No address change for Angelyne

By Bob Pool

May 2, 2008 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The check will be in the mail -- and billboard queen Angelyne knows exactly where to find it.

Even though her Hollywood office was demolished to make way for a new luxury hotel, the busty blond and mail-order entrepreneur will get to use her old Selma Avenue address anyway.

As part of a legal settlement with developers of the W Hotel project near Hollywood and Vine, the Tinseltown icon will maintain the same business address she has used for the last 19 years -- despite the fact that it was destroyed by the wrecking ball.

Angelyne and 35 other tenants of the block found themselves uprooted last year by the $500-million project, which is being built under the auspices of Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Agency.

But Angelyne charged that the agency and developers left her stuck with thousands of photos, posters and other “Angelyne Fan Club” materials imprinted with the defunct Selma Street mailing address.

Much of Angelyne’s income is derived from the mail-order sale of fan items: $10 autographed postcards and $35 signed posters that go for $45 if “an authentic lip print” is added.

She complained that it would cost about $400,000 to reprint all of the items with a new address included.

“One of the developers said that is too much. He said, ‘Honey, take me to court.’ He talked to me like I was his ex-wife,” Angelyne complained last year.

But Jeff Cohen, senior vice president of Gatehouse Capital Corp., the Dallas-based developer of the project’s hotel and accompanying commercial property, said Angelyne had been treated fairly.

“We don’t just print money in the backyard and give it away,” he said. He suggested that Angelyne’s mail could somehow continue to be delivered to the now-phantom Selma Avenue address and then forwarded to her.

According to a settlement agreement, that’s exactly what will be done now that the U.S. Postal Service’s standard one-year mail forwarding service has ended for Angelyne and the block’s other relocated tenants.

“No less frequently than once per week,” employees of the developers will “bundle all mail delivered to displacee’s mailbox on site and forward same to displacee via regular U.S. mail” to Angelyne’s new mailing address, it states.

Additionally, according to Thomas Zia, real estate consultant to Angelyne, she also will receive monetary compensation. That will help defray the cost of a Hollywood storage facility she rented to store her printed fan materials.

Angelyne said the dollar amount of the compensation is supposed to remain confidential. She promised she would be watching her mail closely.

“I know how much mail I should be getting. If they miss a beat picking it up, there’s a huge lawsuit for a lot of money coming. This agreement goes on in perpetuity, even if they sell their property.”

Despite the skimpy, low-cut clothing she wears as she tools around town in her pink 2004 Corvette with the personalized ANGLYNE license plate and her seductive billboard poses, she should be taken seriously, Angelyne said.

“I won’t be compromised. I have my ethics. I had to really stand up for myself. I felt this was the right thing to do.”

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