Palos Verdes Research Park

In 1960, General Telephone and Great Lakes Property Inc. (which owned thousands of acres of land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, purchased from Frank Vanderlip, Jr. and the Palos Verdes Corporation in 1953) proposed a 400 acre “campuslike science center” near the intersection of Hawthorne Boulevard and Crest Road in Rolling Hills Estates. They spent $250,000 on glossy ads for the “Palos Verdes Research Park” (see ad below).

This General Telephone ad was from “Harpers Magazine” July 1961, inside back cover. Ad courtesy of Ed Sharpe Director/Archivist for SMECC and RHHS (now Peninsula High) Class of ’70 (Del Cerro) – www.smecc.org

The first tenant was Nortronics division of Northrop Corp., which planned a 100 acre development. When the developers tried to get the county to relax zoning standards (this area was not yet part of Rolling Hills Estates) to allow light manufacturing, the city council of neighboring Rolling Hills protested. Great Lakes Property Inc. relented and then decided to pursue home construction on the balance of the property. Rolling Hills Estates voters approved the annexation of 375 acres of this property in March 1963.

Great Lakes Property Inc., after no other companies followed Northrop’s interest in the property, announced that it would sell 107 acres of land as a site for what was then being called “Palos Verdes State College”. This sale, however, was never completed due to escalating land prices and the sale was abandoned in mid 1965, and the campus was later located in Carson as the California State University, Dominquez Hills. Gradually, the balance of the land originally planned for the Palos Verdes Research Park was parceled off and sold for home development. In 1991, Northrop decided to sell its 34 acres that it still occupied, and this land was later developed into the Vantage Point subdivision.

For more about the history of the HISTORY OF ROLLING HILLS AND ROLLING HILLS ESTATES , visit my website at https://www.maureenmegowan.com