Weed-Strewn for three decades and residents have no qualms.

THE block-long plot of land on the south side of Wilshire Boulevard near Doheny Drive is enough to make any developer more than interested.

But those weeds are there for a reason--a few reasons, in fact.

A combination of neighborhood opposition, resulting entitlement challenges and plain rotten timing has conspired to keep a prime acre of Beverly Hills real estate fallow for the better part of the last three decades.

The property at 9200 Wilshire Boulevard, between Maple and Palm drives, was purchased out of bankruptcy last August by Ellas Properties for $9.6 million. The London-based developer had envisioned building a Mercedes-Benz dealership but scrapped those plans soon after the purchase, said Phil Seymour, the executive vice president of Elite Properties who represented Ellas in last year's transaction and has the listing on the property.

"They were trying to negotiate something that entailed an additional dealership, but that didn't turn out as planned," said Seymour, who declined to elaborate.

The about-face is typical for the site, once one of a handful of properties along a three-block stretch of Wilshire owned by radio broadcasting mogul Wilier Brown, who had owned Hillcrest Motors Cadillac dealership and bought the property in the early 1970s. Brown built a service facility for Hillcrest Motors at the site, then shut it down in 1985 and razed the building soon after.

By 1987, Brown had agreed to ground lease the property to Liberty Service Corp., a subsidiary of Columbia Savings and Loan Association, according to Raymond Sandier, a partner at Sandler and Rosen LLP who represents the Brown Trust. Having secured entitlements to build an office building there, the tenant succumbed to the savings and loan crash of the late 1980s.

"Columbia was taken over by the government, which paid us out to cancel the lease," said Sandier.

Between the real estate crash of the early '90s and Brown's unwillingness to sell--his other nearby properties had been ground-leased and built on by other developers before the crash--the site again sat vacant and off the market, though one developer proposed building a supermarket before the idea was shot down by the city. After Brown's death in 1994, the property was put up for sale.

The site found another taker in April 1999: developer Steven Crowe who purchased it for $8.5 million, contingent on city approvals or a luxury hotel. Despite neighborhood concerns about the traffic that would be generated by the project, the city finally approved plans for the $43 million 133-room Hotel Bel Jardin in December 2001. But the hotel financing market was just beginning to collapse in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and a resulting drop in tourism.

"My greatest frustration with the process was that it took eight months before we went to public hearings," said Crowe, principal at Santa Monica-based Hotel Development Group. "We ended up answering the same questions for the planning staff, neighbors and City Council."

With its primary investor backing out in March 2003, Crowe's BHG Holdings LLC, which had continued to pay for extensions on its option to buy the site, declared bankruptcy and put the property on the market three months later and sold it to Ellas last August.

Despite its star-crossed history, the site retains its allure to developers looking to capitalize on what remains a prime Westside location. It is set to trade for about a 30 percent premium on its sale price last year. Seymour confirmed that "a major developer in Southern California" is scheduled to close escrow on the site next month. (He would not disclose its identity.)

While not disclosing the purchase price, Seymour said the property had received six offers, three for more than its $12.9 million asking price.

At the $300 a foot price tag, questions on entitlement environment and financial viability remain--which probably suits neighbors fine.

"I think the neighborhood felt very comfortable with nothing being there for a while," said Mitchell Dawson, who stepped down as chairman of the Beverly Hills planning commission last month.