Loft Living

After nine years of suburban tract living in south Orange County, Mark Bartleman and his partner, Rex Theobald, were ready for a change.

So three years ago they traded their “regulation stucco box” for the open floor plan and urban setting of the Kress Lofts in downtown Long Beach.

“Within hours [of seeing the lofts] we both knew this was where we wanted to live,” Bartleman said.

Bartleman and Theobald are among an increasing number of Southern Californians who have been lured to loft living. From Long Beach to Pomona, North Hollywood to San Diego, lofts--ranging from the raw to the refined--are growing in popularity.

But loft living wasn’t always so desirable.

The loft concept has come a long way since the 1940s, when artists in New York’s SoHo district first began moving their canvases and cots into barren spaces abandoned by commerce and industry.

Often illegal, early lofts were neither chic nor comfortable.

With an increasing demand for the open spaces, lofts are no longer limited to converted industrial buildings in marginal neighborhoods. And they’re not just for artists any more.

Whether the space is new or converted, inhabited by artists or computer programmers, in an urban or suburban setting, the appealing features of lofts remain the same: large, uninterrupted wall and floor surfaces, high (at least 12-foot) ceilings and expansive windows.

The New York loft movement gained momentum in the ‘70s and is spreading across the United States in what Lesley Elwood, a consultant for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, calls the “loft phenomenon.”

Elwood said that focus groups around the country shared the perception that lofts represent a sense of freedom. “With no walls and formal layout, people have the opportunity to construct their own environment,” said Elwood.

“Lofts allow for a free, more ambitious and often less-segregated working and living situation,” wrote Suzanne Slesin in “The International Book of Lofts” (Clarkson N. Potter Inc., 1986).

Marcelle Penn, an assistant dean at Pepperdine University who owns a unit in the Kress Lofts in Long Beach, agrees.

“I think it’s a different frame of reference when you decide to give up walls,” she said. “I feel more at ease, more peaceful, more calm.”

The Kress Lofts, at Pine Avenue and 5th Street, were originally the retail space and offices for the S.H. Kress department store. Now the 1923 building houses 49 residential units and two retail establishments.

The Italianate building stood vacant for almost 11 years before investors, led by preservationists Peter Janopaul and Anthony Block, bought the property in 1992. The loft conversions took 2 1/2 years to complete and another 2 1/2 years to sell out.

“It was definitely a vision,” said Block and Janopaul, who have also converted buildings in San Diego and Denver. “It wasn’t easy at times to get people to buy into the loft concept. People didn’t understand it, but it’s a lot more of a known quantity now than it was.”

Lynda Madorsky, an aerospace administrative assistant and the past president of the Kress Lofts Homeowners Assn., said that initially she had problems with financing and appraisals. “There was nothing to compare against,” Madorsky said.

Others in the building hesitated to buy because they were unsure of the investment potential.

The loft condos, ranging in size from 1,000 to 2,500 square feet, sold initially for $145,000 to $450,000. Kathy Shasha, agent with Prudential Realty, said five loft units were resold last year, at an average 18% increase over the original purchase price.

The ages, professions and backgrounds of Kress residents cover a broad spectrum, but most have at least one thing in common: They were looking for a “lifestyle change.”

Some, like Bartleman, a software manager, and Theobald, a computer programmer, left Orange County suburbia “where everything was alike.” Others, like George Box, an architectural artist, traded in an acre in north Orange County for a luxurious penthouse loft. Marcelle Penn and her husband, Joe Mathis, a contract manager, said goodbye to a four-bedroom, two-story home in West Covina “where everyone had 2 1/2 kids and a dog.”

Their new open homes, which feature brick walls, exposed wooden rafters and open ductwork, are “tumbling distance” from the shops, theaters and restaurants on nearby Pine Street and half a block from the Blue Line station.

The proximity of public transportation and entertainment is especially appealing to Chris Verdon, the owner of a catering business, and his wife, Rebecca, a physician for Kaiser Permanente.

Chris Verdon said their housekeeper often takes their daughters, ages 3 and 8, on outings to Belmont Shore via the bus line and to L.A.’s historic Olvera Street on the Blue Line.

So far, personal space and privacy haven’t been an issue for the family of four in the open loft. When 8-year-old Andrea wants quiet time, she climbs into her secluded nest above the closet and reads her favorite books.

Kress units feature the undivided space, high ceilings and vaulted windows common to lofts, but the high-end living quarters are a far cry from true artists lofts, like those at Santa Fe Art Colony in Los Angeles.

Laurel Paley, a 10-year resident of Santa Fe Art Colony, 2401 S. Santa Fe Ave., points out the wide hallways, oversized doors, the loading dock and the freight elevator in her complex, important considerations when hauling 60-pound bags of cement or maneuvering larger-than-life canvases is all part of a day’s work.

And no one worries too much when paint splatters on the cement floors.

