property

Jordon Hudson is suing the owners of a Massachusetts rental property for their alleged connection to the release of a video that showed her then-boyfriend Bill Belichick shirtless and outside the home while Hudson was renting it in 2023.

In a civil lawsuit filed Friday in Suffolk County Superior Court, Hudson accuses the couple of invasion of privacy, breach of contract and unfair and deceptive conduct after the video, which was captured on a porch security camera, and “personal and private information about Ms. Hudson” were leaked online.

According to the complaint, that leak in November 2023 was the reason the public found out about the romantic relationship between the then-22-year-old former college cheerleader and the then-70-year-old coach of the New England Patriots, who now coaches the North Carolina Tar Heels.

“These outrageous violations of Ms. Hudson’s privacy have, among other things, resulted in significant unwanted publicity and scrutiny of Ms. Hudson and her relationship with Mr. Belichick, which they had intended to remain private, and led to the ridicule and denigration of Ms. Hudson through numerous tabloid stories published by the media,” the complaint states.

“This unwanted scrutiny and the ensuing media stories, which contain false information, has caused significant damage to Ms. Hudson, which would not have occurred had Defendants not leaked Ms. Hudson’s personal and private information.”

The Times was unsuccessful in attempts to reach the defendants for comment.

The complaint states that Hudson booked the rental house for four days through Airbnb in or around June 2023. During her stay, the filing states, Hudson received a text from one of the owners reminding her not to park in front of a neighbor’s property. According to the complaint, the owner also texted Hudson “a link to a Ring video of a shirtless Mr. Belichick walking to and from the Property, which had been captured and saved without the knowledge or authorization of Mr. Belichick or Ms. Hudson (the ‘Ring Video’).”

Hudson then informed the defendant that privacy was important to them and asked if she could delete the video, the lawsuit states, to which she received the response: “We will delete it from ring, but as you know, unfortunately, videos are never totally deleted.”

After the video was leaked and the relationship became public, the complaint states, the same defendant told Hudson, “I absolutely did not leak this video to twitter or anyone.” But in May 2025, according to the filing, the owner told Hudson in a text that while they didn’t release the video publicly, “we had sent it to a few people initially wondering is this him [Mr. Belichick], isn’t it him and I don’t know what happened from there.”

The complaint also accuses the defendants of giving a second porch video of Belichick to journalist Pablo Torre, who aired it on his podcast that same month.

Hudson is requesting a jury trial and seeks unspecified damages and an order “enjoining Defendants from disclosing or disseminating any personal and/or private information related to Ms. Hudson to any third-party.”

Multiple media outlets reported last month that Hudson and Belichick quietly ended their romantic releationship in late 2025 but remain close friends and business partners.

Data centres face protests across Europe due to the massive amounts of computing power and water they use.

Protesters in the Netherlands have broken into a construction site for a new Microsoft data centre in Amsterdam, the latest action in a growing movement sweeping Europe.

Several hundred activists occupied the site in the Sloterdijk district on Friday, responding to a call for a two-day protest across Europe against data centres, which handle the large processing workloads associated with artificial intelligence (AI). Demonstrators clashed with police as some climbed a crane and set off flares.

Nathan Timmer, of the protest group Geef Tegengas – which translates as Push Back – told local broadcaster AT5 that demonstrators were occupying the site in an effort to stop construction.

“We don’t want it to be built. Nobody needs it,” Timmer said. “The only thing this will be used for is AI slop. AI warfare, data surveillance and committing genocide. We don’t want that.”

Pro-Palestinian activists also joined the demonstrations in the Dutch capital. By late afternoon police were escorting activists off the construction site, though some remained, local media reported.

Dutch police said they detained 150-200 people suspected of trespassing during the protest.

Microsoft said it was aware of the Amsterdam demonstration.

“We understand that people feel strongly about the project, and we respect their right to express those views peacefully,” a spokesperson said. “However, we do not condone any actions that are unlawful or that put people’s safety at risk.”

