Netflix buys exclusive rights to Disney movies

Netflix Inc. has acquired exclusive U.S. rights to movies from Walt Disney Studios in a deal that catapults the Internet video-on-demand service into direct competition with pay TV giants such as HBO and Showtime.

The three-year agreement takes effect in 2016 and is a blow to the pay channel Starz, which currently has the rights to broadcast Disney movies, including its Pixar animated films and Marvel superhero pictures, about eight months after they are released in theaters.

Starz's sole remaining movie provider is now Sony Pictures. That partnership ends in 2016.

Disney has also agreed to give Netflix nonexclusive streaming rights to more of its older titles — including "Dumbo," "Pocahontas" and "Alice in Wonderland" — starting immediately.

Netflix's chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, called the deal "a bold leap forward for Internet television."

"We are incredibly pleased and proud this iconic family brand is teaming with Netflix to make it happen," he said.

Netflix stock soared on the news, rising $10.65, or 14%, to $85.65.

Shares in Starz's parent company, Liberty Media Corp., fell $5.49, or 5%, to $105.56.

Currently, Netflix has nonexclusive rights to movies from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via a deal with pay channel Epix, as well as an array of library titles from other studios. Its only exclusive movie rights come from independent studios such as Relativity Media and DreamWorks Animation. It also has a wide variety of television reruns.

Sarandos and Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings have long said the company wanted to get exclusive pay TV rights to films from one of Hollywood's six major studios to boost its online entertainment service.

However, Hastings has also at times downplayed the importance of new movies. Netflix previously had streaming rights to Disney and Sony movies via a deal with Starz. In January, investors expressed their concerns that the pending disappearance of those movies would hurt the service. Hastings said in a letter to investors that Disney films accounted for only 2% of domestic streaming and the loss would not be felt.

Since then, though, the Disney movie slate has become more attractive. At that time, Netflix did not have access to movies from Disney's Marvel superhero unit or the "Star Wars" titles from its pending acquisition of Lucasfilm Ltd.

The end of the Starz agreement accelerated a trend that has seen Netflix evolve into a television company, with reruns of shows such as "Mad Men" accounting for about two-thirds of the content streamed by users.

With several original programs launching next year, including the Kevin Spacey political drama "House of Cards," and a direct connection to a growing number of Internet-enabled televisions, Netflix is on the verge of standing on par with many TV networks.

Netflix charges $8 a month for its streaming service, while premium cable networks such as HBO cost $13 to $18 a month, and that's on top of a monthly bill for other channels that typically exceeds $50. It remains to be seen whether the addition of Disney products and more original programming could lead Netflix to increase its price.

The Netflix spending spree could continue, with Sarandos telling Bloomberg News on Monday that his company would bid for rights to Sony movies when its Starz deal expires.

Netflix might have a tougher time wresting away the rights to Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox or Universal Pictures releases from their current deals with HBO, which like Warner is part of Time Warner Inc. Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM are almost certain to stick with Epix, of which the trio are co-owners.

Disney's family-friendly films are particularly valuable to Netflix, however, because young viewers are active users of the service. Last year it launched a separate Just for Kids section of its website and apps.

Although terms were not disclosed, a person close to the matter said Netflix could ultimately pay more than $300 million annually for Disney movies.

This year, HBO cut a deal with 20th Century Fox for its movies, at an estimated price of more than $200 million annually.

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No word from Supreme Court on gay marriage cases

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices are not exactly facing the "fiscal cliff," but they will be under more pressure this week to decide which gay marriage cases they will rule on this term.

They discussed the pending appeals at their private conference on Friday, but announced no decisions. The justices will try again at their weekly conference this Friday, the last such meeting before the long holiday recess.

It is not uncommon for the justices to discuss an appeal for two or more weeks before voting to grant it. The gay marriage question is complicated because there are 10 pending appeals, including a defense of California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage.

Eight of the appeals ask the court to rule on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal benefits to legally married gay couples. Judges in New England, New York and California have declared this provision unconstitutional because it denies gays and lesbians equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court has a duty to rule when a major federal law has been struck down in one part of the nation. But it is not clear which case the court should decide.

