In With the Art, Out With the Old

Antonio Soto is no rabble-rouser. He even chuckles when thinking of the vast social gap he sees right over his head, one floor up from his humble little print shop in downtown Santa Ana.

Soto Printing is squeezed into the ground floor of the magnificent Santora Building, cornerstone of the Artists Village, the city’s prized new development. Almost five years ago, painters and sculptors started moving into the lovingly restored building, with its stained-glass skylights and double staircase once graced by the likes of Rita Hayworth and Barbara Stanwyck.

And this week, the restored Grand Central building across the way had its long-awaited opening as a new arts school with more studios, apartments and galleries. At a splashy debut Sunday, Santa Ana’s finest shared the success of the fledgling arts colony with art fans from fancier cities to the south.

Santa Ana officials hope out-of-town crowds will keep returning to this quaint back street, once all but abandoned to creepy transients and unlicensed cabbies. Today, their dream of transforming the city--and its low-income, lowbrow reputation--seems close to coming true.

Soto’s not complaining, but he doesn’t see a place for himself in that dream. Sitting in front of a cabinet finished in raw plywood, the 56-year-old Guadalajara native mused about the radical changes to the area while Pedro Infante sang old mariachi songs from a radio placed near an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe tacked to the wall with masking tape.

“Upstairs, it’s like being in Beverly Hills,” he said in Spanish, pointing to the studios overhead. “Then you come down here to Tijuana. Wow!”

For some reason, the stark contrast struck him funny. You can’t compare the high with the low, he said. The monied and the nonmonied--Los del dinero y del no dinero.

“The people who will be coming here are already on another level,” he said with no hint of resentment. “People who love art. These are more finicky people.

They’re more demanding than our customers, who are always haggling over price as if they were at the swap meet.”

Soto and his partner and daughter-in-law, Angela, will stop serving their local Latino clientele at the end of the month. On Monday, the day after the optimistic opening of the Grand Central Art Center, they gave notice that they’re quitting.

“Business is slow, that’s the bottom line,” says Angela. “I don’t know who to blame it on.”

From the very start, the Artists Village has had its critics. It’s been bashed as the pet project of the city’s white elite. A pipe dream of those who can’t accept that this is an immigrant, blue-collar, lunch-pail town, home to gardeners, trash men, shopkeepers, nannies and janitors who have no time nor taste for the arts.

You’ve got to hand it, though, to the small group that pushed the project. They had a vision of what they wanted Santa Ana to be, and they stuck to it.

It didn’t hurt that they held the purse strings at City Hall. Officials funneled millions to seed the colony in hopes of attracting struggling artists who would then, theoretically, bring new businesses--restaurants, coffeehouses, art-supply stores, maybe a jazz club.

Even skeptics now think the plan might work.

“Cities flourish, then decline,” states a banner in a public exhibit prepared by designers of the new Art Center, Steven Ehrlich Architects. Projects like the arts school “create public spaces and sew together the urban fabric, starting a new cycle of development.”

That’s my emphasis. Ironically, that noble statement hangs directly across from the few ragtag Santora shops--mostly Latino-owned--that face probable eviction as the project progresses. The landlord is looking to land an upscale eatery on the ground floor to replace the printer, the beauty salon, the ramshackle coffee shop where Latino poets hold far-out gatherings on Thursday nights.

This is an old scheme for urban renewal called gentrification, repeated from Pasadena to Portland, from Soho to SoMa. But I’ve always been doubtful that a yuppie haven could be cultivated in the heart of a town like Santa Ana, which is 50% foreign-born and 70% Latino, almost a quarter of whom live in poverty.

Gil Marrero, the leasing agent for the Artists Village, says he isn’t blind to the poor people who float through the area on foot, “like they’re in a different universe.” But even they can benefit from more of a social mix in their surroundings--”from exposure to both sides of the universe.”

Still, the plan strikes me as equal parts social engineering and wishful thinking: If we build it, they will come.

Santa Ana is a city that likes to be judged by its brick-and-mortar milestones. Ask officials about their accomplishments and they’ll point to several new multimillion-dollar monuments, all opened since I came to Orange County six years ago.

An opulent police building. A gleaming federal courthouse. A state-of-the art city yard. A snazzy science museum.

And now, a renewed and improved historic center.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m all for grand public architecture, sadly a lost art. We need to create more buildings that capture our passing spirits and set them soaring. I’d like more people to discover the uplifting glory of those ornate old buildings now preserved as part of the Artists Village.

But if construction is a measure of a city’s success, you can also judge Santa Ana by what it hasn’t built.

On the day I visited the new Grand Central building, I also happened to stop at a community center--or what pitifully passes for one--in Delhi, a historic Latino barrio. I found almost 50 schoolchildren crammed into a temporary trailer trying to do their homework with help from adult tutors. They all sat around rickety, hand-me-down tables on folding chairs that had just been acquired.

Next door, at the edge of an empty lot on Warner, a sign announces plans for construction of a new neighborhood facility. The area’s immigrant residents have been fighting for that center long before I came here. And they’re still waiting.

Sorry, they’ve been told. The city only has so much money to spend.

Gentrification first. Education later.

Which reminds me of another big project I’ve watched develop in Santa Ana: the experimental new space-saver school now under construction in the Bristol Marketplace, a shopping center at 17th and Bristol streets. The school district won special state funds reserved for school designs that saved space in crowded urban areas. Voila, a new middle school in a mall.

Among the staunchest opponents of that school were some of the most ardent supporters of the Artists Village. They said the school was too expensive and would create a teen hangout at their precious strip center. But they didn’t flinch at dumping over $10 million, all tax money, into the arts colony to create a hangout for grown-ups who already had their schooling.

Oh, forget it. I’m getting worked up about ancient history.

The world is not going to miss the print shop with its Spanish lettering covering the front windows. Nor the beauty salon with its broken floor tiles and ripped leaflets pasted near the entrance with transparent tape. But as they make way for the nicer stores to come, we should remember that these small shopkeepers represent the majority in Santa Ana--hard-working, unsophisticated folks who need more than just jail cells, courtrooms and art galleries.

I should take a clue from Soto, the printer. He’s a lot more accepting about the way the world works.

“Reality doesn’t bother me,” he says.

Soto has never tried to hide his right hand, for example, though one finger is chopped off at the tip. He lost it while operating machinery that cuts and stamps leather. That was in 1973, just three months after he came to the United States.

“OK,” he remembers thinking. “I’ve left a piece of me here, I might as well stay.”

Now that he’s leaving the Artists Village, he says he’s happy to move aside for the beautiful people.

“If I am ugly, I have to accept the reality that I’m ugly,” he said, still smiling. “And if I don’t have the money to make myself beautiful, I have to accept myself just the way I am.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or [email protected].