way, the threat to L.A.'s identity is real. After years of tap dancing (how appropriate given the Ginger Rogers' connection) Los Angeles has raised $5 million to purchase the land. That was before the Chicago boys dropped their $22 million bombshell.

I'm about as big a private-property-rights guy as you're ever going to run across. For years I've done battle with the ultimate abuser of private- property rights (and a fine trampler of checks and balances to boot), Smokey Joe Edmiston of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. But maybe we ought to unleash the SMMC on these Chicago wise guys?

Goon versus Goon. "You think you can come into our house and mess with our cheesy city landmark? You don't know who you're messin' with!"

L.A. practically invented paralyzing red tape. We'll bury the Windy City robber barons in an avalanche of environmental impact studies. I'm sure there's some kind of endangered species living up there. Like homeowners, for instance. There's a vanishing breed. These guys will never know what hit 'em.

Once again we brought this on ourselves. As City Councilman Tom LaBonge said, "Everybody thought the city already owned it." Not quite everybody, Tom. The Chicago gang played us for fools, snapping up 130-plus iconic acres for the price of a two-bedroom Encino fixer. What else do we think we already own? Has anyone checked the title on Griffith Park lately?

As silly as it might seem, the Hollywood sign sells L.A. to the entire world. We can't let some out-of-towners ruin it. And frankly, we don't need outside help to ruin things around here.

Eighty years ago, developers put up the Hollywood sign in the hopes of striking it rich in Los Angeles. Now developers are using the same sign in the modern version of the gold rush, the rush to soak the taxpayers by threatening the things they love most about life in Southern California.