Hollywood Park was winning one fight and losing another, both by slim margins, as vote counting continued Tuesday night on two ballot measures in Inglewood.
According to results posted by the Los Angeles County registrar shortly after 10:30 p.m., Measure AT was losing, 51.9% to 48.1%, a margin of 583 votes; and Measure BB was losing 51% to 49%, a margin of 307.
Measure AT would mean more ticket taxes for big events in Inglewood, home to SoFi Stadium, Intuit Dome and the Forum. The City of Inglewood wants that.
Measure BB would bar the city from allowing billboard advertising on sidewalks, medians and the like. Owners of those sports and entertainment venues, who have their own sponsorship deals, are backing that measure.
Meanwhile, City Council member Gloria D. Gray led incumbent Mayor James T. Butts Jr., 34.6% to 29.8%, putting them on an early track for a runoff election in March.
Los Angeles County does not provide a timeline for when the election results will be listed as final.
The ballot measures were spawned by a feud between Inglewood and Hollywood Park, the nearly 300-acre development anchored by SoFi Stadium and owned by Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
The fight started last year over billboards. Inglewood signed a deal with WOW Media for 60 digital signs carrying 108 screens, some of them bus-shelter-sized kiosks. Others are street displays up to 22 feet tall on sidewalks and medians.
SoFi Stadium, Intuit Dome and the Forum sued to block the deal, arguing the signs would undercut their individual sponsors who paid for exclusivity. A judge sided with the city and an appeal is underway.
Measure BB, short for “Billboard Blight,” aimed to restrict billboard advertising on public property. It qualified with nearly 13,000 signatures.
The WOW deal runs 20 years with two 10-year options, so it could be around for 40 years.
“It’s biblical in length,” said John Shallman, the political strategist managing the “Yes on BB” campaign. “You go back 40 years. We didn’t even have the Internet. We didn’t have cell phones.”
Skip Miller, lead attorney for the city, said the kiosks “blend in with the surrounding areas” and connect to a network that provides traffic and safety information.
The billboards are subject to Inglewood Ballot Measure BB, which calls for the halt of advertising on them.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Measure AT, backed by the city, would lift a $15-million cap on the 10% admission tax the stadium pays. Hollywood Park sees it as punishment for challenging the billboard deal.
The billboard fight led to a bigger one. Last month, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled void the 2015 development agreement that cleared the way for SoFi Stadium, citing a 2018 Moreno Valley decision.
Under the 2015 agreement, Hollywood Park paid up front for roads, water lines, streetlights and event-day police and emergency services, with the city agreeing to eventually reimburse Kroenke for those expenses. Now that the agreement has been voided, the city argues it isn’t required to pay.
The billionaires targeted by the wealth tax on the November ballot include owners of some of California’s top sports teams and, among them, there will be winners and losers if voters approve the measure.
Which owners would be ensnared by the proposed tax on billionaires’ assets remains unclear, since it’s largely dependent on whether they are declared official California residents, at least for state tax purposes. And that’s before lawyers and accountants get involved, an almost certain bet if the ballot measure is approved by California voters.
So it’s possible that the majority owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, Dean Spanos, would have to pay the the wealth tax while the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, San Kroenke, would not — even though both their teams are playing on the same home field at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It all depends on whether the state considers Spanos or Kroenke official California residents and how their assets are tallied.
Other wealthy team owners or co-owners who have residences in California and could be subject to the tax include the Golden State Warriors’ Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, the San Diego Padres’ José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones, the San Jose Sharks’ Hasso Plattner and the Anaheim Ducks’ Henry Samueli.
Among those who appear to live out of state, according to news reports, and may not be impacted: the San Francisco 49ers’ Denise DeBartolo York and John York, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Steve Ballmer, the San Francisco Giants’ Charles Johnson, the L.A. Kings’ and the L.A. Galaxy’s Philip Anschutz.
