Grand Design

By ZAN DUBIN

Feb. 27, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For Frank Swann, the Grand Central Art Center is a student’s dream: a place to work, study and live.

For Santa Ana, the $7.2-million complex of classrooms, art galleries and studios opening Sunday at Broadway and 1st streets is the biggest building block in the city’s bid to create a thriving cultural hub in its moribund downtown and to give Orange County its first vibrant, urban arts colony.

The new center, a Cal State Fullerton satellite, “will attract up to 1,000 people a day to the area” once it’s fully functional, Santa Ana City Councilman Thomas E. Lutz said.

It already has helped lure creative enterprise to Santa Ana, Lutz noted, including DGWB, one of Orange County’s top ad agencies, a multimillion-dollar Irvine firm that recently signed a five-year lease nearby. Company officials cited proximity to the university’s graphic-design students among reasons for selecting the new headquarters.

Nestled within an urban core largely abandoned years ago, the two-story 1924 structure--refurbished in collaboration with CSUF--will have three art galleries, a repertory theater, extension-school classrooms and, soon, a Bohemian cafe, all open to the public.

The art center, which encompasses most of one block and will be open six days a week, is the cornerstone of the city’s emerging Artists Village. This nine-block area is home to roughly 50 artists’ galleries and studios, two other small theater troupes and a folk music and dance ensemble, also housed in historic buildings.

Sixteen Cal State graduate art students, including Swann, are among the first residents of the long-delayed art center, which is opening three years behind schedule because of construction snafus.

“It’s wonderful just to be able to walk downstairs, and there’s my studio,” said Swann, a 29-year-old painting student who will attend most of his classes on Fullerton’s main campus. His apartment, as do the others, has an urban chic feel with exposed rafters and air ducts, and hardwood floors.

Partners in Art

The university paid about $500,000 of the project’s bill. The city, proclaiming that the presence of such an established institution demonstrates long-term commitment to the effort, funded the remainder.

Lutz will attend Sunday’s grand-opening ceremony, as will Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), Santa Ana Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. and Cal State Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon.

“We believe in bringing education into the community,” Gordon said, noting that the school also has satellite campuses in Mission Viejo, Garden Grove and Irvine.

Activity has been minimal, but increasing incrementally, at the 5-year-old Artists Village, which is walking distance from the Civic Center and is modeled on such successful redevelopment projects as San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter.

Its biggest draw has been monthly open houses, which began last year and attract about 400 art lovers to the historic Santora Building, across a courtyard from the university center where most of the colony’s 50 artists rent gallery or studio space.

Supporters have long held that the university center would change all that, drawing visitors to galleries showcasing nationally known artists (and open six days a week), public classes, lectures and films and live-in students providing a 24-hour presence,

It will give employees from the new Ronald Reagan Federal Building nearby more reason to linger after work, supporters say. It should also help motivate tourists and residents countywide to visit the village and adjacent attractions, such as the new Discovery Science Center about 1 1/2 miles to the north on Main Street.

By fall, the university expects at least 300 students a day, in addition to the center’s residents, to be streaming through its hallways. Operation of the building will be subsidized by rental income from its theater and planned cafe, plus proceeds from extension classes and other programs, officials say.

Delays and Objections

The project’s delays stemmed largely from the difficulty of reconstructing the 75-year-old Grand Central Building, officials said.

In fact, some parts, including a computer lab and a Gypsy Den Cafe, won’t be done by Sunday. Repeated delays forced the city to find temporary housing, in nearby downtown apartments, for the center’s first resident students. They will continue to take all their classes on the main Cal State Fullerton campus but are now living in the Grand Central building.

Delays also forced 10-year-old Alternative Repertory Theatre, which leases space for its new homein the Grand Central building, to postpone its opening by about three months.

Meanwhile, Councilman Ted R. Moreno and several Santa Ana residents continue to oppose the Artists Village, asserting that the money would be better spent on street repairs or programs serving the city’s youth.

