Developer Wayne Ratkovich dies at 82

Wayne Ratkovich, the founder of The Ratkovich Company and a prominent developer across Downtown and West Los Angeles, died on Sunday. He was 82. The cause of death was complications from an aortic aneurysm, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

Ratkovich, who founded his development firm more than four decades ago, was instrumental in redeveloping some of Downtown Los Angeles’ most historic buildings and spearheading new developments across Playa Vista and San Pedro. 

“Throughout his career, Ratkovich had an uncanny ability to identify opportunities that others overlooked,” his family said in a statement. 

After graduating from UCLA, he started his career as a real estate broker at Coldwell Banker and began buying properties in the 1970s — one of which was the Oviatt Building at 617 South Olive Street in Downtown L.A., a 100,000-square-foot Art Deco building. The listing was for between $400,000 and $500,000. 

“I figured we ought to be able to do something with that,” Ratkovich told the Times in 2015. “Three years after we bought it, we got an offer far beyond anything we ever imagined.” 

Los Angeles City Council members started asking Ratkovich to buy up more historical properties, including the Wiltern Theatre and the Fine Arts building at 811 West 7th Street in Downtown L.A. 

Ratkovich then started looking towards the beach. 

In 2010, his firm paid $32.4 million for a hangar and 10 other buildings at 12475 West Bluff Creek Drive in Playa Vista, formerly operated by Howard Hughes. The development was eventually fully leased to Google, which still operates it as its Southern California campus. 

Six years later, Ratkovich sold the property for more than $300 million to a group of Japanese investors. 

Ratkovich Company is known for spending big to fix and flip.  

In 2013, the firm bought a full city block in Downtown L.A., with plans to redevelop it into a mixed-use center with retail, a hotel and a 708,000-square-foot office tower. The firm spent more than $250 million on the redevelopment, which was renamed The Bloc. Ratkovich called the project a “massive undertaking.” 

Five years later, Ratkovich sold its stake in the property. 

Ratkovich routinely expressed his love for L.A. monuments — Langer’s Deli, Disney Hall and Philippe’s restaurant — and his frustrations with Downtown L.A.’s planning. 

“They should have left it alone: 155 acres that the city condemned and I don’t think it’s ever going to work out now,” Ratkovich said of Bunker Hill in 2015. “In my opinion [the skyline] should have been along Wilshire Boulevard, the great linear downtown in America.”

The Ratkovich Company, now run by CEO Brian Saenger, is currently working on the redevelopment of West Harbor, a development on San Pedro’s waterfront.