In August, embattled billionaire Mark Walter agreed to sell the L.A. Lakers to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner. The proposed billionaire tax would apply to Iger, who lives in California, but not Kushner, who lives in New York. A spokesperson for Iger declined comment. Walter, who also owns the Dodgers and has been under federal investigation, told the California Post on Wednesday that he has no plans to sell the team.
There is uncertainty and disagreement about how the tax would be levied on sports team owners, and how their ownership stakes would be evaluated by the state when assessing their assets.
Representatives of the Warriors and Chargers, declined comment. Spokespeople for the Kings, Padres, Sharks and Ducks did not respond to requests for comment, nor did representatives of Kroenke or Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who lives in California and whose $9.6-billion purchase of the Seattle Seahawks was finalized in September.
Legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg warned that the proposed tax would have unintended consequences. “It creates an uneven playing field,” he said. “Out-of-state owners get an advantage over in-state residents.”
Steinberg, who has represented more than 300 professional athletes including Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe, Michael Vick and Oscar De La Hoya, said the increased tax could be passed on to fans if voters approve Proposition 40 on Nov. 3.
“Ticket prices are high enough anyway, and somewhat prohibitive to a working person or young person attending a game live,” Steinberg said. “The last thing in the world positive for the growth of sports is passing on that surcharge.”
Dodgers fans buy food at Dodgers Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on many of the assets of billionaires, including their holdings in companies. It was crafted by a healthcare union to compensate for federal healthcare cuts signed by President Trump last year that will cost California an estimated $100 billion, impacting the state’s most vulnerable residents.
David Gamage, a tax law and policy professor at the University of Missouri’s law school, countered that consumers would be far more hurt by the impacts of the impending federal healthcare funding cuts than by potentially higher prices at sporting events.
“The billionaire wealth tax would address the healthcare crisis caused by the Trump administration slashing Medicaid and other healthcare funding. Passing the billionaire wealth tax would be expected to reduce healthcare costs and thereby keep the prices of hot dogs and other consumer goods lower,” Gamage said. “Trying to fool voters by implying otherwise is shameful.”
More than 200 billionaires live in California, some of whom moved themselves or their businesses out of the state because of the proposed tax. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of social media giant Meta, told company leaders that he planned to leave the state to avoid his control over the company being substantially diluted by being forced to sell enough stock to pay the proposed levy. Last week, the company announced the creation of a new nonvoting type of stock that would allow Zuckerberg to sell enough shares to pay the proposed tax while retaining his voting power in exchange for him agreeing to remain in the state for eight years.
Protesters in New York demonstrate against Elon Musk following the launch of the SpaceX initial public offering.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Proposition 40 supporters say that billionaire sports team owners have benefited from Trump’s tax cuts — dividends they didn’t share with the fans who spend hard-earned money to bring their families to games — and that they need to pay their fair share.
Opponents argue that professional sports are among myriad California economic engines that will suffer if voters approve the proposition, in part because owners based in the state would be subject to the tax while those who reside in other parts of the country would be exempt.
The measure “will also drive up the cost of operating a sports team in California, increasing the price of tickets, concessions and merchandise,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable. “This is just one of many ways Proposition 40 will cost Californians.”
A poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies released Thursdayshowed public sentiment had turned against the billionaire tax, with half of likely voters opposing it and 42% supporting it.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer addresses the crowd.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
More than $404 million has been donated to efforts supporting and opposing the wealth tax, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. Proponents of the ballot measure had raised $36.5 million as of Thursday, while opponents received nearly $368 million.
The residency of billionaires is often difficult to ascertain, given that many have multiple properties across the nation and around the world. It is not solely based on where the person is registered to vote.
Among the “facts and circumstances” the California Franchise Tax Board considers are the person’s employer, their spouse’s and childrens’ locations, where mail is delivered, and the location of doctors, accountants, lawyers, country club memberships and houses of worship. The number of days spent in California also is factored into the board’s assessment of residency.