The first ruling on the issue arose when Nancy Gill, a postal worker from Massachusetts, sued because she could not include her female spouse on her healthcare plan. She won, but Justice Elena Kagan may be forced to sit out that case because she worked on it as solicitor general, potentially setting up a 4-4 tie.

In October, Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. advised the court that the New York case of Edith Windsor "now provides the most appropriate vehicle" for deciding the constitutional question. It was filed after Kagan had stepped aside from the Justice Department.

Windsor and her partner, Thea Spyer, lived together for more than 40 years and married in Canada in 2007. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor, but the Internal Revenue Service assessed Windsor $363,000 in estate taxes, saying she did not qualify as a "surviving spouse."

But because Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada, they may not serve as the proper stand-ins for the other plaintiffs who were legally married in one of the states.

Massachusetts has raised a third complication. State Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley filed a separate appeal and urged the court to decide the issue on states' rights grounds. Since marriage has always been a matter of state law, she argued, the Defense of Marriage Act violates the 10th Amendment, which protects the powers of the states.

If the court sees a problem with the Gill or Windsor cases, it could opt to decide similar cases involving federal benefits brought by same-sex couples from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and California.

Once the justices decide which of the Defense of Marriage Act cases to hear, they must decide whether to go further and rule on California's Proposition 8 and the potentially broader issue of the right to marry for gay couples. If the court votes to hear the case, the justices will decide by next summer on whether the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

If the court turns down the appeal, it will clear the way for gay marriages to resume in California, but without setting a national precedent.

In addition, Arizona has asked the court to revive a state measure that denies benefits to the domestic partners of state employees — a case known as Brewer vs. Diaz.

The court's recent practice has been to announce on Friday afternoon which cases have been granted a review, and to announce on Monday the appeals that were turned down.

david.savage@latimes.com

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$120 tablet that runs both Android and Linux to launch in early 2013

For anyone who has ever used his or her Android tablet and wished that it could double as a desktop-style device, PengPod has a product just for you. Ars Technica reports that the new PengPod tablet, which runs both Android and Linux, has met its crowd-sourced fundraising goals and will so on sale in January for $ 120 a 7-inch model and $ 185 for a 10-inch model. According to Ars, the tablet will be able to “dual-boot Android 4.0 and a version of Linux with the touch-friendly KDE Plasma Active interface.” Overall, the tablet received funding of nearly $ 73,000, or around 49% more than the $ 49,000 that the company had been seeking.

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Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Court upholds $319M verdict in 'Millionaire' case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $319 million verdict over profits from the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and rejected Walt Disney Co.'s request for a new trial.

A jury decided in 2010 that Disney hid the show's profits from its creators, London-based Celador International. The ruling Monday by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found no issues with the verdict or with a judge's rulings in the case.

"I am pleased that justice has been done," Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.

Disney did not immediately comment on the decision.

The ruling comes more than two years after the jury ruled in Celador's favor after a lengthy trial that featured testimony from several top Disney executives. The company sued in 2004, claiming Disney was using creative accounting to hide profits from the show, which first ran in the United States from August 1999 to May 2002 and was a huge hit for ABC.

The jury found that Celador was owed $269.2 million, and a judge later added $50 million in interest to the judgment.

The appeals court determined the verdict was not "grossly excessive or monstrous" and that it was not based on speculation or guesswork.

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National Briefing | New England: New Hampshire: Not Guilty Plea in Hepatitis Case

A traveling hospital technologist accused of stealing drugs and infecting patients with hepatitis C through contaminated syringes pleaded not guilty in federal court on Monday. The technologist, David Kwiatkowski, whom prosecutors described as a “serial infector,” was indicted last week on charges of tampering with a consumer product and illegally obtaining drugs. Until May, Mr. Kwiatkowski worked as a cardiac technologist at Exeter Hospital, where 32 patients were given diagnoses of the same strain of hepatitis C he carries. Before that, he worked in 18 hospitals in seven states, moving from job to job despite having been fired twice over accusations of drug use and theft. In addition to the New Hampshire patients, a handful of patients in Kansas and one in Maryland have been found to carry the strain Mr. Kwiatkowski carries.

