Reaganomics on Spring St. and Skid Row

The building is named after Ronald Reagan. It was opened with ceremony Oct. 27, 1990.  The ex-president himself showed up and was handed an oversized key. "I wish all who enter here good luck," he said.  Then-governor George Deukmejian bragged that the 850,000-square-foot structure--state government's largest office building--was constructed on time and within its $106-million budget. There were protestors too, carrying signs with posters of Robbie Conal's painting "Contra-Diction" for Reagan's role in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The building was a project of the Community Redevelopment Agency, intended to improve Spring St. "I think it is a tremendous asset for that area," C.R.A. chairman James M. Wood said. "Nothing is going to improve North Broadway, Spring and Main like this building."  He forgot to mention that it was the C.R.A.'s Bunker Hill Project that had lured the banks away from their traditional locations on Spring Street which had been known as the "Wall Street of the West." I should be fair: the Bunker Hill Project began well before Wood's tenure as C.R.A. chief.

Like many buildings of the era, it was heavily secured against the rising tide of people for whom the economy had not "trickled down." Leon Whitson in the May 12, 1991 L.A.T.  referred to the building as "Fort Ronnie." His description of the interior was attractive, but I've never been inside.  "Security is a prime concern," he wrote. "Employees who arrive by car will enter the building from underground garages, ensuring their safety and their isolation from the street...... One new building cannot change the fact that the hub of the downtown business community has moved irrevocably west to Bunker Hill. Even a street-friendly architectural masterpiece would not overcome the drawbacks of a location on the edge of urban desolation, and the Ronald Reagan State Office Building is far from friendly....Fort Ronnie may effectively defend itself from its surroundings, but it fails to send out a clear message of official optimism in Spring Street's revival."

 I thought it wasn't too ugly, until I compared it with the old state building, a 1932 W.P.A. project.

The old state building at 217 S. 1st. St. had been damaged in the 1971 earthquake, but it was still in use until 1973.  It was demolished in 1976, over the protests of preservationists.  It served as a temporary public park while the plan was to rebuild on the site. After it was demolished in 1976, it was used as a public park, with plans to rebuild on the location. In 1979, the C.R.A. had chosen a different location for the new building, and by 1982 they chose the current location at Spring St.  It was the fourth they had considered.  2600 state employees were to be relocated there from 31 locations around the city, and more space would be leased out to generate income. It was supposed to bring shoppers to Spring St. as well as serve as office space.

The old location is still vacant.

Here's another story about the old location/

Construction of the Ronald Reagan State Building began in 1988 and was completed in October 1990.  

George Kalebdjian, manager of a clothing store less than a block away, agreed the state building would help the area. But he said merchants will be at a disadvantage until the city does something to rid the area of street people who frighten away customers according to the L.A. times 1990 

He probably didn't know that the C.R.A. had been working to get the mission to another location for several years and that construction would begin at San Julian within the year.  

The mission was not exactly welcomed with open arms at the new location, either.

The Union Rescue Mission was not far from the new building site.  It is the oldest and largest of the rescue missions in downtown L.A. The Mission's location on Main and 2nd was at least a block away from the skid row "containment zone" that had been established in the late 1970s.  The Mission got its start in1891in canvas tents  and a gospel wagon under the name  Pacific Rescue Mission.  It moved to Main St. the location of city hall in  It was and is the oldest and largest of the rescue missions. Turkey dinners on Thanksgiving were and still are a long-standing, well known tradition.  Thousands who were down on their luck took shelter there over the decades.

1983 was the year that persons with mental illness began to outnumber alcoholics on skid row, according to the LAT.  Reagan has been blamed for closing the mental hospitals.  Persons with mental illness were to be cared for in their communities, he said, but made no provision for any such care.   1984 was the year the crack epidemic made the news. In the 1970's, cocaine was "nature's way of telling you you had too much money." That completely changed when crack became widely distributed, with help from Oliver North and the CIA.  

1984 was the year the C.R.A. began to pressure the Union Rescue Mission to find another location, father from the future state building, and deeper into the center of skid row.  That "Mission on Main St." which had been there since 1926, was too frightening for the delicate sensibilities of state employees.    May 6, 1984 L.A.Times reported that Lee Holthaus, director of the U.R.M. did not want to move, but realized that it might be unavoidable. "As soon as the state building is approved", he said, "we'll just be in the way."  

In 1989, the C.R.A. agreed to pay URM 6.5 MILLION DOLLARS moving expenses, if they would move to 517 S. San Julian St. at the location of an unused factory.  Executive director George Caywood hoped the move would allow the mission to serve more people in a more compassionate way, but was appalled at the hostility toward the very poor. Mike Neely, head of the Homeless Outreach Program, said there is more need for low income housing than for shelter beds, a situation that continues to this day.  Charles Woo, chairman of the Central City East Association, a group of area business owners, complained that the move would affect property values.  Toy importers and fish processors had been moving to the land left vacant by several decades of "slum clearance."  Woo saw another form of discrimination at work. "Why should the Union Rescue Mission be offensive to state employees yet be acceptable to the blue collar women and men working in Central City East?" he asked. Other skid row service providers were concerned about the concentration of services in a small area.  

Construction began with a dedication ceremony in Jul 1991 and was completed in 1994.

  

The parking and delivery entrance is on San Pedro.  You see pedestrians, as well as tents and shopping carts, on San Julian, and trucks on San Pedro. It was designed that way to calm the fears of the local business owners. This is the respectable entrance, where employees, administrators and visiting dignitaries come it.  Apparently San Pedro St. claims a higher degree of respectability than San Julian, although it's still skid row.

St. Vibiana's Cathedral was its next door neighbor. 