Some have described the colony’s desolate setting as an “Apocalypse” or “ ‘Blade Runner’ without the street vendors.” But for Paley, a painter, art critic and teacher, and the 70 other artists who work and live in the lofts, Santa Fe Art Colony is a sanctuary.

“I love living with my work and I love rolling out of bed and going to work,” Paley said.

“It’s like living in paradise, but paradise has a cost,” she said, referring to the colony’s location, a noisy truck route on the fringes of downtown Los Angeles’s industrial area.

“[But] I can’t afford to live in Venice, where the rents are two or three times more than our 50 cents per square foot.”

For Paley, her live-work arrangement is not simply a lifestyle. “It’s a commitment to our work and creating an environment that supports our work, whatever that art is.”

It’s that same commitment that drew sculptor-draftsman Denice Bartels to the Brewery in Los Angeles, a 21-building complex of lofts that was once the home of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. With more than 300 artists, Coagula Art Journal dubbed the Brewery the “world’s largest art complex.”

Bartels moved to the Brewery shortly after finishing graduate school in 1991. “The thing that I have found most comforting is living in a community of artists,” she said. “I didn’t know how very comforting that would be.”

The Brewery lacks the oversized doorways, freight elevator and wide hallways that are standard at Santa Fe. The complex does, however, boast a digital output facility, photo shops and a restaurant, making working life “self-contained” for residents like Michael Salerno, an artist who shares a 2,600-square-foot loft with his photographer friend Ramona.

Brewery residents complain that the artists’ haven has two major drawbacks: summer heat and winter cold.

Salerno, whose loft is undivided, has enclosed one small space with air conditioning to stave off the summer temperature extremes. Salerno said that the light and the views in his unit more than compensate for the discomfort a few days of the year.

Parachute silk curtains cover the 15-foot windows lining his loft space. “I get beautiful horizontal light, which is perfect for my painting.”

Even though the Brewery is in a high-crime area, residents contend that a strong police presence on the grounds has deterred crime. “You can’t expect to have spacious quarters and low rents in the best part of town,” Salerno said.

The downtown Los Angeles Artists District, a community of lofts close to Little Tokyo, is also typical of the low-rent urban setting for lofts. But despite its gritty location close to the “pushcart district” of the homeless, residents say the area is “virtually free” of crime.

“We have a few isolated incidents,” said Alberto Mijares, local artist and activist, “but nobody breaks into a loft.”

Unlike the Brewery or Santa Fe Arts Colony, the Artists District is within walking distance of theaters, galleries and coffee shops, giving the area more the feel of a New York loft community. And, as in New York, only about 65% of loft residents are artists.

An estimated 2,000 loft dwellers, including the Artists District denizens, make their homes in the lofts that are scattered throughout the eastern and central quarters of downtown Los Angeles. The Artists District is bounded by 1st Street on the north, Palmetto Street on the south, Alameda Street to the west and Santa Fe Avenue to the east.

Mijares said the area has gone through a cycle. At one point, rents were escalating, and artists were forced to move to cheaper loft areas such as San Pedro and the Crenshaw area. Now rents, ranging from 50 cents to $1 per square foot, have stabilized, and artists are moving back.

Pasadena has undergone a somewhat similar cycle. The city was home to a contemporary arts scene in the 1960s and ‘70s, but artists who filled the lofts along Colorado Boulevard were eventually squeezed out by the renaissance of Old Town, an area that now brings rents of $4 per square foot.

But a new artists’ community is emerging. Under the city’s East Pasadena Specific Plan, the area will be designated as an artists’ and craftsmen corridor. Affordable $1-a-square-foot work-live lofts are replacing “functionally obsolete” warehouses and manufacturing companies, according to developer Allen Goldman.

Raul Valera, an artist, conceptual design engineer and longtime loft dweller, was happy to return to his native Pasadena when Goldman opened his lofts a year ago.

“Pasadena is a very creative town,” he said. “Everyone wants to be on the cutting edge.”

In Venice, artists who once occupied the many lofts can no longer afford the rent. Terry Rose, a painter and graphic designer who lives in a Venice loft, considers himself one of the lucky ones.

“I’ve lived here for nine years and the trend has been that I move into a space that I can barely afford anyway and then the rent goes up and I move out and I look for a more affordable space.”

With rents as high as the vaulted ceilings, the typical loft dweller is no longer an artist. “Most lofts in Venice are now being taken over by people in the film industry,” Rose said.

Even though his loft complex, with slanted skylights and slide-up doors on the ground level, is ideally suited for sculptors and painters, Rose is the only artist in residence.

Demand for lofts in Venice is so great that newly built lofts are common. One new development of six loft-style condos is selling units for more than $300,000 each.

“They’re designer lofts,” said Rose, “not true artists’ lofts. Very few artists will actually live there. Only the older Venice painters who have made it in the art world can afford the high rents or purchase prices.”

That’s the situation the Community Redevelopment Agency is trying to avoid.

