The Summer the Woodstock Road Skeletons Come Down: A Laurel Canyon Notebook

Sit on the porch of the Canyon Country Store at 2108 Laurel Canyon Boulevard on a July morning and you can watch the neighborhood do what it does. A latte from Lilly's next door, a screen door slapping against its frame, a Prius pausing to let a coyote finish crossing the double yellow. Look uphill toward Mulholland from the parking lot and, if you know where to squint, you can still see them: five three-story concrete husks on North Woodstock Road, roofless, windowless, silhouetted against the sky like a set that was never struck.

By the time this porch is empty on a Saturday morning in August, that view is supposed to be gone.

The deadline that finally has teeth

On August 7, 2026, the property owner of the five unfinished homes on Woodstock Road is required, by order of the Los Angeles City Attorney, to have them demolished. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto's office secured a plea agreement over the building and safety violations of the five partially built hilltop homes, and as a result the owner is required to demolish all five homes by August 7, 2026. Miss the date and the terms get expensive: the owners will be required to demolish the homes by Aug. 7, 2026, or face probation, community service and a $25,000 fine.

For anyone who has lived on Kirkwood, Wonderland, or Lookout Mountain for more than a minute, this is not abstract civic news. It is the end of a story residents have been telling each other for a generation.

A compressed timeline, because the file is thick:

• 1998–1999. Permits are issued for a planned 21-home development of unfinished, three-story, 5,000-square-foot single-family homes along N. Woodstock Road near Mulholland Drive.
• 2002. The L.A. Planning Commission places a six-month moratorium on the project pending an environmental impact assessment to be drafted by the property developers.
• 2003. The city orders the homes demolished after the impact assessment does not happen. Nothing is demolished.
• Late 2020. The Ghalilis become the most recent in a long line of private developers and owners over the past two decades who tried to resurrect what had initially been a large development project.
• June 2023. The City Attorney's Office files 25 counts against Shahram and Ester Ghalili over their five unfinished, three-story, single family homes near Mulholland Drive.
• August 7, 2025. Ghalili pleads no contest to five counts of failure to comply with lawful orders issued by the Department of Building and Safety and is placed on formal diversion for a period of one year, required to demolish all five vacant structures by August 7, 2026, obey all building regulations, cooperate with city inspectors, and pay $5,000 in fines.

Twenty-three years from moratorium to backhoe, assuming the backhoe arrives.

What the skeletons taught the canyon about itself

Here is the argument this notebook wants to make. The Woodstock Road ruins are not an anomaly the canyon endured. They are the reason the canyon organized. Every quiet institution that shapes daily life up here, from the newsletter in your inbox to the trailhead across the street, exists in part because of that skyline.

Consider the Laurel Canyon Association. The LCA is a 501(c)(4) non-profit residents association with a mission to protect the quality of life and the environment of Laurel Canyon, and it is the oldest association in the neighborhood, having formed in 1930. Its recent record reads less like a homeowner group and more like a small land-use firm: a $1.6 million, 17-acre open space acquisition project known as Let's Buy a Mountain, advocacy toward a new Hillside Construction Regulation Overlay Zone for Laurel Canyon, creation of a Hillside Retaining Wall Ordinance with other hillside partners, and initiation of a proposed Wildlife Coordinator Ordinance with Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife.

The tactic that most defines them, though, is the quietest one. When they cannot stop a project through ordinance, they buy the ground under it. The LCA and the Laurel Canyon Land Trust purchased 2243 Laurel Canyon Boulevard after two years of advocacy, appeals, litigation, and settlement meetings, so the parcel will be preserved in perpetuity as open space; it was bought from the developer of the new house under construction at 2239 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and replacement California Black Walnut trees, a threatened native species, will be planted on the newly purchased parcel. A hyperlocal offset program, essentially, run by neighbors who got tired of losing at Planning Commission.

