Yamaoka, Phil Nisco and Chris Alfaro wanted to open a hot new nightspot—But first, they had to fight Santa Ana City Hall
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
By DAVE SEGAL/OC Weekly
Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 3:00 pm
The Crosby’s owners (from left: Marc Yamaoka, Phil Nisco and Chris Alfaro) envision th space as a “haven of creativity” for their friends, themselves and other free spirits. Photo by John Gilhooley. Maybe skateboarding to city hall to meet with officials about opening a business wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe if the three young men who are attempting to open the Crosby in downtown Santa Ana’s Artists Village had walked into the building at 20 Civic Center Plaza in suits and ties and had been clean-shaven, they could’ve avoided the exasperating series of roadblocks the city has placed before them. Maybe if the Crosby’s principals were older than 25 and had previous business experience, they would have been taken more seriously by SanTana’s bureaucrats, and the Crosby would be serving lunch, helping hipsters get their drink on, showcasing Southern California’s most talented DJs, flaunting bleeding-edge art on its walls, selling art books and displaying its own streetwear line by now.
Or, maybe not.
Have you tried to open a club or bar in Santa Ana lately? It’s typically a grueling process that seems geared to thwart entrepreneurial desire and make potential movers and shakers wonder if they’d be better off following their dreams elsewhere. But Chris Alfaro, Phil Nisco and Marc Yamaoka are determined to launch the Crosby at Fourth and Broadway. They love this downtown neighborhood, they see a void there, and they’re willing to do almost whatever the city asks them to do in order to set up shop. But they wonder why the process has to be so excruciating and draining.
“All of these restrictions are because [the city] doesn’t know us or our concept,” Alfaro believes, “so that’s their way of making sure we don’t create this crazy nightclub where people get stabbed every night.” But he sees a contradiction in Santa Ana’s attitude. “They want to build this area, but they make it incredibly hard for businesses like ours to open up. It’s, like, you’ve seen positive change from where [Santa Ana] was to now; why stop?”
Other downtown entrepreneurs have wondered the same thing.
Dan Bradley, co-owner of Memphis Café, notes that Santa Ana has been cooperative with his company. Even so, it took about six months for Memphis to obtain its liquor license through the Alcoholic Beverage Control’s (ABC) annual lottery system.
“What has been challenging is making the ultimate ‘vision’ that the then-city’s elected officials had for the downtown—and specifically the Artists Village—a reality,” Bradley says. “This was due in part to already existing codes and regulations that do not really jibe with that vision. Also, many of the city staff and elected officials [who] originally championed the Artists Village have moved on.”
Those officials’ replacements—and the incumbents—have been giving the Crosby’s brain trust migraines. Through bureaucratic ineptitude and an epic regulatory process, Santa Ana depletes potential business owners’ time, money and patience, according to Alfaro, who outlines a long trail of woe in the Crosby’s city-hall dealings.
“Our suite was zoned for restaurant/retail and was very briefly occupied by another business (a restaurant that was going to be called Starfish, but the owner gave up the entire project at an early stage), which didn’t get past the application process for a CUP [conditional-use permit]. We were given advice to use the previous CUP application as a guideline for our own. When we tried to pull their file, it was nowhere to be found in the system. It was in their computer as ‘applied for,’ but they didn’t have a copy of the application anywhere.
“A similar thing happened with our C-3 parking waiver. The waiver for the entire building was approved a few years back when it was retrofitted. We were under the impression that it was all set to go. Then we were told by a different person, on the following day, at the same exact desk, that it was in the computer as ‘applied for’ by the previous tenant, but was either deleted from the system or never put in for some reason.”
Alfaro relates that this kind of aggravation was the rule in the Crosby’s dealings with city hall. “There was a lot of misguiding or incomplete information for things we had to handle, bringing us back and forth to different departments with a lot of confusion and waiting on people. There were times when we would get an agenda of things to do; we would do everything, but there was always something left out that we really had to do, or something we didn’t even have to do at all. It all depended on who we were talking to at the desk that day.”
Then there was the floor-plan-finalizing fiasco in Irvine, the radius-map runaround, the age discrimination . . . Alfaro and co. could fill this entire paper with their frustrating experiences.
* * *
In 1989, Santa Ana bohemian/activist Don Cribb conceived the Artists Village to be a catalyst to rejuvenate downtown Santa Ana. Cribb persuaded Mayor Miguel Pulido and other city leaders to lure artists to the area with affordable lofts and encourage innovative businesses. He believed that culture and commerce could combine to strengthen the city’s fortunes and help to diminish the violent crimes plaguing the city. Santa Ana’s government website proclaims, “Since the development of the Artists Village, more than 30 galleries and art studios, 20 or more museums, theaters, ballet, and educational nonprofit organizations and preservation centers have made downtown their home.”
A former member of the environmental-transportation-advisory commission and now on the Santa Ana Council of Arts and Culture, Cribb recalls, “When we started Artists Village, it seemed like Santa Ana had become so unacceptable to Orange County that the idea of putting the arts (largely considered the domain of upper classes) there [was incomprehensible]. Of course, the administration itself thought it was ridiculous. They said, ‘Don, you’ll turn downtown into nothing but homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts if we support the arts there.’ My response was, ‘What’s your point?’ Santa Ana was so derelict then, anything would’ve been an improvement. What were they protecting? You don’t protect disadvantage. You protect opportunity. There was no opportunity.”
Cribb considers Santa Ana’s current leadership to be as myopic and unadventurous as its predecessors. He expresses disgust over the troubles besetting the Crosby, which he views as “the legitimate future of Santa Ana. You have [ethnically diverse individuals] who are young and pushing experimental concepts. I am excited for the Crosby and will do anything I can to help them.”
* * *
The Crosby’s saga is noteworthy not only because it underscores Santa Ana’s problematic attitude and policies toward progressive businesses, but also because of the grandiose ambitions of its owners. Alfaro (25), Nisco (24) and Yamaoka (23) view the Crosby as a “haven of creativity” that will promote everything they deeply care about: unconventional music, visual art, books devoted to visual art, street fashion and healthy food. Oh, and liquor, but that’s secondary to the facility’s other facets.
The Crosby concept has germinated for years and gone through several changes (its original emphasis was on films from the owners’ personal collections and booze). Nisco and Alfaro had worked together in various musical projects, including Nisco’s now-defunct band Vela. Alfaro helped to get Yamaoka—who has known Nisco since grade school—hired at Subject Matter, the Costa Mesa gallery/boutique where he was working until it folded last year. Yamaoka was on the verge of moving to Spain when Nisco and Alfaro made him an offer to be a partner in their budding business. He couldn’t refuse. They signed the lease in January and are hoping to open later this month.
