On land once inhabited by native Tongva people and, centuries later, by the Hughes Aircraft Company, the planned community of Playa Vista is gradually rising on Los Angeles’s West Side. Here, in the 1940s, Howard Hughes built a private airfield and his famous wooden “Spruce Goose,” an aircraft with the greatest wingspan in history. After a single flight, the Goose was permanently grounded, but controversy over the 1,086-acre tract hovered for decades following Hughes’s death in 1976
A series of developers, as early as 1978, tried to create a mixed-use, live-work community. But endless setbacks ensued. In the 1990s, DreamWorks planned a movie studio, then pulled out. Opposition from environmentalists over wetlands protection and other obstacles followed. The final outcome: Hundreds of acres of wetlands will be protected, limiting the development parcel to 435 acres. Now partially complete, it will enfold the historic Hughes Aircraft buildings as movie-production facilities.
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