Land next to Hollywood sign for sale

Robalini's Note: A favorite hiking area for Greg Bishop and myself before I outed him as an evil CIA agent...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_re_us/hollywood_for_sale

Land next to Hollywood sign for sale
Wed Feb 13, 2008

A mountaintop property located near the Hollywood sign and once owned by Howard Hughes is up for sale.

A group of Chicago investors is putting the 138 acres of land just west of the "H" in the sign on the market Wednesday.

The asking price: $22 million.

The property offers a stunning 360-degree panorama of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley, says Fox River Financial Resources, which acquired the land in 2002 for $1,675,000.

"We weren't sure at first what we had," Fox River general partner Keith Dickson said Wednesday. "After looking at it, we kind of feel we got a Van Gogh at a garage sale."

Hughes once planned to build a love nest on the land for his then-paramour Ginger Rogers. Their relationship didn't last, and the property remained undeveloped and in the eccentric billionaire's trust for decades.

The land atop the 1,820-foot Cahuenga Peak consists of five legal lots and "the ridges on the top are nice and smooth," allowing for construction of homes, Dickson said.

The Hollywood sign is just below and east of the property.

Two years ago, city officials and conservationists tried unsuccessfully to raise money to buy the property to make the peak a part of Griffith Park.

Councilman Tom LaBonge, who led the fundraising, said building homes on the peak would ruin one of the city's most famous views.

"That mountain should not be cluttered," LaBonge told the Los Angeles Times. "It's good for the psyche of Los Angeles."

"The city should acquire this land," he added.

Griffith Park suffered two damaging wildfires last year amid extremely dry, hot conditions. A blaze in May burned 800 acres, and one in March tore through the hills near the Hollywood sign and burned 150 acres.