Data centres face resistance around the world due to the massive amounts of computing power and water they use. Activists argue that the boom in facilities serving cloud computing and AI is moving faster than public consultation and environmental oversight.

Dozens of civil society and grassroots groups have said they will join the “Stop Dirty Data Centres” events on Friday and Saturday in 15 European countries, including Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, organisers said.

In Germany, a dozen protesters gathered in front of a data centre on the outskirts of Berlin on Friday.

“We want to put a stop to this blind construction of data centres around Germany, regardless of any environmental concerns,” said protest spokeswoman Caro Weber. “This is really, really dangerous for our future.”

About 100 people also protested against data centres in front of the Polish parliament, representing communities around Warsaw where new centres are planned.

In Italy, the fast-growing data centre industry is facing an equally rapid rise in grassroots opposition, particularly in the northern Lombardy region, the country’s main hub for digital infrastructure.

Stevie Wonder is taking legal action against a reported ex-fiancée, filing a lawsuit this week to evict her after she allegedly lived rent-free at his property in Studio City for nearly four decades.

The prolific musician, whose legal name is Stevland Morris, filed a legal complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday against Carmen Efferson, whom he says has been living for free at a home on Oak Glen Drive since July 1988, according to the complaint obtained by The Times. Wonder seeks to evict Efferson after she allegedly refused to allow inspectors into the property earlier in the summer and failed to vacate the home in August, despite receiving a 30-day notice in late July.

Efferson, whom TMZ reported was once betrothed to the Grammy-winning “Songs in the Key of Life” musician, did not immediately respond to The Times’ multiple requests for response on Friday. A legal representative for Wonder, 76, did not comment and did not clarify the singer’s reported relationship with Efferson. Wonder has been married Tomeeka Bracy since 2017.

According to the musician’s complaint, Wonder and Efferson reached an oral agreement in 1988 that she can occupy the property without paying monthly rent. Tensions began in July this year when representatives for Wonder attempted to access the property multiple times “for purposes of updating and retaining property insurance,” according to an email between Wonder’s legal representatives and Efferson included in the complaint.

One attorney for Wonder notified Efferson on July 23 of a property inspection the following week. Efferson had choice words for the request, emailing another attorney for Wonder on July 25 to “please refrain from your rascist [sic] coldblooded ‘white male privilege’ tone.”

“I’m feeling harassed,” Efferson said, according to screenshots of her email. “Regarding your ORDERS of entering into the place where I am living, I do not consent.”

She ended her email with an explicit statement. An attorney for Wonder responded two days later, informing Efferson that the lawyer who issued the inspection notice “is neither racist, coldblooded, white or male.”

In an email dated July 27, Efferson also threatened to “immediately contact law enforcement” upon further attempts by Wonder’s representatives to enter the property. The next day, attorneys notified Efferson she had 30 days to vacate the home.

“You were given the opportunity to reconsider your decision to deny access and declined,” the notice said, according to the complaint. Efferson was ordered to vacate the property by Aug. 27

On Oct. 6, Wonder’s lawyers issued Efferson a three-day notice to leave the home due to her alleged violation of her oral agreement with the musician. Wonder’s legal representatives also claimed they gave Efferson “three additional opportunities to permit entry” for an inspection, but she failed to respond.

“Owner has been prejudiced by the cancellation of the property insurance policy and is now at substantial risk of economic loss by virtue of your actions to prevent the protection and preservation of the Premises,” attorneys said in the notice, according to exhibits. The attorneys also notified Efferson that Wonder would file a complaint should she refuse access again.

Wonder — celebrating the 50th anniversary of his seminal “Songs in the Key of Life” this year — is seeking forfeiture of the lease agreement with Efferson, legal fees and statutory damages up to $600.

One of Hollywood’s legendary music recording studios is for sale as its owner prepares to end his half-century run immortalizing many of the biggest acts.

