There have been proposals and promises, study groups, lawsuits and reports, all probing the problem of the Panorama Tower. But two decades after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake rendered the 185,000-square-foot office building uninhabitable, it still sits vacant and boarded up, casting a pall over the heart of Panorama City’s struggling business district. “I haven’t checked with the Guinness people, but I’m pretty sure this building holds the world record for largest pigeon coop,” said Michelle Klein-Hass, a member of the Panorama City Neighborhood Council, gazing up at the 15-story structure last month, its windows blacked out or broken and its base surrounded by a chain-link fence. “It has just been allowed to be a graffiti gallery. Every so often, the building is broken into and transients shelter in what is really a hazardous structure.” But the eyesore at 8155 Van Nuys Blvd. might finally be in line for a makeover. In late September, L.A. landlord Taghi Shoraka, 73, of M.T. Shoraka Inc., sold it for $12.5 million, or about $68 a square foot, to Grand Pacific 7-28 LLC, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group Inc. Why Shoraka consented to the sale after letting the building languish for so many years, despite community complaints and a city-initiated lawsuit more than a decade ago, remains a mystery. “To be honest with you, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not able to make any comment about it,” Shoraka said. Prolific L.A. developer Izek Shomof of Pacific Investment Group confirmed to the Business Journal that partners in his firm bought the property and plan to renovate and reopen it. “We are going to redo the whole building immediately. I have a big plan to fix it all up really nice,” Shomof said, adding that he would not reveal details on the renovation until later this year. He hasn’t tackled a project in the San Fernando Valley since his early business days in the 1980s, when he built townhomes, Shomof said. But the Israel-born developer’s experience in recent years could help him with a tricky restoration project such as the Panorama Tower. His family-owned firm has spent the past several years renovating hotels and office buildings in downtown L.A.’s Historic Core, including the Alexandria Hotel and Title Insurance Building. In 2013, it purchased the giant Sears Roebuck & Co. distribution center in Boyle Heights for $29 million and announced plans to turn the long-neglected complex into a mixed-use project. The development is still in the planning stages. Building frustration Already, signs of life are starting to appear at the Panorama Tower, built in 1965. A sign announcing Grand Pacific 7-28’s ownership has been posted and wooden scaffolding has been erected on the building’s south side, where some early construction work appears to have started. The renovation has been a long time coming after earlier attempts to jump-start repairs at the four-acre property were unsuccessful. More than a decade ago, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency hatched a plan to get Shoraka to renovate the languishing high-rise, located at Van Nuys Boulevard and Titus Street. But with the CRA’s focus on what would become the now-thriving NoHo Arts District, no substantial change resulted at Panorama Tower before Gov. Jerry Brown dissolved the state’s redevelopment agencies in late 2011. For a time, Shoraka rented out the tower’s roof to cable television companies as a place to park their satellite antennas, recalled Tony Wilkinson, vice chairman of the Panorama City Neighborhood Council. “He was making a quarter-million dollars a year renting out that roof,” Wilkinson said. A lawsuit filed by the city in 2004 contended that some equipment was installed without permits and that other permits had expired. “They were asking how these companies could service the antennas if the building was red-tagged (for earthquake damage), hoping that if they cut off his income he would just sell the building,” Wilkinson said. Although the antennas went away, Shoraka did not sell the tower or repair it. Then City Councilman Tony Cardenas personally intervened, Wilkinson said, negotiating three potential sales, but none of them closed. “Tony was having huge fights with (Shoraka), trying to get him to do something with the building,” Wilkinson said. “He thought he had deals three times over and the owner kept canceling them. It became personal between the owner and Tony.” Cardenas, now a U.S. representative from the Valley, operates a field office directly across from the tower on Van Nuys. “Panorama Tower is one of the tallest buildings in this area of the Valley and has been an eyesore since the Northridge Earthquake,” he said in an email. “I have been extremely frustrated with the ownership of the property, who have let the building deteriorate, negatively impacting the entire community. The Panorama Tower property could be one of the best resources in our area and I hope that with new ownership will come better and more community-friendly usage of the property.” ‘Real renaissance’ Panorama City is not just an outgrowth of L.A.’s suburban sprawl. It was the West Coast’s first planned community, founded in 1947 by developer Fritz Burns and steel magnate Henry J. Kaiser on about 400 acres they bought from the Panorama Ranch dairy farm. Burns and Kaiser established a central business district surrounded by 3,000 single-family homes built to appeal to veterans returning from World War II. The community, dubbed “The Heart of the Valley,” flourished for decades, with middle-class jobs plentiful at a nearby General Motors Corp.’s Van Nuys assembly plant; Schlitz Brewery; Lockheed aircraft factory; Kaiser Hospital; and the Carnation product testing plant, famous as the place where a research team developed Coffee-Mate nondairy creamer. The Panorama Mall offered shoppers a choice of swanky new department stores, including Broadway, Orbach’s, Robinson’s and Montgomery Ward. But in the 1980s and ’90s, retail began migrating to places such as Northridge and Sherman Oaks and manufacturers started leaving town. In 1992, when GM closed its 100-acre plant – the last major car factory in Southern California – it laid off an estimated 2,600 workers. The earthquake that followed two years later left the community reeling, Klein-Hass said, but the area has made considerable progress since then, despite a gang and crime problem that has lessened in recent years but still clouds its reputation. “I’ve lived here since 1989 and it was a lot scummier back when I first moved in,” she said. Today, the mall has a high occupancy rate, with a La Curacao store and a two-story Wal-Mart Stores Inc. outlet that draws shoppers to Roscoe and Van Nuys boulevards, one of L.A.’s most heavily trafficked intersections. The nearby outdoor Plaza del Valle provides additional shopping options to the community’s high concentration of Latino residents. The Plant shopping center has replaced the GM car assembly factory and, in 2006, Panorama High School opened on the site of the old Carnation plant. But the Panorama Tower’s dilapidated condition has been a constant reminder of the bad years, said Saul Mejia, owner of Panorama City web development firm Global Tech and commerce chairman of the neighborhood council. He hopes to start a local chamber of commerce chapter in the community next year. The unsightly building and its large, empty parking lot act as a magnet for the East Valley’s homeless population, he said. “They sneak in through the back.” If the building, which once was a shiny, modern tower housing medical offices and a radio station, is repaired and reopened for leasing, Mejia believes it could spark a wave of positive change for local businesses. “I believe when they see something positive come in, everyone will upgrade,” he said, waving an arm to indicate the gritty storefronts that surround the tower on Van Nuys. “If somebody takes the first step, everybody else steps up.” Klein-Hass is optimistic, too. “I believe in this town and I think there’s the possibility for a real renaissance here,” she said.
