Amerland Dreams

Don Garza posts about Amerland Corp, the new owner of the Rosslyn Lofts, telling Pharmaka Gallery that they will lose their storefront in March of 2008.

What actually happened was that Scott Moe, the retail leasing person at Amerland, came into Pharmaka Gallery and told the person at the front desk that the management has decided that they will move all the galleries to the 2nd floor so they can pursue other options for the storefronts. What strange about this is that Shane Guffogg, director of Pharmaka, and myself are the people who are responsible for negotiating the gallery lease. Why Moe would simply walk into a business, stir up a hornet's nest like this is yet another example of the incompetence of Amerland Corp. Why are they are intent on destroying the only successful ground floor use in that building in 10 years? They are doing so with empty and underused storefronts already present on the 5th Street side of the building. My prediction if they do this: The stores will sit empty for 3 years and they will be forced to use them for filming. It will kill the heart of the Downtown Art Walk, and the community will see Amerland for the idiotic fools that they are quickly demonstrating they are. Why not get the existing, empty retail activated first, and then look at how to leverage the rest of the ground floor? Look at the Santa Fe Building, the PE Lofts, and other downtown buildings that have had empty ground floors for years. They all pulled the same crap, and were unable to fill the spaces.

Last Sunday Amerland took another shot at trying to manage a film shoot at the Rosslyn Lofts. This time they kept to reasonable hours, but they somehow did not notice that the film production hoisted an All Terrain Vehicle onto the roof (of a residential building!), and drove the thing around with stunt men leaping around, and much thrashing of plywood, so much so that a tenant below had framed artwork fall off his walls, smashing the glass of the frames. The owner of the building, Jules Arthur, claims that he did not know of this, or that the elevators did not operate to the roof, forcing the production to use the residential lobby and elevators.

I called Film LA today to check on the terms of the film permit for that shoot (which, by the way, was not noticed anywhere that I could find either online or in the neighborhood). The person I spoke to was astonished that this activity could be allowed, and has promised to look into it for me. I am expecting to get a look at the permit tomorrow.

I was away in Miami, so I have to rely on second hand accounts, but my neighbors have all reported that the noise and disruption was far beyond what is reasonable for a residential building. Not to mention that such an activity will destroy the roof, which was replaced a few years ago. I'll bet that during the next rain the roof will leak from this.