Center Street Lofts/H2 Lot Update
The Center Street Lofts have their own webpage, where you can see detailed illustrations and floor plans of the project.
life on the edge
daily musings about the oddities of san pedro, california.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
The Center Street Lofts have their own webpage, where you can see detailed illustrations and floor plans of the project.
19 Comments:
wow, a whopping 5% of the units will be live/work spaces! someone needs to go to wikipedia and update the definition of "loft." i think it changed dramatically about 20 years ago.
And a whopping 0%, one presumes, will be priced within reach of your average starving artist.
Do any of you guys read the LA Weekly? Next time you pick one up, take a look at the ads in the back. No, not those ads, you perverts; I mean the ones in the very back. One ad after another for "funky," "artsy" "lofts" starting at $2000 a month.
I can't wait until the first ads for these things start showing up in the Random Lengths...
wow. too nutty. who pray tell will be buying these up? if they were smart they would offer some up for a few artists to own at 100k like they did in washington dc when they were doing the same shit there. a friend of mine got a loft for 160k because they did a lottery of sorts. i think one artist got one for free.
I don't think anyone seriously looked at this project as providing artists' lofts. It wasn't shopped to the public that way, it was shopped as upper middle class urban housing. Now the term loft just indicates an open floorplan and a high price.
Supposedly, the big ground floor business tenant is going to be a union office, but I have a feeling that they haven't persued that arrangement far enough for me to feel cozy about it. It would be nice to see the ILWU have a more public presence in downtown Pedro, if it does happen.
The real issue with the H2 project will be controlling and influencing the identity of the retail tenants. If anything leads to shitty chain businesses coming into town, it's gonna be this project.
Local 63 (clerks) already has its hall at Fifth and Mesa, and 94 (foremen) is on Harbor Boulevard. Local 13 is desperately in need of a new dispatch hall, but it will have to be huge, with lots of parking. So far, the talk that I've heard is of a new hall somewhere along Anaheim Blvd in Wilmington. To be honest with you, as much as I'd like to be able to pick up my jobs in downtown San Pedro, I think the traffic involved--hundreds of cars daily converging on the hall for the morning (around 6:00 - 8:00 AM) and evening (4:00-6:00 PM) dispatch would have a hellacious impact on residents and businesses in the area.
On second thought, if it scares the fucking yuppies away...
It may have been the Maritime Clerks(?)Union, but I'm not sure. I got a feeling that the developers trotted that possibility out to placate the locals when they were shopping their project, but they could be serious.
It sure wasn't Local 13. Given their traffic and activity level, they are going to be pretty unwelcome neighbors unless most anywhere they go, so I don't think that downtown Pedro is gonna happen for them. I figured they might build the new hall in Wilmington somewhere in the wasteland of port related expansion that's going on.
Marine Clerks--and like I said, they're already ensconced in the building on Fifth between Mesa and Palos Verdes. This was a fairly recent move, so I doubt they're really looking to relocate again.
No, I can't imagine anybody welcoming a new Local 13 dispatch hall downtown, for obvious reasons. Maybe they were talking about a new office for Local 13's administration--president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, health benefits office, dues office, etc. But as far as that goes, I don't see anybody really crying out for a replacement to our current Memorial Hall on C and Fries in Wilmington, which is still big enough for those functions and has tradition working in its favor as well.
So that whole "union office" spiel sounds like hot air to me. Just like that handful of token "live-work spaces," the purpose of which is simply to enable them to use that phrase in their advertising and public relations while actually concentrating on selling the straight residential units to the young managerial types they view as their target demographic. "Ooh, honey, look--we'll be rubbing shoulders with real Artisans of Craft! It's funky and artsy, but with no smelly poor people!"
The other union that it could have been is the harbor pilots, but I can't recall. Given their size, they would probably be a good candidate. I'm getting old here, memory's not so good anymore.
There is a difference between a live-work space and an artist's loft. The term "live-work loft" (in the City of Los Angeles) just means that the unit is over 750 square feet in size (you can build smaller apartments, but you won't get the loft designation) and you don't have to divide the rooms off. In other words, you can have a bathroom connected directly to a kitchen (a no-no in any other residential build) and a kitchen with no division from the open space. There are other minor rules, mostly having to do with fire safety, but that's it.
