STORIES

Home to the Sunset Strip and the Rainbow District, West Hollywood is one of the most glamorous cities in the United States, known for celebrity sightings, a lively nightlife and glitzy hotels.  But for a long time, the area was just an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County, burdened with outdated ordinances and policies that failed to meet the needs of area residents.  In the early 1980s, one man – Ron Stone – decided that West Hollywood should be its own city and he set about making it happen.

I’m John Heilman, and I’ve served as Mayor of the City of West Hollywood and a member of the City Council for 40 years.  Ron was an incredible individual.  He was dedicated to the community, extremely ethical.  He was quite tall – about six-foot-four, all arms and legs – and he was an incredibly kind man.

He was compelled by a vision of open local government.  He saw cityhood as a way that West Hollywood’s 36,000 residents — most of them renters and many of them gay or elderly — could shape key community issues such as zoning, rent control and anti-discrimination laws

Dissatisfied with Los Angeles County’s bureaucracy and inattention to West Hollywood’s unique needs, a cityhood or incorporation campaign was launched in 1983 and, in 1984, that campaign made a city out of West Hollywood. Early on, Ron Stone put together a great coalition and, after that coalition was formed, he went out and won the support of an influential renters’ rights activist, Larry Gross, of the Coalition for Economic Survival or CES.

At the time, CES was assessing the aftermath of a losing campaign for rent control in Los Angeles County.  CES had put forth a ballot measure countywide for rent control that failed to pass, most likely because many of the county’s residents were homeowners and landlords, but also because there was an organized campaign by landlords to prevent it from passing.  But in West Hollywood that ballot measure was very popular, because in West Hollywood, 85% of the residents were renters.

CES joined the West Hollywood Incorporation Committee, and it mobilized local tenants to canvas the area with petitions to support cityhood for West Hollywood.  Ron Stone also secured the support of the Stonewall Democratic Club and the Harvey Milk Gay and Lesbian Democratic Club, which were very enthusiastic about the prospect of a city run by elected officials from the LGBT community.

Local landlords and developers mobilized in opposition to cityhood, but their efforts fell flat.  One early opponent was Francis Montgomery, a local landowner whose family managed the Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood.  Montgomery funded a campaign to try to convince area seniors that cityhood would give LGBT people undue influence and that the area would lose the protection of the Sheriffs, but that campaign didn’t work.

In the November 1984 election, an overwhelming majority of residents voted to make their unincorporated area the 84th city in Los Angeles County and that city was the City of West Hollywood. After the cityhood victory, Ron Stone ran twice for the city council and lost both times.  But he remained active in civic affairs, offering advice behind the scenes, attending council meetings and serving on committees.

In 1987, just as the City was beginning to thrive, Ron Stone’s health began to decline.  On August 27, 1988, Stone died at his home in West Hollywood of AIDS-related illness.  He was only 40 years old.

In the wake of his death, Stone would be publicly lauded as “the father of West Hollywood.”