EARLY LAST week, word leaked out that a nonprofit group planned to drape the Hollywood sign with a banner urging the citizens to "Save the Peak." The cover went up late this week this week in hopes of drumming up support for purchasing nearby Cahuenga Peak from private developers for $11.7 million. The sign has brought attention: both concern and
confusion. But that was precisely the point. The group, Public Trust for Lands, says that they have raised about half of the asking price for the parcel. The land was purchased by a Chicago investment group from the estate of Howard Hughes in 2002 for close to 1.7. million.(Hughes had planned to build a love nest on the 138-acre property for actress Ginger Rogers, according to an
L.A. Times report this weekend. NPR Weekend Edition Saturday ran a
segment by L.A.-based journalist Karen Grigsby-Bates about the drawing power and iconic nature of the sign, our "signature" says host Scott Simon. The deadline to raise the funds is right around the corner, April 14. The Chicago-investors' plan was to sell the land for $40 million for home sites, and that's when L.A.'s biggest booster -- the ubiquitous Hollywood-area City Councilman Tom LaBonge -- stepped in to ask for the San Francisco-based land trust to help preserve the mountaintop. And I can attest, I've seen and spoken to LaBonge at dawn hiking those trails in Griffth Park and up around that sign when there is no camera or journalist (on the clock) around. As we say in the business this story is "developing." Stay tuned.
-- L.G.
(
photo caption: Workers hang lettered banners over the Hollywood sign that will eventually spell out "Save the Peak." The environmental group the Trust for Public Land is sponsoring the project, which is an effort to raise money to purchase the land near the sign and keep it from being developed.
photo credit: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/February 11, 2010))
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES reports that Hollywood sign supporters now have 16 more days to raise the funds -- $12.5 million -- to save the the iconic sign and the land surrounding it from "development" L.A. Times blogpost here. 
