Playa Vista under construction

Nine years after it was designed, Playa Vista, a large-scale new urbanist project in Los Angeles, is under construction. But the legal troubles that have plagued the project are not over. Lawsuits by local environmentalists held Playa Vista up for many years until Chase Manhattan Bank began foreclosure last year on $200 million in loans and interest to original developer Maguire Thomas Partners. This action forced the sale of the project to a new team, Morgan Stanley & Co. and Goldman Sachs & Co. Playa Vista is a “brownfield” project being built mostly on upland areas where a Hughes Aircraft plant was previously located. The site also contains a few hundred acres of marshes. As part of a complicated legal settlement with a group called Friends of Ballona Wetlands, developers agreed to set aside most of the designated wetlands, restoring and preserving them in perpetuity. Now developers are facing a new lawsuit from other environmentalists whose goal is to preserve all 1,087 acres, including the former industrial buildings and landing strip. Pending outcome of the lawsuit, a judge ordered development to stop on 16 acres of the property. Environmentalists are appealing the decision, claiming that the judge should have stopped work on the entire project.