DOWNTOWN : Kids Art Oasis to Grow on Skid Row

Renovations have started on a Skid Row building that will be transformed from an auto body shop into an art center for inner-city children.

Backers of the Inner-City Arts program promised that by fall, the unoccupied building shell at 720 Kohler St. will become an “oasis” with a tree-filled garden, classrooms and performance areas for dance, drama, music, painting, crafts and ceramics, and a small gallery to display the children’s works.

“We’re grown-ups, but we’re setting up something for you to carry on for the children you have,” Bob Bates, the program’s co-founder and artistic director, told 120 youngsters who came from nearby schools for a groundbreaking ceremony Feb. 11.

“It’ll be exciting,” said 10-year-old Rosalba Leyva as she gazed at the former Grand Prix Auto Body building, which was decorated with children’s paintings for the ceremony.

Inner-City Arts, which provides 4,300 children with visual arts classes during and after school, has been looking to add dance, drama and music classes for some time. But the three-year-old nonprofit program has been stymied by space restrictions at its temporary digs--a pair of trailers at the Ninth Street School.

The program moved into the trailers in May, 1991, after it was forced out of its donated Olympic Boulevard loft when city firefighters found potentially hazardous chemicals at a denim dying plant next door.

For nearly two years, Bates and program co-founder Irwin Jaeger searched for a permanent facility. A $600,000 lead gift from the Mark Taper Foundation allowed them to purchase the auto body shop, which architect Michael Maltzan will redesign into a 16,000-square-foot arts center. Other donors, including the Ahmanson and Weingart foundations, have helped supporters raise $1.5 million of the total $2.5 million needed.

Maltzan plans an airy, light-filled center that will include a dance and drama studio; a media center where children can learn to use video cameras and sound equipment; a ceramics studio, and a multipurpose area to be used for classrooms and as an auditorium.