The plans were to build "Plaza St. Vibiana," a pedestrian space and complex of low rise housing and commercial structures south of the cathedral.  Before that could happen, St. Vibiana's was damaged in the 1994 earthquake, and a long debate between the Catholic Church and historic preservationists began.  The old cathedral building was preserved as a wedding and performance video, and a new cathedral was built at a different site.   Now, February 18, 2015, I read that a housing complex will break ground here.

The former building was dismantled in Mar 1995.

This is what Main St. looks like now.

Vibiana is the one that's still there, and it's not the same, either.  Once it was St. Vibiana's Cathedral.  Now its just Vibiana, a venue for weddings, concerts and other fancy events.  

The interesting building with the palm trees appears to be a parking structure--employees only--but employees of what?  I don't know.

Spring St. had lovely old architecture, but didn't regain its vitality until the adaptive re-use ordinance of 1999. A new generation moved into the office spaces turned apartments, and patronized the shops and restaurants of their ground floors.

They take pictures of each other.

Dogs and trees have also played their part in revitalizing Spring St.

  

Did the construction of the state building and the relocation of the Union Rescue Mission have anything to do with it?  I don't know, but on 5th St. between Spring and Main, you can buy Skid Row souvenirs with your unhealthy soda.

I like to think that the younger generation looks at the needy with compassion, rather than the hatred and fear that forced the Union Rescue Mission's relocation.

Gateways Apartments

Gateways Apartments looks like all the other new apartment buildings.  You wouldn't know you were in the skid row neighborhood. This is a housing complex built by the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corporation, one of the two major non-profit corporations providing housing for the recently homeless.  The other is the Skid Row Housing Trust, which built the Star Apartments. There were 500 applicants on the waiting list.  The 108 were selected as the most needy by the Coordinated Entry List. 

Skid Row, like every other place, has a history to untangle.  The banner on the building says S.R.O. Housing Corporation--30th Anniversary.  S.R.O. Housing Corporation was founded in 1984 by the Community Redevelopment Agency.  I was surprised to learn this.  The C.R.A. is not remembered kindly by me or by a lot of other people.  They were the ones who destroyed the Victorian houses on Bunker Hill, simultaneously destroying low rent housing and architectural masterpieces.  In some parts of town, old-timers still think C.R.A. stands for Chicano Removal Agency.  They went around declaring charming old neighborhoods to be slums and recklessly demolishing old buildings. 

 Apparently they had also done something good.  

They slowed down a little after the destruction of Bunker Hill in the late 60's, because it was taking longer than they expected to get new projects going, but they didn't give up.  In 1972 they came up with an 20 year plan.  They said downtown L.A. had a "dowdy" image.  They were going to build a 9 acre  park with a lake.  Central City East was their name for skid row.  They planned a university, peripheral parking facilities, housing and new civic buildings.  But first, the had to get rid of the people who were already there.  They urged "speedy treatment of Skid Row habitués to pave the way for rebuilding the key Central City East area."  Did they think they'd send them all to a rehab facility in Malibu, after which they would all lead normal suburban lives? These and other nefarious plans were fought in court, with the Catholic Worker, the Legal Aid Foundation and the Community Design Center leading the fight.  

By 1977, there was a new plan for Skid Row.  The officials  had come to believe that 60% or 70% of the residents were not alcoholics, but were elderly, disabled or just plain poor.  They conintued to use the same statistic until 1983, when they called the mentally ill the largest single group within the Skid Row population. They planned to  create a non-profit organization to build housing and a park for the non-alcoholic residents.  At that time, they thought the Volunteers of America might be the organization to run the housing. The first plan was for an 135 unit building bounded by 6th, 7th, San Julian and Wall streets.  The C.R.A. formed the Skid Row Development Corporation in 1978 with Martha Brown Hicks at its head.  The goals were to do some hotel rehabilitation, establish two parks, and provide street lighting and public rest rooms.  This was not undertaken entirely out of kindness.  It was the beginning of the policy of containment, to prevent the "derelicts" from wandering through the rest of downtown.  The C.R.A. Citizen Report said "the presence of skid row residents, as they stimulate fear, discourages attempts to revitalize daytime ad night time activity on the streets of downtown L.A."

They could not predict the impact Reaganomics would have on Skid Row. The increasing population of mentally ill homeless people has been attributed to both defunding of mental hospitals and the patients rights movement. I don't think it was only closing the hospitals that caused the problem. There was defunding of every kind of program to help any kind of person who wasn't perfectly able to care for him/herself.  Many cities saw a big rise in the number of people living on the streets.  The warm climate of Southern California was a magnet for the homeless of the nation, and skid row was where they ended up after they were moved from other parts of town.

In 1984, James M. Wood, head of the C.R.A. started the Single Room Occupancy Housing Trust with  Andy Raubeson of Portland in charge.  They opened their first renovated hotel in 1986.  In 1989, a 5 year moratorium on demolition of skid row hotels was declared.  It was reported that 2,000 units had been lost to demolition in the years 1969-1986.  There had been many more earlier in the 1950's, but no one was keeping count in those days of ruthless destruction.  Many of the adobes of Old Sonora Town, where Chinatown is now, were destroyed with no thought for their historic value.  Wood frame houses of any era were also considered fair game in those days. 

At present, they operate two hotels for emergency housing, two for transitional housing, and 24 for permanent supportive housing.  Each one of these places has its own history.  The Harold at 323 E. Fifth Street, was their second project and opened in 1987.  It has 58 units. Forty three of the units are for individuals with special needs and receive rental subsidies.

You can make a movie there.  The neon sign works.

The C.R.A. continued to provide acquisition funding for these projects until 2012 when the State of California disbanded The C.R.A. because of a state budget deficit.  There's now a local city C.R.A.  I'll have my eye on them.