Last week, Gilmore Associates’ pioneering renovation of the San Fernando Building at Fourth and Main streets was officially unveiled, with high hopes that it will spark a broad renewal of downtown’s urban core.

The much-heralded conversion of the old office building into residential lofts is 50 percent full, according to Gilmore leasing agent Hal Bastian. The big question now is whether enough tenants will find the building appealing to fill it, given the relatively high rental rates for an apartment complex on the edge of Skid Row.

“We’re really happy with who these people are,” said developer Tom Gilmore of his tenants. “I go there every Saturday and it picks me up. These people are not losers.”

The apartments were designed with young, creative tenants in mind. Each unit consists largely of open space, with no walls separating rooms only a cube (essentially a room within the room) with a kitchenette on one side, a bathroom on the inside and an area on top for a bed or other furniture.

The rents Gilmore is charging are comparable to those charged for Westside apartments, from $790 to $3,000. That’s quite steep compared to other downtown buildings.

A shorter commute

“The people moving into such places are going to be young professionals who can afford to live just about anywhere. The primary reason for them choosing to live in such an environment will be the proximity to work,” said Peter Dennehy, a project manager for the Meyers Group.

Dennehy noted that the housing stock between downtown and Hancock Park is not of the highest quality, while the urban core is a significant source of jobs.

Nancy Curry, a bankruptcy trustee, is a living proof of Dennehy’s analysis. She currently lives in Hancock Park and works in a downtown office building on Olive and Sixth streets. She said her decision to move into Gilmore’s San Fernando Building was based on its proximity to her workplace.

But not everyone moving into the San Fernando is doing so because it’s close to work. Tenant Steven Susnar, chief operations officer with World Net Resource Group, will commute to work in Marina del Rey.

“I support the renovation of old buildings and favor a more cosmopolitan L.A. So I’m moving in,” Susnar said.

Susnar isn’t alone. A number of tenants interviewed by the Business Journal, some of them transplanted New Yorkers, simply find great appeal in living in a more urban environment than most of low-rise L.A. affords.

“You’re also seeing a trend toward living in urban areas again,” Dennehy explained. “You’ve seen it in San Diego, Denver, Atlanta and Dallas. There is more activity and more of a cultural offering.”

Tom Burrows, a Juvenile Court referee, is also taking up residence in Gilmore’s project, and for similar reasons to Susnar. “(My roommate and I are) city people from New York, and we’ve been looking for the city in L.A. for a long time.”

While still living in West Hollywood, Burrows traced out all the best public transit routes from the San Fernando Building to his job at a courthouse on Hill Street. Leader of his neighborhood block association back in Greenwich Village, he has already contacted local community groups with an eye toward making a real neighborhood on Main Street.

Burrows is clearly the kind of person Gilmore is hoping to build a community with, but how many people like him live in L.A.?

“Not everyone’s an urban pioneer,” said Dan James, president of the Park La Brea apartment complex in Mid-Wilshire. “It’s a niche urban, edgy, younger, but it’s a start. Later it will need more traditional amenities to draw a broader market. But I think Tom’s going to be very successful.”

John Durkin, a systems and network administrator at Pasadena-based Core Software Technology, is glad to be moving from his “generic, ’60s-built, L.A. box apartment” into one of the new lofts. He loves the oversized windows that open outward, the countertops in the kitchen, and the slate shower enclosure in the bathroom.

“They’ve done a really nice job on the interiors,” said Durkin, who is paying $1,100 for the full urban experience. “It’s a rockin’ neighborhood late at night!”

Need for downtown housing

For all the new construction like Staples Center, Disney Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, if downtown is to become a viable urban center it must have people living there which is why Gilmore’s project is being eyed so closely by other developers, city officials and downtown boosters.

Gilmore, a transplanted New Yorker, has become the urban core’s perpetual pitchman, a prophet of “real” city living the way it is understood in other metropolitan areas: tall buildings, canyons of concrete, lots of people walking along streets swimming with stimulation.

Over the past three years he has purchased a series of abandoned office buildings, a hotel and even a cathedral along Main Street between First and Fifth streets one of the toughest neighborhoods in the area. All the while, Gilmore has been preaching to other developers about the bargain in centrally located space to be had there. They have responded, if lukewarmly.

To downtown boosters, Gilmore is nothing short of a knight in shining armor come to save the day a man who has put his money, and plenty of it, where his mouth is. Still, they worry that he is overextended and that he’s trying to do the job all on his own.

Whether the gamble will pay off remains to be seen. But the tenants who moved in last week certainly seemed thrilled with their new digs.

“I like the loft concept and the 800-square-foot rooftop deck, which will satisfy my urges to be outside,” said Curry, who rented a penthouse unit the most expensive apartments in the building, renting for around $3,000 a month. “The floor is beat-up concrete with an epoxy-looking finish that I love. The doors to the deck are massive and roll open. The building itself is just wonderful.”

Urban planners like it a lot, too. L.A.’s housing shortage could “choke” its economy in years to come, said Leslie Appleton-Young chief economist with the California Association of Realtors. She noted that Gilmore’s building fits the high-density, mixed-use formula necessary to solve the problem.

“The livability factor, quality of life, is the final element,” she said. “If that can be achieved downtown, they will come.”