Counting on Spring Street to Bounce Back : Development: New state office building, opening later this year, will bring thousands of people and--most believe--a resurgence for the area.

Although it can discourage customers, the World Wide Travel Agency on 4th Street in downtown Los Angeles operates behind firmly locked doors.

“We have locked the doors since we were robbed at gunpoint last year,” explained Allcia Imp, who founded the agency 39 years ago. But Imp and her son, Victor Almacellas, who run the agency, are hoping to unlock those doors by the end of the year.

A block away, George Kalebdjian, manager of the flagship store of the 29-outlet Eagleson’s Big & Tall haberdashery chain, is upgrading his window displays and all but rubbing his hands in anticipation. “Three-thousand employees and 10,000 (people) in and out daily,” he said, smiling. “Somebody has to see us. We have got to do a little bit of business with that.”

What fuels the thinking of these entrepreneurs is the partially completed Ronald Reagan State Office Building, scheduled to open in December, that occupies most of the downtown block bounded by 3rd, Main, 4th and Spring streets. The building will include office space for 30 state agencies and the state Supreme Court.

The tenacious larger tenants of surrounding storefronts are remodeling and gearing up for a comeback from the disastrous slump their businesses underwent after Los Angeles’ financial center abandoned Spring Street a decade or so ago.

But at the corner of 4th and Main, a far less enthusiastic Matel Jimenez wonders if high rents, the opening of the new building and other new construction will drive his 24-year-old food stand, Taco Neta, out of business. He is thinking of moving, or simply retiring.

“They will have a cafeteria so they won’t come to my stand,” Jimenez said. “It’ll be like the RTD (a block south). They have maybe 2,000 people there, but they have a cafeteria and they don’t go out much.”

Some other small business operators, who have suffered from the noise, dirt and blocked sidewalks of the construction years, are wondering the same thing.

Young Kim, who operates Pete’s Grandburger, a 12-stool diner at 3rd and Main that serves about 100 customers a day, doesn’t see the huge state office complex as a potential gold mine. He also is considering retirement.

The Community Redevelopment Agency, with offices next to the Reagan building at 4th and Spring, waged a major effort to locate the new complex in the rundown neighborhood just south of City Hall specifically to upgrade the neighborhood.

The area includes several historic 80-year-old buildings that have stood vacant and decaying since the city’s financial center moved west to the Flower-Figueroa area a decade ago. The Spring Street area has attracted the homeless because of nearby service agencies like the Union Rescue Mission on Main Street.

The CRA’s plan already appears to be working.

When the project began in 1981, said CRA Administrator John Tuite, land on the west side of Spring Street was selling for $110 a square foot, while land east of Main, the old Skid Row area, went for $50 to $60.

Now, Tuite said, prices have risen to $150-$160 a square foot west of Spring and $100 east of Main, primarily because of the new state office complex and the activity it is expected to generate.

Much of the newly built or remodeled retail and office space in the area still stands vacant, but optimistic owners feel certain that once the 30 state agencies move in, lawyers, contractors and others who do business with the state will follow, with restaurants and other service-oriented businesses close behind.

“In a nutshell, the Reagan office building will act as a catalyst and stabilizing force by bringing 3,000 white-collar workers downtown,” said Leonard G. Glickman, president of the Spring Street Assn., which promotes redevelopment along the historic commercial thoroughfare. “It is sort of like the honey, and now the bees will start to come.”

Ari Sikora, development director for LCF Corp., which owns a 13-story, 78-year-old office building at 311 S. Spring, said her firm has been preparing for “the golden goose” the last two years with a massive renovation program. When the state building opens, she expects her own building’s former 80% occupancy rate to soar to full with a waiting list.

No tenants have been evicted, she said, but many low-budget importers and bail bondsmen have already left the building voluntarily.

“I think people just saw the state construction going up and made assumptions about the upgrading of the neighborhood, and our building, and future rent,” she said.