“We’ve gone to council meetings and stated our opposition from day one,” said Sean Mills, 32, a title insurance representative who has lived in Santa Ana all his life.

The council majority, however, supports the village, which has attracted many new tenants since the center’s groundbreaking 17 months ago. They include two small dramatic troupes--Rude Guerrilla Theater Co. and Hunger Artists--and the 35-year-old Los Angeles-based Aman Folk Ensemble music and dance company.

Still Growing

Meanwhile, an owner of Anaheim’s music-and-dance club J.C. Fandango this summer plans to refurbish a structure beside the Santora Building for an upscale Mexican restaurant and entertainment venue showcasing “Latin arts,” according to Matthew Cruz, who owns a gallery in Santora and will collaborate on the venture.

Targeting Santa Ana’s large Latino population, Fandango’s Jose Marco Castellanos plans to present some of the same well-known Latino rock en espanol bands he has booked into the Anaheim club. The venue, to be in the historic Southern Counties Gas Building and to be called La Plaza de Las Artes, also will feature poetry readings and dramatic presentations in a 60-seat theater, Cruz said.

In addition, local developers Arthur Strock and Harriet Harris just finished 15 artist-studio rentals and plan this spring to break ground on 46 artist live-work units, which will available for purchase.

The Irvine-based DGWB ad agency, whose clients include the KFC fast-food chain, is moving its 60 employees to Santa Ana this summer to be in a more culturally diverse and creative neighborhood, executives said.

Not coincidentally, most of Cal State Fullerton’s art students specialize in graphic design, which all ad agencies utilize.

“These are the types of artists that we’d hopefully be hiring some time in the future,” said DGWB president Mike Weisman.

That’s just the sort of community interaction Cal State Fullerton officials had in mind when they envisioned the art center. CSUF assistant art professor Mike McGee, the project’s administrator, visited university and college art departments around Southern California before prominent Los Angeles architect Steven Erlich and his firm were hired to revamp the 1924 building.

Erlich’s updated, industrial-style interior includes student art studios with nearly floor-to-ceiling windows flanking the building’s quaint brick facade.

“We tried to create something that was physically open,” McGee said, “thinking that it would enrich the students’ experience if they could be part of the community.

“We also want to raise the bar in terms of what’s available to the public in that area and do gallery exhibits of contemporary work that are challenging and stimulating,” he said.

Giving Art Students Their Space

In addition to community outreach, the impetus behind creating the art center was insufficient student studio space on campus. All academic art departments must provide some such space for accreditation. Cal State Fullerton had been relying on converted on-campus offices.

“We still use about 15 of those and will maintain them,” McGee said. “But we have 125 graduate art students, so we need even more.”

A commuter school of some 26,000 students, the university had never offered housing for its art students, either. The center’s 27 second-floor units are expected to be fully occupied by summer. Grad students get the studios and one-bedroom apartments, which are 500 to 800 square feet and, rent for $450 to $550, utilities included, on a first-come, first-served basis.

Swann, who also works as a resident advisor to other students living in the building, already has hung his abstract paintings on the walls of his new apartment. He’s further made it his own with a babbling, tabletop fountain and two chirping blue finches.

Besides the proximity to his studio and his low rent, Swann likes being in the middle of the Artists Village, which he believes will soon buzz with potential buyers or curators scrutinizing the work he hopes to show in the center’s Sales and Rental Gallery.

He also likes sharing living quarters with students in a variety of disciplines, from sculpture to animation.

“I think that’s going to generate a lot of creative energy,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Cal State Fullerton

Grand Central Art Center

125 N. Broadway

Santa Ana

Information: (714) 278-7750, CSUF Main Art Gallery. McGee will cal back & let us know when phone at Grand Central will be operable and give us the number.

Opens: Sunday

NOTE: Total building is 48,000 square feet

BASEMENT

* Computer classroom: 35 workstations for extended education classes (800 square feet).

* Classrooms 1A & 1B: Two 600-square-foot classrooms for extended education and university classes.

