The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 118

Hoi gngelea Etmesf leal HOMES-INDUSTRY PART VIII SUNDAY, JULY 23, 1978 TOURIST ATTRACTION Artist's conception of $74-million regional shopping center, The Fashion Show, to be built on Las Vegas Strip. It will cover 34 acres. SHOPPING CENTER TO INCLUDE FIVE MAJOR DEPARTMENT STORES The Fashion Show: A New Act on Las Vegas Strip Foreclosures of VA Dwellings Drop Sharply BY RUTH RYON One of these days soon, this newspaper notice may run under the heading "VA No listings today. Thank you, anyway. The VA.

The reason is that the Veterans Administration's inventory of foreclosures has dwindled so much in the past couple of years that the governmental entity sometimes has no offers of purchase to report. When that happened recently, the VA's regional office in West Los Angeles was deluged with phone calls from brokers asking why The Times had not published the VA's list that day. "We simply didn't have any offers to list," said Jack Dweck, loan guaranty officer with the VA. Listings Dwindle He estimated that three years ago the VA had about 3.500 houses in its resales program. "Today we have fewer than 300," he said, citing inflation as the prime cause.

Most veterans with equity who no longer can afford house payments are avoiding foreclosure, selling their properties and realizing the difference between what they paid and what the properties are worth now. "Our GI loan guaranty program has two objectives," said Dweck, "to get a veteran into a home with a low down payment (none unless the lender requires it) and interest rate (9V6) and to keep the vet in the home by telling him how to budget his finances. However, for many reasons primarily loss of income and divorce the vet may lose his home. Can Lend to Anyone "We guarantee the lender $17,500 or 60 of the loan, whichever is less. If the vet runs into problems, we pay off the lender and take back the house.

We become the lender and can lend to anyone." About i5 years ago the VA began releasing reports of offers on foreclosures to The Times on a daily basis. The Times prints the items at no charge. "We call in every afternoon after 2 o'clock." said Dweck. "Brokers were complaining that they were working their fannies off showing a house only to find out that we already had an offer on it. The notice in the paper is to alert these guys about what offers we have.

Why should they show a house if we already have an offer on it?" Please Torn to Page 19, Col. 1 Dick Turpin is on vacation. XI i i i In (Jm BY TERENCE M. GREEN Tlnwt Staff WrHtr Las Vegas is finally going to get what may be the one thing it doesn't have a major tourist attraction where no roulette wheel will spin, no dice will bounce across a table, no 21 dealer will slap down cards. Although it will be called The Fashion Show, it will not be staged in a theater but rather will be a continuing attraction in a $74-million, 34-acre building complex.

It is, of course, a shopping center, with five major department stores-Neiman-Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bullock's, Diamond's and a fifth to be named in addition to 120 shops, restaurants and boutiques in a two-level mall. "No shopping facility anywhere includes all these prominent fashion stores," said Ernest W. Hahn of El Segundo, codeveloper with the Summa Corp. of Las Vegas. "I'm certain that we'll become a major tourist attraction as well as serving the needs of Las Vegas' 350,000 permanent residents and 10 million visitors," he added.

Helping that idea along, the center will feature valet parking and a "grand entrance," similar to those of the major Strip hotels, to accommodate shoppers arriving by taxi. The Fashion Show is scheduled to open in the fall of 1980, with initial work to get under way this fall. The site is on The Strip, just southwest of the Frontier Hotel. Miloyko Lazovich, executive architect and project designer for the center's architect, ArohiSystems of Van Nuys, explained: "The center is set back from the boulevard, creating an expansive pedestrian promenade where a fountain, extensive landscaping and informational kiosks will enhance the busy street scene." James Langenheim, ArchiSystems vice president of architecture and design, added, "The street-like atmosphere will continue through the other nearby Summa developments." Summa currently operates the Sands, Frontier, Desert Inn, Castaways and Silver Slipper in Las Vegas and Harold's Club in Reno, as well as Hughes Aviation Services and the Las Vegas Air Charter Terminal at McCarran airfield and the North Las Vegas Airport. at Pi SLATED FOR FALL, 1980 OPENING Another view of The Fashion Show shopping center.

Center is set back from boulevard, creating expansive pedestrian promenade enhanced by fountain, informational kiosks, extensive landscaping. Ernest W. Hahn and Summa Corp. are codevelopers. The Nieman-Marcus store will be designed by John Carl Warnecke Associates of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while Store Planning Associates of San Francisco will design the facility for Diamonds, one of several department store chains owned by Dayton-Hudson Corp.

of Minneapolis. No architect has been announced for the foot Saks store or for the Bullock's. Ernest W. Hahn Inc. will serve as general contractor for the project, which will employ more than 1,000 persons during construction, and a subsidiary, Hahn Property Management will manage the retail complex, expected to employ about 2,000 persons.