Lakers part-owner Patrick Soon-Shiong at a game.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire, owns 4% of the Lakers and recently became a co-owner of a new women’s professional volleyball team in Los Angeles expected to start competing next year.
Soon-Shiong noted that it’s not only wealthy Californians who oppose the tax. Teachers, firefighters and other groups oppose Proposition 40 because of concerns about long-term impacts on the state. And, as a businessman with stakes in sports teams, he predicted bad effects on pro sports.
“It’s really, really expensive to bring a family to watch a professional game, whatever that game may be,” he said during an interview in September. “All those costs will go up, and for sure, it’ll be passed down to the cost of the ticket.”
Times Library Director Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
MILWAUKEE — It was an evening for pomp and pageantry, for celebrating a World Series between two of the five major league teams never to win one. But, before the first pitch of the first game, the commissioner of baseball and the head of the players’ union held separate media gatherings that only served to reinforce the notion that a lockout in December is a virtual certainty and Opening Day next March is in serious jeopardy.
Of all the major North American sports, baseball is the only one without a salary cap. The players and their union vow to keep it that way, and union chief Bruce Meyer said every proposal the owners make on every issue is contingent upon a salary cap. How, someone asked commissioner Rob Manfred, can the owners strike a deal if the union is entrenched against a cap?
“Re-thinking where you are is a really important part of trying to make a deal,” Manfred said. “It’s actually a skill in collective bargaining. It’s easy to say, ‘I’m here and I’m never moving.’ That’s not a particularly skilled approach to the process.”
That is perilously close to telling the other guy at the negotiating table how to negotiate. It’s also something you might say when you’re feeling pretty darn good that you’re going to win the negotiation.
“We have an unprecedented level of unanimity among ownership that it is something that we need to do,” Manfred said.
He wouldn’t say otherwise at this point, of course. The owners were unified in 1994, when they last demanded a salary cap. They didn’t win, and fans lost the final two months of the 1994 season and the first month of the 1995 season.
When the NHL got its salary cap, owners shut down the league for a full year. Would MLB owners forgo a year — or at least several months — of ticket sales and media revenue to get their cap? Would MLB players forgo a year — or at least several months — of their salaries to stave off a cap?
We won’t know the answer to either question until the spring, and until then a new collective bargaining agreement would require one side or the other to abandon its position.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred speaks with the media before Game 1 of the World Series in Milwaukee on Friday.
(John Fisher / Getty Images)
That makes this year’s World Series something of a Rorschach test: Is a Brewers-Rays series proof that the system actually works just fine the way it is?
To Manfred, the answer is no. A series featuring two of baseball’s smaller markets is an anomaly when history shows a correlation between payroll and success, not only in the regular season but in advancing through the playoffs.
“It’s not that no small market can win,” Manfred said. “It’s just that it’s pretty rare.”
To Meyer, the answer is yes.
“It has nothing to do with what the Dodgers are doing,” Meyer said. “There is no reason whatsoever that the Pirates can’t do what the Brewers have done, or what the Rays have done.”
The Pirates, Meyer said, do not spend all the money they are allotted to sign draft picks. The Brewers, playing in baseball’s smallest market, might not routinely hand out free-agent riches, but owner Mark Attanasio said his team ranks “right in the middle” of the 30 teams in spending on baseball operations.
Attanasio publicly stumped for a salary cap here Friday, saying it would “help us compete but more importantly all of the other teams with lower payrolls too.” He said Brewers fans already fear it might take another 44 years to return to the World Series.
Said Meyer: “That doesn’t seem like a great way, with all due respect, to try and generate excitement among your fans.”
Meyer said this year’s series “undermines their argument” for what he called “the nuclear bomb of a salary cap.” He said the owners are uninterested in the union’s proposals for addressing competitive balance, including increased revenue sharing among owners and a tax against teams that fail to win consistently, and he alleged the league’s argument is “a charade” for what the owners really want: “to suppress salaries and gut player rights.”
