Plan for Warehouse Near Artists’ Lofts Is Scrapped

Los Angeles school officials scrapped a controversial plan Monday to build a $23-million central warehouse in the middle of the city’s thriving downtown artists’ loft district.

School district planners said they had been unable to reach an agreement with the landowner, Catellus Development Corp., on design specifications and the price of the proposed 250,000-square-foot distribution center.

Artists who live and work in studio lofts around the proposed warehouse site at 3rd Street and Santa Fe Avenue had vigorously protested the development plan.

They hailed Monday’s action and pledged to help Catellus officials find an appropriate development project for the 10-acre site.

In a demonstration last month before the Board of Education, artists charged that hundreds of trucks using the warehouse’s 50 loading docks each day to pick up and deliver books, desks and cafeteria food would choke art colony streets and drive residents from the area.

About 1,000 painters, sculptors, writers and others live in 450 loft work spaces that have been carved out of abandoned factory buildings during the last 25 years. The loft district has proved to be such a success that city officials enacted an “artists in residence” ordinance legalizing such industrial zone habitation.

School officials had looked at the former industrial site as the perfect place for a warehouse. It is close to freeways and railroad facilities and is near the geographic center of the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District.

The district will now look for an alternate spot for the distribution facility, said Dave Koch, the district’s chief administrative officer.

School board President Vickie Castro, who represents the downtown loft area, said officials decided “it’s better if we stop now” and look for a different warehouse location.

Artists said Castro toured the loft district last Saturday. Earlier in the week, they outlined their concerns before representatives of both the school district and Catellus.

“We took Vickie Castro to three or four studios. She seemed to be on our side when she saw we are real people,” said artist Joel Bloom, who runs a tiny general store that is a community meeting place for the colony.

“We made it pretty clear that it would be hard to mitigate away all of the problems this warehouse would cause,” he said.

Painter David Trowbridge, who envisioned rumbling refrigerator trucks idling beneath the windows of the studio he has lived and worked in for 13 years, said school officials were unaware at first that the artists’ colony was there.

“I think the school board didn’t realize what this neighborhood is like,” he said.

Artists plan to stage a design competition early next year in hopes of producing ideas for alternative ways the 10-acre site can be developed, conceptual artist Tom Nagano said.

One idea is to preserve an abandoned, quarter-mile long freight depot built in 1906 by the Santa Fe Railroad that sits on one side of the former school warehouse site.

With minimal effort, Bloom said, it could be turned into new loft studios mixed in with art galleries, restaurants and taverns and--perhaps--a sculpture garden.

“Now we have to find out ways to make friends with Catellus,” Bloom said.