A Renaissance Effort, Artist Center Opens in Santa Ana

For Don Cribb, godfather of the Grand Central Art Center in downtown Santa Ana, Sunday’s grand opening of the multicultural arts space was “like giving birth. This is extraordinary.”

For Grace Sandlin, the opening was bittersweet. Her Neutral Grounds coffee shop, directly across the walk from the arts center, has been a haven for artists, musicians and poets. Now, she says she may have to close within six months because her shop isn’t considered fancy enough for the new center.

Emotions ran from joy to trepidation Sunday as the Grand Central, a $7.2-million partnership between Cal State Fullerton and the city of Santa Ana, opened after a decade of hard work.

Hundreds of artists, well-wishers and just plain curious visitors strolled through the gleaming gallery spaces, gawked at the giant modern paintings on display and peeked at studios built especially to house student artists.

“Last winter during El Nino, there wasn’t even a roof on here,” said Santa Ana City Councilman Thomas E. Lutz. “Look at it now.”

Bill and Linda Gailey of Huntington Beach said they never had a reason to come to downtown Santa Ana before Sunday.

“It’s beautiful space, beautiful light, great ambience,” said Linda Gailey.

“I love it. It’s great,” said Police Cpl. Andy Mantecon, who has patrolled the city for a quarter-century. “It’ll bring people from all over who will see that the myth of crime-riddled Santa Ana is just that: a myth.”

While city leaders hope the project and others like it will spark an economic renaissance in Orange County’s oldest downtown, some area residents and merchants worry that the boom would come at their expense.

“This always happens. The artists find it, and the colonists come in after,” said Stephanka Vildova, 23, a painter from Prague who has rented a studio for the last two years near Grand Central. Her landlord now is considering raising the rent.

But others hope business owners will realize that the whole neighborhood, not just Grand Central, benefits from the artists.

“Without the artists, this place has a very short shelf life,” said Cribb, an antiques conservator who first had the vision of stylish galleries in Grand Central, once a decaying vegetable market.

Across the pedestrian mall, Grace Sandlin and her husband said they’d been waiting for the good times. “Now that everybody’s here, I want to feed them,” she said.

Sandlin rented out her coffee shop for $150 a month in 1996. Original artists’ works traded for food adorn the walls. She said she recently got bank loans to put in a kitchen.

But last Wednesday, she said, she was told the landlord would not give her the 10-year lease she’d been promised. She can exercise her options for two more years, she was told, but that’s it.

Leasing agent Gil Marero said the owner needed more than oral guarantees of a bank loan. Sandlin thinks the excuse “is a sham. They don’t want me here. I’m not fancy enough.”

Cribb said he wouldn’t mind having a Starbucks come in. Sandlin “has a charming space . . . but we need a real bohemian coffeehouse.”

For artists who have made Neutral Grounds their virtual home, the thought of Sandlin not being there is “disgraceful,” said Max Presneill.

But Presneill, 36, an abstract painter and owner of British Lime Galleries upstairs from Sandlin, said he was nonetheless thrilled by Sunday’s opening. He’s enrolled as a Cal State Fullerton graduate student, complete with studio space across the street.

“The energy of what’s happening is tremendously exciting,” he said.