APLA stakes out lavish bash
Fund-raising dinner fetes ’20 Heroes’ over 20 years
By BILL HIGGINS
Ron Burkle’s impressive five-acre Beverly Hills estate was once even more impressive: When Harold Lloyd built the 36,000-square-foot, 44-room villa in 1927 it was set on 16 acres — including a nine-hole golf course.
“Now this is a movie star’s mansion,” said Bruce Vilanch, who was among those honored at Saturday’s “20 Years — 20 Heroes” AIDS Project Los Angeles fund-raising dinner. “It just shows what you can do when there’s no income tax.”
APLA raised more than $500,000 from the Wolfgang Puck-catered dinner celebrating the org’s 20th anni, also meant to remind donors “that this isn’t a crisis of the ’80s and ’90,” said APLA exec director Craig E. Thompson, “we’ve got 52,000 people with AIDS and HIV in L.A. County alone.”
