All Richard wants for his birthday is for YOU to help save a landmark Art Deco tower on Thursday morning
Update 11/16/23: The Cultural Heritage Commission heard from angry Angelenos loud and clear: Jamison needs to halt the demolition by neglect of the landmark Wilshire Professional Building before they try to get permits to turn this medical tower into awkwardly shaped apartments!
Thank you to the passionate folks who sent emails and called in during the hearing. The commissioners were riled up from reading the written complaints received before the meeting began and had no patience with the developer’s architects and their non-answers about the sorry state of the landmark.
We even had the excitement of straining to hear what was getting picked up by a hot mic, after commission President Barry Milofsky called for a short recess and asked planning staff to explain why nothing was being done despite fifteen months of complaints about building code violations. Apparently, inspectors go over to the building but don’t follow through, and Jamison is having trouble keeping competent employees because nobody wants to work there!
Read all about it in our live narration on Facebook or on Twitter, remember that citizens really can make a difference when they show up and speak out, and stay tuned for updates as we have ‘em.
Gentle reader,
If you’ve taken one of our tours or watched our documentary short, you’ve heard the wacky tale of how we “met cute” in the UC Santa Cruz art history department, forming such an immediate mutual loathing that we never spoke until 18 years later, we reconnected at Chris Nichols’ hobo-themed birthday party.
Those 18 years in the wilderness were a chance to explore separate passions, places and wrong turns, until we found one another and fused our very different lives into one life of service to the city we’re both crazy in love with.
One thing Richard did was to work on a peculiar independent film called Treasure Island (1999), an early Nick Offerman vehicle produced and directed by our mutual friend Scott King, who was at the same publishing Kim’s fanzine Scram, among other coincidences. The casting director was Nicole Arbusto.
A year ago this month, Nicole reached out to us with a preservation problem. The beautiful checkerboard terrazzo sidewalks in front of the entirely empty, landmarked Wilshire Professional Building were cracked, buckled and caving into the basement below. Elderly neighbors were tripping. She was worried somebody would fall in a hole. And the sidewalk was so lovely—wasn’t it supposed to be protected?
As a character defining feature of a city landmark, the answer was yes. We introduced her to the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles, who had successfully landmarked the building in 2015, and advised her how to make complaints with LADBS, alert the Office of Historic Resources, communicate with the Council Office, City Attorney, and otherwise navigate the alphabet soup of responsible entities in City Hall—in hopes of making this safer, while preserving the historic installation.
But here’s the thing: nobody took responsibility. A year went by, with the sidewalk buckling, then spackled with ugly cement patches. Most communications with City Hall were ignored. LADBS investigations were closed out or kicked to another department without correction. The windows stayed wide open, inviting birds and rain. Vandals and taggers swarmed inside and outside the still gorgeous building, scrawling their ugly names on the outside, stealing copper and who knows what else from within.
We asked Steve Lucero, the drone maestro behind The Artery YouTube channel, to give us a god’s eye view of the devastation, and when he did we almost threw up.
Why is a useful and supposedly protected landmark allowed to rot in plain sight right there on Wilshire Boulevard for years? It’s the property owner’s fault, but mostly it’s the city’s.
That owner is Koreatown’s massive Jamison Properties, led by Dr. David Lee. Dr. Lee does not like the constraints that come with owning city landmarks, and we wish he would just sell them to somebody who cares.
In 2018, he threatened to use an automatic weapon to kill citizens who were advocating to historically designate the green space in front of Beneficial Plaza two blocks east of the Wilshire Professional Building, during a meeting in City Hall. Then City Council president Herb Wesson was present, a representative of the Los Angeles Conservancy, and Jamison’s attorney, along with community activists.
Naturally, the police were called in response to this terroristic threat, and Dr. David Lee was arrested and spent an uncomfortable few hours in custody before he was bailed out, and faced charges in criminal and civil court.
Actually, no, none of that happened. The billionaire walked right out the door. But Dr. Lee did not oppose making Liberty Park a landmark, and stopped appearing in public to do company business or scare the neighbors. But his Jamison remains a bad steward and landlord, and by all appearances continues to receive special treatment from City Hall, much to Nicole Arbusto’s dismay.
Today on the Empty Los Angeles blog, C.C. de Vere chronicles the remarkable efforts of this devoted Angeleno to try to save a building that she has no financial interest in, yet still feels as if she owns, because she loves it—and on the flip side, the callous failure of the civil servants who get paid to look after Los Angeles to do their jobs or even respond to calls and emails. It’s a damning chronicle of why this city looks and feels the way it does.
We salute Nicole for fighting on, and we want to help her win this battle, not just for the Wilshire Professional Building, but for every good building that’s doomed to be demolished if the City Family doesn’t change its flaky ways.
So here’s our ask: tomorrow, Thursday, November 16 at 10am, the Cultural Heritage Commission is meeting to hear, among other things, a presentation from Jamison about their plans to convert the Wilshire Professional Building into apartments. They’re using out of date photos that don’t show the destroyed decorative sidewalk or the tagged interiors. We can’t let them get away with whitewashing the truth about the state of the place.
Nicole will be making public comment, as will we, asking the Cultural Heritage Commission to form a subcommittee to visit the building, photograph the state of the interior, and get a report of the damage caused from leaving it open to vandals and the weather for more than a year. That information should then be used to compel Jamison to produce a plan for restoring the landmark to its condition before they emptied it of tenants and invited chaos in.
If you’re free tomorrow morning at 10am, please call or Zoom in (or go in person to City Hall) to make a brief public comment supporting Nicole’s efforts during the open comment period on Agenda item #4. This item will be very early in the meeting.
All the info for attending is in the agenda. The meeting will also include a presentation about the ongoing work to restore Frank Lloyd Wright’s looted Freeman House, and two landmarking nominations for multi-family buildings from our preservation pal James Dastoli: 540 St. Andrews Place and Fenway Hall.
You can say something like: “I care about historic buildings, and I am concerned about the year of unchecked vandalism and neglect at Wilshire Professional Building. I want you to form a subcommittee to tour and document the present condition, to hold Jamison responsible to restore it to its condition when it was declared a landmark, and to act to ensure no landmark will again be allowed to be left open to vandals for a full year with no help from Office of Historic Resources, LADBS or City Council.”
If you can’t call in, you can send a short email to the Cultural Heritage Commission at chc@lacity.org, saying much the same thing, with your own spin to make it personal and fresh.
Your public comment would be a great birthday present for Richard, and a chance to bring his old life in independent film production and his new life as an advocate for Los Angeles landmarks, culture and community, together at last.
And if you really want to make his day special, you can still get a ticket on this Saturday’s all day birthday bus adventure in the footsteps of the great Los Angeles illustrator, author and preservationist Leo Politi, featuring a time travel walk to discover lost Bunker Hill and the preserved marvels of Angelino Heights, and many thrilling surprises, including a visit with Treasure Island production designer, and Mr. Bunker Hill, Nathan Marsak.
Plus we’re got new tours listed into February, so join us, do!
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Special Event: Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles Bus Tour (11/18) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Walking Tour (Sat. 11/25) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop Walking Tour (SOLD OUT - Sat. 12/2 - NEW DATE COMING SOON) • Highland Park Arroyo Walking Tour (Sat. 12/9) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness Walking Tour (Sun. 12/17) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Walking Tour (Tues. 12/26) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 Walking Tour (Sat. 1/20) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess Walking Tour (Sat. 1/27) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive Walking Tour (Sat. 2/3) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/10) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/17) • The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 2/24)