Body shop docks at fabled L.A. site.

WHAT do you get when you cross Spanish Colonial with Coffee Shop Modem?

In the case of the former Ship's coffee shop site at La Cienega and Olympic boulevards, Body Shop Classical.

Nearly a decade after the iconic restaurant shut down and five years after brothers Jay and Bob Zaman bought the site from Del Taco Inc., the half-acre property on L.A.'s border with Beverly Hills is being developed--finally.

Flanked by two trademark 40-foot-high "Ships" signs, their neon glow now unplugged, the Ships Center is being turned into a commercial oddity: a 7,000-square-foot auto body shop, adjoined by 3,000 square feet of retail space, fronting La Cienega.

"It's probably one of the best looking body shops in L.A.," said David Kabashima, associate zoning administrator with the Los Angeles Planning Department, which approved the design in 2002. As for the body shop/retail combination, "it's the only one I've ever seen," said Kabashima, who has worked in the department for more than three decades.

Handsome or not, the irregular conjunction of retail and bodywork is the product of development by committee. It also reflects the lengths by which builders, homeowners groups and city officials must go in zoning-sensitive Los Angeles to create a project palatable to all sides.

In this case, the South Carthay Neighborhood Association, worried that a fast food restaurant would be built on the site, mustered its considerable political clout to play a role in the development.

"The longer the property sat vacant, the more we were concerned a fast food restaurant would come in there, which we didn't want," said Tim Tobin, a member of the association that represents 800 homes in the 15 blocks bounded by Olympic, La Cienega, Pico and Crescent Heights boulevards.

Ripe for growth

The neighborhood, once covered by vegetable fields supplying Ralphs grocery stores, was largely developed in the 1930s by Spyros George Ponty. Known for its Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, it became the city's second historic preservation overlay zone in 1984. The creation of the HPOZ establishes a neighborhood board to preserve the architectural characteristics.

The Ship's coffee shop there was the third and last built by restaurateur Emmett Shipman between 1956 and 1967. It was designed by Armet & Davis, whose works include hundreds of other coffee shops, including Norm's and Pann's. Ship's was known for its tableside toasters, and was the epitome of "Googie" archictecture--space-age, zigzag buildings that sprouted over Southern California between the 1940s and 1960s. Along with its sister restaurant in Culver City, Ship's, despite its "Never Closes" motto, shut down in 1995 and was later demolished.

Meanwhile, real estate values in the area have skyrocketed. The 2003 median single-family home price of more than $681,000 is nearly three times the 1995 figure, according to DataQuick Information Services. The county's median sale price has only doubled in the same period.

"People who live in South Carthay Vintage: Alfred Street, feel real attached to the neighborhood and have an active interest in what goes on around us," said Tobin, who moved to the area in 1992.

So when Del Taco bought the site for $890,000 in 1998 and announced plans to build a restaurant with a 24-hour drive-through window, the neighbors, with the help of associations representing Carthay Square and Carthay Circle, north of Olympic Boulevard, took notice.

The planning department approved the restaurant in late 1998, but attempts to get a conditional use permit for the drive-through were challenged by the neighborhood groups. Uncertain of its ability to get the drive-through approved, Del Taco sold the property to the Zamans for $1.1 million in 1999.

"Any place where you've got pre-existing community organization, (as a developer) you've got to deal with it," said Ben Reznik, a partner at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP who specializes in real estate development cases. "You'd be a fool not to anticipate opposition."

Golden arches

Apparently, McDonald's Corp. had not learned that lesson.

Jay Zaman, a principal of Ships Center LLC and owner of Black & White Rent-A-Car on Burton Way in Beverly Hills, said he originally wanted to open a second Black & White facility on the site but was approached by the fast food giant shortly after the property purchase.

McDonald's and the Zamans struck a development agreement in 2001 that was contingent upon getting approvals for a restaurant and drive-through, Zaman said. South Carthay homeowners had a handful of discussions with McDonald's representatives, according to Tobin, demanding that the restaurant cut back its late night hours and not use the easement that connects the property to Olympic. (The site wraps around a Unocal 76 station on the corner.)

A conditional use permit application for a drive-through at the site was filed in January 2001, then withdrawn that December, according to zoning records.

"We made a lot of demands - if McDonald's would send a letter of agreement (to the demands), we would support them," Tobin said. "They seemed to be in agreement, but then we got a call from (then-Councilman Mike) Feuer's office saying they were abandoning the site."

McDonald's, which did not return calls, last year opened a restaurant about a mile south, at La Cienega and Sawyer Street.

With McDonald's gone, "we had to do something with the property," said Zaman, whose brother operates an auto body shop on Third Street nearby. "We decided to join together to put the nicest body shop in L.A. there."

With that in mind, the Zamans hired Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist Robert Gaines to work with the neighborhood groups to minimize opposition during the approval process.

"The biggest difference was that everything Jay Zaman and Bob Gaines told us seemed to be pretty straightforward and honest," said Tobin. "You didn't get the feeling they were trying to see what they could get away with."

The result will be a $2.2 million stucco building complete with a 42-space underground parking lot, a neutral color, marble fixtures and glass retail frontage. Bob Zaman will operate the body shop, and Jay Zaman will set up a Black & White operation there.

And despite opposition to a late-night restaurant similar to the one that once lent the corner some cachet, there may yet be an opportunity to get coffee at the site.

The Zamans had been in discussions with Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf before it opted for a location next to the new McDonald's, and they would still like to get a coffee shop in one of the retail spaces.

The signs, which are not on the L.A. Cultural Heritage Commission's list of Historic-Cultural Monuments, will stay as dimmer versions of their former selves.

Zaman, who said a man once offered him $1,000 for the "Never Closes" part of the sign as an anniversary gift to his parents, who had met at the restaurant, said that they will be repainted, but will not relit.

"We will make them look nice, but we're not going to turn them on," said Zaman. "If we turn them on, everyone will think it's a restaurant."