Los Angeles- from www.dailybreeze.com – The Wild Goose, a Del Aire strip club that has been a South Bay fixture for more than 40 years, could be demolished and replaced with condominiums.
The bar’s owner, Larry Kroeze, plans to put a five-story condominium complex on the site of the club and nearly a dozen homes he owns on Aviation Boulevard between 116th and 117th streets.
An adjacent lot used as a Metro Green Line bus terminal would be replaced with a five-story apartment building, and the bus terminal would be moved to a neighboring lot.
Kroeze is working on completing environmental and traffic reports necessary before the county Board of Supervisors can vote on the proposal, which he said will probably be in the spring.
“The wave of the future is transit-oriented development,” Kroeze said. “The idea is people can get right on a train.”
And it won’t hurt to have a more child-friendly business in the family, Kroeze said.
“Our family owns (the Wild Goose), and there’s nobody left that would like to run it,” Kroeze said. “Our children aren’t interested in it. Running a strip club and bar is a seven-day and seven-night deal.”
Between the two properties, there would be 393 apartments and condos, Kroeze said. Retail stores, including a small market, would on the first floor.
About 10 homes near the Wild Goose, all owned by Kroeze and rented out, would be razed to make way for the proposed development, he said.
John Koppelman, president of the Del Aire Neighborhood Association, said he supports the new housing developments, which would be named Aviation Station. But he is trying to convince Kroeze to provide more parking.
Kroeze will likely have relaxed parking requirements because of the development’s proximity to public transportation.
“I know it’s not realistic to try and fight the project and make it stop,” Koppelman said. “I don’t want the single-family home residents that have been here for 30 years competing for parking with all the condos and apartments.”
Roger Moliere, who is in charge of real estate for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said he approached Kroeze with the idea of building a housing development on his land because it is ideally situated next to the Green Line.
“He owns a city block next to our Green Line station and bus turn-around,” Moliere said. “We started discussing various ideas. It evolved from there into a multiuse facility for residential and some retail.”
Moliere said the county currently has about 30 other similar projects in construction.
Larry Kroeze’s father, Ralph, took over the Wild Goose in 1966 after “some guys” he had loaned money to for purchase of the club defaulted on the loans, Kroeze said.
Ralph Kroeze, who ran a vending machine business, tried to sell it to two other people, and both times they were unable to manage the bar.
“It just kept coming back to him,” Larry Kroeze said. After taking it over, Ralph Kroeze went on to buy the rest of the homes on the block.
“He thought if you owned the neighborhood, people couldn’t complain about you,” Larry Kroeze said. “In those days, it looked like this area was all going to be industrial and commercial buildings. He always looked at it one way down the road. He wasn’t looking to stay here his whole life.”
Larry Kroeze took over the Wild Goose, now marketed as a topless sports club, in 1992 after his father died. He said his father would be proud that he is developing the property.
He would have been “kind of excited about it,” Kroeze said. “You sit back and plan something and, hopefully, you have the satisfaction that you’ve seen something you’ve worked on come to life.”