“Artists have spurred these types of loft developments and they’ve been priced out of the market,” consultant Lesley Elwood said. “Helping them to retain ownership helps them retain a healthy presence in the community.”

The CRA, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Adaptive Reuse Live/Work Task Force, is working to turn downtown’s decaying business district and the area along the Figueroa corridor into thriving loft districts.

The target area, stretching from the new Staples Center to the USC Coliseum, has an overstocked inventory of some 200 pre-1974 buildings.

The task force studied how other large cities, including San Francisco, Denver, Portland, Chicago and lower Manhattan, successfully used loft development to turn decaying business neighborhoods into thriving communities.

Wolfgang Kupka, president of Vista Realty Advisors, agrees that many of these buildings “have no economic life as commercial or retail properties. Converting to lofts is one of the few options, but upgrades are expensive. It’s all in the numbers.”

By waiving some of the costly regulations, the task force hopes to lure developers into jump-starting the conversion. More important, a new ordinance that will broaden the definition and scope of the work-live quarters is expected in April, a change that Kupka feels will make a “dramatic difference.”

Elwood believes all of the components for success are in place. “These projects can really be successful when they spring up around a new development like an arena.”

In Denver, the loft conversions developed around a sports center; in Chicago, high-priced luxury lofts are close to Chicago Stadium.

Tom Gilmore, principal of Gilmore associates, developers specializing in historic buildings, said, “Residential is the No. 1 answer to downtown at the moment. The level of architecture is just amazing. It’s going to happen; it’s just a matter of time and not that long of [a] time.”

Elwood believes that time is now, citing the growing trend of home-based businesses and the “better than ever” cooperation between private and public sectors.

Those same ingredients combined to turn part of downtown Pomona into a thriving art colony.

After pushing through a work-live quarters ordinance in the city, Ed Tessier, a developer and former Pomona planning commissioner, began converting decaying, unoccupied buildings into lofts six years ago.

The Pomona Arts Colony now boasts more than 200 artists, six galleries and more than a dozen restaurants. With a high demand and a waiting list, Tessier has no problem maintaining a 100% occupancy rate in 50-cents-a-square-foot lofts. His company, Jeved Management, just went into escrow for two more buildings that he plans to convert into lofts.

One year ago, after watching the success of Pomona, the city of Upland passed a work-live ordinance. Instead of converting existing buildings, developer Dick Barker is building a complex that will include four work-live lofts.

The complex, which looks like a Victorian-style village, is drawing attention from neighboring cities that are considering emulating the concept and the architectural style.

North Hollywood is planning a development of 1,000 residences that would include 200 large loft spaces. Skeptics, however, fear that artists will not be interested in newly built lofts.

But, as the residents of the Kress Lofts in Long Beach will tell you, lofts aren’t just for artists. After decades of renting, Lynda Madorsky confessed that she fulfilled a lifelong ambition when she bought her loft: “All I ever wanted in life was to be cool.”

Susan Carrier is an Altadena freelance writer. She may be reached via e-mail at scarrier3@aol.com

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Loft Lingo

Hard loft: This is what most people think of when they think of lofts--large, raw, unfinished open spaces, except for the bathroom, with high ceilings and exposed timber beams, pipes, ducts and brick walls.

Soft loft: Units have finished ceilings that, though still higher than those you’d find in most new construction, are not as tall as those in hard lofts. They also have at least three-quarter-high walls around the bedroom(s).

Lite lofts: Have an even higher level of finish than a soft loft.

Raw: Unfinished rental space; may include toilet and/or sink.

Moderate: Has mid-priced kitchen and bathroom finishes.

Upscale: Has upper-level quality kitchen and bathroom fixtures and finishes.

Live-work: May be used for either living or working or both.

High ceilings: They are 14 feet or higher.

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The Art of Loft Living

Here are some opportunities to get a firsthand look at loft life while viewing the work of Southland artists:

* San Pedro Art Colony in Old Town San Pedro holds open houses at loft studios and galleries on the first Thursday of each month from 6 to 9 p.m. For more information, call (310) 831-5757.

* The Pomona Art Colony, just east of Garvey Avenue between 2nd and 3rd streets, hosts a Second Saturday Art Walk featuring artists’ loft receptions and gallery open houses on the second Saturday of each month from 5 to 9 p.m. For more information, call (909) 868-2970.

* The Santa Fe Art Colony, 2401 S. Santa Fe, Los Angeles, will host its annual spring open studio and art tour on April 10 and 11. For more information, call (323) 587-6381.

* The Brewery Arts Colony near downtown Los Angeles at Interstate 5 and Main Street will host its Spring Art Walk on April 24 and 25 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, call (213) 694-2911.

* North Hollywood Arts District will hold its NoHo Arts Festival on June 12 and 13 from noon to 6 p.m. For more information, call (818) 508-5155.

* The Artists District in Los Angeles will host its annual street art fair on June 19 and 20. For more information, call (213) 613-1814.