Nomads Don’t Have Home in NoHo

If the plan had held together, actors would be acting, artwork would be hanging from every wall and espresso would be flowing freely now at Nomads 1800.

But the place that organizers tirelessly promoted as a “synergistic mini-mall for the arts” on Lankershim Boulevard to anchor North Hollywood’s nascent arts district now sits empty, another relic of the 1994 earthquake.

Visions of a splashy spring opening have dissolved into a squabble involving Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway tunneling that has raised doubts about the long-standing dream of North Hollywood as an artistic mecca.

Shortly after the project began to fizzle in the early part of the year, Jennifer Kelton, head of the nonprofit company Nomads Inc., filed separate lawsuits against the MTA and her former landlord and a real estate broker. The suits, which attorneys say seek at least $100,000 in damages, contend that Kelton was misled when she first explored launching Nomads in the 69-year-old building just north of Magnolia Boulevard.

Rather than a mere background annoyance, noise and vibration from the MTA’s Red Line tunneling proved a serious threat to every aspect of the business, the suit says, and those who helped bring Nomads to North Hollywood minimized that threat.

Landlord John Narguizian and others characterize Kelton as an opportunist who used more than $450,000 in Community Redevelopment Agency quake-recovery loans to drive her ambitious, ever-expanding plans and then panicked when she fell far short of fund-raising goals.

“She couldn’t come up with the money,” Narguizian said. “That’s what it came down to. We tried to please her. We tried to do everything we could to change things around. But I finally had to say, ‘Look, Jennifer, I support you and what you’re doing. But I need my money.’ ”

“She would say to me every week, ‘Thank you, John, for trusting me.’ . . . But in this business, I have learned you can’t be a nice guy.’ ”

Mildred Weller, a graphic designer and longtime North Hollywood activist, said: “She thought she had a cash cow with the CRA and she kept coming up with things she wanted to do with the money.”

Kelton, a Marina del Rey music promoter and restaurateur who ran the now-defunct Nomads nightclub in West Los Angeles, grew interested in North Hollywood’s arts district about two years ago.

After settling on the Lankershim property, Kelton began distributing eye-catching press releases, brochures, stickers and post cards that promised a 1996 opening. That date later slid to spring 1997.

At a gala groundbreaking in May 1996, CRA officials praised Kelton’s organizational skills and vision. Lillian Burkenheim, the CRA’s North Hollywood project manager, declined to comment for this story, but had said in 1996 that “I’ve never worked with anyone who has sat down and worked out all the pitfalls . . . thoroughly and methodically like she has.”

Residents that day admired architectural drawings of the complex, which was to have included gallery space, a health-food restaurant, a music and film venue and offbeat shops.

In brochures, Kelton even thanked Narguizian and broker Fred Bower--the other defendant in one lawsuit--on a list of people whose “support has been instrumental.”

Kelton would not comment for this story, referring questions to her attorneys.

“This was her dream,” said attorney Michael Hirsch. “Nobody feels worse about this than Jennifer.”

Hirsch, who called the subway tunneling noise “raunchy” and “unacceptable,” predicted a report reviewed Wednesday by the MTA board of directors would help Kelton’s case. The report concedes that noise levels measured along Lankershim Boulevard in 1996 exceeded the maximum levels allowed in a 1989 environmental impact report for the subway project. The board discussed possible changes to the EIR and mitigation measures but has not taken final action.

David Cox, artistic director of the American Renegade Theatre Co., just around the corner from the Nomads space, called the notion that Kelton didn’t realize the full effects of subway construction when she leased the building “laughable.”

“You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know,” he said. “It’s all everyone ever talks about. There are signs up. There are big piles of dirt.”

Cox and Robert Caine, managing director of Actor’s Alley next door to Nomads, both said the Nomads failure would not hamper the ongoing effort to establish the arts district.

CRA spokeswoman Gayle Anderson said the agency is undeterred by the Nomads situation. “The momentum is still there,” she said.

But not everyone in the neighborhood agrees with Anderson’s confident assessment that “NoHo” is “like Greenwich Village was in the ‘50s.”

“You can’t artificially create an arts district,” said Gary Hendrickson, an artist and head of the Project Area Committee, a resident-activist group. “Artists move in and then you declare it an arts district.”

Restoration work is now complete on Narguizian’s building. He still hopes to find a tenant, but admits to being unsure about his prospects of filling so much space in an unestablished neighborhood.

William Driscoll, who is also representing Kelton, said the situation worked out best for all parties.

Given the subway noise, “everybody, even the landlord, should thank their lucky stars that we’re not in there trying to operate a theater,” he said.