Pacific Design Center Will Make Room for Clothing

The Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood’s wholesale home furnishings mart, is broadening its horizons. Beginning this fall, 300,000 square feet on four floors of the center’s green building will be made into wholesale fashion showrooms.

Andrew Wolf, president of the Pacific Design Center, said Wednesday that 80 fashion companies have signed letters of intent that will be converted into leases. Who are his intended?

“Currently they are in the California Mart, but we also have people from the New York and European markets showing a great deal of interest,” he said. The showrooms are expected to open by July, 1996.

“The future of fashion is on the west side of town,” said Laurel Alweil, one showroom owner who has signed a letter of intent.

Also on the PDC list is swimwear designer Robin Piccone. “Business has declined since the riots,” Piccone said. “Now the Dallas markets are stronger for us. For a company like ours, moving away from the garment industry and moving to a design area would be a good distinction,” she said. Piccone added that she will probably keep a Mart showroom until she can gauge which location attracts more buyers.

“The California Mart will complain,” Wolf said of the shift away from the wholesale apparel center Downtown. “They’ll say we are ruining the industry. But it’s no longer a question of buyers coming to Downtown L.A. They’re going to Las Vegas. Los Angeles needs a new fashion statement, and we feel the PDC is it.”

Corky Newman, president of California Mart, said there have been steady improvements to the apparel center and surrounding area. He believes that “fragmenting the industry” is a bad idea.

“The goal of our current mayor and lots of manufacturers is to rejuvenate the city, and we’ve made tremendous progress,” said Newman, who is also president of the Downtown Property Owners Assn.

Some showroom owners have threatened to defect to more pristine settings in the past, including Santa Monica, but this time, insiders say, they’ll make good on their plans.

“I guess they’re going ahead with it,” Newman said. “We’ll be in competition with the PDC. I’ve never been in an industry where there wasn’t competition. I expect we will do our best to maintain our tenants.”