A Blossoming Bohemia

Two and a half years ago, Jason Lucas, who had moved to Los Angeles from Ohio to pursue a career as a furniture designer, was looking for a place to live. He wanted a reasonably priced apartment with lots of space in which to craft his unusual pieces--tables and chairs suspended by cables from the ceiling. He checked out the artsy enclaves of Silverlake and Los Feliz but found them “a little too trendy.”

Lucas, 26, ended up in Koreatown. He pays $1,050 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in a building called the DuBarry, one of many refurbished Art Deco-style apartment buildings in the bustling multi-ethnic neighborhood near downtown. It wasn’t just the affordable rent that appealed to Lucas. Koreatown’s diversity was a big selling point. “I would kill myself if I lived in the suburbs,” he said.

Here, few signs advertise in English, most businesses cater to Korean and Central American tastes. Although street crime is a drawback and the population density rivals that of Manhattan, Lucas loves his neighborhood. And just a few months ago, his sister, 24, and his musician brother, 22, rented places nearby.

A new bohemia is just beginning to take root in Koreatown. Lured by the area’s affordable rents and architecturally grand apartment buildings, the starving artist set is moving in and signs of gentrification are emerging. Rents in the area are climbing, in some buildings as much as 200% in three years. Two Starbucks and a Wal-Mart recently moved in. And beyond the vibrant Korean American nightlife, there is a young singles scene anchored by the Wiltern Theatre, a few Internet cafes and several low-profile bars with generous drinks and late-night hours.

With more than 100,000 residents and thousands more commuters occupying about 21/2 square miles, Koreatown is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the nation. Most of the area’s residents are immigrants from Korea, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. In 1990, according to census figures, Koreatown’s population was 27.5% Asian, 51.1% Latino, 11.2% white and 6.4% black. Ten years later, the breakdown was 29.9% Asian, 51.7% Latino, 6.6% white and 4.7% black. Roughly, its geographical boundaries are Beverly Boulevard on the north, San Marino Street on the south, Western Avenue on the west and Hoover Street on the east.

But while Koreatown’s growing cachet may be good news for business owners who are struggling to keep the area commercially viable, many low-income families in Koreatown are being pushed out of a neighborhood that in recent years has offered immigrants a toehold in a new land. About three years ago, a handful of developers began to sniff out bargains with the area’s Art Deco apartment buildings. That’s when San Francisco developer Andrew Meieran of Albion Pacific and his partner, the Michigan-based real estate company Seligman Western Enterprises, bought 16 apartment buildings clustered around the Ambassador Hotel for $50 million. Since then, Meieran, who is passionate about preserving the area’s signature architecture, has acquired 22 more. Some of the buildings had fallen into such disrepair that city officials were threatening to condemn them. Now, Meieran, 34, and his partners are renovating them slowly with hopes of drawing more young professionals to Koreatown.

In the process, Meieran admits that some low-income families have been displaced. As units are vacated, he refurbishes them and hikes the rents, typically out-pricing the tenants who had previously lived there. “We want a changing demographic,” Meieran said. “It comes about entirely naturally. We don’t do very heavy advertising.” Instead, he said, he relies on word of mouth to attract new tenants.

That’s how singer-songwriter Linda Mark found her place in Koreatown. A year ago, the 26-year-old Boston transplant moved to an old building on South Hobart Boulevard because she wanted a cheap apartment that wasn’t one of the “new generic dentist office-looking buildings,” she said. And she likes living “in a part of town where it’s not all about money and looks.”

She pays $500 a month for a studio apartment, utilities included. During the last year, her landlord has evicted troublesome tenants, repainted the units and decorated the place with plants. “The thing about this building is that there are a lot of creative types in here, and everyone has different careers, and they all kind of work with each other a bit,” she said. One of her neighbors is a fashion designer and has helped Mark put together clothes for her performances.

The city’s original Koreatown existed south of where it is today, spread along Jefferson Boulevard in the 1930s. But by the early 1970s, the population moved north to Olympic and Harvard boulevards after a large Korean market opened there. Signs designating that area Koreatown went up a few years later.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the area was one of the city’s most fashionable. At its chic heart was the Ambassador Hotel, which opened in 1921, surrounded by barley fields. But not for long. “It was the catalyst for the economic growth of Wilshire Boulevard and the residential community that grew up around it,” said Ken Bernstein of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “Those grandiose residential buildings were in a way made possible by the success of the Ambassador.”

The hotel was a star magnet. In the 1930s, Jean Harlow held her wedding reception at the Ambassador when she married MGM producer Paul Bern. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were living in the neighborhood when they met. John Barrymore had an apartment at the Gaylord on Wilshire Boulevard. In the late 1940s, then-Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan lived in the luxury Langham apartments on South Normandie, known for its rooftop swimming pool.

One of the Langham’s current tenants is USC senior Brigette Young. Her studio apartment is close to the subway and the coffeehouses and bars on Wilshire Boulevard. “Anything you can think of is within 10 minutes of here,” she said. “This is right in the middle of everything.”