“We finally had the chance to do all the concepts we had,” Nisco gushes, “all the different collaborations that we wanted to do, whether it be art, music, design, whatever. We can involve all of our friends and make a communal place people can feel comfortable at.”
It sounds pretty utopian, with fostering creativity taking priority over monetary gain. “That’s the only thing that keeps us going,” Nisco says. “There are so many risks; people keep us aware of that every day. [But] we thought about everything. We tell people if we’re doing what we love, that’s enough reward for us. We want to build a place we enjoy and feel comfortable at, and hopefully that can transcend just us and other people can grasp it.”
* * *
Meanwhile, other Artists Village establishments express mixed emotions about their own prospects and city-hall interactions. Bradley admits that Memphis’ business has improved after an initial rough patch, noting that there’s “much more room for improvement. This will require the continued nurturing of the fine-arts component that the downtown is already known for and which is also the area’s biggest draw, [and] also the addition of more complementary attractions such as restaurants/bars in the area, creating a destination with more options, so a thriving after-dinner scene is part of that,” he says. Downtown also needs to draw more urban sophisticates, Bradley believes, expressing discouragement over the stalled construction of a three-phase loft project and other shelved concepts.
Proof Bar proprietor Joey Mendes knows from discouraging, too. Proof’s liquor license came only after more than two years of struggle. “Our permit includes all sorts of restrictions that we are still in the very long process of trying to amend,” Mendes notes. “Sometimes I feel that they were being cooperative just by approving [it] to begin with. Our Type 48 liquor license is a rarity and has not been granted in the city since 1986.” This license permits hard liquor to be sold until 2 a.m. in a facility that only admits people 21 years old and over.
Asked if he can explain why the city institutes such a hassle-intensive process, Mendes says, “It seems that [the city] fears a resurgence of the ‘problem bars’ that were prevalent in Santa Ana during the ’80s. This is why they went ‘overboard’ in listing operational restrictions.”
Assistant city manager Cathy Standiford says Santa Ana’s regulations are necessary because of the city’s past crime problems, when downtown had a high concentration of bars. “[Downtown Santa Ana] was not seen as a desirable place for people to be,” she says. “The city’s been working hard to try to transform that. What that means is a balance between regulations that allow restaurants and other types of businesses to thrive, but at the same time to protect against harmful effects that can happen there.
“There are other communities in Orange County that don’t require a conditional-use permit, don’t require certain standards in their downtowns, and what they experience is a huge cost for services for their police department, increased crime, problems with crowd control. All we’re trying to do is find a balance that allows business like the Crosby, which we feel will add tremendous value to the Artists Village, to succeed. But at the same time, [we need to] make sure that the downtown is a vibrant, desirable place for people to come.”
Overall, Mendes is dissatisfied with the city’s “lax and unsupportive” attitude toward downtown bars and restaurants. For example, Proof’s use permit calls for a police review after six months of operations. “We are a year and a half in and still waiting on amendments to the many restrictions placed upon our operation,” Mendes laments. “I feel like they gave the license and sent us out into the wilderness to fend for ourselves.
“If you look at other 18-hour downtowns like Fullerton, Long Beach and San Diego,” he continues, “they have a thriving nightlife scene with restaurants, bars, valet parking, plentiful street transportation, well-lit walkways. It seems that the city is so afraid of regressing toward the Santa Ana of recent history that they are unwilling to grow. It’s like they made the one big decision to step forward and then decline on the numerous small decisions that make for real progress.”
Speaking of that pre-Artists Village Santa Ana history, Alfaro’s memories include “crack[heads], gangs for days, creepsters; stray animals were everywhere. According to my pops, there was a crack house right across the street. Walking around wasn’t always fun; [there were] a lot of random unfriendly confrontations.”
Despite the institutional hassles, Mendes reports that business at Proof has been good lately, and it’s been building a loyal clientele. A recent Friday night there saw a large, hip, ethnically mixed crowd animatedly socializing and dancing to Santa Ana resident Dan Sena’s Busywork crew of DJs.
“What is very encouraging is that we are seeing business from all over the county, not just Santa Ana,” Mendes says. “Once again, I have mixed feelings about the developing nightlife scene. The thing that gives me hope is the people. I meet so many fun, interesting, creative and enthusiastic people at [Proof]. It gives me hope to see people with such character and unique personalities coming down, especially considering the fact that other parts of the county have a reputation for being a little sterile and lifeless.
“What discourages me is the constant hesitation we see from city hall in making progress down here,” Mendes continues. “I am just a businessman who gave up my life and my life’s savings to try to run a successful bar in a ‘burgeoning’ downtown. I knew what I was getting into as far as the ‘stigma’ attached to the city, but I had no idea that the internal forces would be so resistant to positive growth.”
Despite these frustrations, Mendes is a city booster. “I believe that Santa Ana is a hidden gem. With its historic buildings and unique cityscape, it has a feel like no other place in the county. I took a huge risk in coming down here, but I have never regretted it. It has been an uphill battle the entire way, and [it] would be very nice to see some continuing support from the city that gets my tax dollars.”
While discussing Santa Ana’s attitude toward progressive businesses, Delilah Snell, president of its downtown business council and co-owner of the Road Less Traveled, repeatedly used the word “ridiculous.” She can sympathize with the Crosby’s situation. [Full disclosure: Snell is dating OC Weekly staff writer Gustavo Arellano.]
“They should’ve had their business up and running by now,” Snell asserts.
It seems as if Santa Ana wants positive developments, but it’s still gun-shy from what’s happened decades ago. So there’s stagnation, trepidation and systemic inertia. Snell agrees: “They need to take a different approach. Instead of working against them and putting all these restrictions and regulations . . . they need to be working with the businesses to make sure that they develop into the kinds of businesses they want to promote.”
Even with new businesses that clearly have good intentions, Santa Ana seems to be resistant. Exasperated, Snell says, “I can understand the city’s apprehensions about letting a ‘bar’ come in because they’ve had a history of having too many bars in the area. They tried to get rid of all of ’em. Their thinking is that if they easily allow for one bar to come in, whether or not it’s good for the city, then they’re probably going to get some backlash from other people who’ve been trying to open bars in the city and [weren’t allowed] to. Like, why them and not us?
“Also, the city’s had a history of being standoffish and not as embracing as other cities have,” Snell continues. “But there’s a lot of old thinking in the city, as well. Times have changed. If we want to change the image of downtown, if we want to be more progressive and look like what other downtowns are doing, like Old Towne Orange, we’re going to have to be more embracing of different businesses and drop the past. That happened 25, 30 years ago. We have new people coming in.”