The Kirkwood Bowl Foundation plays a parallel role a few blocks over. It is dedicated to the preservation of the Laurel Canyon environment through community connectedness, long range strategic action, environmental stewardship, responsible development, hard information and pursuing fair and equitable city government. Read the Bowl's own log of wins and losses and you see the same shape: a Blue Heights massive project reduced in size a second time by the Zoning Director because of their opposition, and two 5,000-plus square foot houses and hillside plans fought by many, until the developers gave up and the land was bought and donated to preservation.

The Woodstock Road skeletons made these institutions necessary. This is the summer their patience gets rewarded.

Under the Country Store, the counter-argument

Ridge politics is one register of the canyon. There is another, and it lives twelve feet underground.

Pace has been serving locally farmed all-organic Italian and Californian food for 26 years and counting, nestled in the basement of a 130-year-old building situated in the middle of Laurel Canyon. That building is the Canyon Country Store above it. The basement it occupies has a specific history: Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas lived in the basement of the Canyon Country Store for a period of time, and the space is now home to Pace, an Italian restaurant. The store itself was rebuilt in 1930 using brick and stones from the old riverbed and turned into the market we see today, after the original 1929 lodge burned down.

Head chef and owner Sandy Gendel still runs the place the way he always has. Pace specializes in organic cooking using the freshest ingredients grown by local farmers, and on any given day you can find Head Chef and Owner Sandy Gendel at one of the various farmers' markets throughout the city, his goal each week to choose the best possible produce and ingredients to enhance Pace's beloved rustic, Italian cuisine. Dinner service runs Monday through Thursday 5:30 to 10 pm, Friday and Saturday 5:30 to 11 pm, and Sunday 5:30 to 10 pm.

Upstairs, the store keeps a rhythm that has not moved in years. Weekday hours run 7 am to 10 pm, with Saturday from 8 am to 10 pm and Sunday from 8 am to 9 pm. Owner Tommy Bina has been the constant. He has managed the store for over four decades and has meticulously preserved its unique character, ensuring that the spirit of the canyon's musical heritage remains alive. Ask a canyon parent what the summer routine looks like and you get some version of what a visiting grandmother from New Jersey put in a January review: morning coffee on the porch, and after picking up her grandson from school an after-school ice cream, or an after-dinner treat from Pace eaten on the porch with the grandkids.

That is the counter-argument to the ridge story. While the LCA is filing letters and the Land Trust is closing on parcels, the store and the restaurant have been keeping the canyon's daily texture in place, one sandwich and one plate of pasta at a time. Both are the same neighborhood. One protects the frame; the other fills it.

A short field guide to who does what up here

What to watch on your own street this summer

A few concrete things worth knowing between now and Labor Day.

• The August 7 date is a hard date, not a soft one. The plea diversion runs a year from August 7, 2025. If demolition is complete on time, the criminal case resolves; if it is not, the penalties kick in per the City Attorney's terms above.
• Expect construction traffic near Mulholland. The homes sit along N. Woodstock Road near Mulholland Drive. Wonderland, Woodrow Wilson, and the upper reaches of Laurel Canyon Boulevard are the logical haul routes.
• Fire posture matters more than usual. A March 7, 2026 house fire on the canyon's steep slopes made the point that the fire started on a balcony and quickly spread to engulf the entire house, and the home's location on a steep slope at the end of a cul-de-sac posed a challenge for firefighters. Brush clearance around your own lot is the closest thing to insurance the canyon offers.
• The Land Trust is still buying. If a parcel near you goes on the market and you would rather it stay unbuilt, the LCA's land-use contact is [email protected], per its own workshop notices. That is the door.

The Woodstock Road story has always been about what happens when a hillside neighborhood is asked to absorb a project it did not agree to. What the canyon built in response, the association, the land trust, the ordinance work, the store and the restaurant underneath it, is the quiet infrastructure most residents never think about until they need it. This summer, if all goes to plan, one long chapter closes. The infrastructure remains.

If you own a home up here and are thinking about what the next chapter looks like for your own parcel, whether that is a discreet sale, a long lease to a vetted tenant, or simply understanding what a Woodstock-era hillside record means for your title and permits, LA Luxuries is available for a private conversation. Contact Us when the timing is right.