For Young, 21, the music director of the college station KSCR, the neighborhood had more character than USC’s campus housing and offered her better access to the Hollywood music scene.

A few blocks away guitarist Theodore Liscinski, 30, rents a studio at the DuBarry on Catalina Avenue. He moved there two years ago from the edgy New York neighborhood of Washington Heights because he won a role in last year’s film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” California’s temperate weather and Koreatown’s cheap rents persuaded him to stay.

Tenants at the DuBarry relinquish most modern amenities including central heating and air conditioning. But for $900 a month, they get a bright, roomy apartment with a view of the Hollywood sign. “It’s not spectacular,” Liscinski said of his neighborhood. “But there are things to do. The [H.M.S.] Bounty is around the corner, if I feel like having a drink. There’s an Internet cafe on Normandie and Wilshire. There’s a 7-Eleven close by and a Thai place I go to every week to get takeout.”

The nautical-themed H.M.S. Bounty on Wilshire Boulevard on the first floor of the Gaylord building is a local watering hole for many of the neighborhood’s up-and-coming artists. They’re drawn by the dimly lit bar’s red vinyl booths and generous martinis. Gaylord tenants kill time at the bar while doing laundry on the building’s basement floor. Matt Dillon, Drew Barrymore and Winona Ryder have been known to stop by.

Actor Joe Falasca moved to the Gaylord from Brooklyn about a month ago. He cherishes his ninth-floor one-bedroom (rent: $1,000) and boasts that the place was once occupied by John Barrymore. “It had the real city feel that I wanted and that old hotel elegance,” he said.

Until the early 1980s, this section of Wilshire Boulevard was dominated by large oil and insurance companies. Gradually, those businesses started moving downtown and to the Westside. In 1989, as the economy soured, the Ambassador Hotel was shuttered and the community took a big fiscal hit. Area merchants suffered while conservationists, developers and city officials fought to gain control of the hotel. In December, the Los Angeles Unified School District ended years of legal wrangling and closed a deal to buy the building and its grounds.

In 1992, the area was ravaged by rioting; scores of Korean-owned businesses were looted and set ablaze. Many Koreans lost their businesses, and some moved away. “This area was largely abandoned [by police] during the riots,” California Center Bank President Seon Hong Kim said. “I still have very bad memories of it.”

Koreatown’s commercial exodus was further fueled by damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake and Metro Rail construction in the early to mid-1990s. During this period, apartment buildings emptied and rents dropped. Low-income Latino families were drawn to the area by its more affordable rents and easy access to public transportation.

About this time, property owners started a business-improvement district to revitalize the area. Trees were planted in medians along Wilshire Boulevard and planters sprouted along sidewalks. Slowly, the area recovered as small, predominantly Korean businesses took over the empty high-rise office buildings.

Many of those Wilshire Boulevard buildings were leased by local and foreign government agencies. Consulates representing the Philippines, Indonesia, Poland, El Salvador, Peru and the Caribbean nations all have a presence in the area.

This expanding diversity has obscured the recent influx of young artists, who are predominantly white, said Charles Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, a national advocacy group headquartered in Koreatown.

“I don’t think we’ve even noticed that they’re coming to Koreatown,” he said. Although gentrification has caused a backlash in other neighborhoods, such as Santa Monica and Venice, Koreatown isn’t likely to experience the same tension, Kim said. “This is a place where we can add all different kinds of culture,” he said, “especially if they’re artists.”

After a difficult decade, the Korean business community perceives new residents as good for business, said California Center Bank’s Seon Hong Kim.

“My company has spent a lot of money on business development [in Koreatown],” he said. “We really need a return from that investment.”

Some residents are less enthusiastic. Latino families make up the majority of tenants occupying the older buildings in Koreatown. For many Central American immigrants, the area is appealing because housing, jobs and transportation are all within walking distance. If rents double, said Carlos Vaquerano, executive director of the Salvadoran American Leadership and Educational Fund, low-income Latinos “will have to leave.... We don’t have the resources Koreans do.”

Recently, developer Meieran clashed with some of his Latino tenants. Late last year, he purchased a building on Berendo Street, where singles rented for as low as $250. After a tour of the building with a fire inspector, Meieran removed an elaborate candle-lit shrine to the Virgin Mary erected by tenants in the lobby. The tenants were outraged, he said, because the shrine had become a community touchstone. He further angered tenants when he fired the building manager because she spoke only Spanish.

“The problem here is a matter of culture,” said Eduardo Rodriguez of the Assn. of Salvadorans of Los Angeles. “You have to respect the culture of people. The problem with gentrification is that it doesn’t take into account what people feel, what people think. It’s just about money.”

“It’s problematic,” Meieran said. “We don’t want to displace people ... but at the same time you want to spend the money to upgrade the building, so it’s difficult.”

Recently, he planted grass in front of the Berendo building where there was only dirt and removed a sidewalk taco stand built by a local vendor. A single in the refurbished building will go for $750 a month. “In three months,” Meieran said, “you won’t recognize the place.”