Snell notes that Santa Ana’s dynamic is unique, yet she thinks “the city should still be strict when it comes to bars, but with the Crosby, they know it’s not just gonna be another late-night place where maybe there’s [undesirables] walking around. The city’s had some problems with that and litter, windows being graffitied. I don’t think it’s going to be that kind of crowd.
“What the city needs to realize is that when you put up all of these obstacles for new, independent, image-changing businesses to come into the area, you’re never going to change your image.”
In Snell’s view, Santa Ana has lagged behind other OC cities with regard to development. “Look at the Orange Circle—totally changed in the past 10 years,” she observes. “It’s great. And they’re getting all the traffic that we should be getting. We’re a downtown area, and we don’t have half of that.”
Santa Ana puts prospective proprietors through this arduous process, Snell observes, “to see how badly you want a business there. Which is so not the way to go about it.”
Deemed by Snell as “very pro-business,” Ward 2 City Councilmember Michele Martinez confesses she was unaware of the Crosby’s difficulties with Santa Ana regulations. However, she admits, “we do have policies that are not very business-friendly, and it makes it real difficult for businesses to open in the city. This issue is being addressed with our staff and how we can better work with the business community.
“I am a big believer in restaurants like the Crosby and how they can help revitalize our city,” Martinez continues. “I believe we need to change the way we do business in our city. We must progress as a city if we want to be ‘Downtown Orange County.’ I want to see more nightlife in Santa Ana, so we can market to a large pool of residents who are spending their money in Fullerton, Long Beach and Brea because Santa Ana does not provide [similar] amenities.”
Nisco points to a city brochure that highlights improvements from new businesses (decreased crime, livelier streets), yet numerous, onerous restrictions remain in place. He shakes his head and declares, “We’re trying to add to the area, clean up the city and build up the culture. It’s weird.”
On top of the institutional obstacles, bureaucratic incompetence also hinders progress. “There are so many different levels of bureaucracy where you can hit problems,” Nisco notes. “There are people up high who might not even know what’s going on, and there are people down low who don’t care. Sometimes it may not be that department, but rather just one person who has a lot of power and what they can put on you.”
“Had it been up to the people actually running it,” Alfaro says, “it would save us a lot more time. People on staff sometimes are just sort of there, and it’s not that they don’t care about the project, but . . . they don’t care about the project,” he says, laughing ruefully. “It’s really frustrating.”
* * *
The idea for the Crosby partially arose out of the trio being fed up with having to travel to big cities to experience interesting music, art and fashion. “We’ve lived in Orange County all our lives,” Nisco says. “We don’t want to have to keep driving 50 miles to find cool places. We want to put it in our back yard. We know there are people here who feel the same way. Hopefully, they’ll be into [the Crosby].”
Musically, the Crosby will likely resemble LA’s Low End Theory club night, where Alfaro (a skilled DJ who spins under the name Urthworm and creates left-field instrumental hip-hop as Free the Robots) has performed and made connections with many of its regulars. Underground hip-hop and experimental electronic music will figure prominently in the Crosby’s mix, but Alfaro insists that all DJs will be given free rein. That’s one advantage to having friends who are elite disc jockeys.
“They don’t have to keep the crowd dancing,” Nisco says, “just play the music they love, what they’d play in their bedrooms, the stuff they show their friends. It’s more about the music and less about rocking a party.”
“We’re gonna keep it open and have different nights,” Alfaro says. “We don’t want human jukeboxes at the Crosby.”
As a member of the six-person From Elsewhere crew, Alfaro will tap some of his cohorts to play his club. Expect to see many of Los Angeles’ A-list DJs, too, including Gaslamp Killer, Daedelus and the Beat Junkies. Plans are afoot to work with Santa Ana clothing/design firm Obey Giant; you may even see famed artist/CEO Shepard Fairey DJing at the Crosby.
With capacity tentatively set under 60, the Crosby will be more of a spot for chilling than shaking moneymakers. Its owners envision the space as a cross between a ’20s jazz joint and a modern hip-hop head’s haunt, with a special fondness for ’80s aesthetics. For instance, the Crosby’s uniquely jerry-rigged sound system will be wired through 18 massive boomboxes of Reagan-era vintage. And the Yamaoka-designed clothing to be showcased will lean more toward hoodies than zoot suits.
While DJs and bartenders will reign during the night, chef Aron Habiger, a longtime friend of Alfaro’s who re-entered his orbit at a serendipitous time, will rule the daylight hours. He’ll be preparing food that promises to be as unconventional as the Crosby’s sonic menu. Currently the sous chef at San Clemente’s Café 207, Habiger could’ve taken higher-paying posts at other spots (he recently graduated from Cordon Bleu), but he sees the Crosby as a rare opportunity to exert total creative control. Gourmet pizzas will form the core of the Crosby’s offerings, with soups, salads and sandwiches also likely to appear. The emphasis will be on uncommon flavors and healthy ingredients.
“I have always wanted to have a place to showcase my food and share with people who are in search of something unique to eat,” Habiger says. Philosophically in line with the Crosby’s honchos, he reiterates, “It’s not about the money for us; it’s the chance to have something special for us and the people in the Artists Village. Phil, Chris and Mark are making my dreams come true.”
The Crosby bosses’ dreams came closer to being realized Aug. 27, when the city granted it a liquor license, minus the absurd conditions of its original offering. It will be allowed to serve alcohol until 2 a.m., and drink orders won’t have to be accompanied by food.
Alfaro and Nisco largely credit their fellow Santa Ana business owners for attending the hearing and supporting the Crosby cause. “Thanks to all the people who showed up, we convinced them it was a positive thing,” Alfaro says. “Some of the council members, staff and police were way iffy.”
Alfaro says Councilmember Sean Mill presented the strongest opposition to the Crosby’s permit, while Jim Gartner “took the lead role in getting the other council members interested.” Some people on the planning staff, police department and city council angled to have the Crosby comply with conditions on its ABC license (no liquor served after midnight, alcohol must be served with food) for at least a year “to build a solid track record and make sure we weren’t bringing a negative vibe to downtown,” Alfaro recounts.
“The main issue is that they don’t want us to turn into a full-blown nightclub. By giving us the 2 a.m. with live entertainment, DJs and music, some automatically made that assumption, without understanding our genre of restaurant,” Alfaro continues. “We were able to appeal these issues with the help of our fellow neighbors in the Artists Village and local community, but it wasn’t easy. We also had to pay another fee of $1,780 for the appeal process. Our concept was pretty hard to grasp, and we were compared to El Torito. El Torito was actually used as a catalyst for their argument of consistency in conditions for our business.”
