A High Point in a Growing Latino Market

The way Frank Fernandez tells it, the once-blighted twin towers that rise above this dreary strip of Pico-Union are the Rome of the Latino business community. All roads lead here, or will soon enough.

Fernandez moved to the La Curacao Business Center in December after months of flat sales at the Citadel in Commerce. He has since hired 80 people from the largely immigrant Pico-Union neighborhood who fan out daily, selling long-distance telephone service to the community his company hopes to dominate--a community that phones home often.

“It’s a very centralized place to do business in the Hispanic community, and it has a lot of professional appeal,” said Fernandez, whose Telecom Enterprises enjoys a 10th-floor executive suite with downtown views and free Internet access. “Just about everyone knows where this center is.”

The year-old business center is the region’s first high-rise hub for businesses catering to the exploding Latino market, one that owners Ron and Jerry Azarkman hope will draw Latinos from across the Southland and help revitalize Pico-Union.

The engine behind the 20-story business center on Olympic Boulevard is the Israeli-born brothers’ thriving La Curacao household and electronics store. Nearly destroyed in the 1992 riots, La Curacao now attracts more than a million shoppers a year to the ground floor of the towers with easy credit and family fun-style retailing featuring clowns, karaoke and the rhythms of banda and merengue.

Reminder of Home

Unknown to most Angelenos, La Curacao is a reminder of home to the region’s Latino immigrants--particularly Central Americans--winning hearts with its mascot penguins and nostalgic motto, “Un poco de su pais,” or “A bit of your country.” The store shares its name and business relationship with a chain in Mexico and Central America, earning it instant recognition with newcomers.

Now the brothers--who spoke neither English nor Spanish when they arrived here more than 20 years ago, but built a $46-million-a-year sales and export operation from the ground up--are betting again on one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

With private security, bilingual receptionists and Latin music piped in to marble-floored elevators, the towers provide an array of services to a clientele often intimidated by mainstream high-rise culture.

Although the towers are still more than half empty, the Guatemalan and Costa Rican consulates have moved in, and the center is negotiating with consulates for Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. More than 70 attorneys, accountants, notaries and exporters--most of them Latino--have leased space, creating a professional community in which, “from the one who cleans all the way up to top management, everyone speaks Spanish and is there to help,” said leasing agent Miguel G. Walter.

The center is home to businesses exploring trade with Central America, and hopes to attract non-Latino companies seeking access to the Latino market. Above all, it is the most concerted effort yet to link the buying power of the swelling Latino community with Latino professional services--among the fastest-growing sectors of Latino business.

“There’s a huge demand from new immigrants for these types of personal services,” said Hector Cantu, managing editor of Hispanic Business Magazine. “If they’re bringing all these services into one building, that sounds like a new approach to serving the Hispanic market.”

The Azarkmans are banking on demographics they know well from two decades in business: Latinos in the Los Angeles Basin have more buying power than residents of Mexico City or Argentina. And the square mile around the towers has a higher population than any west of the Hudson River--more than 90% of it Latino.

“This is the largest Hispanic economy in the world, and there’s really no center for business,” said Mike Falkenstein, a La Curacao vice president. “There’s no office building you can see that says, ‘This is for Hispanic services.’ ”

Struggling Community

The center is in the heart of a community seared into public consciousness when rioters demolished dozens of businesses, the Azarkmans’ former store among them. Pico-Union has struggled against domination by the 18th Street gang, and sustains a poverty rate twice the city’s average.

But although per capita income is among the city’s lowest, many households include multiple wage earners, bringing the average household income around the towers up to $37,288, according to Equifax National Decision Systems.

All told, Pico-Union mirrors the larger Latino market, displaying middle-class values and buying habits despite lower-class income and education, said David Hayes-Bautista, director of UCLA’s Center for Study of Latino Health.

The numbers aren’t small. In 1997, Latino buying power in California topped $112 billion, and it is growing by an estimated $1 billion a month, he said.

City officials say a successful business center could stimulate the neighborhood economy while providing an anchor for revitalization, particularly as the nearby Staples Center--home for the Lakers and Kings--nears completion.

“This business center makes a lot of sense,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez. “[The Azarkmans] are not scared of the market and they’re aggressively approaching it.”

Jerry Azarkman had been in the United States only a few years when he began selling electronic equipment door-to-door in Pico-Union. He learned Spanish as he went, winning the confidence of the community. His brother, Ron, joined the business two years later.