The takeaway: Don’t book non-refundable airline tickets and hotel rooms for spring training.
On other topics:
— As The Times has reported, MLB is keeping an eye on federal investigations into Dodgers owner Mark Walter and his insurance empire, which is under scrutiny for allegedly violating laws designed to protect investors. Walter also is a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits filed by investors alleging fraud and breach of contract.
“As always when we have an investigation — external, law enforcement, whatever — we monitor that,” Manfred said. “That’s where we are right now. We’re just watching what’s going on right now.”
Over the past two months, amid efforts to find what could be more than $20 billion to recapitalize insurance funds, Walter has sold his controlling interest in the Lakers and a minority share of Chelsea, the English Premier League club. On Friday, Bloomberg reported he is seeking to sell the Sparks. He has no plan to sell the Dodgers, team president Stan Kasten has said.
— Meyer said the MLBPA continues negotiations with LA28 over how major league players would be accommodated in the 2028 Olympics. “As of now, we’re not getting satisfaction on those things,” Meyer said.
Both the league and the union say they want to participate in the Games, but Manfred said MLB would normally start preparing its 2028 schedule early in 2027. The league has agreed to an extended All-Star break to accommodate the Olympics, but MLB also could tire of waiting for the union to agree with LA28, which badly wants MLB players to participate.
The World Series is upon us, and this one should be a delight: The team with the best record in the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers, against the team with the best record in the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays.
The players are about to take baseball’s grandest stage. Yet this has somehow become a strange national obsession: not how Jacob Misiorowski or Junior Caminero might shine in the series, but how many people might watch it.
Should you care? Not really. Have you ever thought about watching a World Series game and thought, “Hmmm, let me consider what the ratings might be before I decide to tune in?”
Major League Baseball cares, of course, because its owners count on billions of dollars from the sale of television rights, and those rights are worth more money when more people watch the games. And, since the fog of a collective bargaining war has enveloped the sport, the ratings make for an intriguing subplot in the World Series.
This World Series is what owners say they want: less of, say, the Dodgers and the New York Yankees, more of teams from smaller markets that seldom advance through the playoffs, if they even get there. Neither the Brewers nor the Rays have won a World Series.
Yet the ratings for the Dodgers-Yankees World Series in 2024 almost doubled those for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers in 2023, and this year’s ratings should be much closer to 2023 than 2024.
So, in a sport that already generates the majority of its broadcast revenue in national rather than local packages, amid the collapse of regional sports networks, are the owners taking a risk of making less money on the World Series?
Fox currently airs the World Series as the jewel of a seven-year, $5.1-billion deal that expires in 2028.
Ed Desser, a Santa Monica-based consultant who launched NBA TV and helped negotiate the Dodgers’ record SportsNet LA deal, said the value of a World Series featuring teams such as the Dodgers and Yankees goes beyond the large audiences they command because they play in large markets.
“It’s commonplace for people to hate the Dodgers, hate the Yankees — and, to some extent, that’s good for business, because it’s another rooting interest. Anything that gets people to focus their attention is good,” Desser said. “It’s easy to hate a team that’s in a glamorous place and spends more than almost anybody.
“I’m not sure that anybody has an ax to grind against the Rays or the Brewers. Sports is about passion.”
That said, neither Desser nor Bob Thompson, the former president of Fox Sports Networks, believes MLB is setting itself up for a big fall in revenue from the Fall Classic.
For Fox — and whatever other bidders might emerge come 2028 — ratings would be important, but not as much as you might think.
“Does expected audience matter? Of course,” Desser said. “They’re in the media business, and the way you monetize is by selling subscriptions to your channel and selling advertising.
“But, typically, you’re taking a much longer viewpoint. You’re making a deal that might be five, eight, 12 years. When you do that, you have an expectation that some teams get better, some teams get worse, sometimes you get a large market, sometimes you get a small market. It kind of evens out.”
