An Early Present : Businessman Plays Santa Claus by Renting Loft, Letting School Use It as Auditorium

Twelve-year-old Gregory Velasquez stuffed a pillow under his red sweat shirt, hooked a white cotton beard over his ears and stepped, nervously, to center stage Wednesday during the 9th Street School’s holiday pageant.

It was a first for Gregory, a shy, inner-city student who was tapped at the last minute to portray Santa Claus in the program.

And it was a first for his school, which opened five years ago in portable buildings bolted together as emergency classrooms for the growing number of children living in Los Angeles’ Skid Row area.

Because of its temporary setting, 9th Street School has no assembly hall, which meant that its 465 students had never had their own holiday show.

“There wasn’t room to do anything inside,” Gregory, a sixth-grader, said. “There wasn’t a place. It wasn’t good.”

The auditorium problem bothered businessman Irwin Jaeger too. So a few months ago he spent $137,000 to rent a vacant loft down the street from the school and convert it into a meeting room and art center for the children.

The room’s walls were covered with children’s colorful paintings of Christmas trees and snowy scenes Wednesday as the pupils sang and danced for their beaming parents.

Jaeger stood, unnoticed, at the back of the room. He said the idea for the hall came when he volunteered two summers ago to coach children’s T-ball at the school and met artist Bob Bates. After searching for usable space within walking distance of the temporary campus, Jaeger signed a lease and offered to fund the inner-city children’s art center that Bates had dreamed of.

“Barriers are coming down in Eastern Europe,” explained Jaeger, 58, a Beverly Hills resident who develops commercial property in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. “There are walls here between the haves and the have-nots that also ought to come down.”

On Wednesday, kindergartners in paper elf hats sang “Feliz Navidad” to the delighted audience. When it was the first grade’s turn, children costumed as menorah candles and dreidels sang “Lights of Hanukkah.”

“We could never plan to have a Christmas program because there was no indoor place to go as a backup in case it rained,” explained first-grade teacher Stefani Rosenberg.

Principal Betty Peifer said elbow room for art projects and space for assemblies are important for the inner-city students.

“The children need this space; for the most part, they live in quite small quarters in hotels and apartments.”

Parents were surprised to learn that a private businessman--not the Los Angeles Unified School District--was paying for the loft space.

“The kids have needed an auditorium. They call other schools that have them ‘regular schools,’ ” said Debra Yvonne Sanders, whose 7-year-old daughter, Angel Star, is a second-grader.

Nearby, meanwhile, children also had a starring role Wednesday in another holiday event that focused attention on the spirit of giving.

About 15 kindergartners from a Salvation Army day-care center serenaded a noontime crowd at one of downtown’s busiest intersections to encourage them to drop donations into red kettles.

About 75 businessmen and television personalities managed to collect $11,854 during two hours of bell-ringing at 7th and Figueroa streets, said Tara Patty, a spokeswoman for the Salvation Army.

And in West Hollywood, workers in furniture design studios and showrooms filled 700 holiday gift baskets Wednesday for distribution to AIDS patients. About half of those baskets will go to children, said Pat Dixon, director of the Design Alliance to Combat AIDS.