The masonry exterior walls will be buff and light brown. Please Turn to Page 4, Col. 1 Gehrs Artful House Offends, Baffles, Angers His Neighbors chitecture. It is sophisticated, unique, fascinating and thought-provoking. And it is shocking.

When Gehry conceived the design he fantasized taking a box and dropping it over the old house. He refined that concept by removing the top, bottom and one side of the box. Then he made his fantasy come true by surrounding three sides of the pink house with a wood, glass and corrugated metal box. The sides fac lator," taking words and rough sketches, developing them, coordinating them, making detailed drawings and returning to Gehry to see if the "translations" conformed to the concepts. Together, like a master craftsman and a remarkably skilled but untested apprentice, Gehry and Lubowicki designed a work of architectural art.

A lot of neighbors don't want that art on their corner. ing 22nd St. and Washington Ave. are metal. The third side, which faces the back yard, is glass and unpainted plywood.

The back of the original house becomes the fourth side of the box. Gehry sketched his fantasy and talked about it ad infinitum with Paul Lubowicki, a young architect who was a senior at the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York when Gehry hired him last year. Lubowicki became Gehry's "trans imposing a piece of art on a quiet neighborhood that we may or may not like to live And a few think it's just crazy is Southern California. One expects all the loose bolts and nuts to fall. Sure enough, we collect 'em" It is small wonder that Gehry's architectural intentions proved obscure to his neighbors.

If a unique, intentionally confusing, highly abstract Please Turn to Page 24, Col. 1 BY JOHN DREYFUSS Tifim Architecture and Dtilgii Critic Architect Frank O. Gehry bought an old house on a corner in a quiet Santa Monica neighborhood and he's transforming it into an abstract work of art. The house is sure to attract national attention. It has already attracted neighborhood attention from neighbors who are offended, baffled, amazed and angry at what Gehry has done.

He has built an unlikely wall around a two-story duplex which was sheathed in pink asbestos shingles and capped by a green, barn-style roof. Because the new wall is galvanized corrugated metal varying in height between 12 feet and 15 feet, 6 inches, because the old pink house is clearly visible above the wall and through windows cut in the metal and because Gehry has skillfully played eye-fooling tricks with perspective, the structure is like no house ever seen before. Reflects Design Theories Frank Gehry, whose office is in a Santa Monica loft, is widely respected' by colleagues across the nation as an excellent architect on the cutting edge of his profession when it comes to innovation and imagination. In the home at 22nd St. and Washington which he expects to finish by mid-August, Gehry has put his money and talent where his heart is: In a structure that reflects many of his highly unusual and controversial design theories.

He spent $160,000 for a conventional old house and another $60,000 to create a remarkable new building of which the original house became a mysterious but visible core. It is an exciting work of art and ar "It's anti-social," said a man who lives a few houses away. "The architect knew it would be offensive to people around. It's a dirty thing to do in somebody else's front yard. If he were a poet he'd be writing smutty jingles." The neighbor was right and wrong.

If a radical departure from the neighborhood's traditional architectural patterns is anti-social, then the new house is anti-social. Gehry did not know his house would be offensive to so many neighbors, although he certainly knows it now. There is a strong, prevalent and accurate feeling on 22nd St. that Gehry is imposing his ego and his will on the neighborhood. But to call the house or the act of building it a "dirty thing" seems too strong.

If Frank Gehry were a poet he would most assuredly not be writing "smutty jingles." He would probably be writing complex, arcane free verse that would be little understood and widely misunderstood. Myriad Combinations His house, in fact, has much in common with painstakingly crafted free verse whose elements relate to each other in myriad combinations. Like some poetry, the structure can appear to be quite silly upon superficial examination. But serious study can lead to understanding, loving and hating the house. Some observers dismiss it as a freak think it's a monstrosity.

The whole neighborhood thinks it's a monstrosity. Nobody understands Others find it unbelievable the hell's he making? I don't know how he ever got a permit for it, I just Many people think the house is in the wrong place OPENINGS Crestwood Development of single-family homes in Rancho San Diego priced from $73,990 to $93,990. Story on Page 16, Col. 1 Mountain View Homes Rialto community of single-family dwellings priced from $74,900 to $82,900. Story on Page IS, Col.

1 Smoke Tree Condominium development in La Habra priced from to $74,900. Story on Page 13, Col. 1 Wellington Estates Lemon Heights neighborhood of single-family homes priced from $235,000 to Story on Page 26, Col. 1 See Pages 6, 7 and 8 for additional residential openings. CONTROVERSIAL PROJECT-How old Santa Monica duplex will look after transformation by architect Frank O.

Gehry. Corrugated metal wall around two -story house varies in height and the pink structure is clearly visible above the wall and through windows cut in the metal. Times drawing by Rum Arumlth I.