This is the fifth season of the current Fox contract. The 10 World Series berths have been spread among nine teams, with the Dodgers appearing twice.
To a broadcast outlet, Thompson said, financial success in the World Series is not just about ratings.
“It’s about how good the matchup is and how long the matchup goes. The bulk of the advertising is sold up front (before we know the teams),” Thompson said. “Ratings for the series aren’t going to be a huge deal, unless you’re selling time in, say, Game 6 and Game 7, where you can really be jacking your rates.”
Last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series extended to seven games, attracting viewers amid a dramatic finish and ultimately getting a higher rating than the 2024 Dodgers-Yankees series, even though Canadian viewers weren’t included in that Nielsen count. The Dodgers-Yankees series lasted five games, and the Dodgers beat up on the Yankees when the Yankees weren’t beating themselves.
Even if the World Series itself might be worth less with more lower-profile teams competing, Thompson said MLB could include it as part of a larger package, or dangle it as an incentive for streaming outlets or other new bidders.
He also noted that the latest MLB collective bargaining proposal calls for fewer regular-season games and more postseason games.
“Playoffs are going to get you a premium over regular-season games,” Thompson said.
And, to the extent that postseason ratings might be in decline, ratings for everything — sporting events, awards shows, news shows, dramas, comedies, you name it — are in decline. Only the NFL is immune to lower ratings.
“Big events matter more than they used to, even with smaller audiences,” Desser said. “The World Series is still a big event, and there is a premium for that.”
The three most-watched shows on broadcast television in the week of Oct. 5-11, according to Nielsen: Sunday Night Football (Atlanta Falcons vs. Baltimore Ravens) with 17 million viewers; SEC Football (Alabama vs. Georgia) with 12 million viewers; NLCS Game 1 (Dodgers vs. Brewers) with 11 million viewers.
The top entertainment show that week: Tracker (CBS), with 7.4 million viewers.
The owners will make their money on the World Series, one way or another.
“Even at a lower expectation for audience, there is still going to be that value,” Desser said. “It’s one of the biggest things happening in October.”
Saracens owner Dominic Silvester says he has “full confidence” in chief executive Ed Coetzee and dismissed a newspaper article suggesting there was “executive-level chaos” at the club.
In an open letter on Saracens’ website, external, responding to an article in The Times last week, Silvester said Coetzee had achieved an “extraordinary amount” since being appointed in July.
“The board has full confidence in Ed and his team,” Silvester wrote.
“We believe they have the experience, capability and determination to raise standards across every area of the club, strengthen our financial sustainability and ensure that Saracens continues to be an organisation of which our players, staff, partners and supporters can be proud.”
The Times article, published on Friday, external, claimed the 2022 takeover in which Silvester assumed control from former owner Nigel Wray had “triggered a period of executive-level chaos”, pointing to Coetzee being Sarries’ third chief executive in two years and alleging a high turnover of staff.
“With such a churn in executive staff, club sponsors may well be reluctant to engage in relationship-building,” the article added.
But Silvester used his open letter to reject the suggestions and listed Coetzee’s achievements, such as bringing the all-female athletics meeting Athlos and the Gaelic football fixture between Mayo and Kerry to the club’s StoneX Stadium.
He also highlighted the securing of new commercial and hospitality partnerships and a beefed-up executive team, with Jason Thomas as chief financial officer and Rob Cook as chief operating officer.
“Together, Ed, Jason and Rob bring significant experience, complementary expertise and a clear commitment to building a financially sustainable business while maintaining Saracens’ high-performance sporting ambitions,” Silvester wrote.
“We are ambitious about our future, realistic about the work required to achieve our goals and united in our commitment to taking Saracens forward.”
What we don’t know: What the future holds, in what could be a turbulent winter for the Dodgers and for all of Major League Baseball.
