Large Local Developments Near Completion.

WHAT'S in the works for next year?

TrizecHahn Development Corp.'s vaunted Hollywood & Highland will come online. Caruso Affiliated Holdings' Grove at Farmers Market will near completion.

Office buildings from M. David Paul's Media Studios North office campus in Burbank to the next building at Kilroy Realty Corp.'s Westside Media Center are already going up.

So where are the shovels hitting the soil in L.A. County in 2001?

One distinguishing characteristic of the 2001 construction scene is that a number of projects will be on land vacated by defense-related companies.

"It's very difficult to find a site that has 102 acres right along a freeway in urban Los Angeles," said Bill Bauman, senior vice president of retail properties at Colliers Seeley International.

* That's just what's happened with Zelman Development Co., which is starting work on Burbank Empire Center, a 750,000-square-foot power center on a 102-acre property bought from Lockheed Martin Corp.

City approvals came in November and the center, which would become the largest in L.A. County, is to include extended-stay hotels and retail. Menlo Equities is building the 390,000-square-foot phased-in office portion on 17 acres.

* J.H. Snyder Co. plans to break ground on the West Hollywood Gateway at La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, a 350,000-square-foot project that includes 270,000 square feet of retail and 80,000 square feet of office space. Over in Agoura Hills, Snyder also has a 400,000-square-foot office development in the works.

* Lowe Enterprises will start the first phase of a 100-acre project on a former Northrop Grumman facility in Hawthorne, split between retail, office, high-end industrial and telecom uses.

* Majestic Realty Co. expects to break ground at River Station at North Spring. Street in Chinatown, east of downtown L.A., a 910,000-square-foot industrial project.

* Chicago-based developer JMB Realty Corp's $250 million, 700,000-square-foot Constellation Place in Century City will start construction. Entertainment giant Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is lined up to move into 17 of the 34 floors. Expect more deals to be announced this year.

* Developer Diversified Realty Corp.'s CityPlace in Long Beach will take shape as the 475,000-square-foot de-malling of Long Beach Plaza. The project will include 328 residential units, a 138-room hotel, and will open up streets that were closed off in 1982 when the mall was first built.

* Vestar Development Co. is expected to close escrow in the first quarter of 2001 on 55 acres formerly owned by Northrop Grumman Corp. in Pico Rivera and start construction on 630,000 square feet of retail. That's part of 157 acres that Irvine-based developer Sares Regis is under contract to master develop.

* Ground will break on Playa Vista's Fountain Park parcel, a 420,000-square-foot commercial development by MaguirePartners with financing from Equity Office Properties Trust.

* MaguirePartners will also build a 300,000-square-foot office building in Glendale, a joint venture with Bank of America Corp., as well as the second phase of the 350,000-square-foot, eight-story Plaza Las Fuentes in Pasadena, which will face Colorado Boulevard and have 65 housing units.

* The tome-like draft environmental impact report for L.A. Arena Co.'s Staples Center expansion project, a massive retail/entertainment project, is set to be released after the first of the year. That's when it will become clear just how far-reaching the benefits of Staples Center will be -- and just how much momentum downtown revival efforts have maintained. The big questions are how big the hotel will be and how much will developers expect the city to pony up for the project to pencil out.

* Los Angeles Center Studios' 450,000-square-foot renovation of the former Unocal Corp. headquarters off Bixel treet in downtown will come online in 2001. The company hopes to lease it to entertainment companies in an area that hasn't seen much other action. In the meantime, the company will break ground in the coming months on six more studios, fueled by strong demand for major motion picture work.

* Crown Realty & Development is building its 200,000-square-foot expansion of Wateridge Park in Culver City; Kilroy Realty Corp. is building the next phase of its Westside Media Center; and Overton Moore Properties has a number of projects underway including the 170,000-square-foot Cross Pointe at South La Cienega Boulevard and Pacific Concourse Drive and the $44 million, 216,000-square-foot Douglas Technology Centre on North Douglas Street. Also, the second phase of Overton Moore's 1.9 million-square-foot Port Los Angeles Distribution Center is in the works.