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THE GREENEST BUILDING IS ONE THAT'S ALREADY THERE: The Enormous Potential For Adaptive Reuse in Los Angeles by Damian Gatto I. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY Adaptive reuse is precisely what it sounds like: the adaptation and repurposing of a building (or other structure) for uses other than those for which it was originally designed. Adaptive reuse most commonly involves the rehabilitation of non-housing structures for use as housing, although some variation exists amongst the former and resultant uses of these structures. Los Angeles instituted its own adaptive reuse program in 1999 in the form of a zoning code amendment named the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance. The passage of the “ARO” followed a long series of events in the 20th century: the decline and destruction of neighborhoods in and around Downtown Los Angeles, the subsequent institution of eight Historic Protection Overlay Zones, and finally, very admirable early attempts by activists and investors like Ira Yellin, Tom Gilmore, Wayne Ratkovich, and others during the late 1970s to early 1990s to perform what would later be described as “adaptive reuse.” During the late 20th century, Yellin (with the help of the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Metropolitan Transit Authority) successfully rehabilitated the Laughlin Building for residential use, as well as the Grand Central Market and Bradbury Building for commercial and governmental use. Gilmore was behind the restoration of many buildings in the Old Bank District. Ratkovich, for his part, spearheaded the beautiful restorations of the Oviatt Building, the Wiltern, and the Chapman Drive-in Market in Koreatown. In the midst of this, Los Angeles City Planner Alan Bell began writing the drafting the first versions of the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance in 1997-1998. CLICK "READ MORE" BELOW vv Above: A photo of the San Pedro Bank Lofts, showing the historic bank facade at ground level, and the loft conversions above. The lofts were converted in the early 2000s from the historic Bank of San Pedro, which was effectively defunct by 1994. (Source: The author, November 2020.) II. IN PRACTICE For property owners wishing to maximize the utility of their historic, out-of-code, or obsolete structures, adaptive reuse is a lucrative option for a few reasons. They can circumnavigate zoning requirements that have come into effect since the property’s most recent occupancy, and they don’t have to create additional parking. The monetary costs of demolition are also avoided. For the green thumb, adaptive reuse exponentially reduces the carbon footprint of the project; some 25.5% of the content of California’s landfills are comprised of construction debris. Lastly, there are fewer economic interruptions (e.g. increased traffic, street closures, construction-induced traffic, residential displacement) involved in the project. While adaptive reuse occurs all over the world, I will focus on the built environment of Los Angeles where, I propose, adaptive reuse has tremendous potential for creating hundreds of units of affordable housing, specifically, for people who are elderly, experiencing homelessness, or otherwise at-risk. a. THE SAN PEDRO BANK LOFTS The Bank of San Pedro was founded in the town of the same name in 1888, a whole 21 years before it was annexed into of the City of Los Angeles. The company’s three largest branch buildings were built in the 1920s, all within blocks of each other, near the San Pedro Waterfront. The terra cotta building on the southeast corner of 7th and Mesa Streets was the company’s southern branch. It operated as a Bank of San Pedro until circa 1991, when it began experiencing financial troubles; the federal government assumed control of the debt-ridden company in 1994. The building saw various uses throughout the next decade or so until San Pedro Loft Partners LLC purchased the site. Three permits pulled on May 18th and August 18th, 2005 sum up the whole project: the core of the bank building would be hollowed out, with only the terra cotta façade to remain. From there, ground floor retail and four stories of residential units would be developed alongside the bank structure, and an additional two stories would be developed right on top of the shell of the former bank. The building was one of the about 1,100 unreinforced masonry buildings within L.A. City limits identified as seismically vulnerable in 2006; this was mitigated as a condition of the project. The resulting project, the Bank Lofts, is a terrific showcase of adaptive reuse in the context of historic preservation. b. THE ARTS DISTRICT Downtown's Arts District is perhaps Los Angeles’ focal point for adaptive reuse, in-part due to the fact that the spirit of adaptive reuse existed there long before the passage of the ARO and, indeed, long before very many people were hip to the concept of living in converted factory buildings. Nearly all of the buildings south of Cesar Chavez Avenue and east of Alameda Street were not built for residential use. However, in the 1970s, artists began occupying these units for live-work arrangements. Decades later, the appeal of the hollowed-out district has spread around the country, drawing myriad economic interests to the area. The Southern California Institute of Architecture converted the former Santa Fe Railroad Depot—a concrete shell for many decades—into their new campus, which opened in the early 2000s. Since the conversion of the Barker Block factory building into the “Barker Lofts” in 2007, the opening of Wurstküche Restaurant in 2008, among other projects, nearly every building in the area south of Cesar Chavez Avenue, north of 7th Street, and between Alameda Street and the L.A. River has been adaptively repurposed into retail or residential space. Others have been demolished and redeveloped altogether. An exciting and much-anticipated project is Grupo Habita's adaptive