Long-dormant Beverly Hills site flipped, offices planned.

HOTEL plans for a one-acre parcel on Wilshire Boulevard between Maple and aim drives in Beverly Hills appear to have been scrapped with the purchase of the property by a London-based developer.

Ellas Properties paid $9.6 million for the vacant site, and is planning to build a four-story office building with ground floor retail, according to Brian Dunne, vice president at Grubb & Ellis Co., who represented the seller, BHG Holdings LLC.

The property received entitlements for a 133-room hotel in late 2001, the first hotel approval since the Peninsula Beverly Hills was approved a decade earlier. The site would need additional entitlements from the city for an office development, said Dunne.

BHG had the property tied up since April 1999, but never closed on its $8.5 million purchase as it struggled to develop a $43 million hotel, dubbed Hotel Bel Jardin. In striking a deal with Elias, BHG, which filed for bankruptcy protection in March, was able to close on its purchase of the site from TBO Realty.

Elite Properties' Phil Seymour represented Ellas and First Property Realty Corp.'s Jeff Resnick represented TBO.

V.A. Vote

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on rezoning the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration campus next week in a move that could put another hurdle in front of efforts to develop the site.

The Army has been considering a land-swap and development deal with Watt Commercial Properties. The deal has already been delayed by the Army Corps of Engineers' rejection of an appraisal on the portion of the campus targeted for redevelopment.

The vote stems from a February motion by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to conduct a zoning review of the 388-acre campus and, specifically, the 10.8-acre parcel at the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Federal Avenue earmarked by Watt for either commercial or residential redevelopment.

The land was set aside for veterans' housing in 1888 and was zoned R-4, or "unlimited residential," by the county in 1960. That designation allowed for up to 50 units an acre, or 540 residential units for the corner property, as well as allowing for development without public review.

"If the V.A. wants to continue to function on the Westside or if it needs to modify services and facilities for veterans, We have no problem with that," said Yaroslavsky, who expects the rezoning vote to pass. "(the campus) should not become a laboratory for federal bureaucrats to be real estate developers--it's an insult to veterans and the community."

Officials from Santa Monica-based Watt, which owns about 4 million square feet of office, retail and industrial property in L.A. County, did not return calls.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers' appraisal of the property could be finished next month, according to Douglas Benson, chief of the asset management group for the Army Reserve. The army rejected a private appraisal of the site earlier this year, citing technical errors, he said. He said he did not know the value assigned the property in that appraisal.

Morn Downtown

The original home of the Los Angeles Press Club has been sold by the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles.

The Case Hotel, the 110,000-square-foot building at 1108 S. Broadway, was purchased by L.A.-based Pan Pacific Ventures LLC. The 80-plus-year-old building has been fully occupied by the Los Angeles Job Corps for decades, although the buyer may redevelop the property when the lease runs out in a few years, according to Philip Sample, principal at Newmark Capital Group, who, with Newmark's Chris Caras, represented the seller.

"Their intent is to hold it for a couple years and then renovate the project into creative office space," said Sample.

While the price was not disclosed, the building sold for about $5 million, according to a source close to the deal.

The building, at 11th Street and Broadway, is across the street from the old Herald Examiner building and served as inaugural home to the press club before it moved to the Ambassador Hotel in the early 1950s.

Grubb & Ellis Co.'s Dan Daneshrad represented the buyer on the deal.

Going Condo

Forest Glen Properties LLC bought the 204-unit apartment complex at 20146-20259 Cohasset Street in the West San Fernando Valley from Irvine-based Bascom Group for $26.3 million and will convert the property to condominiums.

Forest Glen will use the legal entitlements acquired by a previous owner in the 1980s to make the conversion. The company will provide the complex's tenants with the right of first refusal before marketing the two- and three-bedroom townhouse units for sale at about $215,000 per unit next year, according to Dean Zander, associate partner at Hendricks & Partners, who, with Hendricks & Partners' Joe Leon, represented both sides of the deal.

Forest Glen will be selling into a Winnetka market where the median-priced condominium sold for $240,000 in June, 11 percent more than the year earlier and 45 percent more than the 2002 median, according to DataQuick Information Services.

Bascom bought the 32-year-old property in 1999 for $16.5 million and spent about $2.5 million upgrading the property, according to Zander.

Inglewood Investment

Upside Investments Inc. bought the 305,000-square-foot Crenshaw Imperial Plaza in Inglewood for $12 million, with plans to spend between $3 million and $5 million upgrading the 43-year-old retail and office property.

Anchored by a Vons and a Sav-on, the 18-acre site at the southeast corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Imperial Highway consists of a 220,000-square-foot retail center as well as an 85,000-square-foot office building, both of which are about 80 percent occupied. In addition to renovating the existing buildings, Upside will build four or five freestanding pads totaling about 20,000 square feet, according to Sean Baker, president at Calabasas-based Upside.

Marcus & Milllchap's Greg Mills represented both the buyer and the seller, Crenshaw Imperial Plaza LLC, on the Plaza deal.

Staff reporter Danny King can be reached at [phone] ext. 230, or at [e-mail].