“It was so intense,” Nisco relates. “Felt like the O.J. trial. But it passed on a 4-2 vote. A good amount of the local business owners came through and spoke on our behalf. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
Now the onus is on the Crosby boys and their contractors to get the physical space ready for the public. “It’s pretty intimidating to think about it all at once,” Nisco sighs. “The only things that can really set us back on the city/state side of it all are the final inspections—health being a big one. All we hear from people are horror stories. We’ll see.”
Perhaps the most heartening aspect to the Crosby’s story has been the helpful advice the upstarts received from their ostensible competitors, those unfortunate souls who’ve been through Santa Ana’s rigorous rigmarole. Alfaro and co. laud their landlord, Joe Duffy; the Memphis group; Proof; Pangea; Gypsy Den; the Road Less Traveled; @space; the downtown business council; and two Avalon Bar employees who’ve loaned their construction skills to the project.
“It seems like everyone’s connected,” Nisco marvels. “There’s some weird synergy here.”
Lofty Ideas: Orange County Lofts
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Traditional or not, the county’s growing number of loft spaces are blank canvases for creative residents to fill with their own unique living situations
By Steve Irsay • Photos by Ralph Palumbo
As real estate professionals like to remind us – overtly or otherwise – they are not just selling property; they are selling a lifestyle. Of course, that pitch is a tough sell when it comes to yet another “Italianate” single-family home in an all-too-familiar subdivision. But nowhere is the concept of living-space-as-lifestyle more palpable than when it comes to lofts – those open, airy, places that promise hip, urban living right here in the heart of suburbia.
From their beginnings as high-ceilinged workshops for space-starved French artists in mid-19th century Paris, to engines of urban renewal in depressed New York City industrial neighborhoods like SoHo nearly a century later, lofts have always been as much a concept as a brick-and-mortar place to hang one’s hat. By their nature, these adaptable spaces are fraught with romantic notions of freedom, creativity and ingenuity. The often-told true stories of loft “conversions” (the transformation of raw spaces into habitable live/work quarters) are captivating: a 1920s horse stable becomes a chic condo and art gallery; an abandoned power plant is reborn as a colorful two-story family home; a crumbling brick tea warehouse morphs into a riverfront penthouse condo; and so on.
Over the last several years, loft developments have popped up all over Orange County – with more on the way – yet none of them boast these colorful back-stories. They can’t. Orange County is too new. There are no abandoned factories to convert. At least, not yet. Until then, local loft dwellers must make do. “We know it’s really a townhome,” smiles Kendra Bradley, who lives in a Santa Ana loft that seems ripped from the pages of a high-end modern design magazine. Adds her husband Chris, “If they offered a converted space in Orange County, we would have found it and we probably would have jumped on it.”
And so, in the hands of residents like these, the county’s new-construction lofts (or “soft lofts,” in real estate lingo), like their grittier forebearers, are becoming innovative, artistic and impressively functional live/work spaces – even if they are just glorified townhomes.
A Cut Above
Seven years ago, Louis Orozco’s life was hectic. The hair stylist, now 39, lived part-time in Hollywood and Newport Beach while running successful salons in Newport and San Francisco. He traveled to New York several times a month to work on photo shoots. He also spent time with his teenage son in Long Beach. Orozco bought a duplex on Balboa Peninsula several years ago and his situation improved a bit – but not enough. “I literally just slept there,” he says of his house. “I had envious feelings towards my tenants because they enjoyed my house more than I did.”
Finally, in 2004 Orozco purchased a building in Cannery Lofts, a community of 22 high-end, ultra-modern live/work spaces in the breezy Cannery Village neighborhood of Newport Beach. He closed his two other locations and set up his sleek Madison Salon in the mixed-use loft’s ground-floor commercial space. He also turned the airy second story into a unique private live/work space and the third story into a classy bachelor pad. Suddenly, his commute to work consisted of a flight of metal stairs. “To have everything here, it has simplified my personal life,” he says. It also makes for an interesting cut and color experience.
Lighten Up Merging his two busy salons into one ground-floor loft meant downsizing. To accommodate up to five busy stylists and their clients in his 750-square-foot salon, Orozco went all white from floor to ceiling to give the space the appearance of being larger. A genuine space-saving innovation is retractable, ceiling-mounted blow-dryers. Orozco also installed a floor-to-ceiling rollup glass and steel front door that floods the salon with natural light and breeze, giving it a refreshingly open feel.
Outdoor Living Orozco’s second floor is also relatively small. To stretch it out, he utilizes his front and rear deck areas. “It creates almost a whole other room,” Orozco says. His centrally located kitchen opens onto a rear deck featuring a long dining table shrouded in swaying bamboo. A retractable electric awning provides optional cover. At the opposite end of the floor, Orozco has outfitted his front deck with a patio set and electric fire pit to create a very usable living room. With both ends open, the entire floor is blissfully breezy and spacious.
Taking Work Home
Orozco’s second floor doubles as a “private” salon for high-profile clients. Two white leather and steel salon chairs sit on the concrete floor opposite a massive wall mirror. A moveable portion of his nearby kitchen counter cleverly conceals a shampoo bowl. Sometimes, Orozco moves a salon chair and mirror onto his front patio for al fresco service. “The first summer that I was here we cut hair on the patio,” Orozco beams. “People freak out. They just love it.”
Guy Space
As a high-end hair stylist, Orozco is typically surrounded by women in the course of his work, so he tried to keep his two-bedroom third floor loft space (his only dedicated living space) “a little manly.” Opposite a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, dark leather sectional furniture sits on the dark hardwood floors. Nearby, a Philippe Starck metal stand displays a large book of female nudes by Helmut Newton. The entire space is framed by exposed steel beams that support the whole building.
For more information, visit www.madisonsalon.com
Design For Life
By day, Chris and Kendra Bradley, both 31, lead creative lives. He’s a landscape architect and urban planner, and plays guitar in a band. She’s a graphic designer at an architecture firm. So the last thing they want to do when they get home is have their creative juices flowing, right? Wrong. From the punk rock club they ran in their hometown of Logan, Utah, to their burgeoning digital giclée printmaking business, creative side projects are a way of life for the Bradleys. Any house they have must be both a blank canvas for their design ideas and a home for their other ventures. They found both at Santiago Street Lofts in Santa Ana.
Located near the Santa Ana Train Depot, Santiago Street Lofts is a cluster of 108 chic live/work lofts. The Bradleys use their small ground-floor commercial space, called Neüe Transit Studio, as an incubator for their design-related projects and as an art gallery that hosts monthly shows. Chris and Kendra often invite guests of their art openings to wander into their upstairs living space, a meticulously crafted testament to their love of modernism.