reuse of the former Stockwell-Haley Furniture Manufacturing Co. Factory at 400 South Alameda Street. The above-ground units are being converted into residential use, while the bottom floor will contain a restaurant, a small theater, and retail space. Such a project would add valuable and necessary streetscape presence facing Alameda Street. Most of the development in the Arts District has taken place on the side streets east of Alameda, leaving a missing link between the heart of Downtown and the Arts District. The site plan for 400 South Alameda is very detailed, quite inspirational, and is downloadable below. The included historic resource statement was researched and composed by the brilliant Chattel Historic Preservation Consultants. Hi Bob! :) [file] In the Arts District, other novel forms of reuse—although not adaptive reuse per se—include At Mateo, which was constructed in a Utilitarian Commercial style using recycled bricks trucked in from Northern California. One of the oldest surviving buildings in the Arts District, the Pickleworks Building, “mysteriously” burned down in late 2018, amid plans that it would be adaptively reused. I had the chance to go inside the Hill & Sons Pickle Works Building in late 2017 during a ride-along with some Senior Lead Officers from LAPD’s Central Division who were evicting squatters....which might provide some insight as to how the Pickle Works Building ultimately burned down. c. OMGIVNING This architecture and design group has achieved a whole lot in its first decade of practice. The group is, foremost, responsible for the adaptive reuse of the Sears Mail Order Distribution Building—aka “The Sears Building”—in Boyle Heights, an Art Deco magnum opus in Boyle Heights. The building has been virtually unused since 1992, save for the moribund Sears on the ground floor. Principally, the group plans to open up the inner core of the entire length of the ten-story building, creating a profusion of natural light in the process. On the roof, there will be recreational and social space; below that, over 1,000 units will be repurposed for residential use, and the ground-floor retail space will be diversified. Much the same is being achieved with the group’s reworking of the five-story Broadway Trade Center at 801 South Broadway. The adaptive reuse in this project is mostly centered on the roof, with creative space, hotel units, and recreational areas in the works. (How does the roof handle all that weight?!) The group has several other adaptive reuse projects in the works. While all of their projects are sure to be extremely productive, the resulting units, again, are likely to be financially out of reach for the average person living in Los Angeles. d. INDUSTRY PARTNERS and the REPURPOSING of MALLS This Santa Monica-based firm specializes in adaptive reuse, and plain old reuse in general. arguably their two most prominent projects so far are 811 Traction Avenue (also in the Arts District) and the PacMutual Building in Downtown. (Neither are malls.) While interviewing for a job in mid-2017 (I didn't get the job), Industry Partners told me that their associates in the midwest were looking into repurposing old malls as senior and other supportive housing. Though previously I could not imagine such a thing, I thought it was a very interesting concept. After all, indoor malls are an outdated concept, dating from the days when people wanted to be sheltered from urban centers. It stuck with me. Sure enough, in Spring 2019, a development group called Hudson Pacific Properties announced that it was rehabilitating and repurposing the Westside Pavilion Mall as office space. This brings up one precondition of adaptive reuse--a precondition that gives adaptive reuse so much potential and makes it such a sensible solution: obsolescent land uses. The days of the fortressed indoor shopping mall have ended in favor of the outdoor European-style piazza. The timeline of Mountain View’s Mayfield Mall was much the same as Westside Pavillion: Hewlett-Packard occupied the site between 1984 and 2013, and thereafter Google began renovating it for their own use. The same happened with the historic Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island, considered one of the nation’s first shopping malls. Other malls that received treatments similar to this include: Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch, Tennessee with the addition of its NHL-standard indoor hockey field; Englewood, Colorado’s Cinderella City Mall; and a particularly unique project in McAllen, Texas, in which the city’s former WalMart was converted to a gigantic library. e. VAN DE KAMP’S BAKERY If you have purchased bulk packs of donuts at Vons or Food 4 Less, than you have probably tasted Van De Kamp’s baked goods. This company was started by the family of the same name in 1915 on Spring Street in Downtown LA. The family expanded their business for 15 years before they built their iconic bakery and office building at 2930 Fletcher Drive in the Dutch Renaissance style. At the company’s height in the mid-1950s, they operated 320 restaurants and bakeries in California, Oregon, and Washington. They began to downsize in 1979 before going bankrupt and being bought out in 1990. The bakery on Fletcher was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #569 on May 12th, 1992. Above: Van De Kamp's Bakery on Fletcher Drive, just after completion in 1930. (Source: Los Angeles Public Library) Some of my earliest memories are of the boarded-up Van De Kamp’s Bakery in Glassell Park. I would drive past it every day on the way to school, wondering why this beautiful Dutch Renaissance Building couldn’t be used for something. (Mind you, this was long before I even knew of the concept of adaptive reuse.) This is precisely what happened in the late 2000s. Initially, the old bakery was set to become a satellite campus of Los Angeles City College. The renovation and retrofitting process went slowly but steadily, and by the early 2010s the building was in