Here are four things we don’t know about the Dodgers, but well worth keeping an eye on:
Shohei Ohtani
Just three short months ago, we wondered whether Ohtani would win his fifth most valuable player award and his first Cy Young Award. Has the time come for the Dodgers to consider curtailing his pitching?
As the Dodgers trudged through the playoffs, we endured daily drama over where in the lineup Ohtani would bat (first, second, fourth, fifth or sixth) and what he could produce despite playing through multiple injuries.
We’ll soon get a better understanding of those injuries, and whether rest, rehabilitation and/or surgery might be recommended for each one. We’ll also get a better sense of what the future might hold for Ohtani as a two-way player, and for his potential to perform at an elite level on both sides of the ball.
Ohtani said he plans to resume pitching next year. He is 32. He just completed his 14th professional season.
Ohtani has pitched more than 132 innings once since 2016, when he was 22 and playing for the Nippon Ham Fighters.
In his three seasons with the Dodgers, this was the first that did not involve rehabilitation from elbow surgery. He started 14 games before a knee injury prevented him from pitching any more this season.
Payroll
Dodgers pitcher Tarik Skubal walks off the field during Game 1 of the NLDS.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Major league owners are poised to shut down the sport this winter, in pursuit of a salary cap designed to restrain the Dodgers, since they won’t restrain themselves.
The owners’ initial proposal set a salary cap of $245 million next year. The Dodgers already have $347 million committed to 14 players next year, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
Under a cap, the owners have promised a transition period to account for existing commitments, and an actual negotiated cap could be higher.
Even if the players do not agree to a cap — and they insist they won’t — whatever economic system that would emerge from collective bargaining would be almost certain to make it painful for the Dodgers to spend so freely.
Whatever the case, the Dodgers could face the kind of difficult roster choices they often have papered over with money this decade. Two closers for $141 million? Good luck with that.
And would they be able to fit soon-to-be free agent Tarik Skubal into their payroll? Skubal might well sign before the lockout is expected to start in December, but there is nothing agent Scott Boras loves more than pitching a marquee free agent to a new owner. The two other Southern California teams — the Angels and San Diego Padres — both have one.
Age
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, left, and general manager Brandon Gomes have decisions to make about their aging roster.
(Luke Hales / Getty Images)
When Andrew Friedman made his name as the general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, he did it in large part by taking advantage of one market inefficiency within the American League East: He beat up on the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees because they were stuck with rosters crowded with aging stars on big contracts. The Rays couldn’t have done that even if Friedman had wanted to.
He didn’t want to do it too much in Los Angeles, because it compromises roster flexibility. But, after seven National League West titles and no World Series championships, ownership went all in: Mookie Betts (12 years, $365 million), Freddie Freeman (six years, $162 million), Ohtani (10 years, $700 million), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12 years, $325 million), Tyler Glasnow (five years, $137 million), Blake Snell (five years, $182 million), Will Smith (10 years, $140 million) and Kyle Tucker (four years, $240 million).
It worked: three rings in six years. Now the bill comes due.
The Dodgers fielded the oldest group of position players in the major leagues this season. Ohtani and Betts are under contract through their age-39 seasons; Smith will be 38 when his deal’s up, Yamamoto and Max Muncy 37, Snell 36, Glasnow 35.
Something to watch this winter: Freeman is 37, signed through next year. He would like to play until 40 and finish his career here. That would take a two-year extension. Would the Dodgers say no?
Ownership
Mark Walter’s insurance empire is under investigation by federal authorities — and the subject of discussions with state regulators — over allegations the businesses he controls failed to properly follow laws designed to protect investors.
Walter’s company has denied wrongdoing, and neither Walter nor his businesses have been charged with a crime. He is, however, a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits in which insurance policyholders claim he and several of his companies committed fraud and breach of contract.
Walter may need more than $20 billion to satisfy regulators by recapitalizing insurance companies. He abruptly sold the Lakers in August, in a deal that valued the team — not just Walter’s controlling interest — at $12.5 billion. He and fellow Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly also sold a small stake in English soccer club Chelsea FC last month for about $1.27 billion, the Financial Times reported. It is uncertain how Walter would provide the rest of the money for recapitalization.
