Hope Street

Pamela Cohen's low-budget "Hope Street" documentary fits nicely into the scheme of "Life & Times," the KCET-TV Channel 28 series that taps segments of Los Angeles rarely granted exposure on the city's other news and public-affairs programs. Hosted and reported by "Life & Times" co-host Ruben Martinez, "Hope Street" traces the struggle of Latinos to force a slumlord to upgrade the run-down apartment house that they share with rats and roaches.

A showplace of the early automotive age in downtown Los Angeles a century ago is set to be revived by new owners who have ambitious plans to turn it into offices, a restaurant and a nightclub near L.A. Live. Long vacant, the stocky five-story building at 11th and Hope streets was a warehouse for the now-defunct local department store chain Desmond's. It still has the company's name affixed to the top. But its glory days date to 1916 when it opened as a full-service outpost of Ohio automaker Willys Overland Co. and once sold luxurious Willys-Knight cars to the city's well-to-do.

Today, with a trio of celebrity and author interviews, a report on a West Valley gallery exhibition on the Holocaust, news from Broadway and a smidgen of poetry, KUSC-FM (91.5) inaugurates "Live on Hope Street With Bonnie Grice," an eclectic weekly arts and entertainment magazine program. Oh, and it'll have some music too. The show, being billed by the station as the "first of its kind on public radio," airs Fridays from 8:30 to 9 a.m. Grice is deejay of KUSC's weekday 7-10 a.m.

The developers of a proposed $31-million hotel near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles are ready to seek city approval to construct an indoor-outdoor complex in the brick shell of a condemned apartment building. Plans call for gutting the empty three-story building at 1130 S. Hope St. that was erected more than a century ago and is no longer structurally sound. The developers would build inside the perimeter of the old exterior walls, creating a landscaped open-air courtyard leading to a new tower with 44 guest rooms.

Prizio & Prizio General Contractors, Fountain Valley, said it has started construction of a $5-million office and warehouse for Fuji Film in Cypress. The two-story concrete building at Phyliss Drive and Hope Street will be 200,000 square feet. Cypress Land Co. is the developer and Nadel Partnership Inc. of Los Angeles is the architect. The building is scheduled for completion in November.

First & Hope RATING Two stars LOCATION 710 W. 1st Street (at Hope Street), downtown Los Angeles; (213) 617-8555; http://www.firstandhope.com PRICE Dinner starters, $7 to $13; pasta, $18 to $20; main courses, $19 to $49; desserts, $9. Corkage fee, $20. DETAILS Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and for supper from 5 to 11 p.m. daily. Fedora cabaret club is open Thursday to Saturday from 8 p.m. to midnight. Full bar. Valet parking, $5, with validation.

Just two blocks from Staples Center, where Washington rhetoric is in full bloom, a quieter campaign imported from the nation's capital is underway--at a Los Angeles charity that works to improve the lives of inner-city kids. As part of its national Campaign for Literacy, Washington, D.C.

We would like to respond to Howard Rosenberg's comments in his review of the documentary "Hope Street: Anatomy of a Housing Struggle" that we feel added fuel to the fire of the misguided anti-immigrant backlash rampant in California ("Battling a Slumlord on 'Hope Street,' " Calendar, Nov. 9).

The Discover America International Pow Wow, a convention of travel agents, will force closure of several streets on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles today and Thursday. 1. 5th Street between Flower Street and Grand Avenue was closed Tuesday and will not reopen until noon Thursday. 2. The two eastmost lanes of Flower Street between 4th and 6th streets were also closed Tuesday and will reopen at 6 a.m. Thursday. 3. Flower Street between 5th and 6th streets will be closed from 9 p.m.

A list of slang used by bicycle messengers pedaling around downtown Los Angeles: pins n. Pedestrians. "A lot of pins were stacked up along Hope Street this morning." bowling n . An event in which one or more pins are knocked down. "I went bowling along Hope Street this morning and hit three pins." peg v . Nudging a pin without knocking it over. "You should have seen the expression of the pin on high heels I pegged today." bulldog n .

