The Norton Ave. Building Where Jim Morrison Lived Is for Sale for $3 Million

Might Jim Morrison’s last WeHo home be taken down by a bulldozer?

The website Laist reports that the house at 8214 Norton Ave. near Havenhurst, where the Doors’ lead singer is said to have shared an apartment with girlfriend Pamela Courson, is on the market for $2.995 million.

The Spanish-style building has six two-bedroom apartments according to its MLS listing. The listing says plans have been filed with the city to convert the building into a bed & breakfast inn where it estimates rooms could rent for $550 a night. The list also notes the building “boasts a future development opportunity” with zoning that would allow it to be torn down and replaced by up to eight condos. The owner, Cheri Woods, is using the Ellis act to empty the building by evicting her two tenants, who rent their apartments for $3,000 each.

Woods has dubbed the building Cherie Amour and tried to promote Morrison’s connection with it to lure visitors. After several attempts, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission agreed to designate the building as historic, with opposition from commissioners Allegra Allison, Edward Levin and Gail Ostergren, who raised about Morrison’s actual connection with the building and about the importance of that in designating it as an historical or cultural resource. The proposal was sent to the West Hollywood City Council for final approval  but the Council has not yet taken it up.

According to stories published in the Los Angeles Independent and the Los Angeles Times in 2005, Woods already was renting out a two-bedroom apartment in the building for short stays that she claimed had been inhabited by Morrison. In an interview with the Independent, Woods said she rented the bedroom on Airbnb for $200 a night. The building now is listed on Woods’ Cheri Woods Rentals website, where it says each of two bedrooms goes for $3,000 a month. The bedrooms, the site says, are not currently avaiable. Rentals of 29 or fewer days would be a violation of the city’s zoning ordinance.

In the interview with the Independent, Woods also contended that Morrison, who was found dead in 1971 in Paris of an apparent drug overdose, actually is still alive and is hiding with the help of the FBI.

“Jim Morrison really is alive,” Woods said. “He is living with his girlfriend in the middle of nowhere. He still smokes pot and drinks beer. The last time I talked to him, he told me he wanted to meet Billy Idol and that he liked the way Val Kilmer portrayed him in the film ‘The Doors’.”

Morrison fans seem to believe he lived there. A “Jim and Pamela” fan page on Facebook has warned that the apartment building might be demolished, pointing to a former Trulia listing that read: “If the famous building is sold to a developer, the owner plans to hold an onsite auction so Doors fans can buy original items such as ‘The Doors’ from the building before it is demolished and replaced with 8 new units at 1200 SF each (or even more if some were designated ‘affordable housing’ on the lot.”