Skid Row Hotel Reborn in Novel Los Angeles Project

They are just 30 plain rooms in the hotel at the corner of 5th and Main streets, the bleakest sector of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, but they fairly glowed Tuesday with pastel paint, humming refrigerators and bright skylights.

Once a flophouse called the Pennsylvania Hotel, the squat, two-story structure has been renamed the Genesis Hotel and transformed through the novel efforts of a church and a synagogue. City officials in attendance at an official opening Tuesday predicted that the renovation could act as the catalyst for a new era of private involvement in rebuilding Skid Row.

More than 60 Skid Row hotels, which in years past provided a way station for newcomers arriving at downtown bus and train stations, as well as long-term housing for many elderly, today are considered powerful contributors to the cycle of poverty among the 10,000 people believed to live in the neighborhood. Restoration of the often rat-infested, burned-out structures is seen by government and business leaders as a way to rid the downtown’s east side of architectural decay and human misery.

The $1.7-million Genesis project was sponsored by two middle-class congregations, far removed from the urban core, and financed by a wide range of private and public sources.

The project by a nonprofit corporation formed by the All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena and the Leo Baeck Temple of Bel-Air signals a growing consensus among government, community and business leaders that the private sector must begin investing in Skid Row, city officials said.

The nonprofit church and synagogue group also has purchased the nearby Roma and Pershing hotels, which together with the Genesis comprise a total of 100 rooms and an investment of $7.5 million. The money was raised through loans, grants, public funds and corporate tax credit investments.

All three hotels sit on an intersection that one city official called “the worst of Skid Row.” In addition, at least six other hotels are being purchased, or are under consideration for purchase, by other nonprofit groups--many of them linked to churches.

At a sometimes emotional ceremony just steps from a sidewalk where ragtag men panhandled for coins, James Wood, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, called the opening of the Genesis, which the CRA helped finance, “my proudest moment on the CRA.”

In the past, it has been left largely to the redevelopment agency to try to revive Skid Row’s more than 60 hotels, a project estimated to take hundreds of millions of dollars. While several hotels have been renovated by the CRA, Woods said Tuesday that “the government simply cannot do it alone.” He praised the religious leaders for their involvement in Genesis.

‘Not Alone Anymore’

Said Wood, “What you are saying (to the destitute) is that you are not alone anymore, and you are saying that by buying property and maintaining it and running it in a humane manner. You did not buy property on the Westside, you bought it on Skid Row.”

Owned and permanently operated by the nonprofit Church & Temple Housing Corp., in partnership with the long-time Skid Row organization Las Familias del Pueblo, the Genesis and the other hotels will offer rental housing for $175 to $225 per month.

Reynaldo Torriente, who moved from the Wilshire District to Skid Row a year ago when he lost his truck-driving job, said he rented a room at the Genesis the minute the first few were completed three months ago. For Torriente, 47, the airy building with its graceful inside archways and modern communal kitchen has already meant a new lease on life.

“This is my building,” said Torriente, who joined so enthusiastically in keeping the building clean and free of drug dealers and vagrants that he was awarded the job of building manager. Now, he works every day, cleaning and watching over his new home.

“This is something special, so very clean and quiet, where on the outside it is violent,” he said. “I feel good in this building, and I take care of the building.”

Religious leaders who gathered at the hotel Tuesday vowed to seek out more synagogues and churches to follow the example of the Pasadena church and the Westside synagogue, the first congregations from outlying neighborhoods to invest in Skid Row flophouses.

Rabbi Lennard Thal, the regional director of the Union of Hebrew Congregations, said, “We pledge (to) you, to the best of our ability, to find other churches and temples to come together . . . to find other hotels to reach a similar conclusion.”

The well-dressed crowd told the story of the growing interest in private investment in Skid Row housing:

Robert Wycoff, president of ARCO, and the Rt. Rev. Frederick Borsch, bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles, chatted with lenders from Citicorp and First Nationwide Bank--all groups that helped finance the Genesis or nearby Pershing and Roma hotels. Donors included the James Irvine Foundation and Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, and numerous other corporations invested through a tax credit program that encourages construction of affordable housing. Design work, specially targeted for safety and group dining, was done by Archiplan, and the Los Angeles Community Design Center acted as consultants.

John Tuite, executive director of the CRA, said the key to the project is the intent of the church and synagogue group to permanently own and manage the buildings and offer humane surroundings for the residents, without taking any profit from the development.

Earlier Efforts

“Cities that have done rehabilitation work with private (for-profit) owners, when they returned some years later, have found they have had to plow almost as much money into the building the second time around,” Tuite said, because many private managers do not care about the buildings they run or the tenants they select.

Church and other nonprofit groups have a proven track record of maintaining low rents and decent buildings in ghettos elsewhere in the country, because they are committed to improving the community, Tuite said.

“What you have to remember is that people are lost here,” Tuite said. “They are searching, however, and with (the opening of the Genesis Hotel) I think some of them will now find what they were looking for.”