Albert Mansour, owner of the 33-year-old Europa Grocery Co., a delicatessen at 3rd and Main that serves 550 customers a day, is trying to expand the offerings in his limited space in anticipation of additional customers.

Among the optimists, Mansour believes the presence of 3,000 office workers across the street will mean greater safety, cleanliness and general prosperity for the area after some lean years.

“They will clean up the neighborhood. There won’t be the bums laying around,” he said confidently. “We will have better customers and less headaches.”

Of the handful who feel their businesses have been hurt by the project, Ruth Moscoso is the most outspoken.

Moscoso owns Ruth’s Shrimp House, a take-out storefront at 357 S. Main in the rundown, largely vacant Barclay Hotel. Standing in her dusty, empty shop one recent weekday lunch hour, Moscoso said business has dropped off by at least a third during the two-year construction of the state building.

She pointed with disgust to the two lanes of one-way northbound Main Street occupied by construction machinery and vehicles blocking drive-up access to her shop. A sign at 4th Street restricting sidewalk use, she said, also discourages walk-in customers.

Because access to their businesses has been curtailed, Moscoso and Ricardo Custodio, owner of the neighboring L.A.F.E. Shoe Repair, were paid up to $13 a day for 18 months of the construction. But the work has continued beyond the 18 months. Moscoso complains that contractors failed to fulfill other promises. The result, she said, is that customers have a hard time finding her.

“They were supposed to give me a sign and lights. You call that a sign?” she exclaimed, pointing to the bent tin sign above her front door proclaiming ‘Ruth’s Shrimp House, Shrimp, Chili, Hamburgers, Food to Take Out.’

“That is a poster!” she said. “They said, ‘What the hell do you want--like in Las Vegas?’ I said that would be a good idea.”

Like many of her neighbors, Moscoso can’t decide her own future until her landlord acts. She may move. Now 70, she also thinks of retiring.

Also among the pessimists is Jimmy Bell, who has operated a women’s discount clothing store on 3rd Street for 32 years, once in a bustling third-floor loft where the new Reagan building now stands, and now in a small street-level shop across 3rd.

“We have suffered during the construction because we don’t have any parking on the street,” he said, sadly surveying his empty shop.

He is afraid to rely on state employees patronizing his shop and fears rent hikes and even ouster if a developer should move to tear down the strip of ramshackle storefronts and build something new.

“I am too young to retire,” Bell said, “but the way business has been going, maybe I can’t continue.”

Parking has always been “the Achilles heel” for Spring Street, according to Glickman of the Spring Street Assn. But he and the CRA believe that problem will be eased by the new Broadway-Spring Center parking structure across Spring Street from the new state building. The structure, which also has lease space for shops and restaurants, has 650 parking spaces for state employees and another 624 for the public. The new office building itself has 250 parking spaces for state officials.

The man who owns Joe’s Auto Park surface lots on Spring, 3rd and Main and at the Broadway-Spring Center is cautiously optimistic.

“I have been waiting for this for the last 10 years,” said Henry Lumer Sr., who started the parking and development firm with his father, Joe, on the site of the new state building 33 years ago.

“Business has been really, really bad, because all the buildings around here are vacant,” said Lumer, who is now trying to lease two floors of office space vacant since the 1971 earthquake in the Eagleson’s building he owns. “I am sure this is going to be a change for the better . . . .”

Back at their 4th Street travel agency, Imp and Almacellas, who have had to make “house calls” to customers in the downtown area, are particularly eager for the improved security they believe the Reagan building will bring.

“There will be a vast improvement for our business because . . . the CRA has committed itself to clean up the streets,” said Almacellas. “So as soon as the state employees actually move in, there will be more security. The area will be cleaned up as to the vagrants, the drugs, the prostitution.”

The CRA’s Tuite shares that belief, noting the agency has worked diligently with the Los Angeles Police Department to beef up patrols and booking procedures.

“The more people down here to do business, the more secure the neighborhood will be,” Tuite said, bolstering the hopes of Imp and Almacellas that they can soon safely unlock their doors to welcome more customers.