No one ever marketed the spaces in the building as low-income, or as artists' lofts, so you can't blame the developers for their plans. All kinds of self-employed, non-artists do and always have worked in live work spaces.
As to the idea of artists moving in, I work with hundreds of artists, and let me tell you, there is no shortage of middle to high income artists. The idea that artists are starving, penniless madmen is absolutely detrimental to the art industry. Artists are professionals, skilled in their field, making products or providing service that serves a market. Don't mistake broke, just out of art school, poor hipsters or weekend hobbyists for professional artists. Professional artists are like anyone else, their income range can hover just over the poverty line, or they can be millionaires. The same goes for arts professionals and academics. I have clients in academia who live in $500,000 lofts in Long Beach and are homeowners in Palos Verdes.
I worked for over a year on a project to build low-income artists' lofts on that site & at the LaSalle West and I can tell you that the numbers just don't work, and legally, because the H2 lot is a CRA owned property, you can't build a project their that discriminates in favour of one population, if the units qualify as low-income. If the units were qualified as low-income, you would just end up with the normal population that rents in that price range, with no garuntee of any artist population. The other problem with building low-income on H2 is that because low-income has a much smaller return on investment than "luxury condos", you would have to build much higher and many more samller units, to make the project attractive, with more parking, traffic, etc... When we were exploring the idea of building low-income on the site, we were looking at 15 years before the project became profitable in any way, minimum.
I know, I know, it's never the developer's fault. Pity the poor developer, whose only humble wish is to provide shelter and abode to upwardly mobile 22- to 35-year-old managers and financial workers who might otherwise have to bear the indignity of living in un-artsy, non-funky gated communities or tract developments. And all they ask in return is a few sheckels for their hard work and their pioneering vision. Must they always suffer the complaints and epithets of the people in whose communities their projects must unavoidably be installed? Don't these kvetching locals understand that the developers are, in the words of our friend Whalenale, "pushing up" the community--you know, like a bra?
And pity the CRA, as well, who have to keep a straight face while claiming that it's illegal to "discriminate" in favor of poor and middle class members of the community by imposing the sort of restrictions that have been placed on a million developers in a thousand cities for decades now, but that there's no illegal discrimination involved in using CRA property to build residences that inherently discriminate in favor of that portion of the population that can afford "luxury" condos. Personally, I don't know if I could deliver that line without giggling (but then, I should probably knock off the laughing gas).
Thanks for the info about the well-off artists; having just fallen off the turnip truck, I must admit I wasn't aware that some artists do well for themselves. So you're telling me that Andy Warhol wasn't working at K-Mart all those years to support himself? Now I'll have to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about this art thingy.
But how encouraging to learn that the "art industry," as you put it, is so attuned to the needs of the economy! Professionals, you are! Skilled, industrious, enterprising, sober! Making products to serve a market! No paint-spattered, gin-soaked, neurotic, unemployable wretches, you--not in today's red-hot art market! Can "art futures" tradable on NASDAQ (you know, like pork bellies) be far behind? Then you wouldn't even have to worry about getting Centre Street yuppies to come into Walled City and buy a painting; you could just make your work available on the open commodities market and a few months later, presto! Twenty dollar fish and chips at the Whale and Ale for the whole gang! Let's hear it for art!
Incidentally, who's "we"?
I don't think there was any resistance or complaint on the part of the community (outside of some parking issues) regarding the development of the H2 lot. For about 30 years the city has been trying to develop this project (although it was a mistake to bulldoze the buildings that made way for both the Sheraton and the H2 lot in the first place, IMHO), and ground was broken several times on projects that didn't pan out, most recently a multiplex theatre in the mid 90's. Building new buildings, tearing down old ones, restoring old buildings, expanding, changing etc... deveoplers are part of normal community growth and maintinence. Yes, they are often over-zealous and quick to ignore the wants of the existing community, and that's why the community has to function as a balance on their ideas and plans.
