On another, more positive note, this story should make citywatch's day, should it come to fruition. If anyone has been to the Hayward Hotel recently, with the new Crack Gallery and Sixth Street Market, that is a great corner, rivaling 4th and Main for it's storefronts. If you haven't, it's worth checking out. Now the same developer has plans for the Bristol Hotel. From the
Downtown News.
Battling the Bristol’s Blight
Developer’s Plan for Vacant Hotel includes 103 Efficiency Units and Two Ground-Floor Eateries
by Anna Scott
Published: Friday, April 3, 2009 3:20 PM PDT
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - For the last six years, the Bristol Hotel has been a dilapidated eyesore. If new owner Izek Shomof has his way, it will soon be a bustling structure that adds to the vitality of the neighborhood.
“It’s a beautiful, historic building located in a very good area and it’s just sitting there,” said Shomof, who with his business partner and son Eric Shomof paid $2.5 million for the property at 423 W. Eighth St. “Our major goal is to beautify the area, make it more pleasant. It was the same with the Hayward.”
Shomof, who owns a string of market-rate apartment complexes in Downtown, is referring to the Hayward Hotel, a formerly rundown crime-magnet at Sixth and Spring streets that he acquired in 2001. Shomof has since made cosmetic upgrades to the building’s interior and façade, and has brought businesses to its ground floor including a food market, a clothing store and the recently opened D-Town Burger Bar.
Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council President Russell Brown said the building has improved significantly.
“It has changed immensely,” he said. “They had all kinds of drug dealing and crime and it was pretty bad, and they’ve done a really great job of fixing it up and still keeping it with affordable units in it. I know they’ll do a really good job with the Bristol.”
Revitalizing the 1906 Bristol could also provide a long-awaited complement to surrounding businesses, including the Golden Gopher bar and the Italian eatery Colori Kitchen. Shomof hopes the property, which will continue to serve low-income residents, will open by the end of the year. Shomof would not disclose how much he plans to spend on renovations, but said the project will be funded privately.
“This will be a positive catalyst for the area,” said Golden Gopher owner Cedd Moses. “For too long, the Golden Gopher and Colori Kitchen have been the only businesses willing to take a chance on this stretch of Eighth Street.”
Changing Hands
Shomof bought the Bristol from Adolfo Suaya, who acquired the property in 2003.
Suaya, a high-profile restaurateur, originally planned to convert the building into a hotel with a nightclub and restaurant. The Bristol’s 103 rooms, mostly inhabited by low-income tenants, were vacated a few months after the sale. Suaya’s plans, however, were soon derailed by legal tangles.
About 20 former tenants filed a wrongful eviction lawsuit against Suaya in 2004, and Suaya ultimately paid about $226,000 in damages. The next year, the Community Redevelopment Agency filed a lawsuit against Suaya, alleging that redeveloping the hotel would violate an agreement the agency had with prior owner Chae Ro: The CRA had loaned Ro $1.5 million in exchange for keeping the property as low-income housing until July 2015.
Last year, Suaya settled with the CRA. According to the settlement terms, the Bristol would have to serve as affordable housing if it reopened before July 2015. However, Suaya was not required to reopen the building at all, raising concern that he might let it sit vacant for seven years.
Instead, Suaya put the property on the market, but the legal restrictions helped make the property a tough sell.
In September, National Housing Ventures, a small nonprofit with ties to the Amerland Group, was in escrow to purchase the property for $4.5 million, but the deal fell through because of financing difficulties.
Suaya said he is relieved that the building finally sold. “It was time to move on.” he said. “I’m glad I got it off my hands.”
Shomof said he finalized his purchase of the Bristol about three weeks ago. He plans to apply for the Section 8 federal rent subsidy program.
Section 8 buildings can be lucrative investments even for private developers. In September the Related Cos., the developer behind the $3 billion Grand Avenue project, purchased a Section 8 building at 740 S. Olive St. Related West Coast President Bill Witte said at the time that such properties “can provide decent cash flow if they are reasonably sized and there’s no market risk.”
If the Bristol does not qualify for Section 8, Shomof said, his long-term plans for the property could change.
“Section 8 or not, we have to continue it as low-income housing” until 2015, he said. What happens beyond that “is something that we have to look at at the time.”
For now at least, Shomof plans to renovate the Bristol’s 103 units as efficiency apartments.
Most of the units already have individual bathrooms, he said, but he will likely add kitchenettes. “We’re hoping by the end of this year that the building will be open,” said Shomof. “All we have to do is cosmetic.”
The new ground-floor businesses, he said, will include a second D-Town Burger outpost and a restaurant similar to L.A. Café, which is on the ground floor of his Spring Tower Lofts at 639 S. Spring St.
That is welcome news to local stakeholders who have considered the boarded-up Bristol a stumbling point for a key block.
“I’m very pleased that the hotel is being used,” said Mike Pfeiffer, executive director of the South Park Business and Community Benefit District, which operates just south of the Bristol. “It will be a key anchor in bringing back that block.”
Contact Anna Scott at
[email protected].
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