Ex-Flophouse to Open as Stylish Skid Row Hotel

This is not what you expect at a Skid Row hotel. Abstract paintings on the lobby walls by some of the city’s best-known artists. Color schemes of taupe, teal and peach coordinated by a Beverly Hills interior designer. Decorative touches like strips of marble in the baths and custom-made bedspreads in the rooms.

Eva deWeerth, a Beverly Hills interior designer, is accustomed to working on Westwood penthouses, sprawling Pacific Palisades estates and sets for Hollywood studios. But during the last year, deWeerth and a number of other prominent Westside designers and architects have spent countless hours on Main Street--in the heart of Skid Row--renovating an abandoned flophouse and turning it into a tony-looking residential hotel for the poor.

The nonprofit Leonide Hotel, which opens today, proves that good design is not frivolous--a decadent luxury to be enjoyed and appreciated only by the rich, deWeerth said. The poor, the homeless, the jobless, she said, “also can appreciate and be uplifted” by the right choice of colors, textures and design.

Katherine Rainey, who just moved into the hotel, has stayed at dozens of Skid Row hotels, run-down rooming houses with holes punched in the walls, roaches scurrying beneath her bed and crack addicts as neighbors. When she first saw the Leonide, she said: “I felt at home for the first time in a long time.”

“Just because you’re homeless or down on your luck doesn’t mean you don’t like beautiful things,” she said. “We’re still human. It’s nice for me to see these pretty pictures on the walls, and the plants in the lobby and the nice atmosphere.”

Karen Hallerman, executive director of Chrysalis, an employment and housing agency for the homeless that runs the 66-room hotel, said she wanted to find a way to make the Leonide different from the usual drab downtown residence hotels without exceeding her budget. She mentioned the project to a few of her friends in the design field and they volunteered their services and contacted a number of their associates.

The $5.5-million cost of purchasing and renovating the hotel was funded primarily by the state and the Community Redevelopment Agency. Chrysalis and the Los Angeles Community Design Center, a nonprofit developer, directed the project and coordinated the volunteer effort, which made the hotel affordable.

By the time the one-year renovation project was completed, about 10 designers and architects had volunteered their time, 35 subcontractors had provided their services for free or at reduced cost, about a dozen firms had donated furniture or materials and five artists had donated or loaned their artwork. The project included the three-story hotel and the building next door, a “Triple X” adult movie theater. The design team transformed the theater into Chrysalis’ corporate offices, where case managers help Skid Row residents find jobs.

Residents of the hotel, mostly single men--many of whom are recovering from drug and alcohol problems--pay only $235 a month to live amid such stylish surroundings. Hallerman contends that these surroundings provide residents with a psychological boost and help further the goal of Chrysalis: to find jobs for people and eventually help them move out of Skid Row.

“This is all part of the transition we want people to go through,” Hallerman said. “Skid Row is such a depressing environment. What we need to do, both in our offices and at the hotel, is provide a place where people can be uplifted.”

Outside the hotel, winos slept in the shade and groups of men pass bottles of white port. But inside, the Leonide has the decor of a stylish Westside hotel. In the lobby there are abstract photographs in white frames, acrylic paintings on canvas and a $20,000 sculpture on loan from Venice artist Laddie John Dill. The donated walnut coffee table and overstuffed sofa and chairs--reupholstered at cost--are surrounded by a ring of ficus trees.

The rooms are small, but have more amenities than many chain hotels. They all have custom-made bedspreads, ceramic jar lamps, bleached ash desk and end table sets and Art Deco-style chairs. DeWeerth, the Beverly Hills decorator who headed the design team, said she approached the Leonide project with the same degree of research and planning that she gives her other jobs.

“This is a treacherous stage in these people’s lives and they need every bit of encouragement they can get,” she said. “I tried to reflect that in the design by making it cheerful, uplifting and airy.”

Nancy Levy, who headed the design and architecture team that renovated Chrysalis’ corporate offices next door to the Leonide, said she has wanted to do something to help the homeless for years. But as an interior designer, she never imagined her skills could be of any use. Then she heard about the renovation project.

“It was very inspirational for me to see how many people have wanted to help in whatever way they could,” she said. “A few weeks ago a bathroom salesman was by my office and I told him what I was doing. He immediately offered to help. So he donated all the tile that now covers the bathroom walls.”

The renovated Chrysalis offices, filled with donated cherrywood conference tables, leather sofas and chairs, look like a plush business headquarters. One room is filled with computers donated by IBM, where clients can learn word processing and other jobs skills.

Levy said she tried to use the “psychology of design” to ease clients transition from Skid Row to the working world. Each office, where Chrysalis case managers interview clients and assist them in finding jobs, is set apart and designed like a small house with several windows and lights--”that look like porch lights,” Levy said--outside the offices.

“We didn’t want some big cavernous room with high ceilings that would intimidate the clients,” Levy said. “People are coming off the street so we wanted something that would feel very comfortable--like a little neighborhood. This is the first step for people to get back into society.”