The planned industrial/residential community of Playa Vista had been on corporate drawing boards long before the closure of the Hughes Aircraft complex there.

Summa Corp., the firm formed by Howard Hughes in 1972 to manage his business enterprises, began planning to develop the 2.3-square-mile chunk of land as far back as 1978.

The 926 acres the company owned lie just north of Westchester, southeast of Marina del Rey and west of the 405 freeway.

Under Summa’s June 1980 proposal, the $1 billion development plan would have set aside only 92 acres for the flora and fauna that thrive in the uninhabited Ballona Wetlands west of the aircraft plant.

Environmentalists were aghast. As a result, a lengthy battle ensued between Playa Vista developers and preservationist groups, most notably Friends of the Ballona Wetlands.

The Friends f the Ballona Wetlands group insisted that even the 175 acres proposed in a revised plan in 1984 was insufficient to protect the Ballona Wetlands ecosystem.

The proposed project would consist of some 8,500 condominiums and apartment units, 4.5 million square feet of commercial and office space, a 40-acre marina with nearly 1,000 boat moorings, three hotels with some 2,400 rooms and a 209-acre nature preserve.

The company decided that incorporation into the city of Los Angeles would be preferable to coming under county control. In November 1985, the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to annex 803 acres south of Ballona Creek.

The 141 acres north of Ballona Creek would remain under county control, and would include the marina expansion near Marina del Rey, some 1,200 housing units, a 150,000-square-foot retail village and two of the three hotels, according to Summa.

The developers managed to forge ahead despite the flurry of protests and lawsuits from environmental groups. Howard Hughes Properties, a Summa division, originally acted as the developer, with Santa Monica-based Maguire Thomas Partners taking that role in 1989.

Maguire tweaked the massive plan to include 13,085 dwelling units, 5 million square feet of office space, 595,000 square feet of retail space, 1,050 hotel rooms and the new marina. As part of a $10 million lawsuit settlement with the Friends group in 1990, Maguire agreed to restore 345 acres of wetlands west of Lincoln Boulevard.

Residential buildings line Jefferson Blvd. in Playa Vista in this view looking east from Beethoven St. (March 2020 photo by Sam Gnerre)

Residential area of Playa Vista, Phase 1, in May 2005. (Daily Breeze staff file photo)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

Opponents continued to battle developers throughout the 1990s, but court rulings favored the developers for the most part, and the project, the cost of which had been put at $8 billion, seemed ready to go forward by 1996. A groundbreaking event was held, somewhat prematurely, on March 25, 1996.

Then Chase Manhattan Bank filed a default notice on $150 million of loans in March 1997 against Maguire. In July, Maguire principal Robert Maguire agreed to pull back his role in the project, and a new company made up of investment fund managers, Playa Capital Corp., took control.

Finally, on Dec. 8, 1999, the L.A. City Council gave its approval to the Playa Vista project with a 12-0 vote. It would be built on 460 acres.

Construction on the first phase, encompassing one-third of the tract, began in earnest in 2000, with crews scheduled to build 3,246 homes, 3.2 million square feet of office buildings and 35,000 square feet of neighborhood stores. Its first residents moved in on April 1, 2002.

The highly regarded Playa Vista Elementary School opened in 2012, joining several parks, a public library and police and fire station branches that already had been built. Several retail centers also serve the area, including Whole Foods Market, Home Depot, movie theaters and restaurants.

Phase 2 gained initial approval in July 2004, and final approval in 2010. It included a 114-acre commercial district, The Campus at Playa Vista, that combines an entertainment, media and technology district with Playa Vista’s retail core.

In addition to the Alphabet Inc. companies, such as Google and YouTube, we mentioned in last week’s post, other corporations with operations there include video game titans Electronic Arts, computer electronics manufacturer Belkin International, theater firm IMAX Corporation, Facebook, Microsoft and dozens of other firms.

Construction continues on Fountain Park Drive and Playa Vista Drive in Playa Vista. March 2006. (Daily Breeze staff file photo)

(90094 zip code map of Playa Vista)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

So whatever happened to that new marina with 350 boat slips to be connected to northwest Playa Vista via an extension to the Marina del Rey channel? Its announcement in 1991 caused the Marina del Rey harbor to scramble to remodel its facilities, but the proposed Playa Vista marina has yet to get off the drawing boards. It was last mentioned as part of a possible future phase of the project in a 1996 Daily Breeze story.

In December, meanwhile, the final Phase 2 residences went on sale at the Encore development, 41 years after the Summa Corp. first formulated the idea of Playa Vista.

According to estimates in the 2018 American Community Survey report, zip code 99094, which encompasses most of the Playa Vista development, has an estimated population of 9,368.

That’s up from a population of zero in early 2002.

Sources: California Demographics by Cubit website; Daily Breeze files; Friends of Ballona Wetlands website; Los Angeles Times files; “Our Story,” Playa Vista website; “Hughes Aircraft: Birthplace of the Spruce Goose, the world’s largest seaplane,” Daily Breeze website.