Warming Up The Bradleys’ home is a crash course in mid-century modern décor: an Eames bent plywood chair; a George Nelson slatted bench; limited-edition Verner Panton stackable “S chairs;” and a ceiling-mounted fiberglass ball chair. To avoid modernism’s harshness, the Bradleys peppered their home with natural materials like walnut laminate flooring (laid lengthwise throughout the home to connect the living spaces); horizontal teak plywood slats on one small wall; and a shaggy white flokati rug beneath the clear ball chair. “We pride ourselves on having really modern design sensibility,” says Kendra. “But it’s very livable.”
Flex Space At just 250 square feet, the Bradleys’ ground-floor Neüe Transit Studio is small. To make more room, they built moveable wood walls in the two-car tandem garage behind the gallery, allowing them to open the connecting door and create additional space for their monthly art shows. “People don’t even get that this is our garage,” says Kendra. “They think it’s a second room.”
Points of View To create a visually stimulating view looking down from their balcony-like “media room,” the Bradleys placed a striking black-and-white area rug on the floor below. Accent wall colors like lime green, olive green and red were carefully placed so that viewers – even those across the street looking through the massive windows – would see multiple “color fields.” “So it’s kind of like a Mondrian painting in 3-D,” Kendra says.
For more information, visit www.myspace.com/neutransitstudio
Artful Living
Visitors expecting a serious taste of artist Arlo Eisenberg’s work when they visit his downtown Santa Ana loft get only a few pieces in his downstairs space. “I use the downstairs as an appetizer,” jokes the 33-year-old graphic designer for Paul Frank. The main course awaits up the six flights of steel and concrete stairs leading to his open, airy living space.
Almost three years ago, Eisenberg, a former professional inline skater and co-founder of skate company Senate, bought a two-story space at the East Village Lofts, 40 live/work units in historic downtown Santa Ana’s Artists Village. At the time, he was a freelance graphic designer working from home. He designated his long, narrow downstairs – which some might have used as a gallery – as his office, which meant he needed to find somewhere else to display his own art. “I was really excited about the idea of having a place where I could have gallery space,” he says. He decided to have his upstairs living space serve double duty as his Digital Messiah Gallery and Studio. But keeping that same space comfortable for himself and his young daughter took some creativity.
Starting Over Though it featured the wide-open floor plan of a traditional loft, Eisenberg’s unit also had some touches better suited to a tract home: stucco-textured walls, rounded corners and quarter round molding around kitchen fixtures. Eisenberg did away with all of that. “Instead of moving into a place that was a blank canvas, I actually had to go backwards to give it the appearance of not having anything done to it,” he says.
His Room Openness is what attracted Eisenberg to loft living. But he still wanted a little privacy. To differentiate his “bedroom,” which is set up in a bright corner of the space, he laid down a four-inch riser of cork wood tiles. He also erected one partial wall that is a few feet shy of his 14-foot ceilings, allowing light and air to pass into his bedroom while shielding his bed from view.
Her Room
On weekends, Eisenberg hosts his six-year-old daughter, LuLu. “Even though I wanted to keep the whole place open, I wanted to have the option of her having some privacy,” he says. So he carved another corner of the open space into a large L-shaped bedroom full of windows. The addition has had another benefit: more walls means more display space for his own art.
House Guests
Eisenberg kept the décor to a minimum (dark leather couch, coffee table and a low, custom-built entertainment center) to accommodate visitors. During Santa Ana’s monthly First Saturday Artwalk, he opens his home gallery to display his work. Residents of East Village Lofts also organize their own semi-regular Art Yard open house events. “There are other artists here and we each are doing our own thing, but in a way we are collaborating and trying to get the word out that art is happening here,” he says.
Santa Ana is absolutely, positively, OC’s best downtown—now, keep it that way!
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
By ELLEN GRILEY/OC Weekly
Thursday, October 19, 2006 - 1:00 am
Here’s a typical story about downtown Santa Ana, the county’s best—some might say “only”; they’d also say “real”—downtown: toward the end of a fundraiser last month at Memphis Café, an older woman was readying to leave when she paused, lowered her head a bit, and asked (cue hushed voice), “I’ve never been here before. Will it be safe to walk to my car in the parking garage?”
It was barely 8 p.m.
I told her she’d be just fine. Besides, ma’am, they don’t let the prisoners out of county lock-up for their nightly romp around the city until at least half past.
It’s likely true that if you’re a white woman over a certain age you’ll always fear that the black man (or in this case, Mexican) hiding in the shadows is after your purse and wedding ring, no matter what city you’re in. But some cities have it worse than others—Long Beach vs. Pasadena, Anaheim vs. Corona del Mar—and Santa Ana, well, has it worst.
“In high school I was told not to drive anywhere near Santa Ana,” remembers Jade Howe, owner and designer for Howe Jeans. “I even had a blood sworn oath with my buddies to never move east of the 405.” That was when Howe was still living in Dana Point. Today he lives in downtown Santa Ana in one of the spacious New York-style lofts that borders the Artists’ Village. This is his sixth year in Santa Ana and his third in the lofts. Before that he lived in Floral Park.
“I can remember not even wanting to go to Floral Park for a dinner party once,” Howe says. “But I was blown away once I saw it.”
So what’s the deal? Seriously, Floral Park has some of the most beautiful mansions and wide, pristine streets outside of the Wilshire District in LA, yet you’d be hard pressed to find many in the Lexus set willing to drive near it. And what’s Newport have, again?
Oh, that’s right: gates.
Which is sort of funny because for all the missing gates in Santa Ana—unless we’re talking about the ones that dot the white picket fences outside the houses along Broadway—the city, downtown especially, retains some of the most intact historic architecture and culture there is left to experience in Orange County.
Of course, Santa Ana is among one of the oldest cities in the county—and with the courthouse, rests at its literal civic center—so city officials did have that going for them. But keep this in mind: unlike nearly every other city, no one’s completely shitted development all over the downtown. And the city is now—slowly but steadily—adding to it. Note, for instance, the triumphant return of Dennis Lluy who, with fellow resident Christopher Hall, hosted such events as the Carchestra—exactly what it sounds like—and a free performance by the Sweet and Tender Hooligans (the famous Smiths cover band) earlier this year as part of the SoundDowntown series as well as the First Saturday art walks (always a treat) and the year-and-a-half old weekly Certified Farmers’ Market in the Fiesta Marketplace parking lot.
“We have 20 regular vendors who sell fresh fruits and veggies—some certified organic—herbs, flowers, plants, honey, free-range eggs and a variety of prepared and hot foods, plus tamales, fresh-baked breads, roasted corn, dried fruits & nuts, Korean BBQ, rotisserie chicken and more,” says Lara Montagne, the market’s organizer (and, yes, another resident). “A major goal of the Grain Project [the not-for-profit that hosts the Santa Ana market as well as a new one on Sundays in Costa Mesa] is to provide fresh food to the community and help generate a vibrant location for the community to gather—artists, businessfolk, grandmas, students, families, all walks of life.”
