The Walker Building: Home is where the floating stairway is

When the Southern Californian thinks of a home, he/she thinks of a house: back yards, roofs, weird neighbor across the street who insists on painting his house that color.

Apartments? No. Apartments are not homes, thinks the Southern Californian. Apartments are those things that faded celebrities die in; that usually contain—gad!—renters. But folks who watch over cities such as Long Beach have started to think it would be lovely if their downtowns were known for something other than best being avoided. They’ve looked for ways to get people to live there—as opposed to feeding a meter every now and then. At the same time, people have tired of spending so much time in their increasingly expensive and soul-sucking cars and have become open to the idea of living somewhere where most of their needs—food, clothing, Del tha Funkee Homosapien—are within walking distance.

And so the increasing popularity of the loft—back yards being in short supply downtown. The downtown loft is the apartment that’s a home and therefore, unlike the usual rented apartment, yours to construct—or deconstruct—as you wish. Few have taken customizing to heart as much as the residents of the Walker Building at Pine Avenue and Fourth Street.

Built in 1929 and designed by the men who also drew up the plans for Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Walker—which housed Walker’s Department Store—was restored in 2002 to house 39 lofts and 7 two-story penthouses in what the broker’s literature calls “Manhattan-style” units, though they seem to contain far too much space (13-foot-high ceilings, square feet in the thousands) and working plumbing to be categorized as such.

But the New York state-of-mind thing works when you think of how Walker residents live: sanely. There is a grocery store just a block over and, music being the food of life, Vault 350 is catty corner—Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Feb. 20! There are restaurants and a Gold’s gym and pizza places and music stores and long stretches of sidewalk to walk and hold hands and a bike path and myriad other places that are not the inside of your car.

“We have people who come home from work on Friday, park their car and don’t go inside it again until Monday morning,” says Dominic Tucci, one of the brokers who sells lofts in the building. “In fact, we have some people who never go in their car anymore. They take the train to work.”

The building itself has been restored to its unadorned glory, back to its concrete walls and floors. Some residents have burnished those floors to look like marble, others have covered them in hardwood, still others in animal prints. Kitchens tend to be open, some more than others, but bedrooms are all over the map. Some prefer a bed sitting off the living room, others construct their own closed-off fortresses of solitude. Perhaps the best example of the latter is a loft that features a second-level bedroom accessible only on one’s hands and knees—best kids room ever!

There are floating staircases, hanging chairs and a peek-a-boo hole in one bathroom wall that allows those soaking in the deep, jet-streamed tub to look out the building’s large windows at the skyline or ocean or Palos Verdes.

Lofts range from about the mid $600,000s to a bit more than $1 million, the latter being the fourth floor penthouses that are large enough to house a couple bedrooms and, in one case, a full-sized craps table. There is a common area on the fourth floor and a secured lobby where the store’s original boiler sits. In that lobby there are pictures of Long Beach in the 1930s, days when crowds of folks jammed the sidewalks of Long Beach’s downtown in Sunday-go-to-meetin’ finery.

“Look at everyone rockin’ the hats,” Dominic says. Gazing at the picture, he adds, “That’s coming back.” I trust he was referring to folks hanging downtown and not the hats. What kind of putz wears a hat?

THEWALKERBUILDING.COM  DOMAPROPERTIES.COM

Tags: downtown, lofts, Long Beach, Shelter, walker building