By Melody Hanatani
Daily Press Staff Writer

18TH STREET — A center that has served as a haven for low-income artists over the past 18 years is expected to receive a major facelift.

The 18th Street Arts Center, a non-profit organization that provides affordable housing and studios for artists and art organizations, is planning to expand its aging, 25,000-square-foot facility to accommodate more classrooms, galleries and apartments.

The non-profit is planning to amplify its facility to help the artist community, which faces financial pressures due to Santa Monica’s notoriously expensive studio rental market, said Executive Director Jan Williamson.

“We’re losing artists out of Santa Monica and 18th Street is the only affordable place in the city of Santa Monica for small arts organizations to start up, unless someone wants to run it out of their garage,” Williamson said this week.

Construction for a new arts center is unlikely to break ground for at least three more years. However, a selection committee — consisting of board members, project developer Community Corp. of Santa Monica, the city’s Cultural Affairs Manager Jessica Cusick, and Rich Erickson of construction company O’Neil —-recently narrowed a list of architects down to four applicants from a pool of more than 15.

“We had a fantastic pool of California-based architects,” Williamson said. “We had a very hard decision to narrow it down to these four.”

The selected firms include Daly Genik Architects, Mack Architects, Pugh & Scarpa Architecture and Koning Eizenberg Architecture. Each is based in Santa Monica, with the exception of Mack Architects, whose offices are in Venice.

Since the architects were not asked to submit preliminary designs, the committee based its decision on portfolios and relevant experience in affordable housing in cultural facilities. The selection committee should finalize an architect by the end of the month, Williamson predicted.

The project, which is estimated to cost anywhere between $20 million and $30 million, is expected to be three times larger than the current building, or the maximum allowable size on that lot. The 18th Street Arts Center has partnered with Community Corp. of Santa Monica to develop and fund the project.

The city of Santa Monica allocated $30,000 in predevelopment funds.

The 18th Street Arts Center currently houses 12 artists and hosts work and meeting spaces for eight artists and nine organizations.

“We’re finding that affordable studio space is pretty impossible unless you moved here a long time ago,” Williamson said.

Features of the new center include 30,000 square feet of public space for classrooms and galleries, and about 40,000 square feet of living space, which could translate into more than 50 apartments.

On Thursday evening, the 18th Street Arts Center held a welcome reception for the public to meet the four architects at its gallery near Olympic Boulevard.

Art lovers flocked to the gallery to view the firms’ past projects as they sipped wine and chatted up the architects.

Gwynne Pugh of Pugh & Scarpa Architecture and chairman of the city’s Planning Commission was among the architects in attendance and said the four architects applied for the project for the same reason.

“They are invested in the community,” Pugh said.

The reception attracted architecture students like Jaime Valenzuela, an undergraduate student at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, who said he was inspired by the architects’ use of interesting materials in their previous projects.

Ronald Lopez, a concept engineer who was an intern at the 18th Street Arts Center from 1999-2000, said he was surprised by how the arts center itself has changed in the past six years.

Lopez, whose exhibit premieres in the gallery next month, opened his own art center in Turkey.

According to Lopez, the space where the reception was held on Thursday was not a gallery when he was an intern. He added that the current layout of the center does not foster a tight-knit arts community.

He said the arts center is a microcosm of the city of Los Angeles and its lack of a cohesive center. He feels the new center would bring the artists in 18th Street closer together.

“I think they’re great designs,” Lopez said of the architects’ portfolios. “They fit with 18th Street. I’d hate to be the one to actually pick.”