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Rupert Murdoch pulls plug on 'the Daily,' first news app for iPad

Rupert Murdoch has pulled the plug on News Corp.'s high-profile experiment to create a digital national newspaper.

The demise of the Daily, announced Monday by News Corp., illustrates the challenges the media baron faces as he attempts to transform his global publishing empire for the Internet age.

The Daily was introduced nearly two years ago as the first news application for Apple Inc.'s iPad and was designed to dazzle a generation of young readers who found print publications too dated and stodgy. But in the end, News Corp.'s expensive endeavor violated an old-school media tenet: Don't be boring.

"The Daily wasn't very interesting," said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst and author of "Newsonomics," a book about the future of the online news business. "Visually, it was attractive, but they forgot that if you are going to call it the Daily you have got to change people's daily reading habits. They never presented enough of a compelling reason to read the Daily."

Analysts estimated that News Corp. spent at least $80 million to hire big-name journalists and designers and operate the application with the look of a high-end magazine. Along the way, Murdoch discovered that established brands such as the Wall Street Journal would be a more potent draw for readers in the digital world rather than trying to create a new title from scratch.

The Daily will cease publication Dec. 15. Its technology and some employees will be folded into the New York Post, one of Murdoch's old-media titles.

"From its launch, the Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing," Murdoch said in a statement. "Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term."

News Corp. on Monday outlined a sweeping restructuring as it prepares to break into two separately traded companies next year. It plans to spin off its publishing assets, including the Journal, the Post, the Times of London, the Australian and book publisher HarperCollins, into an entity that will retain the News Corp. name "in keeping with the company's 60-year heritage of bringing news to the world," Murdoch said.

The more profitable entertainment properties will constitute the second company, the Fox Group. The entertainment side will boast News Corp.'s vast television assets, including Fox Broadcasting, cable channels FX, Fox News Channel and National Geographic, regional sports networks, and interests in British and European satellite services, as well as the 20th Century Fox movie studio.

Murdoch, 81, will be the chairman and chief executive of the Fox Group. He will remain chairman of the reconstituted and much smaller News Corp. Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, will become chief executive of the publishing company when the corporate split is complete, most likely next summer.

The selection of Thomson, 51, to run the company confirms his increasing stature within Murdoch's enterprise. Thomson, who like Murdoch is a native of Australia, has been an increasingly close confident of Murdoch since he was installed as managing editor of the Journal and editor in chief of its parent, Dow Jones & Co., in 2008. Before joining Dow Jones, the onetime China correspondent served as editor of the Sunday Times, another News Corp. paper, for six years. Before that, he was editor of the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, owned by News Corp. rival Pearson.

Murdoch, in a Twitter post, called Thomson "a special leader and great friend. Also an Aussie!" In the company's statement, Murdoch singled out the Journal's growth internationally and the U.S. during Thomson's tenure.

The company said the Journal's deputy editor in chief, Gerard Baker, 50, will succeed Thomson. Baker has worked at the Times of London, BBC and Financial Times.

Separately, the company said Tom Mockridge, who was tapped last year to lead News Corp.'s scandal-plagued British newspaper unit News International, would leave the company at the end of this month. Mockridge, who was passed over for the CEO job in favor of Thomson, had worked at News Corp. since 1991.

Mike Darcey, 47, chief operating officer at pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Group, will replace Mockridge at News International, the company said. He will become the division's third chief in less than two years. Mockridge last year was dispatched to replace Rebekah Brooks, who was forced to resign over News International's hacking and bribery scandal at the company's now-closed News of the World and faces a criminal trial next year.

Monday's moves were designed, in large part, to structure News Corp. for a new era. Wall Street had long agitated for News Corp. to shed its newspapers and focus on the more profitable television channels and moviemaking. But Murdoch refused to relinquish his publishing titles. Instead, he agreed to separate News Corp. to appease investors and give him the freedom to buy new properties.