Still, the city is also adding—and allowing for—a lot of other stuff, too: One Broadway Plaza (37-story business plaza directly across the street from the county’s only arts high school? Tsk Tsk!), Starbucks (and when SolArt Gallery Cafe still takes donations? Boooo!), American Apparel (not actually bad but can an Urban Outfitters be very far behind?). Which means that this may actually be the last year that Santa Ana is the “Best.”
Then again, there’s Huntington Beach.
Nahhhhhh. Downtown Santa Ana will always win out.
“It’s so vibrant,” says Montagne. “It can involve something a bit freaky at times but any city with such a high population has those elements. The mix of people out and about—lots of families walking together, the large trees, old architecture and the possibilities to create are what brought me here. Santa Ana feels like a playground to me.” Say hi to Montagne (and the rest of the Grain Project volunteers) at the Farmers’ Market, Fiesta Market Parking Lot, Corner of 3rd and Bush, Santa Ana, (714) 542-9392; www.grainproject.org. Every Wed., 3-7 p.m., rain or shine. A special Dia de los Muertos celebration (plus health and resource fair featuring free screenings, nutritional information, giveaways and more) will be held during the market on November 1.
Urban transitions The time may have come for a Manhattan lifestyle in Orange County.
Monday, December 12th, 2005
By AMY TAXIN
The Orange County Register
Todd Nelson savors the memory of last Christmas Eve. He was sitting on his balcony, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper, as a fire truck rumbled up the street, its sirens blaring.
Gone were quiet nights. Gone was floating on his back in a swimming pool, staring at the night sky filled with stars from his three-story house in the North Tustin hills.
But Nelson wouldn’t change a thing about his new life in a Santa Ana loft, where he has less privacy but also a greater sense of community than in the suburbs.
“It’s a lifestyle downsizing,” said Nelson, 55, who also traded in his benefits-consulting job for retirement and the glass and ceramic work that he shows in his loft. “I don’t have a gardener or pool anymore. I’ve gained a different kind of amenities.”
“It just feels more like a neighborhood.”
As developers build high-rise apartment buildings, condos and live-work lofts in cities from Anaheim to Irvine, they hope Orange County residents who have long cherished their suburban lifestyle will shift to urban living.
With traffic piling up on the freeways, some homeowners say they’re willing to give up the space and privacy of their single-family homes and pay big bucks for condos they once thought less desirable than a house with a yard.
With housing prices at all-time highs, economics has also led young professionals to look at urban options and developers to build in industrial areas and working class neighborhoods.
“It’s not a bad thing to have a Manhattan lifestyle in Orange County,” said Pat Veling, owner of Brea-based consulting firm Real Data Strategies Inc. “Would that have flown 10 years ago? Perhaps not. But when you look at the cost of land people have to pay, the only way to go is up.”
Demographics changing
Developers say other forces are also at play. People are staying single longer, baby boomers are working well into retirement age, and well-to-do urbanites from cities with a long tradition of high-rise development are moving to Orange County.
For Nelson, the change jolted him when he sat down at his dining room table and realized he was looking into his neighbors’ bedroom across the way. When he walks his two Italian greyhounds, he can see into people’s garages.
“It really is a strange situation,” said Nelson, a divorced father of two. “You’re much more in a fish bowl. You’re much more exposed to other people.”
For some people, that’s a tough adjustment to make.
Cynthia LaBlanc, who owns a video production company, loves the convenience of working below her Santa Ana loft. But she misses her quiet life in Crestline, where she watched squirrels play in her yard and listened to the birds chirp on summer nights.
Now, LaBlanc has traffic noise all night and worries about waking her neighbors when she works late.
“You never really get away from it,” said LaBlanc, 46, who is looking into buying a country home for weekend getaways. “It is downtown and so it’s not really quiet.”
Another challenge is getting suburban-size belongings to fit in an urban space. Space-saving tricks include buying furniture with drawers to expand storage.
With smaller spaces, it’s a no-no to do things like stock up on canned goods because they’re on sale, or buy in bulk at warehouse-style stores, said Tiffany Schwartz, president of Irvine-based organizers Clearly Efficient.
“There’s almost a freedom when they’re forced to downsize,” said Schwartz. “There’s a freedom in letting go of things and making decisions.”
one size doesn’t fit all
Knowing the challenges residents face, Beazer Homes is installing 4-by-8-foot cages above parking spaces in its 265-unit Anaheim complex to create additional storage.
Developers recognize that living downtown isn’t for everyone.
“We are in no way saying this is going to be a replacement,” said Emile Haddad, president of the western region for Lennar Corp., which is leading Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle project. “We’re trying to provide an affordable alternative to buyers that is closer to where they work and gives them a better lifestyle. That is really the mission.”
Nathan Sheridan, 32, an attorney from Mission Viejo, loved living in downtown San Diego with his wife.
But once they started planning a family, Sheridan wanted to live somewhere where his wife wouldn’t fear for his future children’s safety.
“When you live in a downtown area, you’ve got homeless people walking by your place all the time. You’ve got people making $2 million a year living next to you, too,” Sheridan said. “You’ve got to be a lot more careful.”
Many people will cling to a suburban lifestyle long after their children have left home, cherishing the vast space and backyard patios where they can barbecue with family – so long as they can afford it.
Gordon Klein, 74, of Anaheim, swore off apartment living after he visited New York as a young man and saw people running in and out of concrete buildings like ants.
But today, the retired teacher enjoys the freedom of his three-bedroom condo – which requires less maintenance than the house where he raised his family. Now, he’s thinking about buying into the Platinum Triangle to sample the new urban feel.
“There were a couple of generations who were brainwashed – you have to have a house to ‘be there,’ to ‘have arrived,’” Klein said. “But, you can own a condo. It’s what you put into it.”
Orange County, the ultimate suburb, plants urban roots
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
SANTA ANA, Calif. — With land running out and housing still in huge demand, developers in Orange County are making a radical about-face from the sprawling tract homes and gated communities that have defined the nation’s prototypical suburb for decades.
They’re building high-density lofts, townhouses and high-rises within walking distance of grocery stores, art galleries and movie theaters, often in nondescript downtowns and industrial zones strangled years ago by crisscrossing freeways.
The projects reflect a new urbanism that has been reshaping the nation’s major metropolitan areas for several years. Orange County, however, poses a unique challenge because its cities never fully developed in the race to suburban utopia. Now, developers are trying to create an urban core from scratch.
