It’s Not Easy Being Hip
Now that Los Feliz has been anointed by everyone from the Economist to Vogue as the cool place to shop, dance and live in Los Angeles, the area’s 240 merchants are facing challenges they couldn’t have imagined three years ago.
Foremost among them is how to maintain the area’s quirky, alternative charm while guiding growth in a way that will satisfy a diverse group of entrepreneurs--a group already engaged in a lively debate over the area’s future.
Most agree they don’t want to be invaded by chains such as Gap and Pottery Barn. They worry about rising rents, which have crept higher as the area has grown more desirable. And they complain about a lack of parking, a perennial problem in Los Angeles but one that is especially acute in Los Feliz.
But perhaps the biggest challenge came in December, when the Los Angeles City Council designated the area a Business Improvement District, which means merchants will be charged annual membership fees to be used for improvements to the area.
Already, the BID has become a lightning rod among the eclectic Los Feliz merchants, who comprise all ethnicities, ages and social values from punk to conservative, and who own businesses ranging from funky vintage clothing boutiques to trendy restaurants, mainstream car dealerships and decidedly alternative body-piercing studios.
While most businesses support the BID, a small but vocal minority says it didn’t want it, doesn’t need it and wasn’t given an opportunity to fight it. Some claim it will impose a hardship on small businesses at a crucial time when they are struggling to get on their feet financially.
“I’m upset about the way it was handled,” says Ana Medina, who owns Archaic Idiot, an antiques and record store on Vermont Avenue. “We pay enough taxes as it is, and I think the membership should be voluntary.”
Like other BIDs throughout the city, sliding membership fees are automatically levied on all businesses in the Los Feliz area based on their size and number of employees.
The minimum annual fee is $200, the maximum about $500. Total annual revenue from the Los Feliz BID is expected to be about $60,000, according to George Abrahamian, president of the Los Feliz Business Improvement District and owner of La Belle Epoque, a restaurant and bakery on Hillhurst Avenue.
“It may not seem like that much money over the course of a year, but $250 can be a day’s worth of sales to some of the stores,” says Reiko Mathieu, who owns Squaresville, a vintage clothing store on Vermont.
In a hopeful sign, some of the merchants who initially opposed the BID have joined its transitional board.
“I protested because I thought the neighborhood needed a little more time to be educated about it, but now that it’s going on, I definitely want to have a voice,” says Mathieu, whose shop draws Hollywood celebrities as well as Japanese and German tourists clutching magazine articles that refer to Los Feliz as the coolest of L.A.’s neighborhoods.
“It’s definitely the dyed-hair set--people who are into vintage clothes and Americana,” says the fledgling entrepreneur, who adds that the publicity has been great for her business: Sales are up 60% in the 14 months since she opened.
The BID has brought together an eclectic group of entrepreneurs, many of them young and alternative-minded, with little in common with the more established businesses next door.
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In Los Feliz, a Lucky supermarket and Fred Sands Realtors office coexist with hip-hop clothing stores and Dragon, a modeling agency that specializes in providing pierced, tattooed and otherwise unusual individuals to the Hollywood film industry.
While the mix makes Los Feliz interesting, it can also make it more difficult to define goals.
“I’ve worked in other business districts where apathy reigns,” says Edward Henning, an urban revitalization consultant who spent a year and a half on a city contract helping develop the BID. “In Los Feliz, people are real strong-willed, ethnically diverse and real opinionated. It’s a challenge. It’s not vanilla.”
Restaurants tend to cluster on upper Hillhurst, where well-established eateries such as Katsu and Farfalla do brisk business. Coffeehouses, alternative clothing boutiques and record stores tend toward Vermont, although some are now expressing interest in Hollywood Boulevard, says Michael Salter, a sales agent at Fred Sands’ Los Feliz office.
Slater says commercial rents have risen from $1.50 a square foot in 1995 to as much as $2 today.
The commercial area is bounded roughly by Sunset Boulevard on the south, Los Feliz Boulevard on the north, Hillhurst on the east and Vermont on the west, but it extends to Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue on the southwest.
Unlike Melrose Avenue or Old Pasadena, where shops congregate around one long walking street, Los Feliz has three main destination streets: Hillhurst, Vermont and Hollywood. Because they are separated by residential streets, some Los Feliz business owners wonder about the geographic feasibility of declaring it all one big BID.
“I have concerns about how it would work,” says Billy Shire of Wacko/Soap Plant, which sits on a 6,000-square-foot corner property on Hollywood Boulevard.
Shire says he has canvassed businesses on his stretch of street and found that most are against the BID and don’t see how it will benefit them.
“Tree planting doesn’t do anything for me, and I know the improvements will be concentrated along Vermont and Hillhurst, not down here on Hollywood Boulevard,” Shire says.
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Not necessarily so, says Abrahamian, who adds that the beauty of the BID is that the businesses themselves decide where the improvements will go.
Many owners say what drew them to Los Feliz in the first place were the low rents, which are less than half what merchants pay on Melrose. In fact, a few are refugees from Melrose.
Mathieu for years managed the vintage clothing store Wasteland on Melrose. Shire relocated his Wacko/Soap Plant/Luz de Jesus art gallery from Melrose because of the lower overhead and the fact that it’s closer to his home in Echo Park. Vinyl Fetish, a record store, opened a store on Vermont two years ago but retains its original outlet on Melrose.
Many say they like the fact that Los Feliz does not have the mainstream chain stores that have popped up along Melrose.
“People think that when a shopping district gets Banana Republic and Crate & Barrel, it’s turning the corner, but it’s really losing its edge,” says Henning.
But rumors are rampant that the chains are already eyeing Los Feliz. Several business owners told The Times that Starbucks Coffee had tried unsuccessfully to rent space on Vermont. A spokeswoman for Starbucks declined to comment.
Starbucks or no, the area’s growing popularity inevitably will mean change.
Abrahamian says an annual street fair that drew 1,500 people when it began in 1991 now brings as many as 12,000 shoppers and diners flooding into Los Feliz.
Celebrities such as Madonna and Brad Pitt have bought homes there, and the cult movie “Swingers” has put such Los Feliz nightclubs as the Dresden Room and the Derby, a swing-dancing haven, on the hipster map.
Henning says he believes Los Feliz will continue to thrive for several reasons. The business community is committed to promoting the area and has even hired a public relations firm.
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But the growing popularity has brought some headaches.
Richard Adams, a vice president and regional manager for Fred Sands in Los Feliz, says parking has become “our No. 1 priority.”
As for crime, that other urban blight, it is down substantially since a Los Angeles Police Department substation opened on Vermont several years ago, an LAPD spokeswoman says.
Reiko Mathieu recalls that when she first saw the space on Vermont that she ended up renting, “it had sat vacant for five years and was ugly and boarded up.”
“But I just got a feeling that this was a neighborhood for potential. It was kismet. A lot of people happened to have the same vibe at the same time.”
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Los Feliz Proposal
The Los Feliz Business Improvement District, indicated by the shaded area, would levy fees on all businesses in the area to pay for improvements.