The Azarkmans, who declined to be interviewed, built their empire by portraying La Curacao as deeply connected to Latin American culture. Easy credit, aggressive advertising and a system that lets customers spend dollars on relatives south of the border have helped.

Since 1989, shoppers have been able to purchase goods at the Azarkmans’ Pico-Union department store and another one in Panorama City, to be picked up at the outlets in Mexico and Central America.

Falkenstein said the Azarkmans’ stores are independently owned but have “some relationship” with the foreign outlets. The Azarkmans also offer credit to La Curacao shoppers, many of whom are unable to secure it elsewhere.

Alarmed by rising personal bankruptcies in the Latino community, the store earlier this year launched the Hispanic Credit Education Campaign, a coalition of lenders, financial institutions and competitors who offer financial counseling to Latino consumers.

“They treat the customer well and they give credit easily,” said Francisco Flores, 26, who lives nearby and purchased his first camera from La Curacao at age 18.

Flores holds a La Curacao credit card that offers lower rates to longtime customers. His brother bought a disc jockey sound system on credit and used it to launch his own business. “They understand us,” said Flores, originally from Acapulco.

La Curacao has also produced its own series of programs that meld travelogue with infomercial.

“Recuerdos de Mi Pais,” or “Memories of My Country,” recently aired for 17 weeks on Channels 52 and 22, featuring Renan Almendarez Cuello, one of the region’s most popular Spanish-language radio personalities. One episode whisked viewers to a beach in El Salvador, a Honduran island, a Guatemalan village and a Mexican town of artisans. Sandwiched between travel segments, Cuello showed off store appliances, computers and furniture.

The Azarkmans opened their first store on Olympic Boulevard in 1980. In 1991 they moved to a larger store that was destroyed in the riots six months later. Their move to the ground floor of the Bank of America towers at Union Avenue was meant to be temporary, but the Azarkmans stayed on.

Meanwhile, other tenants fled and the bank foreclosed on the owner. In 1993, the Azarkmans purchased the towers for $3.7 million, and two years later opened a second store at the former Robinson’s site in Panorama City’s Panorama Mall, with stylized Mayan pillars, a stage and a children’s play area.

They developed the concept for a one-stop Latino business center about a year ago. The store gives name recognition to tenants, who draw hundreds of potential shoppers to the store’s front door daily.

For now, the building bears the Bank of America logo, and the western tower is only 17% leased. But the project is on its way. The eastern tower is 45% leased, and several floors were recently redone with new wallpaper, peach carpets and Latin artwork.

Negotiations are nearly complete for the bank branch to move to a smaller space in the western tower and reduce its logo, said building manager Ray Buelna. The La Curacao Business Center then plans to mount its own name, expand the store and add a food court. Leasing agent Walter said he is also looking for a gym.

Like the stores, the towers aim to tap both the booming Latino market and close ties Central Americans have with their home countries.

“The Azarkmans are doing on a larger scale what comes naturally to the community--transferring resources back home,” said Roberto Lovato, a Los Angeles marketing consultant and former Salvadoran community activist.

“A lot of businesses at the center, and the consulates, have aspects of their work that are transnational, whether they are selling goods that are sent to Guatemala and El Salvador, dealing with [immigration] documents, or buying real estate back home.”

Dica Inc., a Guatemalan real estate developer, set up shop there near the consulate to serve Guatemalans eager to invest back home. The Guatemalan law firm Larios & Associates does the legal footwork for Dica’s deals and provides other services involving Guatemalan law.

“We begin business with them here and finish in Guatemala,” said Gabriel Larios Ochaita. “We are Guatemalans and this is a Hispanic center. All our clients like to come here.”

Many tenants were drawn to the executive suites, which start at $200 a month. A bilingual receptionist serves them from a red-carpeted waiting area with a wood spiral staircase.

Immigration attorney Claire Cifuentes left her job at a Pasadena law firm in September to launch a solo practice. A Guatemalan, Cifuentes has ties with the consulate and nearby nonprofit agencies, and is strategically located to deal with recent immigration law changes affecting Central Americans.

Others say working in a center that caters to Latino services is good for networking. “I got someone who had been to the Guatemalan consulate, and someone else referred a client to me for their taxes,” said Dinorah Ayala, a paralegal who moved there in November. “My business is 100% better.”

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Business Hub

The 20-story La Curacao Business Center could help revitalize Pico-Union at a crucial time for the troubled neighborhood, as the Staples Center--new home of the Lakers and Kings--nears completion. The booming La Curacao electronics and household store is located at the base of the business center.

1. La Curacao Business Center

2. Staples Center