High-Rise to Become a ‘Bastion of Hope’ : Redevelopment: Minority contractors group plans to buy and renovate historic Continental Building in Downtown.

A fledgling minority contractors group that rose from the ashes of the 1992 riots hopes to breathe new life into the city’s oldest high-rise, the down-in-the-heels Continental Building in Downtown Los Angeles.

The United Minority Contractors Assn., which helped reconstruct several business buildings damaged during the riots, has signed an agreement to purchase the 12-story structure at Spring and 4th streets, a block south of the Ronald Reagan State Building.

The group, organized to help its 600-plus, primarily African-American members find work, plans to rehabilitate the historic building to serve as its headquarters and job training center and, eventually, as office space for other community organizations.

As important, UMCA leaders say, they intend for the building to serve as a symbol for the empowerment of minority entrepreneurs.

“The implications are wonderful,” said Emmett Cash, the group’s finance director. “With all the disarray going on in the city, here’s a bastion of hope and upward mobility.

“Here, we are taking control of the first high-rise building built in Los Angeles and being the first blacks to own such a facility.”

Under terms of an option agreement with Westside real estate developer Fred Cowan and two associates, the UMCA this week took possession of the boarded-up building for two years while it comes up with a $225,000 down payment. The rest of the $1 million purchase price would be paid over an extended period, Cowan said.

The UMCA will seek grants from foundations and corporate sponsors to pay for the building and the rehabilitation work. Fix-up of the two bottom floors alone could cost $1 million, according to UMCA President Al Williams.

The agreement reflects fiscal and social considerations in a neighborhood where real estate values have been plummeting.

Downtown real estate experts say the Continental Building was worth $5 million five years ago. But, for much of the time since, the structure has stood vacant after Cowan and his partners repossessed it when a previous purchaser went belly up.

“The fact that a non-economic major piece of real estate can be converted to economic and social use, with jobs created and people trained in the construction trades . . . is of great significance,” said Cowan, who with his partners have donated $25,000 toward UMCA’s reconstruction costs.

Don Spivack, director of operations for the Community Redevelopment Agency, calls the agreement a positive step for the city’s Downtown historic neighborhood, where state officials are considering restoring three pre-World War I structures to house 3,500 state workers.

“This is a great matchup--rehabilitating another historic building, bringing about its re-occupancy and bringing in a use with potentially significant social benefits to the greater Los Angeles community,” Spivack said.

UMCA was formed shortly before the 1992 riots, but came to the fore afterward by demanding a larger role for minority contractors in rehabilitating damaged buildings and constructing new ones. Since the riots, the UMCA has helped a black-owned contractor win a contract to build a Taco Bell in Compton and built a Smart & Final grocery in Hollywood and two Payless shoe stores in South-Central Los Angeles, Williams said. The group also reconstructed the Sears store in Hollywood, which sustained heavy damage in the riots.

Many workers on the projects have been long unemployed inner-city residents participating in free UMCA construction training courses.

Still, the minority community continues to be plagued by limited employment opportunities, Williams said.

“We’re doing all this training, but there are no jobs out there. Our major goal is to put young people who are homeless and people just out of the service to work.”

“This is a great deal,” Williams added. “But we have to get the funds to make it work right away or we’re spinning our wheels.”

A ribbon-cutting and dedication is planned for Thursday morning. The UMCA, which plans to hold its first national convention here in February, is also hosting a fund-raising theater party Thursday at the Richard Pryor Theater in Hollywood.

Originally known as the Braly Building, the Continental Building was constructed in 1904 by renowned Downtown architect John Parkinson.

At 175 feet, it towered over the neighborhood for decades, and, with the exception of City Hall, which was dedicated in 1928, the Continental was the city’s tallest structure for more than 50 years.

During several remodelings, historic flourishes inside the building vanished, but the top floors of the facade--dominated by elaborate terra-cotta garlands, lions’ heads and columns--remain largely as they stood at the turn of the century.

Late this week, UMCA members trainees were hard at work preparing for the dedication. Out-of-work painters, plumbers and contractors swept floors, scrubbed walls and removed bottles of wine left behind by homeless squatters.

“They’re teaching us to do it the right way,” said trainee Bobbie Marshall, 41, of Pacoima. “The right way always seems the hardest way, but it’s the best way.”

Marshall is hoping to pick up enough contracting skills to earn an adequate salary to support his wife and two children.

“This will help,” he said. “I’m very determined not to go back onto general relief.”