The list of household names who have recorded at Conway Recording Studios spans generations and genres. Burt Bacharach, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Daft Punk, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar are just a few of the artists who have recorded there.

While many studios have struggled, the unique space has attracted big names for decades.

Digital production tools and home studios have eliminated much of the need for traditional recording space, allowing artists to produce professional-quality music almost anywhere, real estate data provider CoStar said.

The digital revolution rocked the analog world of art, media and communication on a scale the industrial revolution did to agrarian and handicraft economies more than a century ago. The advent of Pro Tools recording software in the 1990s and the rise of music streaming services in the early aughts irrevocably changed the business.

Yet industry veterans say surviving facilities with expansive live rooms, vintage gear and decades of recording history may be becoming more valuable as they become harder to replicate. U.S. recorded-music revenue rose 7% to $6 billion in the first half of 2026, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America. Streaming, physical formats and licensing all posted gains.

Conway Recording Studios is a jungly hideaway on bustling Melrose Avenue created by a transplant from chilly Buffalo, N.Y., who arrived in the 1970s with a vision to create an L.A.-style oasis in the middle of the city where he could pursue his craft as a sound engineer.

“I moved to California to be outside in the warm,” Buddy Brundo said. “I like sunlight.”

He defied recording studio conventions by bringing in natural light through large, soundproof windows instead of working in chambers sealed on all sides.

“You kind of feel like you’re in Hawaii or somewhere else,” at Conway studios, said entertainment real estate broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE. “That’s what’s kept Conway so busy over the years.”

Among the musicians who came to work there lately was Korean pop group BTS, the subject of a Netflix documentary released in March that followed the young men as they recorded their comeback album “Arirang” after completing their military service.

Brundo appears in the film.

1

2

1. “You kind of feel like you’re in Hawaii or somewhere else,” a real estate broker said of the studios. “That’s what’s kept Conway so busy over the years.” 2. Conway’s clients have included Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, U2 and Counting Crows. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Taylor Swift is a regular and once created a run on company merchandise by wearing a Conway Recording Studios sweatshirt in public.

People have asked Brundo for years when he might sell the studio he has operated since 1976, said Mihalka, who has the listing.

“Ten years ago I wouldn’t even think about this,” Brundo said. Now, “I’m 83, and how long can I keep this up? It’s best to walk away while I still can.”

He works out three times a week and appears fit, jumping up to play air guitar to Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” while showing off the powerful sound system in Studio B. The band recorded the hit 1987 album of the same name at Conway Studios, where members arrived by motorcycle.

Brundo is asking $15 million for the property that spans more than an acre on the edge of Melrose Hill, a niche neighborhood at Melrose and Western avenues known for its trendy restaurants.

It includes three studios, offices, tons of recording equipment, including two grand pianos, lounges, and a kitchen that pointedly lacks a stove.

“Every studio I worked with had a stove, and the kitchen was a mess,” Brundo said.

“Ten years ago I wouldn’t even think about this,” Conway’s Buddy Brundo said. Now, “I’m 83, and how long can I keep this up? It’s best to walk away while I still can.”

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Not that he hasn’t gone out of his way to accommodate his clients. Years ago he shrank his own office to enlarge a lounge for a singer-songwriter who needed space to camp out.

“Courtney Love wanted to book a bunch of time,” but also wanted a place to unwind outside the studio. “We lived here for two months with the kids and the clothes.”

One of his studio innovations was an air-conditioning and filtration system that whooshes out smoke and neutralizes it with charcoal filters and blue lights that kill bacteria, because the official smoking policy is “whatever they want,” he said. On a recent afternoon, a strong scent of cannabis came from Studio A.

To create his rambling California oasis in the middle of a busy neighborhood, Brundo acquired house after house on the south side of his lot over the years so he could keep expanding. He bought and tore down 10 of them.

“Each house was a battle,” he said, particularly one where the owners had an issue with guitarist and outdoorsman Ted Nugent, who accidentally shot an arrow into their yard.

