Is Runaway Production Really an Issue in Molly’s Burgers Demolition in Hollywood?
Bob Poole’s June 29 article in the Los Angeles Times caught my attention. Framed as an nostalgic issue of the Hollywood “landmark” being demolished in favor of development company behind movie studios in New Mexico and elswhere and, therefore, partly responsible for runaway production, the owners of the stand seem to have an emotionallly compelling plea. But is it valid? Should they be invoking “runaway production”? Some background from Poole’s article:
As a developer prepares to gobble up Molly’s Burgers, preservationists in Hollywood are taking a stand.
They charge that Los Angeles officials are sacrificing a potential cultural landmark by selling the walk-up burger joint at 1605 N. Vine St. at a discount price to a company they claim is luring jobs out of Hollywood.
Land around the 20-stool eatery is to be sold to Pacifica Ventures, a Santa Monica-based development company that builds and operates out-of-state movie soundstages.
The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which spent $5,463,000 to acquire the Vine Street site, is selling it to Pacifica Ventures for $825,000.
Agency officials say the firm’s proposed $57-million, eight-story, glass-sided office building will eliminate an eyesore along a revitalized, trendy stretch between Hollywood and Sunset boulevards.
While it sounds like Pacifica got this land for a steal, it’s not as though the city will not benefit from the new devlopment, which also had some other strings:
In exchange for the low price, Pacifica Ventures will be required to rent office space only to entertainment-oriented businesses for five years, Bell said.
“We’re trying to revitalize Hollywood,” she explained.
What I found interesting was one of the big complaints critics of the deal are making by invoking the spectre of Runaway Production:
Critics of the deal say redevelopment officials are in fact rewarding a company that has contributed to the so-called runaway production that is damaging Hollywood.
Pacifica Ventures’ primary business is the development and operation of soundstages and back lots. It runs a large production facility in Albuquerque and has negotiated to build others in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Is it fair to blame Pacifica for runaway production? Maybe. But I would like to point out that the bigger culprit, it seems to me, are film incentives. So Pacific owns/runs studios in New Mexico…a pioneer state in film incentives. As for Pacifica’s plans in the other states mentioned? Film incentive states all of them. In all fairness to Pacifica, perhaps if it could take advantage of an infrastructure incentive to build movie studios in California, then maybe it would…but those incentives do not currently exist in California for that purpose. in the following, they offer the “we don’t make the rules, but we do play by them” argument, which is hard to dismiss:
The firm seeks tax incentives and other financial assistance from local officials as a prerequisite to development.
“To get any kind of project going today, it has to be a public-private partnership,” said Hal Katersky, Pacifica’s chairman. “Every project we do has government involvement or it doesn’t take place.” Katersky said he envisions one to three entertainment industry tenants in the Vine Street building. Pacifica has described it as having “every amenity and technological feature a cutting-edge digital production studio could ever need.”
He does not see his company’s out-of-state soundstages as contributing to Hollywood’s job-export problem. He said his firm merely goes where filmmakers want to work. “We are opportunistic developers,” Katersky said. “We don’t determine where they go.”
Katersky said he would welcome Molly’s as a tenant in planned first-floor retail space: “We’re more than happy to have them.”
Nevertheless, the nostalgia argument persists, and it’s hard to dismiss the case fans of the buger stand make about preserving history etc:
According to some, Molly’s has history on its side. Originally opened in 1929 as part of a Richfield gas station, the stand was initially called Mom’s Place. In the 1950s, its name was changed to the Curb Charbroiler. The Molly’s name dates from the 1960s.
Historian Charles Fisher, who has worked with the Los Angeles Conservancy and the Heritage Coalition of Southern California, said the burger stand is “a rare fairly intact example of a post- World War II roadside diner” and is “emblematic of its time and place in mid-20th-century Hollywood.”
Still, Molly’s lunchtime crowd is braced for the worst.
“No matter how tall they make a new building here, this will never be New York, and it shouldn’t be. This is California,” said musician Lanny Morgan as he nibbled at a cheeseburger and fries.
“I’ve been coming here 30 years,” he said. “I knew this place wasn’t going to last — I could see this coming. Look around you at all of the new development. This place is a greasy spoon.”
“Why do they have to put a new building here? A place like this brings character and makes an area like this a neighborhood,” said Mike Lloyd, who works at a nearby music company.
A couple of stools away, Dutch tourists Norman Verhagen and Nanda Christis were in agreement.
“I think Hollywood has changed for the better from the first time I was here,” Verhagen acknowledged.
“But get rid of this? It’s a pity.”
