Developer watches over neighborhoods in his projects: latest effort designed to give area identity.

Michael Resnick is not your typical developer.

For one thing, his name is perhaps most closely associated not with tearing down properties, but with preserving them.

Resnick was cofounder of the group that spearheaded the effort to save the Glendale Federal Savings & Loan Association building on Brand Boulevard.

And he has come up with complex schemes not only to preserve other architecture in L.A. but also to put it to more productive use at the same time.

Now Resnick has turned his attention to an office building at Chandler Boulevard between Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Agnes Avenue in Valley Village, one of those slap-em-up boxes from the 1970s that the community has long regarded as an eye-sore.

His plan is to strip the building down to the frame and re-purpose some of the adjacent parking to create a mini-village on the property, and he has partnered up with none other than Holliday Development in Emeryville to do just that.

"I had to literally go up to San Francisco to get somebody who I felt understood the site," Resnick said recently. "When I talked to some of the locals, they said, 'we can sell the parking lots and put up condos.'"

Holliday, an award-winning developer, is credited with bringing lofts to San Francisco and for transforming many of the communities in the Bay Area with its cutting-edge residential designs.

Resnick, who said candidly that the project is just too big for someone with his experience, said he chose Holliday because he envisions something that is more than the makeover of a single building.

The property, which includes some vacant land, parking areas and a large office building, sits across from the Orange Line busway and it abuts a residential neighborhood of single family homes. What Resnick wants to do is to turn the office building into condominium units and construct townhomes adjacent to it, creating a kind of border or entryway for the residential neighborhood and helping to give it an identity.

Resnick has dabbled in adaptive re-use projects before, albeit not to the scale of his Chandler Comers project.

Most recently, he fell under the spell of a small, multifamily building in North Hollywood that was originally built for workforce housing by Richard Neutra, a mid-20th century architect of what were trendsetting homes at the time. Several of Neutra's works have been designated historical monuments in L.A.

The building had fallen under considerable disrepair, along with the block on Radford Street where it is located.

So Resnick, whose company is called Not-A-Box Housing in Studio City, acquired not just the building, but the block it stood on as well.

"I knew this was the only building of its kind in the world," Resnick said.

Resnick figured that making the building marketable would require not just renovating it, but somehow transforming the block on which it stood.

He sold the other properties on the street to his friends at cost with the option to buy them back, and went about renovating the architectural jewel that he felt would be the centerpiece of his work.

"This gives me two to three years to figure out what to develop on the site," Resnick said. "In the meantime, the neighborhood is taken care of, and by the way, the owners of the other properties will make a profit when it is time to sell."

The renovated apartment building opened with an event benefiting Neutra's home and studio, which has been preserved and is now under the care of California State Polytechnic University Pomona.

Tentative plans for Chandler Comers call for about 102 units and about 50 row homes.

The first public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Aug. 29.

Industrial Squeeze

Can vacancy rates get any lower for industrial properties in the San Fernando Valley?

As of the second quarter of 2006, the average vacancy rate in the Valley had fallen to 2.1 percent for industrial properties, versus 3.2 percent in the same period a year ago, according to a report released by Grubb & Ellis.

"On a year-over-year basis, L.A. North delivered the most impressive performance of all the markets in L.A. County," the authors of the report wrote. "Since second quarter of 2005, vacancy rates in L.A. North have decreased by 190 basis points thanks to an impressive 2.8 million square feet of positive absorption."

The Valley's industrial vacancy rate for years has been nominal, usually under 5 percent, but as space tightens even further, there is also little promise of any relief in sight.

As of the second quarter, a mere 534,000 square feet of new industrial space was under construction in the San Fernando and Conejo valleys, although Santa Clarita does have about 1.3 million square feet of industrial space in development, the Grubb & Ellis report revealed.

Senior reporter Shelly Garcia can be reached at [phone] or by e-mail at sgarcia@ sfvbj.com.