The company has more than $10 billion in cash, and has begun a buying spree that includes regional sports networks and an Australian television business. The company is said to be contemplating other acquisitions in the old-media space, including the Los Angeles Times and book publisher Simon & Schuster, owned by CBS Corp.

The company would like to bolster its HarperCollins publishing arm, reportedly to better compete against the powerhouse Amazon.com, which has the ability to offer price discounts.

"The power of the written word has been in my bones for my entire life," Murdoch wrote Monday in the email to employees. "It began as I listened to my father's stories from his days as a war correspondent and, later, as a successful publisher. It deepened when, starting in grammar school, I rolled up my sleeves and worked alongside fellow students to publish school journals."

meg.james@latimes.com

dawn.chmiewlewski@latimes.com

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Coast Guardsman is killed after suspected smugglers ram his boat

A veteran U.S. Coast Guard chief petty officer was killed Sunday after suspected smugglers rammed his vessel near Santa Cruz Island, casting him into the ocean with a fatal head wound.

Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III, 34, of Redondo Beach was second in command of the Halibut, an 87-foot patrol cutter based in Marina del Rey. Authorities said they could not recall a Coast Guard chief petty officer being killed in such a manner off the coast of California.

Early Sunday morning, the Halibut was dispatched to investigate a boat operating near Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's eight Channel Islands. The island is roughly 25 miles southwest of Oxnard.

The boat, first detected by a patrol plane, had fallen under suspicion because it was operating in the middle of the night without lights and was a "panga"-style vessel, an open-hulled boat that has become "the choice of smugglers operating off the coast of California," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

The Coast Guard cutter contains a smaller boat — a rigid-hull inflatable used routinely for search-and-rescue operations and missions that require a nimble approach. When Horne and his team approached in the inflatable, the suspect boat gunned its engine, maneuvered directly toward the Coast Guard inflatable, rammed it and fled.

The impact knocked Horne and another Coast Guardsman into the water. Both were quickly plucked from the sea. Horne had suffered a traumatic head injury. While receiving medical care, he was raced to shore aboard the Halibut. Paramedics met the Halibut at the pier in Port Hueneme and declared Horne dead at 2:21 a.m.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our shipmate," said Adm. Robert J. Papp, the Coast Guard commandant. "Our fallen shipmate stood the watch on the front lines protecting our nation, and we are all indebted to him for his service and sacrifice."

The second crew member knocked into the water suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a hospital later Sunday. He was not identified.

Using a helicopter and a 45-foot boat stationed in Los Angeles, the Coast Guard later found the panga and stopped it.

Two men were detained. The Coast Guard declined to identify them or say whether drugs were found aboard the boat. A second suspicious vessel was believed to have been traveling alongside the panga before the incident.

"We are actively working to ensure that all of the individuals involved in this illegal activity are brought to justice," said Coast Guard Capt. James Jenkins.

The Coast Guard was unable to provide a detailed account of Horne's service.

He had been heralded by the agency on several occasions.

He appears to have arrived in Southern California last summer after serving for two years as an executive petty officer in Emerald Isle, N.C. There, he received a Coast Guard Commendation Medal for his leadership in 63 search-and-rescue cases, in which 38 lives were saved.

According to an account of the medal ceremony, the most notable of those operations involved a boat that capsized in a North Carolina inlet in 2010. The account said he coached his team through "treacherous" sea conditions to rescue five people.

The Coast Guard also noted Horne's involvement in a January operation in which the Halibut found and stopped two boats operating at midnight with

no lights. The boats contained 2,000 pounds of marijuana.

In the last five years, as U.S. authorities have become increasingly successful at blocking traditional land routes, smugglers have taken increasingly to the sea — ferrying both drugs and immigrants. Authorities believe a smuggling vessel is launched toward California every three days; the number of immigrants and smugglers arrested at sea or along the coast more than doubled to 867 in 2010 from the previous year.

