Design Center Plans to Grow
The news spread quickly last summer when Baker, Knapp & Tubbs, the largest tenant at the Pacific Design Center, threatened to forsake the West Hollywood building for a competing design center downtown.
In a business that lives and dies according to trends, the rumored move appeared to be a blow for the West Hollywood center and a coup for Palace Square, a 1.2-million-square-foot design emporium that is scheduled to open at 830 S. Hill St. in 1987.
But the Blue Whale, as the West Hollywood center is popularly known, survived the challenge. This fall, it signed Baker, Knapp & Tubbs to a lease that will keep it there until the year 2000.
The lease agreement left the whale completely occupied with about 200 tenants, including some of the most prestigious firms in the design business. Now, the whale hopes to solidify its dominant position in the Los Angeles market with a massive expansion, according to executive director Murray Feldman. “It will refocus the attention of the international design community on the Pacific Design Center,” Feldman said.
Will Stay Put
Owners and managers of local design firms said that, for now, they will remain in West Hollywood where interior designers, architects and space planners can look at furniture, carpets, drapes and accessories in one stop.
But showroom owners and managers said they may be forced to move eventually if rents, already almost double those downtown, continue to rise.
The design center’s expansion proposal presents the city of West Hollywood with a dilemma: How to accommodate an industry that threatens to go elsewhere without damaging the environment for neighboring homeowners who worry about traffic, noise and parking problems. Discussion of the specific plan is scheduled for tonight’s City Council meeting.
If approved, the specific plan will set most of the important guidelines for the development, such as the size and location of the buildings and the number of required parking spaces. Details such as landscaping will be considered by the council later.
No one has denied the style and daring of architect Cesar Pelli’s plan to expand the giant blue glass design center, at Melrose Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard.
Pelli plans to place two massive, irregularly shaped glass buildings on an extended base of the existing center, increasing it from 725,000 square feet to nearly 1.6 million square feet.
Deep Green Glass
The first addition would be nine stories tall in deep green glass and the second a sweeping slice of maroon glass, eight stories high. Facing San Vicente would be a large, landscaped plaza edged by a small amphitheater and a free-standing exhibition gallery.
But neighbors on residential streets east of the project said their view will be not of the stylish glass buildings, but of a seven-level bare concrete parking structure, dubbed the “gray ghost” by one man.
“It looks like an afterthought,” said Peter Freed, whose home on Huntley Drive would be across the street from the garage. “It’s as if it were designed by the Corps of Engineers of the U.S. Army. It looks like a bunker.”
After neighbors complained about shadows that the parking structure would cast and noise and fumes of cars, Feldman agreed to set the garage farther back from the homes, and to terrace it and landscape it to lessen its impact on the neighborhood.
Feldman also said the first two or three levels of the garage would be enclosed to prevent car noise and fumes from disturbing neighbors.
Extension Sought
Neighbors, still concerned about traffic and parking problems, have asked for an extension of public hearings for several weeks, while Feldman said he hopes to get City Council approval tonight so the structure can be completed by March, 1987 in time for West Week, the center’s annual design conference.
A staff report recommends approval of the specific plan for the project although the buildings are taller and denser and the parking structure smaller than required by local zoning. The city staff also asked for conditions that would require the developer to:
- Pay 50 cents a square foot, or about $437,000, into a fund to construct affordable housing in the city as proposed by a community development corporation. The center would also have to pay $50,000 to help start up the corporation.
- Open a child-care center in the building or pay the city 10 cents per square foot of project area, or $87,500, to help the city provide child care at another location.
- Set aside 10 days a year in the exhibition gallery for use by the city.
- Pay 1% of the project cost to the city for art in public places. For completion of the $85-million first phase, that would be $850,000.
- Pay roughly $218,000 to help establish a transit system linked to the design center.
If the project is approved, the design center would also be required to widen streets and improve several major intersections near the building.
But Freed said the conditions would do little for neighbors of the building.
“From where I sit,” he said, “it is a case of the city selling its birthright to the (Pacific Design Center). The city gets its goodies, the (center) gets its approval and the people in the neighborhood get trampled.”
The city’s staff report said that the project is a “worthwhile risk” because of the importance of the design industry to West Hollywood.
“People in West Hollywood are committed to seeing the design center continue as the flagship of the interior design industry,” said City Councilman Alan Viterbi. “It is the main industry in the city and it supports a lot of other businesses.”
Long Waiting List
Feldman said the center needs to expand to accommodate a long tenant waiting list. He brushed aside suggestions that the center will be seriously challenged by the downtown Palace Square development.
“If you look at our (expansion) model and then translate that into a value of $150 million,” he said, “would you say that sounds like a project that is fearful or under attack or that is defensive?”
Feldman said that 10-year leases for 29 original tenants were scheduled to expire next year and that all but one has signed a lease to come back.
During last summer’s lease negotiations, Baker, Knapp & Tubbs let word seep out through the close-knit design community that it planned to move downtown.
Richard Sheldon, leasing director for Palace Square, said Baker, Knapp & Tubbs officials had him draw up a lease for 40,000 square feet--7,000 square feet more than the firm leases on the fifth floor of the design center.
Sheldon and other industry insiders said they believe that Baker used the Palace Square offer to get a lower rent from the design center. “They took the lease and went to their current landlord and got a lease extension,” Sheldon said. “I’m afraid we were used.”
‘Turning Point’
Jack Warnock, manager for Baker, Knapp & Tubbs, conceded that the offer from the downtown design center was a “turning point” in helping his firm negotiate a lower rent at the Pacific Design Center. “I wasn’t doing anything underhanded or anything,” said Warnock. “For a three-week period we were serious about moving down there. I was making my plans to move.”
Palace Square’s prime sales pitch has been its rent of $18 a square foot a year, considerably less than the $30 charged at the Design Center. Sheldon said the downtown building is also easier to reach from most parts of Los Angeles.
Established firms in the Design Center said last week that they plan to remain there because of the building’s drawing power among image-conscious designers. But officials said they will watch the downtown center to see if it can attract the designers, architects and space planners who have traditionally come to West Hollywood and surrounding neighborhoods.
Hugh Mackay, president of Kneedler-Fauchere, said the prestigious firm considered leaving the design center but decided to stay. “We had to decide what we wanted, cheap rent with no (customer) traffic or to pay the going rate in the Pacific Design Center, where the traffic is and where the action is.”
Mackay said Kneedler-Fauchere and other firms will “have to figure out how to make a lot more money to cover the increased overhead” because of the design center’s higher rents.
Two to Move
Palace Square has had more success luring firms from streets surrounding the Pacific Design Center. Sheldon announced earlier this month that New York-based Decorators Walk and Scalamandre will leave Robertson Boulevard to move downtown. Another prestigious firm at the center, Brunschwig & Fils, plans to open a second showroom at Palace Square.
“The rents are becoming high even on Robertson and Beverly (Boulevard),” said Tony Barbara, a spokesman for Decorators Walk. “Almost all the stores here are becoming retail because the wholesalers cannot afford it.”
Representatives of other fabric houses on Robertson said their customers have trouble finding parking because they must compete with patrons of the chic restaurants and shops. Several predicted that all wholesale design shops will eventually leave Robertson and surrounding streets in search of lower rents, with many moving downtown.
City officials and local activists said they want to stop an exodus.
“That’s why we need the added space at the design center,” said Woody McBreairty, a sales representative for a West Hollywood fabric and wall covering house. “If the space is made available then rents can become more competitive. I’m really concerned about seeing more space made available to the design business.”
