Antelope Valley Artists Hoping Creations Open the Door to Historic Site : Preservation: Group, which wants to buy Cedar Avenue Complex, receives space from city for sales.

It is hardly the Louvre, but a group of Antelope Valley artists are setting up a temporary gallery in a vacant Lancaster appliance store with the hope that holiday sales will help them buy and restore a permanent home.

The nonprofit Antelope Valley Allied Arts Assn. is negotiating with Lancaster officials to buy the historic Art Deco-style Cedar Avenue Complex, which last month was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But if and when the artists take over the vacant complex of five Depression-era buildings, they will be responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovation work.

Toward that end, the city is allowing the artists to display works for sale in the glass storefront of a vacant city-owned commercial building at the corner of Lancaster Boulevard and Fig Street.

“It’s kind of a shot in the arm for us,” said Allied Arts business manager Rich Winkler. “A percentage of all the art sale proceeds will go toward restoration.”

The move is the latest in a long-running saga over the future of the complex, once slated for demolition by the city but now on the national register because of its past uses and architectural significance.

The Lancaster Boulevard complex--which was the city’s first civic center--includes a jail built in 1920, a health center built in 1920, and a two-story Memorial Hall, a sheriff’s substation and a sheriff’s garage, all built in 1938.

Lancaster bought the complex from Los Angeles County in 1985 with plans to demolish the aging structures and erect a modern office building. But local preservationists protested and won a temporary reprieve from the city.

A purchase by Allied Arts would appear to save the buildings from demolition permanently. Winkler said the artists’ group was prepared to pay roughly as much as the city paid for the complex--$395,000.

“I imagine it might be little less than that,” he said, adding that the group has the money on hand. The real financial strain, he said, will be to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for immediate repairs.

The buildings first must be heated and air-conditioned and new roofs must be installed. After that, Winkler said, his group would seek preservation grants to restore the buildings.

Estimates for the work range from $1 million to $3 million.

Preservationists who fought to save the buildings said they were encouraged by the negotiations between Allied Arts and Lancaster officials, saying their goal may be within reach after eight years of effort.

“Our goal is to save the building,” said Diana Gravatt, a member of the Committee to Preserve the Cedar Avenue Complex. “We don’t care who owns it.”