While the property could be used for other purposes, Buddy Brundo hopes to find a buyer who will keep the music going.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Brundo had set up a Styrofoam deer and a bear on the back of his property to entertain archer Nugent. The musician missed a shot and his arrow passed through the fence and came close to striking a neighbor in her backyard as her husband stood nearby.

“He was really pissed off,” Brundo said of his neighbor. It took Brundo another year to buy the neighbors’ house “because the price went up,” he said.

Today, the foliage a full-time groundskeeper tends has grown tall and thick. Sleek cats roam the grounds.

The parking lot is large for the studio’s size, and its 59 striped spaces have accommodated about $2 million worth of fancy cars at a time, Brundo estimated. It’s also big enough for basketball games, and Brundo recently painted a full court on the asphalt so singer The Weeknd could play ball during downtime.

While the property could be turned to other uses such as stores and housing, Brundo hopes to sell it to someone who will keep the music going even as times change.

The recent backlash against AI-generated music has prompted “a reversion back to the real” with bands using more instruments and needing more space to record, Mihalka said. “There are fewer studios now where you can actually do this.”

Athens, Greece – Tonia Katerini, a 69-year-old architect, leaned into her computer, scrolling through the property contracts that she said are remaking her neighbourhood.

Across Exarchia, the Athens district long known for its radical left-wing politics, flats are being bought up and turned into short-term rentals, pushing out the people who live there.

For months, Katerini and a group of neighbours have been digitally mapping foreign purchases using public records, marking them with red dots.

She zoomed out from her street on the map; it was a sea of red.

The balcony doors of her flat, where she has lived since 1986, were open and noise from the cafes below drifted in past the plants and stacks of architectural plans.

Her group says much of the money behind the rentals is Israeli; by their count, more than half of the area’s new company-run hotels and rentals .

In a neighbourhood where Palestinian flags hang from balconies and solidarity slogans cover the walls, that has caused friction.

On her own cobbled street, where the noise of arriving tourists rolling their suitcases wakes her in the morning, Israeli investors have bought two buildings, she said. The flat below hers belongs to one such company.

“They are nice guys we have downstairs,” she said. “It’s an Israeli company.”

A few streets away, a residential building is streaked with black paint.

“Airbnbs leave us homeless,” reads one slogan across its facade. “Zionists not welcome,” reads another.

Such buildings are easy to spot. Instead of residents’ names, the buzzer panels show only numbers and a keypad by the door releases keys for Airbnb guests.

Across the neighbourhood, activists have splattered keypads and facades with red paint.

They say short-term rentals are driving an aggressive gentrification that is pricing out locals and erasing the area’s identity.

Foreign money has poured into Greek property in recent years: non-residents invested a record 2.75 billion euros ($3.2bn) in Greek real estate in 2024, according to the Bank of Greece, before easing last year.

No official figures break down foreign buyers in Athens by nationality. But an annual survey of completed sales by the agency network RE/MAX Hellas found that Israelis were the largest group of foreign buyers in Attica, the region around the capital, ahead of buyers from Turkiye and Lebanon, reported the Greek weekly To Vima.

Exarchia’s political activism runs deep. In 1973, students at the nearby Athens Polytechnic rose up against the US-backed military government, which fell the following year.

In 2008, police shot dead Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old Greek student, in Exarchia, provoking protests that spread across the country. It came, Katerini said, like “fire on dry land”.

As Greece’s debt crisis deepened, that anger on the streets helped propel the left-wing Syriza party to power in 2015.

‘Tenants displaced, apartment blocks emptied’

Chrysoulla Papageorgiou, a schoolteacher who has lived in Exarchia for 24 years, is a familiar face on its streets. Earnest and straight-talking, the 46-year-old remembers it as “a neighbourhood of solidarity”.

The change came slowly, then quickened. At first, small owners rented out a spare room. After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies began buying entire blocks.