We see a video on the Internet and it makes us melt or fume or cry. Sometimes, we respond en masse and change lives overnight. Thanks to one video campaign, a 9-year-old boy who made a cardboard arcade in East L.A. has received more than enough money to one day go to college. Thanks to another, a 68-year-old school bus monitor verbally bullied by a pack of middle schoolers probably now can afford to get off the bus for good. We see things on the screen and we act, in part because it's so easy.

First & Hope RATING Two stars LOCATION 710 W. 1st Street (at Hope Street), downtown Los Angeles; (213) 617-8555; http://www.firstandhope.com PRICE Dinner starters, $7 to $13; pasta, $18 to $20; main courses, $19 to $49; desserts, $9. Corkage fee, $20. DETAILS Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and for supper from 5 to 11 p.m. daily. Fedora cabaret club is open Thursday to Saturday from 8 p.m. to midnight. Full bar. Valet parking, $5, with validation.

These crime fighters aren't in uniform and don't carry weapons or badges. They wield guitars, Hula-Hoops, washboards, paintbrushes, and will hopefully have the ability to draw a crowd. Last week, Seattle parks began paying street performers -- mostly musicians, but also a few visual artists and some vaudevillians -- to entertain in five downtown parks in hopes that with more people around, a park will be less hospitable to illegal activity.

In the latest turn in the two-year debate about local law enforcement role's in controlling illegal immigration, 14 Orange County sheriff's deputies graduated Thursday from a program that will allow them to check the immigration status of county inmates. The checks should significantly increase the number of inmates deported after serving their sentences, Sheriff Michael S. Carona said.

On the afternoon before they perform at Staples Center, a group of would-be clowns, jugglers and acrobats -- ages 8 to 13 -- gather at the Hope Street Family Center on the campus of the California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles to practice their routine. But Evelyn Ramos, a day short of her 10th birthday, arrives on crutches. It's nothing serious, but she is questionable for the big show.

Downtown Woodland now has a Dog Gone Alley to complement a passageway paralleling Main Street long known as Dead Cat Alley. The City Council unanimously approved the name at the request of the Woodland Art Center. Supporters hope the whimsical name will help attract tourists and add to the flavor of the downtown historic district. Art Center board member Dino Gay passed a petition, signed by more than 200 people, seeking the new name.

On the afternoon before they perform at Staples Center, a group of would-be clowns, jugglers and acrobats -- ages 8 to 13 -- gather at the Hope Street Family Center on the campus of the California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles to practice their routine. But Evelyn Ramos, a day short of her 10th birthday, arrives on crutches. It's nothing serious, but she is questionable for the big show.

Residents complained to the City Council on Wednesday that a station planned for the newly approved light-rail route between Los Angeles and Pasadena will force the city to close a main east-west road. County Transportation Commissioners plan to ask the city to close El Centro Street because long north-south trains stopping at the Mission Street station will block the street to the south. "There is going to be an uproar if we close that street," resident William Evans said.

After commandeering the Bonaventure Hotel last year, Giant Village, the biggest New Year's Eve celebration in Los Angeles, is moving back outdoors to the streets of downtown. A crowd that could reach 12,000 will ring in 2005 on Wilshire Boulevard (between Grand Avenue and Flower Street) and Hope Street (between 6th and 7th), with tunes provided by some of dance music's top DJs, as well as live rock 'n' roll.

Over the long run, the issue of melding Grand Avenue and the summit of Bunker Hill with the historic core of downtown ought to pale in comparison with planning and development in the South Park district ("A Core Dilemma," by Nicolai Ouroussoff, Aug. 18). The latter area, "the floor of downtown," might be considered a blank canvas that could be far more imaginatively utilized toward ameliorating schisms and truly bringing this region together. The Hollywood sign just doesn't do it, folks.