Converting Bullock’s to Ralphs a Landmark Decision

Instead of jars of cold cream, there are trays of cold cuts. Display cases of perfume, rouge and lipstick have given way to shelves of pinto beans, ravioli and lettuce.

And where special windows once showcased mannequins dressed in poodle skirts and pillbox hats, television monitors now beam images of shoppers squeezing melons.

An unusual blend of the old and new has turned a landmark 1950s-era department store building into a high-tech supermarket--Westwood Village’s first full-service grocery store in 27 years.

Conversion of the former Bullock’s store into a Ralphs market is seen as a signal that Westwood is emerging from its economic slump of recent years. It is also drawing cheers from homeowners and historians alike as proof that a neighborhood’s needs can nicely coexist with remnants of its heritage.

The former 225,000-square-foot department store was designed in 1950 by Welton Becket & Associates, the trend-setting architectural firm known for the downtown Music Center and Hollywood’s Capitol Records building.

The Bullock’s was built with a modernist blend of concrete, tile and stone accented by walls of glass. Its signature feature was a trio of free-standing, glass-windowed display boxes on Le Conte Avenue across from UCLA.

For decades, carefully dressed mannequins in those boxes signaled changes in styles for shoppers and passersby.

But by early 1997, when Macy’s shuttered its department store operations there, the building was seen as the area’s largest white elephant. With Westwood Village losing business to other shopping and entertainment districts, no single potential tenant was emerging to take over the sprawling structure.

Complicating things was the determination of Los Angeles officials to preserve the building. A special Westwood Design Review Board staffed by community representatives and architects was on guard against even the smallest amount of unauthorized remodeling there.

Cincinnati-based developer Madison Marquette Co. acquired the site in early 2000 and announced plans to subdivide it into a half-dozen or more shops and galleries. Local homeowners demanded that a supermarket be placed there too.

A grocery store “is probably the only development project in the history of Westwood Village with absolutely no naysayers,” Sandy Brown, president of the Holmby-Westwood Property Owners Assn., told Madison Marquette President Jim Bennett when she telephoned him to lobby for a market.

The company agreed to add a Ralphs supermarket to the mix. Designers were hired to figure out how to fit it in, along with more conventional tenants such as EXPO Design Center and Best Buy, without destroying the look of the building. Later, Long’s Drugs was recruited to take over the old department store’s rooftop tearoom space in a make-over that eventually will total $32 million when finished early next year.

Interior escalators were replaced by an outside elevator system that links all three shopping levels with parking areas on the roof and in an adjoining open lot.

“Breaking it into a multiple-tenant building but respecting the architecture made it a more complex project,” said Stephen Kanner, a Westwood architect who handled the conversion for Madison Marquette.

“My mother worked at Bullock’s selling shoes on the first floor when it opened in 1951. It was weird walking through there again. It is a great postwar building.”

Working with the Westwood Design Review Board, Kanner discovered that no changes could be made to the outside of the building--including its display boxes.

“The boxes brought back a lot of the quality from those older days. We wanted to keep them. But we didn’t want their windows to be boarded up or used for something like a poster,” said Terri Tippit, president of the West of Westwood Homeowners Assn. and chairwoman of the design review board.

Board member Jeffrey Averill, an architect, said the window boxes, or vitrines, are valued parts of the Westwood urban landscape. “The building is removed from the street, and these showcase windows help connect it and activate the streetscape,” Averill said.

Ralphs reacted to the use-the-box edict with an unusual approach: It installed four large-screen television sets in its display window to show Le Conte Avenue passersby images of colorful aisles and busy shoppers from cameras inside the store.

“We wanted to bring an interaction between pedestrians and those inside the store. We didn’t want anything static,” said Jeff Guth, Ralphs’ vice president of construction. “These aren’t security cameras--they’re specifically for the outside window.”

It remains to be seen how EXPO Design Center and Best Buy will use the other two display boxes.

Guth said the market’s bakery and deli counters were installed near the Le Conte entrance so UCLA students can sip coffee and eat sandwiches on an adjoining outdoor patio created from the former department store’s walkway area.

Inside the market are computer stations where shoppers--for a fee--can sign on to the Internet and check e-mail. Do-it-yourself checkout scanning stations also speed up purchases for students hurriedly shopping for just a few grocery items. “We figure people at UCLA are technologically oriented,” Guth said.

Sophomore communications student Sage Teton, 19, used the self-scanner when buying French bread and Parmesan cheese for dinner recently. “It’s so nice to have this close to campus,” she said. “I don’t remember Ralphs being so fancy.”

Longtime residents also are pleased. “People in Westwood are thrilled beyond words. They haven’t been able to grocery shop like this for a quarter century,” said Steve Sann, a Westwood real estate consultant.

Greg Fischer, a Westwood historian and neighborhood preservationist, termed the make-over a success. “Anybody can build a box. They were able to preserve a lot of the old features without looking ridiculous,” Fischer said as he emerged from the market with his own bag of groceries.

Madison Marquette officials say the conversion may hold lessons for others attempting to convert former department stores, such as the recently closed Montgomery Ward chain, for totally different retail use. In the past, abandoned department store buildings that have survived have been turned into things such as museums or law schools, as have old May Co. and Bullock’s stores on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“It’s far from easy,” said Mike Tewalt, the firm’s vice president of development. “But a building of historical significance from its design and the period it was constructed can represent a great opportunity.”