Drug runners and human smugglers have run ashore at a dog beach in Del Mar, at Crystal Cove in Orange County and next to the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Border Patrol agents have been diverted from land to sea, and an agency supervisor recently called the ocean "the front line."

The eruption in sea-based smuggling has created the same cat-and-mouse game in the ocean that has long existed along the U.S.-Mexico border. Smuggling boats often travel without lights and at a slow speed to limit their wakes. When U.S. agents began disrupting routes into San Diego beaches, smugglers began conducting counter-surveillance, using radios to direct boat pilots to unguarded beaches.

scott.gold@latimes.com

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Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Vietnam Veterans, Claiming PTSD, Sue for Better Discharges

NEW HAVEN — In the summer of 1968, John Shepherd Jr. enlisted in the Army, figuring that the draft would get him anyway. By January 1969, he was in the Mekong Delta, fighting with the Ninth Infantry Division.

Within a month, his patrol was ambushed, and Mr. Shepherd responded by tossing a hand grenade into a bunker that killed several enemy soldiers. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star with a valor device, one of its highest decorations.

Yet the medal did little to assuage Mr. Shepherd’s sense of anxiousness and futility about the war. A few weeks after his act of heroism, he said, his platoon leader was killed by a sniper as he tried to help Mr. Shepherd out of a canal. It was a breaking point: his behavior became erratic, and at some point he simply refused to go on patrol.

“I never felt fear like I felt when he got shot,” Mr. Shepherd said last week.

After a court-martial, the Army discharged Mr. Shepherd under other-than-honorable conditions, then known as an undesirable discharge. At the time, he was happy just to be a civilian again. But he came to rue that discharge, particularly after his claim for veterans benefits was denied because of it.

Today, Mr. Shepherd, 65, is part of a class-action lawsuit against the armed forces arguing that he and other Vietnam veterans had post-traumatic stress disorder when they were issued other-than-honorable discharges. The suit, filed in Federal District Court, demands that their discharges be upgraded.

The suit raises two thorny issues that could affect thousands of Vietnam veterans: Can they be given a diagnosis of PTSD retroactively, to their time in service, though the disorder was not identified until 1980? And if they can, should recently instituted policies intended to protect troops with PTSD be applied retroactively to their cases?

Mr. Shepherd’s legal team, students with the Yale Law School veterans legal clinic, argues yes on both counts. In court papers, they assert that it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Shepherd and other veterans who were later given PTSD diagnoses began exhibiting troublesome symptoms while in service.

Moreover, under rules put in place during the Iraq war, troops who say they have PTSD must be given medical examinations before they are forced out of the military, to ensure that problematic behavior is not linked to the disorder. If they are given a PTSD diagnosis, service members may still receive an honorable discharge.

“Vietnam War-era veterans, in contrast, have been denied this opportunity for appropriate consideration of the PTSD,” the students said in the complaint.

But the Army says no. In a rejection of an earlier request by Mr. Shepherd to upgrade his discharge, the Army tersely rejected evidence that his misconduct 43 years ago was linked to PTSD and raised questions about whether his platoon leader was actually killed.

A spokesman for the Army said the military has a policy of not discussing pending litigation.

The details of Mr. Shepherd’s case aside, the suit could have a wide impact. The Yale team says that its review of records from 2003 to 2012 shows that 154 Vietnam-era veterans petitioned the Army to upgrade discharges because of PTSD, but that only two were successful. Yet the Army Board of Corrections for Military Records granted upgrades nearly half of the time for other cases.

The students estimate that more than a quarter million Vietnam-era veterans were discharged under other-than-honorable conditions, and that thousands of those probably had PTSD. Their suit names as defendants the secretaries for the Army, Air Force and Navy. Vietnam Veterans of America, the veterans service organization, is joining the case as a plaintiff on Monday.

Discharges that are other than honorable can make it harder for veterans to find work and also disqualify them for veterans benefits.

In Mr. Shepherd’s case, a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor in 2004 gave him a diagnosis of service-connected PTSD. As a result, the department will provide health care for his PTSD. But it will not provide him general medical care, unless he is found to have other health problems related to his service.

