Reality and the Power of Real Estate
The burned-out hulk of the Hotel Ferraro, about 20 blocks west of downtown Los Angeles’ grander hotels, is an example of how the forces shaping the city are beyond the control of the people who are supposed to be in charge.
The specific force represented by the Ferraro is real estate. The owner of this Westlake district hotel wants to tear it down and sell the property. The district’s City Council representative, Gloria Molina, insists not only that he rebuild, but also that he provide low-cost housing units.
It’s government policy vs. private property rights, a familiar but always interesting standoff in a region that has been shaped by development.
“Welcome to Hotel Ferraro,” reads the sign on front of the rust-brown building across from MacArthur Park. Welcome, indeed.
Monday, two men sat on the sidewalk, backs resting against the gutted building on the 6th Street side. Two women beggars occupied a spot around the corner on Alvarado; they lost out in the contest for small change to a much more demanding man nearby. A black woman across the street screamed something about crack into a telephone. In the park, the multi-ethnic drug dealers were selling. And in the middle of it all, two Latino immigrant mothers pushed strollers with infants along 6th, headed home from shopping.
They all were part of a scene that demonstrated Westlake’s value as a historical guide to Los Angeles. Mansions from the 1890s, old apartments, a movie palace, crack dealers mingling with immigrants--all illustrate aspects of the city’s past and present. This is a neighborhood of Raymond Chandler, who in one of his novels in the 1940s described a nearby hotel as “a white stucco palace with fretted lanterns in the forecourt and tall date palms. . . . There was a desk and a night clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.” It is also a neighborhood of poet Ricardo Ventura, who, four decades and a tide of immigrants later, described how “MacArthur Park changes into the illusion of the Salvadoran fatherland.”
I, too, am drawn to the neighborhood, sticking to the streets, shops and Langer’s delicatessen, avoiding the crack dealers in the park. Westlake can provide a cold splash of reality for a mind often numbed by political speeches and boosters’ reports about shaping “the world-class city,” as if they were actually in command of its destiny.
The Ferraro, which never was world-class, sank to a symbol of municipal impotence in the 1980s. By then, Westlake was established firmly as an immigrant arrival point. It also had become the city’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhood, and one of its most lawless.
Syed Ali of Pasadena purchased the building in 1983. The place was such a dump that the Fire and Building and Safety departments had shut it down. But Ali put $1.5 million into renovating. And City Councilman John Ferraro, who then represented the district, helped him through the city bureaucracy. A grateful Ali renamed his building “Hotel Ferraro.”
It became a single-room occupancy hotel, or SRO--a place for those on the margin. In 1988, Ali signed up with the state Department of Corrections to provide housing and two meals a day for paroled state prison inmates. He netted $150,000 a year.
On Nov. 17, 1988, the hotel was destroyed by a fire of undetermined origin. Ali decided to tear down the building and sell the land. But his plan conflicted with municipal policy. A city law designed to preserve SROs made it illegal to destroy them. Ali took the city to court. Spurred on by Molina, the office of City Atty. Jim Hahn fought him. Ali protested that he didn’t want to rebuild. He just wanted to sell--and get out.
Deputy City Atty. Tony Blain prevailed in Superior Court and now the case is back to the city bureaucracy. Ali won’t be able to tear down his building unless he gets an exemption from the single-room occupancy preservation law.
To Molina, there’s more at stake than the Hotel Ferraro. Low-cost housing is disappearing in Westlake. The MacArthur Park Metro Rail station, now under construction, has spurred land speculation. Old apartments are being torn down by speculators who one day will build expensive housing. The immigrants will be forced out. The number of homeless will grow.
Molina, Hahn and the other officials see the case as proof of the city’s determination to provide low-cost housing, even if it interferes with property rights. Determination aside, nobody lives in the building today and the end of the legal wrangling is not in sight. Ali, not a major power in the real estate business, is also stymied. He can’t jump ship.
It all illustrates the difficulty of city government accomplishing something even as small as this. That’s the lesson in reality from the Westlake district.
