A New Space for LACE : Linchpin of Downtown Art Scene Moving to Hollywood

It wasn’t so long ago that Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions was surrounded by galleries, performance spaces and artists’ lofts. Now the buildings flanking LACE in the warehouse district east of downtown are marked with “For Sale or Lease” signs and occasional graffiti.

“There are very few restaurants that are open at night. There are very few places to hang out, which is essential to having a neighborhood,” said LACE executive director Gwen Darien. “Our immediate neighborhood--there’s not much in it. I mean, I wouldn’t go to the bus station lunch counter for dinner.”

So in a few months, LACE will add a “For Sale or Lease” sign of its own and leave for a new storefront location on Hollywood Boulevard. The organization that has been a cornerstone of downtown’s cutting-edge visual and performing art scene is moving.

“A lot of people do not feel that (downtown) is a central location anymore, that they have to make a special trip out here,” Darien said. “There used to be (numerous) galleries down here.” Now, there are less than a handful.

Leaving downtown was not a decision Darien or the LACE board of directors made suddenly. But a combination of factors, including an increase of crime around a recently constructed bus station, led Darien to approach the Community Redevelopment Agency about a year ago.

“What happens is that the perimeter of the bus station--and we’re basically within that perimeter--is where a lot of things happen, (such as) break-ins of cars. We actually had someone mugged on their way from the bus station here. (There’s) a lot of hanging out. A lot of what appears to be prostitution and drug deals,” she said.

Still, what hurt LACE more than the actual crime was the perception of crime: Performance attendance was down 15% in 1992 from the previous year. Last year’s riots weren’t the cause of the problem, but exacerbated them.

“What is disheartening in terms of how the location affects us is that--particularly in the last year--our programs (and) exhibitions have been excellent,” she said. “They have received very favorable critical and audience attention. And there hasn’t been a kind of attendant rise in audience.”

Calling the relocation a move to save the organization is too dramatic, but, Darien said, “There will be this continuing erosion of the audience if we stay at this location.

“I don’t want to emphasize this as (if) we’re moving to save ourselves. . . . We’ll be 15 years old next year . . . and we’re moving into young adulthood,” she said.

LACE was founded in 1978 and operated out of the Victor Clothing Building on Broadway until 1986, when it bought the site in the warehouse district with the help of a loan from the CRA. Seven years later, LACE is moving again.

“I know there are a lot of people who will say they’re upset about us leaving (downtown),” Darien said. “Then you ask them when the last time they came to a program was.”

Kim Abeles, a visual artist who recently joined LACE’s board of directors, lives in a nearby studio and has resided downtown since 1979.

“If I seem a little bit sad in a sense, it’s because I saw so many wonderful things happen downtown,” she said about LACE’s move. “People seem more and more reluctant to come downtown, as if it’s this whole other entity outside L.A. proper.”

Which came first--the death of the arts organizations or the death of the audience--becomes a chicken-and-egg question. There was the demise of the Factory Place, Wallenboyd and Boyd Street theaters during the 1980s, followed by the closing of the Woman’s Building on North Spring Street and the folding of the resident company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. LACE became one of the only alternative performance venues left downtown.

LACE’s new building--formerly the Newberry School of Beauty--is on Hollywood Boulevard between Hudson and Wilcox. It’s near a park the CRA is developing, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center and the new home of the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, which is relocating from the MacArthur Park area. Darien is hopeful that Hollywood will develop into the arts community that the warehouse district was unable to support.

“Basically it won’t be like here, where people have to be exported into this community. There is a community (in Hollywood). There is a street life. There are tourists that walk down the street. There are people that go there for movies. . . .

“It doesn’t need to be created, which is what happened here . . . It can be augmented.”

Hollywood, however, is not without its problems. The crime rate is higher than downtown, with Hollywood Division reporting 640 assaults in 1993 to date, compared to 359 in Central Division. (Those figures, however, are not scaled for population density.)

Also, the Metro Rail is aiming to tear up Hollywood Boulevard for years, interrupting the flow of automotive and pedestrian traffic.

Cooke Sunoo, project manager of the Hollywood Redevelopment Project, said the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is making efforts to offset the disruption. LACTC is going to sponsor arts programs and offer valet and validated parking to try to create an image of Hollywood as “accessible.”

Sunoo said the CRA was “looking for an organization that would add to the vitality of the area, and we realized that today that particular walk doesn’t have the strong retail potential. So we looked for a way to bring in a broad base of people to the street there.”

So, while LACE hopes Hollywood will give it a new audience, the CRA hopes LACE will bring a new audience to Hollywood.

Though the new LACE space is a little smaller than its current 13,200 square feet, architect Fred Fisher said the storefront will allow LACE to take advantage of the street life like it never could in downtown. Fisher, who will design the renovations, said it will be “a little more efficiently arranged . . . very simple, not broken up with columns and an elevator shaft” like the warehouse.

Toward the front of the building will be a bookstore and cafe, as well as a video display visible to the street. Galleries, performance space and offices will be toward the back.

LACE is also trying to make it easy for people to come in the first place, by providing secure parking behind the building. LACE is negotiating a five-year lease with the CRA, which is managing the city-owned building. The CRA is also giving LACE a $65,000 grant for rehabilitation. Plans are to start construction in July so LACE can move in September.

Board chairman Dale Stulz believes the change in venue will bring LACE not only a new audience, but also new sources of revenue--sorely needed in these days when government-funded arts budgets are shrinking.

He, too, is aware of the view that LACE is abandoning downtown, or conversely, that downtown abandoned LACE.

“It’s not so much about our abandoning anything,” Stulz said. “A move to Hollywood is going to increase our exposure, which is going to increase our programming . . . It’s going to make us more accessible and allow us to do what we do best, and that is to show work on the cutting edge.”