Made on the Westside : They Might Go Unnoticed, but Industries Remain Part of the Fabric of Their Upscale Neighborhoods
Some words simply don’t seem to mix well--like “Westside” and “industry,” a combination that might be likened to a Chardonnay and Coke.
In fact, Los Angeles’ Westside once had a thriving industrial base. It flourished after World War II, as businesses migrated from the central city in search of more and cheaper land and the region was awash in defense-related spending. For years, the area west of La Brea Avenue was home to such industrial icons as Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica and Hughes Aircraft in Culver City.
Hughes at its peak employed 15,000 people and handled 20% of the state’s electronics business, according to Allen Scott, UCLA professor of geography. Anticipating the bright postwar future, myriad smaller firms, mostly defense-related, followed the lead.
That legacy is fast disappearing. Soaring land values, coupled with recession and tighter environmental restrictions, have squeezed manufacturers out of the pricey Westside--considered one of the least factory-friendly places in the Los Angeles area.
One need look no further than the sprawling Helms bakery complex in Culver City and the Globe A-1 noodle factory near Robertson and Venice boulevards. While fondly remembered by longtime residents, both have been long retired and converted into businesses more befitting the Westside: The Helms building now houses the Antique Guild and other shops, while the Globe A-1 plant is a Rolls-Royce dealership. And that site is slated for more change--it soon will become an ultramodern family entertainment center.
But local manufacturing has not vanished altogether. Often unnoticed amid the swirl of entertainment and service business is a motley collection of factories. Not far from the moneyed calm of Brentwood and Marina del Rey or the trim neighborhoods of Westwood, they give at least partial lie to the belief that the biggest product hereabouts is unproduced scripts. Following is a look at three long-established factories that have managed to survive--even thrive--amid the move away from manufacturing.
HERE TO STAY
Five days a week, from roughly 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. (longer hours during the Christmas rush), tens of thousands of pounds of silky Bordeaux chocolates, bulbous chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs and tawny peanut brittle stream off the “assembly lines” at See’s Candies, an old-fashioned, ivory-colored factory in West Los Angeles. Nearly 400 workers--600 more during the holiday rush--mix, bake and pack the sweets, 8 million pounds of which were produced last year.
Located on La Cienega Boulevard between Jefferson and Washington boulevards, the 45-year-old complex stands as a veritable institution for many Angelenos--and, apparently, for the company’s management. Despite the Westside’s high land values and the transfer of the company’s headquarters to San Francisco two decades ago, company executives aren’t thinking of changing much at the 6.5-acre plant--not its technology, not its products, certainly not its address.
Last year, See’s sold $200 million worth of candy from 218 shops in seven Western states. The West L.A. operation distributes to 100 of those stores. Its chocolate comes in liquid form from Burlingame, Calif., and its sugar is likewise trucked in from Northern California. The cream and corn syrup come from companies throughout Southern California and the boxes come from Commerce.
“We do it from A to Z--from taking in the raw materials to selling the candy in our shops,” said See’s director of customer relations David Harvey. “We always have, since Day One.”
That isn’t to say that See’s hasn’t been subjected to a number of external changes during the past 4 1/2 decades. Perhaps the biggest has been in the density of the surrounding area. Harvey points to aerial photos taken of the company shortly after it opened. There is only the factory and acres of brush and weeds. Today, the plant is surrounded on all sides by stores and businesses. “You could see miles of open fields,” recalled company CEO Charles Huggins. “There wasn’t much of anything.”
Another transformation has been in the company’s work force. Most employees are middle-aged and Latino, with an overwhelming majority of them commuting from 20 and 25 miles away. “A high percentage of our workers come from East Los Angeles,” Huggins said.
Yet for a city whose mantra is change, and then more change, See’s is a veritable rock of stability. Changes? Moves? “We’ve got a nice setup here. There’s no need,” said Harvey, who adds that in his 16 years with the company, no one has ever suggested that the factory relocate.
LOSING PATIENCE
Sol Gindoff roots around in a massive row of papers lining the wall behind his desk and emerges with a stack of envelopes and folders easily six inches thick and weighing three to four pounds. He hands the pile to a visitor and urges a look.
The return addresses are from towns such as Nogales, Corpus Christi and Topeka, and the senders are various representatives of the cities’ government. In one form or another, they all are invitations to Gindoff to pack up his Santa Monica-based business and move it to where the labor is cheaper, the restrictions fewer, and the profits--presumably--greater.
