Variety, the City’s Spice

Frequently scorned as a community of immigrants, Santa Ana is using its diverse resources to lure artists and professionals back downtown, an area that is emerging as a hub for Orange County’s cool and hip.

Starting with the redevelopment of 4th Street in the 1980s, when seedy bars gave way to Latino-oriented shops and restaurants, city planners have been carefully crafting a redevelopment plan for the downtown area to create a family-friendly environment where people can work and live.

By all accounts, the effort to mix culture, artists and professionals is working, helped along by a low crime rate and affordable rents. An arts community flows seamlessly into the county’s legal center, vacant buildings are being filled with restaurants and theaters, and businesses are moving in.

Gil Marrero, a downtown real estate agent who grew up in New York City, said the “melting pot” feel of Santa Ana’s core reminds him of his hometown.

Last month, DGWB Advertising left its “sterile Irvine” offices for Santa Ana’s landmark former City Hall, of Zigzag Moderne design, built in 1935 and purchased by the firm.

“We moved here because we love the diversity,” said Jon Gothold, one of three partners who own the agency. “It’s a stimulating area, and the city cares about the arts and the diversity of its community.”

Gothold said he’s in Santa Ana to stay. His wife, Janice Lowry, has an artist’s studio at 4th and Main, one block away. The couple bought a home in French Park, an elegant old neighborhood northeast of downtown, allowing him to walk to work.

“I love the city and the fact that our whole lives are on Main Street,” he said.

Artifact, a Santa Monica-based media company that produces television commercials, will become the inaugural tenant at the Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center by the end of the month. The privately owned building at Sycamore and 5th streets is the old Masonic Building, built in 1930.

The restored building, which sat vacant for 17 years, features three theaters and a restaurant that general manager Bruce DiMauro said is designed to be “a high-end eatery that someone can take over.” The larger of the theaters will be converted to a dinner theater, he said.

John P. Reekstin, head of the city’s Community Development Agency, said officials realized early on that they could use the downtown architecture--office and retail structures built in the 1920s and ‘30s--as a selling point to attract professionals.

“The value of our downtown is the eclectic look. We’re going to build on our already eclectic downtown with new architecture,” Reekstin said.

Indeed, the gleaming 10-story Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse towers over the brick-and-mortar structures that made downtown Santa Ana the center of Orange County business for generations until malls began to sprout in the suburbs.

According to Reekstin, two state appellate court buildings are scheduled for construction next year in the Civic Center complex, across from the Reagan building.

“This is going to open the door for new restaurants downtown. There are several businesses that are looking to relocate downtown, and we’re going to encourage these employees to eat and shop here,” he said.

With construction of the state court buildings, downtown Santa Ana will further establish itself as the county’s legal center. In addition to the federal courts, the main Superior Court is also downtown.

Developers are hoping to attract law firms to the refurbished buildings.

Marrero, who has specialized in downtown real estate for seven years, said redevelopment is “the beginning stage of a renaissance in Santa Ana.”

“Many of us who were raised in urban environments recognized the need for an urban hub in Orange County that was multicultural, and where we could experience art and entertainment,” he said. “Santa Ana is the only city in the county that can do this.”

Don Cribb, a city planning commissioner, is given credit for synthesizing the Artists Village at the south end of downtown with the professional firms setting up shop in the area.

The village--bound by Sycamore, Main, 3rd and 2nd streets--is anchored by the Grand Central Art Center, which opened in 1999 as a $7.2-million partnership between Santa Ana and Cal State Fullerton.

“The arts village was my project,” Cribb said. “I planned for it in 1986 when Orange County viewed Santa Ana as a depreciated area, when people looked down their noses at us as a town that had too much of an immigrant look to it. What they didn’t see was that Santa Ana was a confluence of diversity.”

Charles View, a downtown development manager added, “Where else in Orange County can you turn the corner from a place like 4th Street and its Hispanic ambience and walk into a community of artists who represent other cultures? We’re not just talking about painters; there’s avant-garde theaters too.”

The Santora Building, home to artists from all over the world, is just up the block from the Grand Central Art Center. The studios inside will soon be complemented by a new Memphis Restaurant, featuring Cajun dishes and other uniquely American cuisine.

View said city planners borrowed ideas from cities such as Portland, Ore., San Francisco and San Diego, where aging downtown areas were turned into models of redevelopment.

“We couldn’t only encourage the arts and professionals to move downtown. We had to encourage people to live downtown too. And this meant affordable housing,” View said.

In recent years, new apartment buildings have been built around the periphery of downtown, occupied mostly by Latinos, who make up 76% of the city’s population. Now, the city is negotiating with a developer for 86 condominiums to be built on three city blocks in the Artists Village.

“These will be ‘live/work’ units, and they will complete the Artists Village development,” said View. He said there is already a waiting list.

For Cribb, the downtown redevelopment “is a delicious way of showing the rest of Orange County that you can have low-income people and rich folks working and living together in one area.”

“Rich architects and lawyers are already rubbing elbows with Latino immigrants downtown,” Cribb said. “Instead of relying on other people’s ideas of who we are, we are starting to identify ourselves.”

The city’s downtown potential is also attracting attention from UC Irvine. Reekstin said the city is negotiating with the university for the use of the YMCA building at Sycamore Street and Civic Center Drive.

UCI plans to convert the stately old building to an arts center where students will study digital animation.

A more controversial project has been One Broadway Plaza, a 38-story structure at the north end of Broadway proposed by developer Michael Harrah. The building would include an eight-story garage for 2,400 cars.

The project is opposed by local residents because it would include the demolition of several historic buildings along Broadway. Opponents also express concern that the structure, which would be the tallest in Orange County, is incompatible with their neighborhoods.

“It would be the capstone of our revitalization of downtown,” View said. “We’re working with [Harrah] on a plan to maintain and preserve the historical Broadway corridor.”

Harrah, who has refurbished several downtown buildings, declined to comment.

Controversy aside, Cribb said city officials “have struck a good balance” in planning downtown redevelopment. Equal consideration was given to entertainment, business and housing, he said.

“As an urban environment, Santa Ana is becoming the centerpiece for Orange County. Not bad for a city that many people had counted out because of its ethnic makeup,” Cribb said.