Dr. Jesberg and the Derailed Adaptation

Nearly a century ago in beautiful, then-fashionable Westlake, Dr. Simon Jesberg opened the Eye and Ear Hospital at 500 Lucas Avenue. Over the course of his medical career, Dr. Jesberg retrieved more than 1400 objects from patients' throats and lungs, donating this unusual collection to the County Hospital as a teaching tool after his death.

The former Eye and Ear Hospital is a lovely "classic LA" building, even in its fenced-off, boarded-up, long-empty state. For years, it housed the nonprofit Para Los Niños, which sold the building in 2016.

The lucky buyer was HMG/Coree, a Hong Kong-based biotechnology firm. In 2018, plans were announced for an adaptive reuse project that would turn the former medical building into apartments with a tiny retail space.

I love adaptive reuse, especially in a neighborhood with a lot of usable older buildings sitting empty. But the project never did get started (the building has had no permit activity since 2004), and the application was terminated by the city in 2020.

What would the good doctor say to leaving his former building empty at a time when the abandoned adaptive reuse plan is needed more than ever?

500 Lucas Avenue, Westlake.

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