“Overnight, tenants were displaced and apartment blocks emptied,” she said.

Bars opened, spilling tables and chairs across pavements on streets that had once been quiet.

Rents rose and migrants and low-income families, many living in basements and on the lower floors, were the first to go. Schools lost pupils and old bookshops, traditional cafes and grocers closed.

For years, Exarchia residents sheltered refugees in occupied buildings. Sitting on prime real estate, they were among the first buildings police emptied and then sold, Papageorgiou said.

“Half were squats,” she said. “Now we have only one.”

That last building is draped in painted sheets declaring solidarity with the families inside. Neighbours help make sure the children get to school.

Since 2022, Exarchia Square, long the heart of the neighbourhood’s protests, has been a fenced-off construction site for a new metro station that many residents fought against. Riot police, Papageorgiou added, are now a daily presence.

The aim, she believed, is to turn central Athens into somewhere “purely touristic”.

In recent years, buyers have been “almost only Israeli”.

Near the square hangs a large Palestinian flag. Tourists sometimes scrawl anti-Palestinian messages on its white stripe, and activists paint it white again.

Foreign buyers, Katerini said, see Greece as a safer place for their money than Israel itself, and in Athens “the government is very friendly with Israel”. In August, Athens signed a missile deal with Israel worth $3.5bn.

‘A very good opportunity’ for investors

Vagelis Lazaridis, a stocky real estate agent who heads a branch of the Athens-Attica Real Estate Agents’ Association, talks about his trade with passion. He said the reasons for the investments were purely practical.

Exarchia “was a run-down area” which made it “a very good opportunity”, he said.

It is beside the centre, close to the metro and to universities full of students from abroad. Unlike Plaka, beneath the Acropolis, it has few building restrictions.

Once a handful of buyers arrive, he said, others follow.

Greece to become ‘far less appealing’ for Israeli buyers

The government is now trying to cool the market.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced last month that the transfer tax for homebuyers from outside the European Union would rise from 3 percent to 15 percent from next July.

“The party is over in Greece,” The Jerusalem Post wrote in a recent report. “The country, which in recent years has become a preferred destination for Israelis seeking real estate investments at reasonable prices and with attractive yields, is about to become far less appealing.”

Lazaridis said agents’ associations oppose the plan, which has yet to become law. It “may not take effect, or may be postponed”, he said.

Agents expect some non-EU buyers to speed up purchases before the deadline, reported the Greek news site in.gr.

‘Fewer Airbnbs’

Not everyone in the trade sees an unstoppable tide.

Iryna Rondyak, who is originally from Ukraine, runs her own estate agency near Exarchia. She said that when Israeli buyers began arriving about a decade ago, they made up about 60 percent of her foreign clients, many buying whole office buildings to turn into hotels.

Until around 2024, foreigners accounted for about 70 percent of her sales, she said.

This year, it is about 30 percent, as state-backed mortgages for young Greeks, under a scheme called “Spiti mou” (My Home), attract local buyers back.

She credits new rules for the turnaround.

No new short-term rental licences are being issued in central Athens, including Exarchia, and in September the freeze was extended to the end of 2027, reported To Vima.

Properties bought under Greece’s “golden visa” residency scheme can now only be let long-term. While a cheaper route into the scheme, at 250,000 euros ($280,000), rewards investors who convert empty office buildings into flats.

“Anyone living in Greece couldn’t find a home in the centre. Everything was on Airbnb,” she said. “Now there are far fewer.”

It is “a little better,” she said, but “the problem still exists”.

Rents remain high, at 10 to 15 euros ($12 to $17) per square metre, even in the southern suburbs, she said. Many flats sit empty because owners find renting them out is not worth the tax bill.

Residents are less convinced.

The rental freeze is temporary, they say, and investors with enough money can still find ways in. Nor does it undo what has already happened: many of the neighbourhood’s buildings are already short-term rentals.

Back in Exarchia, Papageorgiou counts herself lucky.

