SOUTH-CENTRAL : Adopt-A-Building Program Seeks Aid

Michael McMeel believes adoption isn’t just for children.

The Beverly Hills entrepreneur and former musician has come up with his own adoption program, one that pairs corporate sponsors and community leaders with empty buildings as part of a plan to refurbish abandoned sites.

“I was wandering around South-Central, and I realized there is all this wasted space,” said McMeel, who heads the nonprofit Awareness Foundation, which works with community groups and youths to provide student field trips. “After the riots, people talked about ‘We need to build in South-Central,’ but there are already tons of buildings there that just need to be fixed up.”

The foundation, started by McMeel in 1992, is asking corporate sponsors to adopt vacant buildings and turn them into learning centers, much the way that businesses and community leaders have adopted stretches of highways for litter and graffiti removal.

McMeel said he is not looking just for cash donations but materials that companies no longer use--such as computers, desks and other supplies--for the centers. The Discovery Centers project would refurbish the vacant sites with the help of volunteers, who would also staff them. Computer, art and other classes would be offered.

The foundation has received the endorsement of Mayor Richard Riordan, Councilman Mike Hernandez and others who appear in a short film McMeel has produced about the foundation. The film will be used to raise funds for the centers, McMeel said, adding that the project has not been able to attract a large corporate sponsor.

“He is displaying a will to do something that we need,” said Hernandez, who met McMeel when the entrepreneur began attending City Council meetings in 1992. “He has faith in corporate America, and that’s what we need.”

Hernandez said he is working with McMeel to assist other youth organizations.

Getting sponsors has been difficult. Sitting in his Sunset Boulevard office, McMeel pointed to a stack of rejection letters from banks, corporations and others, who have cited shrinking budgets and an increase in the number of organizations looking for help.

“It’s been hard. People don’t realize that to the degree that they ignore the problems out there, that will be the degree that it comes back to hit them in the head,” he said.

McMeel has, however, met with some success at the Vermont Square United Methodist Church at Vernon and Budlong avenues. Church leaders and McMeel have been discussing the possibility of using an empty three-story building owned by the church as the first Discovery Center.

“People need alternatives and places to go for hope and that’s what attracted me to the idea of the Discovery Center,” said the Rev. Kenneth Waters.

McMeel said he approached Waters shortly after the 1992 riots with the idea of making a documentary film that would help focus attention on South-Central. That led to the church appearing in McMeel’s film, “A Light Still Shines,” and to talks about the church housing the first Discovery Center at the site.

“The fact is, there is a need in this community,” Waters said. “There are needs for job training, job education and recreational activity, needs for some alternative for our young people to prevent the loitering.”

Information: (310) 288-0291.