Designs for Success

By Constance Tillotson and Jorge Casuso

May 5 -- Dressed in black, Eric Mathis sits behind an ultra-thin, brushed-gray laptop on an otherwise barren desk and greets a customer to Vitra. The Downtown showroom on 5th Street is filled with sleek, colorful designs that exude warmth despite their shiny steel frames.

There’s a side table made of corrugated cardboard designed by Frank Gehry that sells for $1,120 and a “re-edition” of Jean Prouve¹s gray laminate chair with a Plexiglas backrest that sells for a cool $1,950. But the top eye-catcher is Vernon Patton’s orange “Living Tower” sofa that stacks four and carries a $12,000 price tag.

“We love this space because it draws in so much foot traffic,” Mathis said of the cavernous storefront Vitra moved into last November after leaving the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “People who may not have had exposure to modern design are now able to come in and experience it.”

Vitra is one of half a dozen design companies that, seemingly overnight, has turned the Downtown into a Mecca for high-end furniture design, luring architects and designers shopping for that special table or tub, as well as design buffs gawking at objects they had only seen in coffee table books.

The new showrooms are also attracting elite collectors, including the “über” Hollywood crowd. Brad Pitt, a well-known furniture aficionado, attended Vitra’s opening, and Beck will be bathing in the “contemporary high design” bathroom the recording artist and his designer put together at Boffi just a block’s stroll away.

“You create the right environment and get one or two lead tenants and they attract the rest of the group,” said Robert O. York, a consultant for the Bayside District, who helped lure some of the design companies to the Downtown. “We have a full range, from the mainstream to the rare and edgy. They all want to be together.

“There’s just a synergy when you can go to a location and find a wide range of offerings of one-of-a-kind items,” said York, who is a partner in the Fransen Co. “They¹ve popped up all over. Some of it happened spontaneously, and some of it needed a nudge. It’s obviously picked up steam in the last 18 months.”

Downtown Santa Monica proved the perfect location at just the right time, York said. A flurry of home sales, along with cautious investors pumping cheap equity loans into their properties, boosted the “home market” at a time when a lagging economy had left large Downtown spaces vacant -­ from a military recruitment center to a Greyhound bus depot.

The large spaces with plenty of natural light, the flexible hours and the foot traffic spilling from the Promenade drew elite design companies that open showrooms only in the world’s capitals. Some companies relocated from the Pacific Design Center, where they occupied artificially lit niches that, until recently, catered exclusively to licensed designers.

“These design groups need studio and display space, but also the ability to make sales,” said Mark Richter, who oversees the Bayside for the City’s Department of Resource Management. “Many large (building) shells have been vacant for some time and made affordable.

“They can pick up the cachet of a Santa Monica address and put them in proximity to their clientele,” Richter said. “There’s money being spent in this area. People are aware of good design, so there¹s a market for it, and people are willing to pay for it.”

Vitra, which for two years leased space in the Pacific Design Center (known to insiders as “the blue whale”), was thrilled to follow in the footsteps of Dormire, the ICF Group and Knoll and make the Bayside its home, Mathis said.

“Our place now is huge,” said Mathis, who is the showroom’s retail manager. “At the Pacific Design Center, space is so limited. Also, with our ceiling to floor windows we have this great natural light. The (design center) has no windows. It’s like you are in a cave. You walk in there and it just feels dead.

“If you are not a designer, the average person can feel intimidated about walking into the building, like they don’t belong there,” Mathis said. “Here they know they are welcome.”

Shelter -­ which moved into the old Greyhound bus terminal on 5th Street ­- also found Downtown an ideal spot to push a sleek updated 50’s look that would likely have made Frank Sinatra feel perfectly at home sipping an ice cold Martini on one of the showroom sofas.

“This building is part of history,” said Scott Clark, the showroom manager. “It is a wonderful space for people to come into. With us, it’s much more hands-on and service-oriented. We want to make sure we do all we can to take the pressure off the customer.”

Clark, who also worked at the Pacific Design Center, sees Santa Monica as a place where designers can be more accessible to the public. “In the (design center) it is very limiting what you can do. If you work 9 to 5 with weekends off, you could never go there to shop. Here we are open seven days a week.”

Boffi, the Italian company specializing in bathroom and kitchen collections, also found Downtown to be an ideal location for a showroom that features a $32,000 oval bathtub carved from a single block of limestone.

Boffi is so minimal, even its name is spelled out in tiny one-inch letters on the 25-foot glass doors. Inside, the towering sky-lit space is industrial sleek, clean and inviting.

“The space drew us as well as the location,” said Mark Robinson, president of Boffi Los Angeles. “The weather is attractive. Compared to West Hollywood, the parking is great. Santa Monica is doing a nice job with the refurbishing of the area… We’re surprised at how many people are walk-ins.”

Robinson has been working to organize the half dozen design companies sprinkled throughout the Downtown. He wants to put together a map and plans to hold a design tour in October that will give the companies a chance to showcase their designs as potential customers nibble on hors d¹oeuvres and sip wine.

“A lot of these businesses are draws unto themselves,” Robinson said. “With more of them here, you can hit Boffi for bathrooms, go to Vitra for seating…. The group is about promoting this as a destination and Santa Monica as a trendsetter.”

The street presence is feeding a hunger for top-of-the-line design that is no longer restricted to the professional and the avid collector, Robinson said.

“People are starting to appreciate not only the chair, but who designed it,” he said. “It’s more related to art and fashion. The style (contemporary high design) is popular across the board. Among younger people there seems to be a trend.”

Design Furniture and Housing Centers

Need a side table or new bathtub? If you have plenty of cash to spare, Downtown is the place to shop. You can find anything from a $1,120 side table made of corrugated cardboard to a $32,000 oval bathtub carved from a single block of limestone. Following is a list of design companies that have made the Bayside an über destination for discriminating shoppers.