8850 Sunset project goes to public hearing in WeHo

The redevelopment of the Sunset Boulevard block that includes the Viper Room has been the subject of debate for years. In 2022, it went before the West Hollywood Design Review Committee. After extensive public outreach and input, the project is back, this time before the city’s planning commission.

On April 18 at 6:30 p.m., the planning commission is holding a public hearing on the project. If approved by the commission, it will be passed on to the City Council. Silver Creek Development put forth the project, and the company’s managing director Charles Essig said it will fit perfectly on the Sunset Strip.

Essig said the new build will be an 11-story structure with 78 residential units, including 16 affordable housing units, a 90-room hotel, ground floor and rooftop restaurant spaces, banquet and meeting spaces, a “reactivated and revitalized” Viper Room, subterranean parking, an outdoor garden amenity deck, a small café and liquor store space, among other features.

Over the years, the project has been reduced in scope and size, as compromises have been made with the city and West Hollywood residents. While the block includes a number of mostly-one story structures, the focal point for the community has been the Viper Room – which is now owned and continues operation under Silver Creek Development. The iconic club, once partially owned by Johnny Depp, is perhaps best known for being the site where River Phoenix overdosed in 1993, leading to his untimely death. It has seen performances from Johnny Cash, the Pussycat Dolls, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Essig said that the Viper Room would be included in the rebuild, although none of the original structure will be salvageable.

“We’re very interested in revitalizing [the club] given it being a big part of the [Sunset Strip] for such a long period of time – that’s why we acquired that business, as well,” Essig said. “From a structural building standpoint [however] the building is inherently challenging, and it’s just dilapidated.”

The Viper Room and the rest of the block, which includes the former Terner Liquor store (now Roro’s Liquor), was deemed not historically significant by the West Hollywood Historic Preservation Commission and the City Council in 2016.

“Because the Viper Room/Terner Liquor store building has been irrevocably altered over the years, it is ineligible for landmark status,” the West Hollywood Preservation Alliance wrote to the Beverly Press, explaining that because of the alterations the alliance is not taking an official position on the project. Regardless, it wrote that “the WHPA prefers to see the city’s decades-old buildings preserved or adaptively reused, particularly on the Sunset Strip.” The organization did advocate for the Viper Room to be historically designated in 2016. The WHPA noted that the Rainbow, the Roxy and Whisky A Go Go were all historically designated, but “unfortunately, the same did not occur with the Viper Room property.”

The Viper Room and the liquor store space were initially opened as a grocery store in 1921. After World War II, the building was split in half, and the right-hand structure has been a music venue ever since. From 1951-69, it operated as the Melody Room, a significant jazz club of its day.

“There have long been rumors that the music venue was controlled by underworld figures operating behind dummy corporations,” the WHPA wrote. “We’ll never know if that’s true, but it is a fact that Mickey Cohen’s headquarters were one block east, in the basement level of a storefront building he controlled at the corner of Holloway and Palm Avenues.”

The group Sensibility on Sunset is against the project, operating a website at sensibilityonsunset.com that is encouraging residents to speak out against the development at the public hearing. It dubs the plan for 8850 Sunset Blvd. “one of the most disruptive” in West Hollywood history.

Essig said, though, the redevelopment is in line with West Hollywood’s Sunset Specific Plan, which was adopted in 1991 and amended in 2019. According to the city website, the plan was created “to encourage responsible development along Sunset Boulevard.” The plan’s intent was to ensure that the Sunset Strip remains “a vital district for businesses, residents and tourists.”

“[The plan] targets sites on Sunset that were very, if you will, underwhelming and could utilize some reactivation. And this was clearly one of them,” Essig said.

The WHPA expressed concerns that the Sunset Strip’s history may be fading away.

“The trend now appears to be toward demolishing the Strip’s past to make it over as a canyon of glass towers,” the WHPA wrote. “If so, in 20 or 30 years, future residents and visitors will likely assume the city’s leadership in the 2020s lost its way, much like mid-century L.A. leaders did when they eliminated the trolleys and replaced them with freeways.”

The website for the 8850 Sunset Blvd. development, 8850sunsetboulevard.com, has a comment section which invites visitors to email and express whether or not they support the project.

“We’ve listened to quite a bit of feedback on the original project, reducing height and density and making different moves that were responsive to the overarching horizon, if you will, with respect to the Sunset Strip, and how it translates into the overall skyline and fits in a very thoughtful way,” Essig said. “I think [the current project] directly responds to that and will be incorporated into this western portion of Sunset extremely well.”