Building Is No Mini-Mall--It’s Maximal Southern California
In the western San Fernando Valley in a proper suburban location between a freeway and an industrial park lies what is arguably the perfectly representative Southern California building.
It houses the headquarters of a prominent hair-care and beauty products manufacturer; a salon; a cosmetics shop; a rain-forest exhibit; a gym, and--to dissuade any thoughts that we are solely consumers who produce only entertainment--a high-tech defense contractor.
It is a politically correct collection of tenants with slick, futuristic names like Perceptronics, Aesthetics and Quest Fitness. The defense contractor, known chiefly for its simulated war games and weapons-training programs, is beating its electronic swords into digital plowshares.
The hair-care and beauty products are cruelty-free.
Some of the landscaping is drought-resistant.
The Woodland Hills building is architecturally distinct. Its main entrance on DeSoto Avenue is an imposing gray stone pyramid edged in neat rows of tall green horse tails (those leafless, bamboo-like stalks). Inside, concrete floors dotted with silvery squiggles and furniture upholstered in fuchsia and neon orange look like something out of the Jetsons.
With a place like this to work, work out and be groomed in, why ever leave? Who needs the biospheres of Arizona?
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“We’re waiting for the gym to open its juice bar--then we’d have everything,” said Perceptronics personnel director Devra Eckmann with a laugh.
The 25-year-old defense contractor, which specializes in “virtual reality” simulators, occupies two floors on the north side of the building. Forward-thinking as it is, the firm is dispensing with full metal jackets for exposed metal ductwork; some of the revealed pipes in its ceilings are even painted pastel. A small atrium holds dozens of corn plants--a restful view when looking up from the lens of a trainer TOW, or Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-Command-Link-Guided anti-tank weapon system.
Although the bulk of its work remains defense-related, the company wants to convert its simulation technology to civilian uses and has already done some jobs tailor-made to Los Angeles, at least before the recession.
There was a fancy “surrogate travel” marketing device for a Beverly Hills developer who wanted clients to be able to “tour” their future mansions and lush grounds before they were even built. And a gift-of-the-year from Neiman Marcus’ Christmas catalogue was a $20,000 exercise bike with workout levels (flat, hilly) coordinated to an attached large-screen TV that displays appropriate terrain to the pedaler.
The virtual bike tour has yet to make its way to Quest Fitness, although the gym’s clients include Perceptronics CEO Gershon Weltman and software engineer Moshe Kirsh.
And one of the gym’s managers, a buff Marine veteran and aspiring physical therapist named Richard Irby, confirmed it will soon open a juice bar serving sandwiches and cappuccino, before he was summoned to check an aerobics-class stereo on the blink. Class members kept stomping and leaping in rhythm, even without the soundtrack of Van Halen’s “Jump” to urge them on.
“The women--they’re serious about their workouts now, music or no music,” Irby said.
The gym is open 24 hours a few days a week, he said. For anyone who feels like moving into the building or just spending the night and needs a change of clothes, Quest also has a pro shop selling comfy sweats. There are personal trainers available, a nutritionist and a masseuse.
“We say it’s the quintessential California building,” Eckmann said. “We just need a film studio and we’d be perfect.”
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Even without one, there is glamour enough at the C.E.N.T.R.E. salon, where you can get your hair cut, colored, permed or relaxed in an atmosphere that oozes hip.
Already perfect-looking clients sip water, juice or coffee as French rap blares. The partitions between workstations are artfully bubbled and cracked clear glass, providing privacy while also letting in plenty of natural light. A leggy gamin drifts past in a miniskirt, white knee socks and a pair of elevated, post-modern Mary Janes. The Spank-Me-Hard look.
Down the hall, you pay in the Profumeria, purveyor of ultra-sensual, ultra-expensive beauty products made from rain-forest extracts, the (plastic) bottles say. They’re made by the Sebastian company, also headquartered in the building. Farther down the hall is the euphemistically named Aesthetics, which does waxing, electrolysis, derma peels, plus a couple other sadomasochistic beautification procedures.
Finally, there is the Little Green Rainforest, an educational exhibit aimed at children and often serving as a sort of in-house day-care center. “A lot of times, I’ll send my clients’ children in there to sort of browse around and keep them busy,” said hair stylist Adrienne Firestone, who takes an aerobics class at Quest Fitness.
By now it’s probably obvious that this assembly of complimentary businesses didn’t just come together spontaneously but was planned that way. In fact, Sebastian either owns or is affiliated with most of the building’s tenants except for Perceptronics and Quest Fitness--and it sought out a gym for the premises.
So it’s contrived--so what? So are a lot of things we enjoy here in Image Central.
It just makes this building that much more a perfect little microcosm of Southern California.
