LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
40
C
NEWS Volume 42, Number 16
EBRATING EL
YEARS
At Playoff Time, Clipper Pride
A Downtown Bike Share Program
7
8
Since 1972
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
April 22, 2013
The Beacon Finally Shines After Eight Years, an Arts District Condo Project Opens
photo by Gary Leonard
Peklar Pilavjian is part of the team that opened the $20 million Beacon Lofts. The project at Fourth and Alameda streets is nearly sold out. by RichaRd Guzmán city editoR
A
t first glance, Fourth and Alameda streets seems like an unwelcoming portion of Downtown. Noisy bigrig trucks often travel down Alameda and there is little pedestrian traffic in the immediate area. But in late 2005, Peklar Pilavjian, a co-owner of the St. Vincent Jewelry Center on Hill Street, saw the corner as his
chance to jump on the Downtown residential bandwagon. He and some partners paid $9 million for a former storage facility on the northeast corner of the intersection. They planned to create 53 for-sale lofts in the 1923 structure on the edge of the Arts District near Little Tokyo. Then, the recession hit and the market crashed. Banks stopped lending and projects stalled. In the following years the development plans flipped from condos to rentals and
back to for-sale status. Now, things have stabilized, and the story has a happy if long-delayed ending. Pilavjian and his partners finally completed the project, now called Beacon Lofts, in October. Six months later, they have nearly sold out the $20 million project. The 67,000-square-foot building holds units from 650see Beacon, page 15
Downtown’s New Political Power Player Young Internet Firm NationBuilder Is Leading a Revolution in How Candidates and Businesses Organize by Ryan VaillancouRt staff wRiteR
I
nside the Downtown offices of NationBuilder, there’s little evidence that the company plays a crucial role in hundreds of high-profile elections across the country. The Pershing Square-adjacent headquarters for the company, which sells cloud-based organizing software to political campaigns and other businesses, feels more like a shared workspace for recent Stanford grads than a political war room. The firm’s 52 mostly jeans-clad employees sit on couches and exercise balls while typing. They play ping-pong during breaks. The office kitchen features a gourmet coffee machine with a touch screen and three choices of high-end beans.
On a recent Friday afternoon, firm founder and CEO Jim Gilliam was working on his laptop while lying on a coach, blanketed in the afternoon sun coming in from an adjacent window. It was somewhat of a marvel that he was even awake. The casual feel belies the role NationBuilder plays in determining who gets to wield political power in Los Angeles and beyond. In the March 5 city elections, NationBuilder users included victorious City Council members Mike Bonin, who won the 11th District seat, and 15th District incumbent Joe Buscaino (who faced only token opposition). In Council District 13, eight candidates, including the top two finishers Mitch O’Farrell and John Choi, who have
moved on to the runoff, used the nonpartisan NationBuilder. So did Eric Garcetti, who advanced to the mayoral runoff against Wendy Greuel (she is not using the business). Others high-profile figures using its services include Newark, NJ Mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful Corey Booker, New York City mayoral candidate Christine Quinn and recently elected Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell. The company bills its product as an affordable, one-stop online shop for community organizing. NationBuilder websites are equipped with a slate of tools that help campaigns — or businesses, nonprofits and government agencies — track, analyze and engage with their supporters. Monthly see NationBuilder, page 18
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