After the fire, insult added to injury

Owners of Palisades site tout broad redevelopment potential, just as residents feared. But city officials have other ideas.

- NOAH HAGGERTY

THE PACIFIC Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates, destroyed in last year's Palisades fire, one year later.

(ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times)

For months, former residents of the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates have feared the uncommunicative owners of the property would seek to displace them in favor of a more lucrative development deal after the Palisades fire destroyed the rent-controlled, roughly 170-unit mobile home park.

A confidential memorandum listing the mobile home park for sale indicates the owners intend to do exactly that.

The memorandum, quietly posted on a website associated with the global commercial real estate company CBRE, says that the Palisades fire created a "blank canvas for redevelopment" at a site "ideally positioned for a transformative residential or mixed-use project."

"I just thought, oh my god, this is so much propaganda and false advertising," said Lisa Ross, a 33-year resident of the mobile home park and a Realtor. "How can they even get away with printing this?"

Neither the current owners of the mobile home park nor the real estate companies listed on the memorandum responded to requests for comment.