“They all say, ‘We want you, we want you to come here and employ our people,’ ” said Gindoff, chairman of Pioneer Magnetics, a manufacturer of power supplies and electronic test equipment. “Here in Santa Monica the attitude is, ‘We don’t want you.’ ”
Forgive Gindoff if he sounds a bit pressed. Keeping his assembly concern up and going these days means adhering to a completely different set of rules and standards than when Pioneer settled in Santa Monica 35 years ago. And lately, it seems, those standards and rules have been closing in on him.
For one, the city of Santa Monica is attempting to convert a largely industrial tract west of Centinela Avenue and south of Broadway from an area of light manufacturing and high-rise office construction to one that combines manufacturing and residential zoning. Though the city is operating under a state mandate to create a better balance between jobs and housing, Gindoff claims the change would prevent his business and others from expanding and might even cause some of them to leave.
“To chase jobs away just blows my mind, I can’t understand the thinking,” he said. “What good is it if the companies leave and the people are out of work?”
Santa Monica officials, however, say the city should not be singled out for causing manufacturers to flee.
“The loss of manufacturing business is something that has been happening anyway,” said Kenyon Webster, planning manager for Santa Monica. “The zoning is one of several important (reasons).”
Indeed, from Gindoff’s perspective, the possible rezoning is merely his latest headache. The upward crawl of city taxes, the tightening of industrial regulations, the rising costs of labor, the increase in crime, and offshore competition have left Pioneer executives wondering not only if they’ll leave the city, but perhaps the state.
“Frankly, it would be easier to do your fabrication offshore,” said company President Jerry Rosenstein, who estimates that worker and labor costs would then be a fraction of what they are now for the company. “Our biggest expense is in health and human resources.”
Currently, Pioneer Magnetics has 225 employees and occupies 52,000 square feet of space spread over four buildings. Moving is not something Gindoff had ever envisioned, given the enormous expense and trouble. But whereas Pioneer was at one time a part of an industrial community that included companies such as Lear-Siegler, Douglas and Unisys, most of those companies have either left or have quit production in the area. Pioneer executives call themselves “the last of the Mohicans.”
“We’d like to stay here and be a good citizen of Santa Monica,” Gindoff said. “People should have a right to be in business where they want to be in business.”
And if matters proceed along their current course? Said Gindoff: “One of these days we’re going to sit down and take a look and see where they want us. It certainly does not encourage us to stay here.”
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
The address is deceiving: On Robertson Boulevard, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard and next door to the trendy LunaParkrestaurant and club. A small record company sits across the street and a cafe down the block spills over with fashionably dressed patrons lounging over late breakfasts or rushing in for early lunches. What better place for a furniture factory?
For Nathan Goller, owner of the Phyllis Morris showroom and factory, the location--in West Hollywood, right in the heart of the city’s interior design district--couldn’t be more desirable.
“The ability to have a factory close to your showroom means a lot,” said Goller, an attorney whose late wife, Phyllis Morris, started the business 40 years ago. “If we had to drive, to run to Culver City to check on production, we’d be losing accessibility and the time of our designers and things wouldn’t work out. Here, we’re right on top of it.”
Granted, Goller’s is not a large manufacturing concern. It consists of only 30 employees cutting, sanding and shaping wood into custom-made furniture in a space that measures some 30,000 square feet. But its current presence in pricey West Hollywood harks back to another era, when sheet metal and woodworking shops were more easily found than the bistros, clubs and entertainment companies that now dominate the streetscape.
“This area was zoned for manufacturing,” said Goller, whose wife created the company as a “poodle lamp” and interior design business, and who expanded it into furniture design and manufacture facility in the 1960s. “This wasn’t a high-rent district at that point. The (area) between San Vicente and Doheny was all small manufacturing.”
The irony is that, today, the costs of locating a factory on Robertson Boulevard would be prohibitive for most companies, even for Phyllis Morris, which has a celebrity clientele who buy tables, cabinets, and bed frames for thousands--in some cases tens of thousands--of dollars.
“It’s a luxury we couldn’t afford if we started out now,” Goller acknowledged. “We could make more money renting our showroom and factory than we could running our business.”
It’s realities such as these, along with the ubiquitous zoning and environmental restrictions placed on industry, said Goller, that will mean the eventual disappearance of manufacturing in West Hollywood, despite the city’s encouragement of a varied mix of businesses. Experts say the process is a familiar one--valuable urban land evolving to a higher and better use.
“There’s a few manufacturers but they’ll be gone,” Goller said. He points to a sheet-metal shop on the corner, an operation that he says has been on the block for years. “No one’s going to keep doing that in that corner. . . . (The cities) don’t want more manufacturing; they want more boutiques.”