Veterans disability compensation is also a problem. Mr. Shepherd’s undesirable discharge was actually upgraded to a general discharge in the 1970s under a special Carter administration program. That upgrade should have made it easier for him to apply for disability compensation. But subsequent legislation enacted by Congress said that clemency upgrades like Mr. Shepherd’s did not automatically qualify veterans for benefits. Mr. Shepherd’s compensation claim was ultimately rejected.

Mr. Shepherd, who has been divorced twice and battled through alcoholism and drug abuse, lives in New Haven, getting by on Social Security and a Teamsters pension. (He drove trucks for years.) He could use the extra money from disability compensation, but what matters as much, he says, is removing the stain of his discharge.

“I want that honorable,” he said. “I did do my part, until I really felt it wasn’t worth getting killed for.”

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Chinatrust Bank to move U.S. headquarters to downtown L.A.

Chinatrust Bank has agreed to move its U.S. headquarters to downtown Los Angeles from Torrance.

The bank will rent two floors in 801 Tower, a company representative said. The high-rise is in the financial district north of Staples Center.

"We wanted to be in a major financial area," said Brian Gregson, head of U.S. retail banking at Chinatrust. "This is the early stage of getting our ducks in a row to start some expansion."

The bank's name will be affixed on top of the 25-story tower at 801 S. Figueroa St., he said.

Chinatrust, which is based in Taiwan, has 12 branches in the United States, including seven in Southern California. The bank will move about 175 employees to the new headquarters by the middle of next year, Gregson said.

Terms of the lease with landlord Mani Bros. Real Estate Group were not disclosed, but data provider CoStar said the agreement is for 10 years. At current rents, the lease for nearly 40,000 square feet would be valued at nearly $20 million.

Chinatrust's decision to move to downtown L.A. is part of a recent trend for businesses to relocate their main offices to the financial center, reversing the exodus of previous decades, real estate broker Ted Simpson of Cushman & Wakefield said.

"This speaks to the emergence of downtown L.A. as a corporate headquarters destination not seen since the 1980s," said Simpson, who represented the bank in the transaction with his partner Michael Ma.

Other companies to recently move their main offices or regional headquarters downtown include law firm Haight Brown Bonesteel and architecture firm Gensler.

"Corporations are once again choosing downtown for its attractiveness to its employees, not just low cost," Simpson said.

Average rents are cheaper downtown than on the popular Westside, in part because downtown has higher vacancy. Large corporations including Arco and First Interstate Bank left downtown in past decades or substantially reduced their offices.

Apartments going up in N. Hollywood

Apartment complexes planned before the demise of redevelopment agencies in California continue to rise in North Hollywood.

The projects in the NoHo Arts District near the northern terminus of the Red Line subway include the recently completed NoHo Senior Villas for elderly low-income tenants.

A larger, $50-million market-rate complex is under construction nearby and has reached its top height of six stories.

Phoenix developer Alliance Residential Co. is building the 308-unit market-rate complex called the Ferrara at 5031 Fair Ave. It is intended to be resort-like with outdoor dining facilities and bars, pools, cabanas and an outdoor movie venue.

"Our goal is to create a luxurious urban getaway for the residents," said Jonas Bronk of Alliance.

The Ferrara is slated for completion late next year.

NoHo Senior Villas, at 5525 Klump Ave., has 49 units and was built by Clifford Beers Housing and PATH Ventures for $16 million. Most of the units are reserved for seniors who were homeless and are living with a mental illness. The five-story complex has on-site facilities for mental health and social service personnel.

Both projects were designed by Killefer Flammang Architects of Santa Monica.

Also recently completed in North Hollywood was the $32-million NoHo Senior Arts Colony. It is intended for residents age 62 and over with interests in such pursuits as singing, acting, photography and writing.

The two senior housing projects are in the former North Hollywood Redevelopment Project Area, which offered tax breaks to developers. State officials dissolved local redevelopment agencies this year to save money.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

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