The historical society: attorney Ira Yellin and a coterie if deep-pocketed friends are about to embark on a project that preservationists are hailing as the largest-ever and most significant historic restoration in L.A. County.

The historical society

Attorney Ira Yellin and a coterie of deep-pocketed friends are about to embark on a project that preservationists are hailing as the largest-ever and most significant historic restoration in L.A. County

The sparkle long ago faded from most of the architectural gems built in the City of Angels around the turn of the century.

Some stand in dismal disrepair, while others have been unceremoniously torn down.

But three sullied gems, long buried beneath the grime and grit of downtown Los Angeles, are now being polished to their former brilliance by a bespectacled attorney named Ira Yellin.

It's a job that many local preservationists are calling the largest and most significant historic restoration in Los Angeles County history.

And that's making the 5-foot-7-inch, 148-pound Yellin a giant in local real estate circles.

"I picked up the newspaper one morning and read about Ira buying The Bradbury Building," recalls prominent real estate attorney Doug Ring. "So I called him immediately, got him right out of the shower, and told him, `Damn it, you're doing the most exciting stuff in town and I want to be involved, even if I have to work for you on a discounted basis.'"

Yellin agreed. And Ring, a nameplate partner with the firm Gold, Marks, Ring & Pepper, helped Yellin get all the necessary city approvals for his project.

Yellin, with additional money from long-time school chum Allan L. Alexander, now the mayor of Beverly Hills, and a few other well-heeled friends, earlier this month began sprucing up the 97-year-old Bradbury Building on the southeast corner of Third Street and Broadway.

The 61,000-square-foot building, which Yellin and Alexander bought last January for about $8 million, is one of only two Los Angeles structures to be designated a national historic landmark. (The other is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.)

Yellin says $4.7 million has been budgeted for the Bradbury renovation, which is scheduled for completion by year's end.

While significant, the Bradbury project pales in comparison to what Yellin has planned for the city block directly across Broadway.

Yellin and his deep-pocketed friends have spent some $19 million since 1985 buying up half the city block bounded by Broadway, Third, Fourth and Hill streets, including the historic Million Dollar Theater Building and Grand Central Market.

His group plans will spend another $24 million to redevelop the property, which Yellin has renamed Grand Central Square.

"Not only are the buildings individually significant," says Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, "but the project as a whole is strategically located enough to provide very high leverage for similar renovation along other key parts of the historic district. It also provides an important link between the historic district and new financial district."

Yellin may be just the person to reconcile downtown L.A.'s historic past with its explosive modern-day growth, too.

He seems to thrive on diversity, and is himself as much a paradox as the area surrounding his developments.

The 49-year-old dealmaker grew up in a working-class, Orthodox Jewish home in the San Fernando Valley, got himself a pricey Ivy League education, and then joined the Marine Corps reserves -- right in the heat of the Vietnam War.

Not exactly your typical career path.

"I had always advocated people participating in some type of national service, and (enlisting in the Marines) allowed me to prove to myself that I wasn't just some middle-class guy mouthing all the liberal phrases," Yellin recalls.

"I'm sure one could make a psychological argument that I went into the Marines to prove I was six feet tall -- most developers in downtown are tall," he quips. "But it didn't work. I still go to the gym a lot, though."

The paradoxes of Yellin's life continue today.

He and his family live in a spectacular 1929 Art Deco home in the exclusive Santa Monica Canyon, but Yellin says he prefers hanging out in the seediest parts of town; more specifically, Hollywood, decrepit parts of downtown L.A., and the Venice boardwalk.

His office overlooks one of the trendiest parts of the Sunset Strip and is furnished in minimalist, high-tech style replete with chrome and black lacquer. Yet he's got his money riding on some of L.A.'s oldest structures.

"I love a mixture of styles, cultures, people -- that's why I'm on Broadway where it's so crazy and confused, rather than in some saner area of town," Yellin explains.

But there's economic sense to his seeming incongruities, and that economic sense is the Grand Central Market.

"That market has survived and been profitable for 73 years," he says. "It has weathered economic storms and two world wars. It's been an affluent market that serviced the mansions of Bunker Hill, a middle-class market, and now it's an Hispanic market. So I knew it could survive any change of direction. It's our safety net: a solid economic engine that helps pay the bills and service the debt."

But unlike many local developers, Yellin is clearly interested in more than just the bottom line.

"Whenever he comes to me with a project, he starts by telling me about what a significant contribution it would be to historic preservation, or to the city, or to society," says Stanley Gold, president of Shamrock Holdings Inc. "Ten minutes goes by before he even mentions the economics."

One of Yellin's presentations was convincing enough to get Shamrock, the private investment firm of Roy E. Disney, to become a 33 percent equity stakeholder in Grand Central Square.

Yellin's populist-tinged sales pitches are straight from the heart, associates say.

"If you were to ask the general business community, `How'd you like to do this 70-year-old market and historic building renovation that's going to take a lot of agony and a big chunk of your life? It'll give you a reasonable return on equity, but no return on your time," attorney Ring poses. "They'd run the other direction."

"Ira could have bought a piece of land, built a tract of single-family homes that would have sold in 30 seconds, made his money and walked away," he continues. "But he chose not to do that; and that's a lifestyle choice that has to be respected."

Yellin's sense of social responsibility might well come from his father, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi.

"We grew up in a very strict, orthodox home with lots of religious regulations and restrictions," Yellin explains. "All kosher food; we had to stay home all day on the Sabbath; no driving; no electricity."

Yellin, his wife, and their teenage son and daughter are much more less stringent in their religious observances today. But Yellin remains a very deliberate, controlled person who rarely lets his hair down.

"Probably the wildest I've seen Ira was when our families were on a European vacation together," says Beverly Hills Mayor Alexander, who was Yellin's roommate at Harvard Law School some 25 years ago. "He had a few beers in Germany and got tipsy, but was still in perfect control. In law school he used to keep his black socks on one side of the drawer and his brown socks on the other."

Yellin concurs with his partner's assessment.

"People who know me say, `Ira never goes wild.'"