I can see and agree with you on some of your critisisms of other projects in the area, but the H2 lot development is something that the community has wanted for a long time. I remember how excited folks were when there was going to be a theatre showing first run movies in downtown, and how disappointed folks were when that project went under (this was when it looked like the Warner might have no future).
"We" was the Angels Gate Cultural Center. In 01-02 we explored the possibility of expanding our program by building live/work, low-income artists' lofts in the LaSalle Hotel, as well as developing the H2 Site as mixed use retail. I was not involved in much decision making during the exploratory process, but was part of the discussion with both the CRA and the developers. I had the opportunity to explore the LaSalle top to bottom and can say that it probably doesn't have much of a future as a building, unless cold-water, bathroomless flats come back into style. Basically it is riddled with load bearing walls that would make any project geared towards low-income lofts unlivable (at 750-1000 sq. feet per unit, every apartment would be essentially a collection of narrow hallway-like rooms. Wearing my artist hat, the place, and the floorplans we had drawn up stank to high heaven of "not enough room to work"). It also has extensive fire damage in a number of areas, outside of the brick, the building has little that is salvageable.
During that process, the one future for the H2 lot that really appealed to me was building a MTA bus terminal on the lot. Apparently San Pedro is supposed to have a bus terminal/turnaround in the downtown area, and 7th Street, being a secondary highway, is ideal for an entrance and exit to that lot. There may even be state bond money sitting in the bank somewhere, for that project. I thought it would be great if we had a major transit hub in the middle of downtown, but there was apparently huge resistance from the "white, moneyed, property owning population" about "those people" using the buses.
With regard to the CRA and discrimination. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. When we were trying to renovate the LaSalle Hotel, we were told, basically that you cannot build housing that caters to any specific group. In other words, it would be illegal for us to say "Let me see your slides and artist's resume before we rent to you" if we were building low-income housing. It would be the same as denying someone housing on the basis of race or sexual orientation. If I am correct, the H2 lot does not specifically have any designation as low-income. If my memory serves we were exploring developing the H2 lot with the intention of having that portion of our project be geared towards upper-middle class condos, as well, with the La Salle being dedicated low-income artists' lofts (which was why we wanted to do the project iun the first place, so when the low-income artists' lofts got shot down, we backed out of the bidding).
I'm not talking about the Andy Warhols of the art world. Yes there are some spectacular art celebreties out there, but contrary to popular myth, they are a tiny speck of the population. Just like for every Donald Trump there are a million small businessmen and untrepenurs who make decent livings. Think about how many gin-soaked, neurotic wretches who probably work in any other workforce or industry. The vast majority of professional artists are not fine artists, but essential workers in every imaginable industry. Every graphic designer, architect, video game dynamic lighting specialist, set painter, film editor, actor, dancer, singer, potter, cake decorator, flower arranger, medical textbook illustrator, tattooist, old car pinstriper is an artist and a worker. I could sit here and expand that list all night. Just sit down and think about how little would get done in our post-industrial, capitalist economy if literally dozens or even hundreds of professional artists weren't working to make, design and market every object you use, own or buy. Then think about how much money some of those folks make and then ask yourself if most artists are starving in their garrets?
Actually, the art market (at the international level) is becoming increasingly analagous to the stock market or any other trading market. Almost no one who buys a painting for more than say $200,000 does not have the idea of capital investment in mind. Art, in the high range of the market (we are talking millions per object here), like precious metals, can be seen as a safe investment that also has the advantage of bringing tremendous bragging rights and prestige to the owner. Given the astronomical numbers that some works are trading at, it is likely that at some point in the not so distant future folks will be trading in shares of major pieces, which are held in bank vaults or on display, never actually moving around, but with the investors changing, depending on the whims of taste and the market. Scary, huh?
Calamari wrote:
I can see and agree with you on some of your critisisms of other projects in the area, but the H2 lot development is something that the community has wanted for a long time.