“Regarding the Los Angeles Dodgers, to be clear, the team is not being sold,” Walter’s holdings company said in a statement last month.
It is uncertain whether a resolution with insurance regulators would satisfy the Department of Justice, which reports to President Trump. In July, when the Dodgers visited the White House, Walter presented Trump with an official World Series championship ring with his name engraved on it. He also sold the Lakers to former Disney chief Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
Major League Baseball is monitoring the situation and could conduct its own review after the state and federal matters are concluded.
For decades, the bold, mid-century building at Lincoln and Olympics boulevards in Santa Monica has been the end of the line — the last address on the 2,400-mile westward journey of Route 66. Once home to the Penguin Coffee Shop, today it holds Mel’s Drive-In. But now its future is in doubt.
The owners of the property have filed early paperwork to level the structure and replace it with an eight-story apartment building. Preservationists are pushing for a historic designation that might protect it.
The groups appear headed toward a showdown Dec. 14, when the Santa Monica Landmarks Commission will hold a hearing on the site’s nomination for protected status by the Santa Monica Conservancy and the Los Angeles Conservancy. The allied conservancies contend that the building is “the most significant representation of its style and period in architecture and design in Santa Monica.”
Designed by famed mid-century architects Armet & Davis, the building held the Penguin Coffee Shop from 1959 through 1991.
(Architects Armet Davis / Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives)
“This isn’t about saving a modern restaurant. It’s about preserving some really important Googie architecture,” said Nina Fresco, vice president of Santa Monica Conservancy. She added that “there’s no reason why housing and historic preservation can’t be partners.”
Irvine-based firm ValueRock Realty bought the half-acre Mel’s property for $6.2 million in 2020, and in 2025 began offering the property for sale, asking $26 million through brokers Newmark Pacific.
Soon after learning that the building was for sale, the Santa Monica and L.A. conservancies nominated Mel’s for a landmark designation, which can protect buildings from demolition, Fresco said. As part of the effort, Santa Monica Conservancy leaders raised $6,800, the cost of a Santa Monica landmark nomination, and enlisted the L.A. Conservancy as an ally.
Then on Sept. 18, ValueRock filed a preliminary application with the city (also known as an SB330 application) to replace the 1959 building with an eight-story apartment building, including 138 apartments, 123 parking spaces and first-floor retail space.
The sign of Mel’s Drive-In features a penguin, homage to the coffee shop of yesteryear.
(David Fouts / For The Times)
When it bought the property in 2020, ValueRock announced that it “is considered to be a historical landmark within the community.” But in its September filing for the apartment project, ValueRock management checked a box indicating that no historic or cultural resources are known to exist on the property.
“We didn’t know they would be quite this aggressive, but it’s not a huge surprise,” Fresco said.
Under city law, Fresco said, if a property is more than 40 years old, the owner must wait at least 75 days after seeking a demolition permit before any demolition can happen. “So we’re OK at least until that hearing” in December, Fresco said.
If the Landmark Commission agrees to confer landmark status on the building, Fresco said, it may be shielded from demolition — but the owner can appeal the decision to the City Council.
Management at ValueRock Realty did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The restaurant remains open, receiving a steady stream of locals and Route 66 travelers. “We’re going to be here until 2029,” said Marilina Borchio, manager of Mel’s, citing a lease that runs through June of that year. As she spoke, the breakfast crowd was trickling in on Sunday morning. Borchio said she’s spending a lot of time reassuring customers who “think we are going to be demolished tomorrow night.”
