Will This Become the Next Great Stroller’s Paradise?

The Neighborhood: Fairfax Avenue between Wilshire and Beverly boulevards.

What It Was: An uninteresting stretch of boarded-up buildings, empty parking lots and small businesses.

What It Is Now: Unique shops and restaurants are slowly moving into the area at Fairfax and Beverly, creating the possibility of a new walkable district that has character instead of a cookie-cutter outdoor-mall look.

The Potential: The next mini-Melrose?

Angelenos are constantly searching for the next great shopping / walking / dining area. Who can blame us? With precious few places to stroll in the city, even sites with distant potential are met with excitement.

Fairfax between Wilshire and Beverly is a contender. While the street is still a work in progress and merchants aren’t exactly clamoring over leasing space, it’s got legs. A scant few years ago the strip was a ho-hum collection of small businesses (a dance-wear shop, a cigar store, a travel agency), office space and a Jack-In-the-Box. It was little more than a corridor linking nearby landmarks Museum Row, Farmers Market and CBS studios.

But it’s the proximity to those landmarks that has some people interested.

Mani’s Bakery moved in at Fairfax near 6th Street in 1991, and suddenly there was a reason to stop along the route. Now there are more.

Gasp, just north of Wilshire, offers imported furniture, plus antiques and home accessories. The collection includes sofas, chairs, dining room and coffee tables, armoires, chests, lamps, vases, candleholders and mirrors. Many of the pieces are recycled teak from Indonesia.

It’s the second store for owners Hilmar Ragnarsson and Jeff Kiffer (their original store is on Beverly, east of Fairfax).

“My partners and I live down the road, and the location was too perfect for us,” Ragnarsson says. “The place was calling to us, saying, ‘Come on, baby, fix me up!’ The response we’ve gotten since we opened has been great, people saying, ‘Thank you,’ honking as they drive by, telling us this was such a dump, all gray and gross, and nobody did anything with it.”

He is optimistic about the neighborhood: “Actually, it’s a very cool street, and the neighborhood is very nice. I’m really thrilled to be a part of it.”

A few blocks north is Kristin Londgren, the eponymous boutique of a new local designer of feminine, contemporary women’s clothes.

“I just think the area has a really good feel about it,” Londgren says, explaining why she chose the spot just south of 3rd Street. “It has a lot of walking traffic and people feel this is an area they want to support. Someone said it’s very SoHo, because you’ve got some contemporary shops mixed in with older establishments, like a watch repair.”

Just west of Fairfax on Beverly is a trio of new shops: Gallery 7916, offering prints and originals from contemporary artists, as well as vintage works; Nell’s, selling antique and new pottery, hand-painted vases, lamps, pillows and linens; and shelter, featuring modern furniture and home accessories.

Area merchants are looking forward to the opening of Barnaby’s restaurant on Fairfax and Colgate Avenue next spring, hoping it will bring even more people to the area. The 350-seat restaurant, bakery and lounge housed in a restored Art Deco building was slated to open months ago, but had a series of delays.

Developer / owner Elliot Gottfurcht is still high on the location: “I hope that the redevelopment continues to go north and south along Fairfax, and that the shops begin to be upgraded and we see a lot of boutiques. With that we’ll also see foot traffic. It’s an area that I think has a wonderful group of people working and living there.”