Oh, I don't dispute that at all. Look at the history of gentrification and you'll see that often the people in the affected communities welcome the changes, at first. "Hey, we finally have a decent grocery store and a place to get coffee! Our city councilman/woman tried for years and couldn't do that! And these new neighbors may be a little frou-frou, but they seem pretty harmless, and they sure did paint up the old flophouse real pretty, and...hey, what do you mean my rent is going up 30% this year? And the people next door are getting evicted for 'renovations'? And this snazzy pamphlet that the nice fellow from the Urban Land Institute gave me last week--'A New Urban Mixture,' I think it was called--good God, IT'S A COOKBOOK!" [*dramatic organ riff*]
I'd love to write a bunch more contentious stuff, but I have to get some rest. Going to NYC for the weekend. I'll let you know if I do anything fun and relevant to this blog, like going to Williamsburg and kicking hipsters in the shin.
Until then, let me just recommend that you take a spin by 22nd and Pacific, where the apartments above Anchor Liquor have gotten a quick paint job and become reborn as...no, wait for it...the "Grande Promenade Apartments." No, I'm not kidding. I laughed my ass off the other night when I saw that, and the novelty still hasn't worn off.
You should have seen some of the development ideas that were floated by, say, less scrupulous developers than the ones that are working downtown. Where the Bank Lofts and Center Street Lofts projects are being done as individual, unrelated projects by seperate entities, there was this one company that wanted to buy literally every building on 7th Street, with the exception of my building and Robin & Doug Hinchliffe's building, almost every building on 6th with the exception of the John T. Gaffey Building and Papadakis' building, and develop the bank, the H2 and the LaSalle. They had maps and drawings of our "new downtown" and everything. I was so wierded out by the fact that my building was going to be sitting there in the middle of this totally fake "olde" downtown.
Have fun in NYC. Last time I was there I slept in a $250 a night room (We weren't paying anywhere near that much) at a faux hostel in Manhattan that was basically a taller version of the Cabrillo hotel, and we had to pay $50 a day to park our car in some kind of mechanical 8 storey car shuffler.
That the Anchor Liquor apartments have been reborn as the "Grand Promenade Aparements" doesn't suprise me. I believe that the Papadakis family still owns Anchor Liquor, or at least the building it's in. Speaking of promenades, has anyone noticed the mile of palm trees the just put in over at the construction site. They moved a bunch of stuff around, at the same time, everything from 5th to the bridge on Harbor looks slightly different.
New fake downtown, eh? Sounds vaguely familiar for some reason (*cough* Bridge to Breakwater *cough*).
Yeah, NYC was fun. A quick trip, obviously. I actually stayed in that flophouse-turned-hostel in the Bowery that I linked to in one of my comments here. $30 a night gets you a room just slightly bigger than the bed inside it, and cubicle-style walls that extend almost, but not quite, up to the ceiling. That's fine with me; I don't need anybody to powder my ass, I just want a place to crash after exploring all day. Apparently, I'm not the only one who travels in that mode, because they do a pretty good business. If that's not proof that there are other uses for old residential hotels than yuppie condos, I don't know what is.
I did some walking and bus riding in Harlem and East Harlem, which are supposedly in the process of being gentrified. If so, the gentrifiers have still got a long way to go. Of course, I'm rooting against them and for the people of Harlem.
As for Williamsburg...ah, what to say about Williamsburg? It seemed that every time I turned around, I was either seeing something that made me think, "Damn, I wish Pedro were more like this," or "Jesus fucking Christ, I hope Pedro never becomes like this." Cool (and reasonably priced) used bookstores, vapid boutiques, overpriced trendy restaurants, hole-in-the-wall bars, bubbleheaded shopaholics, genuine starving artists selling shit out of their cars, gorgeous (to me) buildings in their as-yet-unrenovated glory, the ominous sight of scaffolding everywhere...man, can't we just have the bookstores and the starving artists without the high rents and the renovations and the yuppies?
On a side note, if you drive your car to Manhattan you deserve to pay $50 a day to park it. You're in the freaking world capital of public transportation! Seven bucks a day for an unlimited Metrocard and you can ride the subways and buses all the livelong day!
(Fuckin' Papadakis, I might have known...him and his grahhhhnd promenahhhhd...)
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