The Googie-style building, designed by famed mid-century architects Armet & Davis, held the Penguin Coffee Shop from 1959 through 1991, catching the eyes of passing drivers with its dramatically slanted roof, oversize windows and a long counter inside for diners in a hurry. Architectural historians describe Googie style as a bold strain of Mid-Century Modernism, notable for big neon signs and swooping roofs, especially popular among restaurants, bowling alleys and car washes, now increasingly rare. Rae’s Diner, a 1958 building on Pico Boulevard, is another Santa Monica example.
The coffee shop never earned a Michelin star (nor has Mel’s) but its workaday American fare won a following. “The Penguin gets my vote for the best diner around,” wrote Times restaurant critic Charles Perry in 1989.
But two years later, the Penguin was gone. By 1992, the building had been converted into a dentist’s office. Eventually it fell idle, until the San Francisco-based Mel’s chain arrived in 2016 and began a renovation aimed at bringing back the restaurant’s ’50s atmosphere.
Mel’s Drive-In now occupies the old Penguin Coffee Shop building at the official end of Route 66 in Santa Monica.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The renewed restaurant opened in 2018, with a penguin atop its sign, in homage to years gone by.
“A lot of the neon elements are gone, but the main elements are still there,” said the Santa Monica Conservancy’s Fresco, who is also a Santa Monica planning commissioner and former landmarks commissioner.
The renovation and restoration effort included removing layers of paint and tile that had been added over decades, revealing interior stone cladding that had been covered and replicating the counter and stools, vinyl cushioned booths, tables of plastic and metal, terrazzo floor, and light fixtures. The work was “to the letter of the Secretary of the Interior’s standards” for the treatment of historic properties, Fresco said.
The building is not mentioned in “An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles,” by David Gebhard and Robert Winter, which is a prime source for many preservationists. But Mel’s won a $10,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2025 to pay for Route 66 centennial signage project.
Route 66 memorabilia at Mel’s Drive-in.
(David Fouts / For The Times)
“This site, like Route 66 itself, represents something greater than itself,” said Rhys Martin, manager of the National Trust’s Preserve Route 66 initiative, in an email. “It’s a connection to a journey through time and space that will be forever lost if this remarkable Googie structure is demolished.”
Fresco said she’d love to see the building continue to operate as Mel’s, but in the big picture, “we can’t stop them from building housing.” Still, Fresco said, she is hoping that the owner can come up with a project that retains the existing building while adding housing around it, as several other developers in Santa Monica have done. At 829 Broadway, developers agreed to preserve a World War II era Quonset hut while building a five-story apartment building around it. (The Quonset hut was occupied by Pono Burger from 2013 to 2025.) And the old Rapp Saloon — an 1875 brick building at 1436 2nd Street — was reborn in the late 1980s as a meeting space within a four-story hostel, now known as Hostelling International’s HI Los Angeles Santa Monica Hostel. The Santa Monica Conservancy begins its walking tours there.
If the allied conservancies win landmark status for the Penguin/Mel’s building, Fresco said, the owners “will be able to do exactly what they want to do now. They will just have to do it differently.”
Route 66, which was born and officially named U.S. Highway 66 on Nov. 11, 1926, was extended to Santa Monica in 1935. Though many travelers think of the Santa Monica Pier as the end of the route, its official terminus from 1935 on was at the intersection of Lincoln and Olympic boulevards, where Mel’s now stands.
Though Route 66 was decommissioned in the 1980s, its popularity as an Americana-rich driving route has grown in recent years, especially during this year’s centennial celebration of the road.
By the time the coffee shop building was going up at the end of the route in 1959, Fresco said, interstate freeways were already beginning to usurp Route 66’s role and the Santa Monica route of Interstate 10 had been plotted. By putting their eye-catching building on a spot along Route 66 and next to the path of the freeway, Fresco said, the people behind the Penguin were catering to motorists on roads rooted in two different eras.
“The Catholic Church shaped Rome. Commerce shaped Manhattan. It is popular culture that has shaped L.A.,” architecture critic Alan Hess told a Times reporter in 1993. “We should see these buildings in that context and take them seriously.”