“Most places got the city first and then the suburbs. The real question is, is Orange County finally getting a city?” said Ethan Seltzer, director of the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University in Portland, Ore.
“For a lot of people, the bloom is off the suburban rose,” he said.
Experts say the lifestyle changes that accompany the urban developments will be a shock for many residents used to living in a suburban bubble defined by their subdivision, their car and their office.
Artist Robert Brown and his wife were the first to move into live/work lofts in downtown Santa Ana two years ago. They paid $375,000 for the loft and the downstairs store, called Night Gallery, where he sells his ceramics and metalwork.
Brown says the feel of the urban life is refreshing after living in a condo development in suburban Orange. He and his wife walk to the farmers market and don’t drive much. They know their neighbors for the first time in their adult life.
“Living here is completely different,” said Brown, who also teaches at a junior high school. “It’s really nice, the camaraderie we have with our neighbors. It’s OK to say hi.”
Nearly 20,000 high-density housing units are planned or proposed in Orange County over the next 30 years, with “urban villages” centered around parks, retail space, restaurants, bikeways and fountains. The number is likely to grow dramatically if the first developers see success, said Mark Boud, a real estate economist in Irvine.
Orange County began to boom in the 1950s, as thousands of middle-class families flocked there to take advantage of cheap land and a suburban lifestyle that was increasingly hard to find in Los Angeles.
Almost overnight, the rural county known for its fragrant orange groves was transformed into the ultimate suburb, a vast patchwork of sprawling subdivisions and tract homes connected by a maze of modern freeways.
The model was followed throughout the country as people looked to flee the poverty and blight overwhelming many inner cities.
The focus of several Orange County cities became tourism: Anaheim developed rapidly because of Disneyland, while Newport Beach drew visitors with its pristine beaches and surf culture.
Today, the suburban utopia is tainted by exorbitant housing prices that have forced many young families to move farther east. The median home price was $610,000 last month — an increase of more than 14 percent over the same time last year.
Meanwhile, developers have chewed through nearly every acre of open land in the county of more than 3 million people.
There are three times more jobs created each year than homes built, resulting in a shortage of about 15,000 to 25,000 houses each year, said Emile Haddad, president of the Western region for Lennar Corp., which has urban developments planned in Irvine and Anaheim.
Developers, desperate for new homes sites, see urban redevelopment and infill construction as their best hope. Buyers are responding, attracted by proposed prices as low as $300,000 for lofts. Waiting lists are growing, even though most projects have yet to break ground.
The Anaheim City Council last summer adjusted zoning for a swath of underused industrial land of more than 800 acres. At least a half-dozen developers now envision a total of 9,175 housing units — townhouses, lofts, apartments, studios and condos — in an area dubbed “The Platinum Triangle.”
The pedestrian-friendly area will incorporate Angels Stadium, the Anaheim Pond concert venue and a mass transportation hub, as well as 11 high-rise towers, public parks, bike paths and retail space. The council is expected to approve the first piece of the project on Tuesday.
“We didn’t have a single property owner complain — and that’s because they knew their property values would go up overnight,” said Sheri Vander Dussen, city planning director.
Other cities moving to allow such development are Santa Ana, Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Irvine and Garden Grove.
Still, experts say the demand for housing is so great that even the largest-scale urban infill projects won’t affect prices in the long-term.
“The truth is, our demand for housing outstrips the supply so far that doing this here and doing that there isn’t going to do anything,” said Victoria Basolo, associate professor of planning policy and urban design at the University of California, Irvine.
“Unless you drown the market with these, I don’t think prices are going to give,” she said.
Urban pioneers elevate their sights downtown
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
An overview of the changing core of Orange County, as established cities reinvent themselves with public transportation and high-rise housing
By COURTNEY PERKES
The Orange County Register
Loft-buyer Joseph Lising picked out carpet, paint colors, cabinets - and his neighbors.
The 30-year-old recruited friends, plus his girlfriend and brother, to buy into the Santiago Street Lofts, which are under construction next door to the Santa Ana Depot.
He’s among a new breed of urban pioneers who are attracted to areas some consider undesirable - such as near the thunder of railroad tracks or in industrial areas - in search of convenience and community.
Cities are also counting on the urban in-fill projects as jumpstarts for lagging downtowns, or they are creating them from the ground up.
Lennar Corp. on Tuesday will seek permission from the Anaheim City Council for as many as 11 residential towers, as high as 33 stories, plus shops for the Platinum Triangle near Angel Stadium.
The plans are the first part of an upward empire in Anaheim for the builder, who last month submitted plans for a 450-foot-tall residential tower near the Big A.
Urban lifestyles are in vogue with lower crime rates, less available land for housing and grittier notions of neighborhood.
They also bring greater density that could crowd schools, stress infrastructure and create more demand for public safety.
Anaheim’s fire chief has called for two new fire stations to serve the Platinum Triangle, where now the nearest station is about a mile and a half away. The need was highlighted after a June arson fire at the under-construction Stadium Lofts.
Young professionals
The lofts and condos are most popular among young professionals without kids and older couples with grown children, said developer David DiRienzo, president of Urban West Strategies.
“Ten years ago, people were still fleeing the cities,” said DiRienzo, a developer of the Santiago Street Lofts in Santa Ana. “You can look around Orange County and go into some of these downtowns, be it Brea, Placentia or Santa Ana, there’s some cool old neighborhoods that are walkable. You can look at every urban corner as a different experience, unlike the suburbs.”
Many older cities in north Orange County are cultivating a more urban identity where residents will live near transportation hubs, restaurants and shops.
Or in some cases, the new residents will create them. Lising plans to open a Catholic bookstore in his loft in addition to commuting to Irvine where he works in commercial real estate.
“The face of Orange County is transforming into more of a European type of living,” Lising said. “It’s nothing new - living in stacked housing where retail is on the bottom is a blast from the past.”
The latest trend of live-work lofts, under way in Santa Ana, Stanton and Orange, can bring more commerce, sales tax revenue and prestige.
For those who don’t work at home, other projects tout proximity to public transportation:
In Buena Park, the Olson Co. will build 192 town homes along Artesia Boulevard across from the future site of a Metrolink station.
In Fullerton, Olson is building 120 town homes and lofts just south of the railroad tracks.
City officials in Placentia have approved 54 homes on vacant land by the train tracks in Old Town.
Manuel Pineda, owner of El Cantarito restaurant, welcomes more foot traffic into Placentia’s sleepy downtown.
“This is a good idea to bring more people here,” Pineda said.
“I don’t hear the train, probably because my mind is here,” he said. “But it’s a lot of noise.” Some of his customers jump when it roars by.
Khalil Darwish, owner of Solo 98, a convenience store on the main drag, said the area needs an economic lift that condos could bring.
