Winner Chosen in Design Contest for Vermont Corridor Project

Even before Pepperdine University left 81st Street and Vermont Avenue for Malibu, its old Los Angeles neighborhood had been in decline.

On Tuesday, more than 20 years later, a winner was chosen in a politically controversial design contest that backers hope will revive the former Pepperdine property and spur other improvements along the troubled Vermont corridor.

The winning proposal in the competition sponsored by First Interstate Bank would restore the 1931 Art Deco tower that housed Pepperdine’s administration, add adjacent storefronts in a similar architectural style on a vacant Vermont lot and build 35 townhouses along rear courtyards. And, in a highly symbolic return of higher education to the site, USC has promised to locate an advisory service for small businesses there.

“We are now embarking on a journey to once again make this site a flagship for this corridor,” declared Los Angeles Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the area. His comments came during a ceremony Tuesday afternoon in the turquoise Pepperdine building, which has been empty since the college moved in 1972. Ridley-Thomas was on the contest jury that selected the entry by San Francisco architect Daniel Solomon and the Caleb Development Corp., a South-Central firm, over two other finalists from an earlier pool of 66 entries.

The selection came after much debate, highlighted by a squabble between Ridley-Thomas and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who lives a few blocks away in the more upscale Vermont Knolls area. Waters and Vermont Knolls homeowners opposed the bank’s original plan for 130 units of rental housing and demanded a solely commercial development that the congresswoman envisions as part of a central city version of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.

In response, the housing component was sharply reduced and switched to market-rate townhouses. But Waters and some neighbors remain upset and will continue to push a counterproposal of stores built in the style of an African village and fronted by a small park.