COMING DOWNTOWN

By Chris Coates, Los Angeles Downtown News
04/17/2006

The California Endowment is one of the most prolific grant givers in the state, dispensing more than 7,700 grants totaling $1.6 billion since it was founded nearly a decade ago. It has an endowment of $3.7 billion.

The Endowment had been based in a Woodland Hills office building that offered little room to meet with nonprofit leaders, Walden said. So when it came time about five years ago to look for a new headquarters site, space, location and amenities were top priorities, along with parking, proximity to public transportation, natural light and access to outdoors, she said.

"That I think is a reaction to all the time we've spent in hotels and church basements," Walden said.

Downtown's central location and access made it a natural choice, she said. But space in the area was tight, and Ross said both leasing space and converting an existing building appeared too costly. "We just couldn't fund anything that fit our needs," he said.

Eventually, through a connection on the board, the Endowment learned of a plot owned by the U.S. Postal Service, which operated the Terminal Annex near Union Station. The land, at the unusual intersection where Main Street crosses Alameda Street, was a parking lot and postal facility.

"It was basically a brown field and dirt," Walden said.

But it was a perfect fit - close to freeways and near public transportation. Soon the Endowment secured the site and hired Rios Clementi Hale Studios, a local architecture firm currently working on such high profile projects as L.A. Live and Grand Avenue.

Firm principal Mark Rios said the designers paid special attention to making the building fit into the neighborhood.

"We're really obsessed with site-specific architecture. This building came about because of ample research," he said. "This idea about 'fit' was very important."

One element that figured into the design is the Los Angeles River, which runs a few miles north of the Endowment site. Thus river rocks are used in landscaping, as are sycamore trees and grasses to create a kind of waterless riverbank. Inside the lobby, a projector beams images of a riverbed onto a screen.

"We felt that this property was really crucial because it starts to link up the Cornfield and the L.A. River" with the rest of Downtown, Rios said. "We saw our project as this kind of building block of connections to the river."

In a similar vein, the 16,000-square-foot courtyard uses pavement from the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevadas. The courtyard also has a native plant medicinal garden with aloe, rosemary and pennyroyal, and a handful of sequoia groves.

Endowment Senior Associate Jeff Okey said those touches humanize the building and are appreciated by the nonprofit's 130 employees. The Woodland Hills office was never known as an inspiring place, Okey said.

"It's very conducive for being more productive," Okey said. "I think people work harder here."

Welcome to the Neighborhood

The project joins a rapidly changing neighborhood near where Los Angeles was originally settled.

For decades, Catellus (and its predecessor companies) was the area's major landowner, with a portfolio of about 50 acres. But during the 1990s, Catellus startling selling off chunks of the property. Today, the headquarters for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Metropolitan Water District are both on former Catellus land.

More recently, Catellus (which last fall merged with Colorado-based ProLogis) sold additional portions to nonprofit First 5 LA for a new headquarters and to a housing developer for the 278-condominium Axis at Union Station.

Just northwest of the Endowment site near Chinatown, plans are in the works to turn an arrow-shaped plot known as the Cornfield into a state park. Chinatown is also gaining attention as developers plan adaptive reuse projects on Broadway and Spring Street.

Walden said she is looking forward to being part of the area's evolution, along with helping Downtown groups.

"It really is the crossroads of the beginnings of Los Angeles," Walden said. "I believe that with us here and all that's happening in Downtown, it's also presaging what Downtown can be."

Contact Chris Coates at chris@downtownnews.com.

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