“Here in this area, it’s very low-income,” said Darwish, who sells diapers, milk and chips. “Someone who buys a house is employed.”
EFFECT on services
In Santa Ana, where the first phase of Artist Village lofts were built in 2003, residents want to see more commerce and nightlife.
“I wish I could walk more places,” said Arlo Eisenberg, a 32-year-old artist who moved to Santa Ana’s downtown lofts a year ago from Venice. “There’s not that many places here yet. If you want to go out to lunch, you’re basically going to the same couple places.”
Latino merchants have feared gentrification would push them out. So far that hasn’t happened, though a Starbucks opened in the heart of Santa Ana’s Fourth Street where vendors sell spiced fruits and churros from pushcarts.
In fact, it’s been businesses catering to the loft dwellers, like an upscale clothing boutique, that have closed down.
But while business results may be mixed, the developments could strain public services.
Gordon Itow, senior director of facilities planning for Anaheim City School District, has been meeting with Lennar officials to gauge the effect on the district’s 23 elementary schools, which run year-round and at capacity.
“The challenge we have is there hasn’t been any track record of the impact of a development of this nature,” Itow said. “It takes awhile, sometimes several years, for the full impact to happen. We don’t have any land in the area, and that’s what has us concerned.”
James Vanderbilt-Linares, a school board member, said developer fees could benefit the district if enrollment doesn’t increase dramatically.
“The perfect storm for this would be an instance if there was a tremendous number of young families moving in, and we had to build a new school in the Platinum Triangle area,” he said.
“Downtown San Diego had a renaissance and turned offices into lofts. They catered toward young professionals, which is what happened initially. Then they started marrying each other and started families, and because of the cost of housing decided to make the best they could of the circumstances.
“The San Diego district is trying to deal with educating kids in the downtown area when they weren’t really expecting any.”
The Platinum Triangle
The Anaheim City Council will meet Tuesday at 5 p.m. to vote on Lennar Corp.’s master plan for the Platinum Triangle. The meeting is at City Hall,
200 S. Anaheim Blvd.
Information: www.anaheim.net
East Village Lofts at Artists Walk, Santa Ana, Calif.
Wednesday, June 1st, 2005
Source: BUILDER Magazine
Publication date: June 1, 2005
By K.S.
TALK ABOUT UNCHARTED TERRITORY. These 40 live/work lofts are the first new for-sale residential units to be built in Santa Ana’s historic downtown in more than 30 years. That meant no comps and an unknown market, two components that would make any developer hesitant. Top-notch design and affordable prices ($328,990 to $537,990) combined to make the project a success.
Nestor + Gaffney Architecture went with a three-story urban-loft approach that provides commercial space for small design firms and artists on the street level with contemporary living units above. A typical building module includes two two-story townhomes and two third-floor penthouses, all with wide-open plans that include exposed duct-work and concrete floors. Exteriors take on the more industrial quality of Santa Ana Artists Village, an eight-block neighborhood of former urban blight that’s been transformed into a vibrant downtown community.
Since the project opened in February 2003, sales have clipped along rapidly, but it’s those all-important resale numbers that really tell the story. Appreciation for these nifty lofts increased by more than 100 percent in just one year. Not bad for a risky urban-infill endeavor.
Out of the ordinary in Orange County
Sunday, January 9th, 2005
By Jennifer Mena, Times Staff Writer
January 9, 2005
Amid the cookie-cutter homes in gated communities throughout Orange County, Santa Ana’s downtown has become a refreshing, urban oasis for adventurous home seekers. New businesses and a nascent artists village have drawn professionals who live in lofts and revel in the area’s Latin flavor, which differentiates the area from its starchier neighbors.
Beginnings
Santa Ana was founded in the late 1800s when William H. Spurgeon came on horse from Kentucky and bought the land, which was then part of the vast Yorba family ranch. He was the city’s first mayor when it incorporated in 1886. Public transportation, including the Red Car, train and trolleys, and roads were built in the next decades, allowing for a bustling downtown that attracted large department-store chains. These stores had closed by the late 1980s.
Changing direction
Ten years ago, the city of Santa Ana began promoting the concept of an artists village and encouraging the investment of millions of dollars in vacant historic buildings in downtown, which led to a reduction in crime.
“Santa Ana has a stigma, but some people are seeing more here now,” said Tanya Weeks, a real estate agent with Platinum Properties International, who lives in a loft. “We are the pioneers in here. But now many lofts are coming and this area will boom.”
Drawing card
Two years ago, the Olson Co. of Seal Beach built most of the 74 lofts in downtown Santa Ana, which spans the area bounded by 1st, Minter and Ross streets and Civic Center Drive. Within three years, city officials project as many as 300 more will be built, including 16 more by Olson.
“The biggest attraction for buyers is living and working in an in-town urban community,” said Bill Holford, Olson senior vice president of sales and marketing. “You have shopping, retail, services, dining and transportation all close by as opposed to living in the suburbs, where you have to commute to the different services.”
Stock report
Santa Ana’s two-story lofts, which were offered for $275,000 2 1/2 years ago, now fetch more than $500,000, Weeks said.
Olson has not set prices for its 16 new ones. Four lofts currently are on the market and priced from $509,000 to $599,000.
The company’s existing lofts, with finished kitchens, painted walls and few interior divider walls, range from 1,400 square feet to 2,100 square feet.
The closest traditional neighborhood to Santa Ana’s downtown is French Park, a tract of stately historic homes near Spurgeon Street and Washington Avenue. Home prices there range from $400,000 to $700,000.
Surrounding areas also include aging rental homes and apartments.
Street scene
The downtown shopping area includes check-cashing outlets, discount clothing shops, travel agencies and jewelry stores, among other businesses.
Shoppers can also buy fresh fruit, ice cream and chips from vendor carts stationed on the streets.
The downtown area hosts an annual three-day Mexican Independence Day fair in September. About 75% of Santa Ana’s population is Latino.
Insider’s view
“What we have here is definitely not suburbia,” said Matt Lamb, the city’s downtown developer manager. “It’s definitely like nothing else in Orange County.”
Report card
Heninger Elementary School, Willard Intermediate School and Santa Ana High School serve the area. Their scores on the Academic Performance Index in 2003 were 641, 544, and 601, respectively, out of a possible 1,000. El Sol Academy and Orange County High School for the Arts are nearby charter schools with API scores of 559 and 841, respectively.
Historical values
Residential resales:
Year…Median Price
1990…$179,000
1995…$148,500
2000…$188,000
2003…$245,000
2004*…$430,000
*Through November
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Sources: DataQuick Information Systems, api.cde.ca.gov, http://www.santaanahistory.com , http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/facts/