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L.A. Jazz Landmark Hits Sour Note

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Los Angeles Times

Published: October 19, 2008

LOS ANGELES - In 1957, Jimmy Steward graduated from high school in El Dorado, Ark., which had pretty promenades left over from an oil boom but no jobs. Like many others, he looked West for work and landed in South Los Angeles, where, he said, "I didn't find no gold."

Steward worked in warehouses and foundries and eventually rented a one-room apartment in a tired building where the ghosts are named Basie, Calloway and Ellington, and where the walls, if they could talk, might break into song.

Steward is one of 32 people who live in the Dunbar Hotel, which City Hall will take over soon because the hotel has failed to repay nearly $3 million in loans.

On the one hand, the Dunbar is a monument to the strength and guts of black Los Angeles. Financed by black business leaders, built by black craftsmen and opened in 1928 along the spine of the black community, the hotel was a source of great pride in an age of segregation.

It also became the musical epicenter of West Coast jazz, and its guest list - Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, plus Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and scores more - reads like the table of contents in a jazz history book.

"That was the place," said Paul Bryant, 75, a piano and organ player who began performing in Los Angeles in 1937 and played on dozens of records, including 12 of his own. "The Dunbar was the black version of the Ritz-Carlton."

The Dunbar is no longer a hotel but contains 73 apartments for low-income residents; about half are occupied, mostly by senior citizens.

All of the elements of grace and beauty are still there. But inside the Dunbar's Art Deco lobby, under a magnificent chandelier, are cigarette butts and chewed-up sunflower seeds on the window sills. The walls and windows that form soaring arches next to the front desk are filled with holes.

The lobby's original furniture - velvet divans, wooden chairs - is piled in the basement. The elevators often fail. When the plumbing faltered a while back, tenants went without hot water for weeks. When they complained to management, they were told to hire a plumber themselves.

On surrounding streets, the old jazz clubs - the Down Beat, the Parisian Room - are long gone. Left behind is a poor neighborhood riddled with gang violence.

In his room, Steward prepared for another day. His rent is about $360 a month. During the Dunbar's glory days, stars often requested favorite rooms. Steward's apartment was favored by "Pigmeat" Markham, the performer whose "Here come da judge" routine was his signature.

"It's a landmark all right," Steward said. "But around here, you don't have too much time to reflect on history. Everybody's just trying to survive."

The Dunbar, many believe, deserves better.

Big changes are afoot, although no one knows how it's going to turn out. Its finances are complex. The nonprofit Dunbar Economic Development Corp., for instance, which works to revitalize the surrounding area, owns the building, while a separate nonprofit group owns the land.

Twenty years ago, the City of Los Angeles gave the Dunbar a $2.9-million rehabilitation loan. For years, however - because the building is so old that it requires frequent, expensive fixes - it has cost more money to keep the Dunbar open than it generates.

The Dunbar couldn't repay the loan. As of June 2008, according to City Hall, the Dunbar owed the principal plus $2.4 million in interest - $5.3 million total, more than the building is worth.

In March, a judge appointed Malcolm N. Bennett, an authority on housing and finance, as receiver. Bennett now oversees day-to-day operations and is credited with stabilizing the Dunbar by improving living conditions and adding security.

In November, the city expects to foreclose and put the Dunbar Hotel up for sale. All parties assume that no one is going to buy it.

At that point, the city would ask nonprofit organizations or redevelopment agencies for refurbishment proposals.

Michael Dolphin, chairman of Dunbar Economic Development Corp.'s Board of Directors, said he fears the project could become tangled in red tape.

"The whole thing could go south," Dolphin said. "You could have rats and pigeons in this place for the next 20 years."

But City Councilwoman Jan Perry said safeguards are in place, including historic landmark status that would add strict government oversight to redevelopment efforts. Any deal with an outside group, Perry said, "would have very, very, very specific language about preserving the structure."

"The dream," as Dolphin puts it, is to reopen the Dunbar Hotel to those who put it on the map: the musicians, mostly West Coast jazz artists, many of whom have grown old in anonymity. Then, he said - with a rehearsal and performance space in the lobby, perhaps - the Dunbar would again become a cultural jewel.

"Now that," said Gerald Wilson, an old-time jazz musician, "is a great idea."

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