Upstairs Downstairs: THE NEW COMMUTE
When Newport Beach hairstylist Suzanne Finamore decides to call it a day and head for home, she doesn’t have far to go. Just up one flight of stairs, to be exact.
Finamore lives over her Studio La Rue salon, one of six business owners who live above their shops on the 400 block of 31st Street.
Several owners also lease the residential space above their antique stores, art galleries and other shops to tenants, creating a small colony of 15 residents on her street.
“We have our own little community within the street,” Finamore said. “In the morning I’ll come downstairs, and everyone will be out sweeping, landscaping and saying, ‘Good morning.’ Then we start business. It’s like a little European village.”
Finamore’s neighborhood is a throwback to the days before strip malls and automobiles, when it was common for people to live in buildings above shops that lined their town’s Main Street.
Such neighborhoods have become rare in the United States, except in a few cities such as San Francisco and New Orleans, where city dwellers still occupy condos and apartments atop dry cleaners, grocery stores, pubs and other retailers on the street level.
“The historic model of Main Streets was shops on the ground floor of buildings and apartments on the second floor,” said Robert Harris, director of graduate programs in architecture at USC. “It’s part of our national heritage, but it’s increasingly disappeared.”
During the 20th century, most modern communities went the way of Orange County and Los Angeles. They became dense, business-only urban hubs surrounded by suburban sprawl. City planners drew clear lines separating business from residential areas.
“There was an assumption that people wanted to live in the suburbs. The basis of zoning was to keep unlike uses apart,” Harris said. “And in the days when industry was quite noxious, it was a good idea.”
In the last couple of decades, as land became scarce and smog-belching industrial plants moved out of the cities, urban planners have shown greater interest in creating mixed-use areas where people live and work.
Harris served as chairman of the Downtown Strategic Planning Committee for the city of Los Angeles. It approved a plan in 1993 to promote mixed use for “miles and miles of commercial streets in Los Angeles because of the surplus of commercial buildings and the shortage of residential.”
Some mixed-use projects are already in place and “a lot more are coming along,” he said.
There’s housing above the Museum of Neon Art on Olympic Boulevard and the Grand Central Market on Broadway in downtown L.A. and above the shops on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, to name a few.
Developers are modifying historic buildings on 4th Street in L.A. that will feature housing above retail sites on the ground floor.
Small pockets of mixed-use neighborhoods can also be found throughout Orange County, including in downtown Huntington Beach, San Clemente and Orange.
Mixed zoning gives people the opportunity to live near their work.
Harris lives in Bunker Hill Tower in Los Angeles. His building has a grocery store and dry cleaner on the first floor, offices on the second, third and fourth floors and condos on the remaining 32 floors.
His home is eight minutes from his office and close to restaurants, parks and other amenities. “It’s very convenient,” he said.
“Of course, it’s noisier, and if you don’t like diversity, you might not like living downtown. We have every ethnic and economic background. I find that fantastic. But others want to be with people just like themselves.”
Finamore has spent 20 years buying condos and houses, renovating or rebuilding them, then selling and moving on. She likes the work so much that she’s studying for her contractor’s license.
Still, she didn’t want to give up the camaraderie and creativity of working as a stylist. “So I decided to combine everything under one roof,” she said.
Finamore selected 31st Street as the site for her home and salon because the neighborhood was already part of the Cannery Village business district approved for mixed use by Newport Beach in the 1980s.
Residences are also allowed in several other commercial areas of the city, including sites around the Balboa and Newport piers.
Finamore bought the land two years ago when it was a parking lot. “I’d come here to look at antiques, and the shop owners would say, ‘Oh Suzanne, you should build something here.’ ”
Working with an architect and subcontractors from 30 trades, Finamore spent eight months creating a French-style building that would match the street’s European ambience.
She owns another salon nearby in Newport Beach, and she would visit the building site “eight to 10 times a day” to oversee the work.
The three-story building, completed in fall 1999, consists of a 1,000-square-foot retail space on the ground floor and a 2,500-square-foot private residence on the upper two levels; it cost between $120 and $175 a square foot.
“It was difficult to build in a mixed-use zone because there were a lot of codes,” Finamore said.
Her structure had to meet commercial and residential requirements for occupancy, fire safety and parking. The city requires two parking spaces for 2,000-square-foot residences and four spaces for 1,000-square-foot commercial sites, so Finamore needed room for six parking spots.
She made room for parking behind her building, where patrons can park in tandem spaces two cars deep, which is permitted by the city code.
Finamore leases part of her retail space to Ilona Martin, an artist who has opened a gallery on the site called Petit Gallerie Bella. Finamore’s roommate, artist Jeannina Blanco, exhibits her works in Finamore’s salon.
Since moving in last November, Finamore has found her live-work arrangement beneficial to her prolife. Salon customers who express interest in her building are invited upstairs for a tour.
Finamore’s home features romantic rooms with French doors that open onto small balconies with wrought-iron railings, cream-colored limestone floors and baths with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures for an Old World look.
Finamore filled the home with French antiques. “Everything’s authentically French,” she said. In the kitchen stands one of her favorite finds: a well-worn wine-tasting table. Her master bed and bath occupy most of the third floor, which opens onto a large deck where she can look out at the surrounding village and watch the sun set over the ocean in the distance.
“People are starting to say, ‘Would you build one of these for me?’ If I lived in a residential area, no one would be able to see what I’m doing,” Finamore said.
She’s already landed two projects, building a Tuscan-style home in Fallbrook and remodeling a French-style residence on Lido Island in Newport Beach.
Living where she works also makes it easier to run the salon: “I like the fact that the salon is an extension of my home rather than a business,” she said. “It’s more personal. If a customer calls to say, ‘I’m running late. Is it OK?’ I say, ‘Sure, fine. I’ll be here anyway.’ ”
In between clients, she can do small chores around the house such as laundry and cleaning, freeing up her weekends. After hours, she likes to relax on the terrace outside her living room and watch the passers-by poke around the antique stores.
“When I go out to dinner I can walk to my favorite sushi restaurant. The cleaners, the bank--everything’s within walking distance. I can go down the street for a cup of coffee and pick up a roll. I try to do everything on foot. I have a new car, but I don’t take it out much.”
Her next-door neighbor, Tony Shepardson, lives above a gift shop and real estate office in a two-story building inspired by a mixed-use structure in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
“This is more like apartment living. There’s no yard space, and parking is always a problem,” Shepardson said. “But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I like the hustle and bustle during the day, and at night it quiets down and you’re in your own little world.
“It’s a fun area. I can walk to the market, the bank and 30 different restaurants. I can walk to the ocean or the bay.”
Living in a business district isn’t for everyone, but boosters of mixed-use zoning say it works with people of the right temperament.
“Some people say, ‘Who . . . would want to live downtown?’ But everybody’s not the same,” USC’s Harris said. “A lot of people enjoy living downtown already, and a lot more want to. They’re fed up with living at a distance from where they work, and the things they like to do, like going to concerts and the library.
“If only 1% of the population turned out to be interested in living in downtown L.A., we wouldn’t know where to put them all,” he said.
For her part, Finamore has no complaints about living on the street where she works. “I can’t think of any,” she said. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”
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Kathryn Bold is a freelance writer based in Rancho Santa Margarita. She can be reached at kbold@home.com.
