‘Munchkin Hotel,’ Culver City at Odds Over Parking Lot

The place hasn’t been part of a ruckus this big since the Munchkins took it over 64 years ago.

But the venerable Culver Hotel is suddenly in the middle of a dispute over a $41-million local redevelopment project that is raising hackles in Culver City--and belly laughs across the country.

The city has shut down a municipal parking lot used by hotel guests to make room for a multiplex movie theater that officials hope will attract outsiders to revitalize their struggling downtown area.

Trouble is, the elimination of 38 parking places at the lot rented by the hotel is chasing away the very visitors that officials are courting with the project. And as a result, Culver City’s most recognizable landmark may close.

Along with convenient guest parking, the redevelopment project also has wiped out the hotel’s passenger-loading zone used by taxis, tour buses and airport limousines.

“We have no drop-off, no temporary parking--no place to stop so you can come inside and check if we have rooms available,” said hotel owner Joseph Guo. “They are putting us out of business.”

Since the parking lot was shut four weeks ago, Guo has repeatedly begged officials to at least allow passenger loading in an alley next to the hotel. The city has refused and police have begun issuing $38 tickets to drivers who stop there.

City leaders contend there is plenty of parking for hotel guests at a newly opened 400-space municipal parking structure. The garage is part of Town Plaza, the redevelopment project that eventually seeks to build new restaurants and shops in the downtown area, in addition to the 1,850-seat movie complex.

But Guo, 47, complains that the parking structure is unguarded at night and is a two-block walk from the hotel for suitcase-lugging guests. He said his patrons who try to drive to the parking area encounter a nearly mile-long detour through a residential neighborhood along a confusing network of newly designated one-way streets.

Guests say it is aggravating to be able see the distinctive, wedge-shaped hotel from most of the downtown area but not be able to easily reach it by car. Even the alley next to the hotel is hard to find: Access to it is off a private driveway leading to the Culver Studios film lot on Washington Boulevard.

Built in 1924 by Culver City founder Harry Culver, the six-story hotel at 9400 Culver Blvd. was the Westside’s first “skyscraper.” As the city’s film studios expanded, the 46-room hotel became popular with movie stars. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton and Clark Gable were among celebrities who maintained part-time residences there.

The brick building and its marble and wood-paneled lobby were also often included in movie scenes. Laurel and Hardy and “Our Gang” comedies were filmed there, along with scenes from more recent features such as “Stuart Little 2” and the TV series “7th Heaven.”

The hotel’s most celebrated role was behind the scenes, though.

In 1938, 124 midgets and dwarfs from across the country descended on the Culver Hotel to portray Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz.” The little actors were booked three to a bed during the movie’s production at the nearby MGM studios.

That arrangement gave rise to rumors of debauchery and drunken little people swinging from hotel rafters that quickly became a part of Hollywood legend.

Those days were conjured up again last month when the parking lot’s closure and Culver City’s redevelopment plan were the butt of jokes on a national radio talk program.

For eight years radio host Tom Leykis has broadcast his show from a studio near the hotel. He and others at the Westwood One radio syndication company also parked in the lot until they were kicked out.

Leykis laughed at the notion that a multiplex theater will breathe new life into Culver City’s downtown--which he described for listeners as “a bunch of low-slung buildings, under-performing businesses, 10-minute traffic lights and parking nightmares.”

“The last time there was anything fun to do in Culver City, I think, was the time the Munchkins stayed at the Culver Hotel and had an orgy,” Leykis scoffed on his April 10 show.

“At a time when companies that own movie theaters are going under, with the typical foresight in Culver City they’ve decided to forge ahead with a multi-screen theater here. And they think people are going to come from outside Culver City to watch a movie here.”

City officials bristle at those comments--and at Leykis’ suggestion that the redevelopment project has led to a new civic slogan: “Culver City: It’s Not Just for Taggers Anymore.”

Mayor Carol Gross said the multiplex proposal is a sound one that has been “evaluated a great deal” over the last nine years by redevelopment planners.

She said Guo’s parking “needs and concerns have been under consideration from the beginning and taken under consideration all along” by city officials.

As for Leykis, “I think this person, too, had convenient parking for years. Now, somebody inconvenienced is striking back,” Gross said.

City redevelopment administrators acknowledge that the multiplex plan has not been without its problems.

Some Culver City voters tried unsuccessfully in 2000 to block the project through a ballot initiative.

After that, the theater’s proposed original developer, AMC Entertainment, cut back on its operations because of economic problems and pulled out of the project. The city then decided to underwrite the construction itself, scaled back the multiplex plan from 20 screens to 12 and recruited Pacific Theaters to operate the cinemas as a tenant instead of as an investor.

Mark Wardlaw, Culver City’s deputy community development director, said the city has advised Guo that an automobile turnaround area and passenger drop-off zone will be installed in a city-owned greenbelt near the hotel as part of the theater construction next year.

But Wardlaw warned that the city “cannot assign the use of a public right of way” for the exclusive use of hotel patrons--meaning moviegoers will have use of the drop-off area, too.

Guo said he doubts that his hotel will survive until next year.

He said tenants who rent office space in the building have already pulled out, and irritated overnight guests have informed him they won’t return unless the parking problems are solved.

Born in China, the Northwestern University-educated Guo said he and his investment company purchased the then-closed hotel for $2.9 million in 1997, after being assured by the city that he could continue to rent sufficient parking space in the adjoining municipal lot for guests. Another $1.2 million was spent refurbishing the place for its reopening it in 1998--in time for surviving Munchkins to return to the hotel for a 60th-anniversary “Wizard of Oz” reunion.

Last week, Guo went to court seeking to force the city to abide by its 1997 parking pledge. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order but set a June 10 hearing into the matter.

So for now Guo gazes over his gleaming but nearly empty lobby--and at slick city brochures that brag about “bringing Main Street back” to Culver City.

One pamphlet touts the role the redevelopment agency has had in turning “that vision into reality by completing such projects as renovation of the Culver Hotel historic landmark.”

“They didn’t renovate this, we did,” Guo said. “Now we just want to be able to stay in business.”

But as things now stand, keeping the Munchkins’ hotel open may be a tall order.