use. Presently, it operates as a charter school, a terrific asset to the community. The former bakery’s rehabilitation thereby demonstrated adaptive reuse’s potential for yet another purpose: the creation of educational facilities. f. PACIFIC ELECTRIC LOFTS The Beaux Arts-style Pacific Electric Building on Main Street at 6th Street was originally built in 1905 to house the offices and switchboards of the Pacific Electric Red and Yellow Cars, which at the time were the largest urban railway systems in the world. Its two-story rooftop rotunda was also one of the original meeting places of the exclusive, invite-only Jonathan Club. Like many buildings in Downtown Los Angeles, the building fell into neglect and was mostly vacant by the 1980s. In came the ICO Investment Group and Killefer Flammang Architects, who adapted the building to contain 314 lofts, 12 penthouse units, a gymnasium, a rooftop pool, and a library. Most of what made the project feasible was $5 million in equity, obtained through Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credits. g. DOUGLAS BUILDING LOFTS The Classical Revival-style Douglas Building on Spring Street at 3rd Street was built in 1898 as a memorial to lumber baron Thomas Douglas Stimpson. The Douglas Building joined the fate of many other Downtown Los Angeles gems by wallowing in neglect and vacancy throughout much of the late 20th century. This lasted until the early 2000s, when Metro Partners 5 and Rockefeller Partners Architects adapted the building into 50 condominiums complete with rooftop space. III. MOVING FORWARD…… Since the institution of its own program, Los Angeles has become a model of adap-- *record skip* Okay, maybe not a model of adaptive reuse, but a prominent urban showcase of the practice nonetheless. That said--and as bold and productive as the hundreds of adaptive reuse projects undertaken since the Adaptive Reuse Ordianance have been--the resulting units seem to be missing a common thread: affordability. THE MAIN OBSTACLES HERE: PRICE – Granted, hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions— of dollars go into rehabilitation of a structure for its adaptive reuse. Thankfully, rehabbing a project under the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance avoids conformance to many codes and zoning requirements (which all bear a price tag) as well as the long-and-drawn-out EIRs (which have a HUGE price tag). Other snafus involved in adaptive reuse in Los Angeles include… PERMIT FEES. Take those of the San Pedro bank lofts. These carry over into the final price of the project and, therefore, the units. TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC: Many redevelopers involved in adaptive reuse often target younger or middle-aged urban professionals—people who can afford to pay perhaps $2000 per month in rent— as their potential tenants. Seldom—at least that I am aware of—are adaptive reuse projects dedicated solely to persons who are disadvantaged. ……And THIS is where things arrive at a slight impasse. My overarching proposal here is that adaptive reuse has tremendous potential as a mitigation for the shortage of housing units for homeless, working class, disabled, or otherwise disadvantaged persons. However, if the numerous costs involved in the project carry over into the final cost, and if the target tenants are people who can afford to live in most areas in the County anyway, then we have a problem. Furthermore, while the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance fast-tracks these rehabilitation projects by not requiring certain code conformances—most relevantly, elevators and parking—then the resulting residential units may not be feasible for some. Seniors and persons with disabilities need proximate parking and elevators. I do not raise these objections for contrarian reasons. The fact of the matter is that the predominant age group of unhoused persons who die on the street--at the rate of one to three a day as of 2019—is 50 to 65 years old. A retrofitted factory building from 1910 in the Arts District may not be accessible for this predominance of elderly persons who are unhoused. THEREFORE, GOING FORWARD: Buildings adaptively reused as affordable housing need to accommodate all possible physical needs of all possible tenants while also offering the lowest possible monthly rate. This means that vacant buildings adaptively repurposed as housing should, ideally and without thinning the potential candidates too much, have the following traits: No Big-Ticket Repairs Necessary – The least likely you are to have to undertake large-ticket repairs— foundation replacement, seismic retrofit, rewiring, or reroofing— the better. Also, aim for buildings that have elevators and parking. State/County/City/Other Government Buildings – I shook my head when they demolished the old LAPD Parker Center. Is there any doubt that this government office building—with a window to each room, tip-top code conformance, and over 300,000 square feet of usable floor space—was a perfect candidate for adaptive reuse? What a waste. Incentives — Similar to the State of California’s Seismic Mitigation Program (“Brace N’ Bolt”), it is conceivable that the State or other government entity could match funds for adaptive reuse projects. A tax write-off for repair costs above a certain threshold might also be an order. BIBLIOGRAPHY Author not listed. “Construction and Demolition Debris Recycling.” CalRecycle Home Page, State of California, https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/ConDemo/
Bernstein, Ken. “Economic Development: An Ordinance Injects New Life Into Downtown.” Planning Los Angeles, edited by David Charles Sloane, American Planning Association Planners Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2017, pp. 253–263. Los Angeles Department of Planning building permits: * 04010 - 10000 - 04488 - 8/18/2005 (San Pedro Bank Lofts) * 05016 - 10000 - 05314 - 5/18/2005 (San Pedro Bank Lofts)
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