Art Center for Bunker Hill No Longer in the Picture

In a bid to enliven downtown Los Angeles, city officials have offered every incentive they can think of--including a prime parcel on Bunker Hill--to bring Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design to the central city.

But as the school’s trustees begin to debate whether to move, the high-profile downtown site across from the Los Angeles Music Center and Disney Hall has been removed from consideration.

It turns out that the city of Los Angeles initially offered the site at the southeast corner of 1st Street and Grand Avenue without the knowledge or permission of the owner: Los Angeles County. County leaders say they have other plans for the property.

“We would consider giving it to [an agency] in our county family first,” said Alma Martinez, chief deputy for county Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes downtown.

Los Angeles officials, who will host a reception for the Art Center board of trustees tonight, say they have broadened their pitch to include a variety of downtown locations. But the city of Pasadena has two specific properties on the table, including a location in bustling Old Pasadena. The Art Center board of trustees is expected to make a decision by Friday.

The reception is intended to “let Art Center know that downtown Los Angeles is a vibrant place,” said Rocky Delgadillo, deputy mayor of economic development. “Art Center would be another demonstration of the great influence that downtown Los Angeles will have on the art, design and creative communities.”

The stakes are high for both sides. Moving the Art Center and its estimated 1,500 students and staff to downtown Los Angeles would prove a major boost to efforts to broaden the cultural and entertainment amenities in the long-struggling central city. For example, the avant-garde Southern California Institute of Architecture recently announced that it would move its campus to downtown from a site near Marina del Rey after being wooed by city officials.

Losing Art Center to Los Angeles would rob Pasadena of a high-profile institution and economic engine.

“It’s more of an image generator,” said Eric Duyshart, Pasadena’s manager of business development. “It provides Pasadena with name recognition on an international level.”

Art Center has been studying whether to expand on its remote hillside campus near the Rose Bowl, build a more visible, urban school or pursue a combination of the two.

Los Angeles officials held up the Bunker Hill parcel, which is occupied by a parking garage, as an ideal site for a new campus. The property is in the middle of an emerging cultural corridor that includes the Music Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Colburn School of Performing Arts, Disney Hall and the new cathedral for the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

But city officials apparently failed to give their county counterparts notice of their intentions before the proposal appeared in the news media earlier this year. “We learned about it in the newspaper,” Martinez said.

In a letter sent in April to the Community Redevelopment Agency, which is controlled by the city of Los Angeles, county Chief Administrative Officer David E. Janssen said that “the property is not available for consideration as a site for the Art Center.”

The corner location is a candidate for numerous projects. Molina, for example, wants the site to first be considered for a new home for the Natural History Museum, now located in Exposition Park.

Earlier this week, Los Angeles County spokeswoman Judy Hammond said: “We have a consultant looking at the whole Civic Center. We don’t have anything on the table.”

Pasadena, meanwhile, has offered two urban locations as well as assistance in helping Art Center expand on its existing Linda Vista-area campus. One of the sites is near Pasadena City Hall. The other is in the city’s thriving Old Pasadena district.