Her landlady, whose family has lived in the area for generations, refuses to raise the rent as an “act of resistance”.

Papageorgiou said jokingly that her landlady’s accountant has told her she is ruining the market.

The fast-spreading Norte Fire in Orange County is fuelled by intense warm winds and unseasonably high temperatures.

A fast-spreading wildfire in Orange County, in Southern California, has engulfed several coastal properties and prompted widespread evacuation orders.

The Orange County Fire Authority said on Friday that the Norte Fire had scorched about 188 hectares (465 acres), with the state’s Cal Fire agency putting it at about 231 hectares (570 acres) by the evening, and that at least six homes had been damaged or destroyed in the San Juan Capistrano area.

The fire authority said firefighters were “aggressively attacking the fire from the ground and air” and issued pleas for people to stay clear of the area.

Unseasonably high temperatures and low humidity are fuelling the rapid growth of the fire, the AFP news agency reported.

The Norte Fire started in the coastal city of San Clemente on Friday and moved to the city of San Juan Capistrano, with some 6,000 homes and 16,000 residents under evacuation orders by the evening. An evacuation shelter has opened in each city while helicopters attempt to douse the flames.

Intense warm winds

The Norte Fire is one of several in the region driven by Santa Ana winds, intense warm gusts that blow from the southwest US interior towards the California coast.

The Santa Ana winds typically arrive in the autumn, right when Southern California’s vegetation is at its driest after a long, rainless summer, according to The Weather Channel.

Forecasters said winds blew at between 55km/h and 90km/h (35mph and 55mph) within coastal areas.

The strongest winds were expected through Friday, but the high heat and low humidity conditions that contribute to the growth of the fire are expected to last through Saturday night.

Tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles County were left without power as authorities attempted to lessen the possibility of electrical sparks that the heavy wind gusts could carry.

Other ongoing fires

California firefighters were also busy battling the Bryson Fire, which broke out on the outskirts of the Malibu beach community in Los Angeles County on Thursday. As of Friday, the fire had burned about 59 hectares (147 acres) and was 17 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

The Henderson Fire was 20 percent contained and had burned 842 hectares (2,080 acres) in San Diego County by Friday, Cal Fire said. The blaze impacted Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and prompted freeway closures.

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani and top New York Democrats are calling on the owners of private parking lots to block federal immigration officers from using their properties as staging areas, days after immigration officers shot a man in the city.

In a Friday letter, Mamdani, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and dozens of state and local lawmakers told lot and garage owners that the city needs their “help at a critical juncture.”

“In solidarity with immigrant New Yorkers and in our shared commitment to the City we love, we ask that you do not rent, lend, or otherwise make your property available to ICE as a staging area for its enforcement operations,” the letter reads. “Make it known to ICE that it is not authorized to use your garages and lots.”

The plea came after immigration officers shot 28-year-old Dominican national Oscar Belgal during an arrest last week as he rode in a car with his young son. The shooting sparked protests and drew renewed attention to the federal government’s immigration crackdown.

The federal officers had been using a nearby private parking lot as a staging area before the shooting, according to Friday’s letter.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security slammed the letter in a statement that read: “Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won’t. Luckily, no terminated parking will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make New York safe again.”

Federal officials maintain the immigration officers believed their lives were in danger and opened fire only after Belgal smashed his car into two government vehicles and accelerated toward them.

New York City has previously barred outside law enforcement agencies such as DHS from setting up staging areas on city property unless they have a judicial warrant or qualify for certain “limited legal exceptions,” according to the letter. “But these laws govern City property, not the private lots and garages that you operate,” it adds.

Private businesses have at times found themselves in the middle of tense political fights over President) Trump’s administration’s immigration enforcement push.

In one instance, a Minnesota hotel that refused to let immigration officers stay there in January apologized after public criticism from DHS, saying the decision violated its internal policies. In another, protesters occupied the lobby of a Manhattan hotel they said was housing some immigration officers.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.

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.”