* Studios: 27 work spaces, 200 to 300 square feet each, for graduate art students, faculty and an artist in residence.

* Digital Photo Lab: 12 computer workstations for digital photo production (650 square feet).

FIRST FLOOR

* Glass brick: Panels of 6X6 glass brick embedded in sidewalk . These provide natural light on basement work areas.

* Open Studios: Six graduate student work areas, two students in each studio (400-500 sq. feet each).

* Gypsy Den Cafe: Coffeehouse and full-service, cafe-style restaurant with outdoor patio (2,800 square feet). NOTETABLES WILL BE PURCHASED FROM THRIFT SHOPS SO SHAPES WILL VARY.

* Theater: Home of Alternative Repertory Theatre, a professional troupe staging plays open to the public (80 seats, 1,800 square feet).

* Watermark printmaking workshop: Printmaking services for professional artists and students (1,500 square feet).

* Grand Central Gallery: Public gallery for changing exhibitions of work by professional contemporary artists (1,700 square feet).

* Grand Central project room: Public gallery for changing installations by professional artists and architects (800 square feet).

* Sales and rental gallery: Art by CSUF students, faculty and alumni for sale or rent. Includes bookstore (1,200 square feet).

* Artist-in-residence studio: Work space for professional artists in residence (700 square feet).

* Wood shop: Woodworking studio for students (900 square feet).

Main reception desk

TOP FLOOR

* Living quarters: 27 studio and one-bedroom apartments, primarily for CSUF students. Full kitchens and baths. (500 to 800 square feet).

Sources: Cal State Fullerton; Robbins, Jorgensen, Christopher Architects.

Graphics reporting by JANICE JONES DODDS

The Grand Opening

Free tours of the Cal State Fullerton Grand Central Art Center, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, will be given during the grand opening from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Galleries, artists’ studios and other facilities in the Artists Village will be open for the afternoon, as will two inaugural exhibits in the art center: “James Doolin: Selected Works 1983-Present,” in the Grand Central Gallery, and “Steven Erlich Architects: Re-Cycle,” in the Project Room. Both run through May 30. Admission to all activities is free.

Regular hours at the Grand Central Gallery, Project Room, and Sales and Rental Gallery are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Mondays. (714) 834-1692.

Upcoming Artists Village Events:

* James Doolin will give a public lecture at Grand Central Art Center March 6 at 7 p.m. during the next Artists Village open house, which runs 7-11 p.m. Both events are free. (714) 834-1692.

* The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art continues its annual juried exhibition, “Instinct,” through March 27 at 208 N. Broadway. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. Free. (714) 667-1517.

* Alternative Repertory Theatre presents Donald Margulies’ “Sight Unseen,” April 3-May 1, at 125 N. Broadway, in the Grand Central Art Center. $22-$25. (714) 836-7929.

* Hunger Artists presents adaptations of Franz Kafka’s short plays “In the Penal Colony” and “Red Peter” Thursday at 204 E. 4th St., Suite I. $10-$12. Through March 21. (714) 547-9100.

* Rude Guerrilla Theater Company presents “ ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” at the Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway. $10-$12. March 12-April 18. (714) 547-4688.

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Below are other points of interest in or near the Artists Village area of downtown Santa Ana:

ATTRACTIONS:

1) Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St. (714) 567-3600.

2) Kidseum (operated by Bowers), 1802 N. Main St. (714) 567-3600.

3) Discovery Science Center, 2500 N. Main St. (714) 547-7000. (714) 542-2823

4) MainPlace mall, 2800 N. Main St. (714) 547-7000.

5) Koo’s Cafe, 1505 N. Main St. (714) 648-0937.

GALLERIES, THEATERS:

6) Martinez Books and Art Gallery, 200 N. Main St. (714) 973-7900.

7) Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santora Bldg., 208 N. Broadway. (714) 667-1517.

8) Aman Folk Ensemble, Empire Building, 202 N. Broadway. (714) 836-8006.