The World Stage has long been known as the artistic heart of black Los Angeles, but now it is facing danger of closing.
World Stage, located in the heart of the Leimert Park neighborhood, has served as a bridge to African American culture by offering the community various workshops and performances every day. It is a non-profit educational and performance art gallery where artists and writers can share their skills and wisdom.
Now supporters of the World Stage are fighting for its survival with developers and new investors, who expect the new Crenshaw/LAX Line stop to spark a neighborhood revival, since transportation hubs often drive real estate development and lift local businesses.
People from the World Stage acknowledge that investors are seeing the value of the institution, which has been part of the community for 25 years. “The Metro project is reality now. It has increased the value of the property, not just here at Leimert Park but the whole surrounding area,” said Sequoia Mercier, executive director of the World Stage.
After years of Leimert Park community members’ advocating for a new Metro stop on the Crenshaw segment of the Expo Line, it finally came to reality.
Shortly afterwards World Stage and its neighbors found out that a new landlord had bought the building. The building contains seven units, all the units are owned by the same owner. The landlord doesn’t want to renew the leases of those businesses in the neighborhood.
The new owner is MBA Mascot LLC of Culver City, according to the public records filed with the Los Angeles County Assessor’s office. Representatives of the company did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Tenants said they did not know who had purchased World Stage. Mercier said the complex is under a month-to month lease and the only person tenants have been able to contact is the property manager of the building’s management company, Clint Lukens Reality.
“It has become a place where if someone died and they need to do a memorial service, it’s done at the World Stage,” Mercier said. “It’s become kind of an unofficial community center for a lot of things.”
“I hope the person who bought the property is an artist who is really culturally sensitive and really want to maintain the [atmosphere] of Leimert Park,” said Mercier.
The board members of the World Stage have attempted to get help from City Council President Herb Wesson’s office, but they haven’t heard anything back yet. Wesson’s district includes Leimert Park.
The World Stage held a rally last month to call attention from the public to their situation.
“The point of the rally was to ask people to call Councilman Wesson’s office and to ask them to pay attention to the issue,” Mercier said. “ We are not trying to embarrass the councilman’s office.”
The World Stage supporters argued that it would be devastating to the community it was evicted.
Dimitri Condelee, a flutist who plays at the Jazz Workshop every Saturday, said he’d rather give up the transit stop than harm World Stage.
Damien Goodman, executive director of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, claims that the project needs to be modified. “We don’t think it’s a project that is currently designed in a way that is good for the community,” he said.
New Metro rail stops have led to the gentrification of many areas across Los Angeles. The rent burden for residents around the Vernon stop on the Blue Line rose 18 percent after it opened in 1990, according to a report done by Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.
The change in ownership at World Stage has created considerable anxiety by business owners in and around the complex, who worry about the future of World Stage as well as of Leimert Park.
Laura Hendrix, the owner of an art store called Gallery Plus, noted that its neighbors are being evicted. “The building that the World Stage is in has at least four vacancies now.”
Hendrix also said, “I hope it’s a positive thing, I hope it brings business to us, but right now I just don’t understand how this is going to be and happen to our [community’s] cultural identity.”
“This [metro] project is not for people who are here, it’s for someone else,” said Mary Enzinga Kimbro, one of the owners a gift shop called Zambezi Bazaar.
Kimbro and her sister Jackie Ryan have operated the store for 23 years, but they will leave at the end of this month after being notified the new landlord won’t renew the lease.
While other merchants are facing the fear of closing their businesses in the future, Ben Caldwell, a filmmaker and the owner of the KAOS Network, an arts and multimedia center in Leimert Park, has a different view of the project.
“It’s a good transition for the community,” said Caldwell. “It’s changing the stereotype of the community.”
Caldwell also has a positive opinion on the future of the World Stage. “The World Stage doesn’t have to be worried about leaving because it’s an art organization,” he said.
“It is more than just the building. It’s the keeper of African-American music,” said Caldwell. “Wherever it lands, it will be [a] phenomenon and will change the area that it’s in.”
Caldwell has owned his three-story building since he came to the community in 1984. He said if the World Stage doesn’t have a place to stay, he would share his space to let the tenants move into his building.
Edward Johnson, assistant chief deputy to Wesson, said his office is aware that there is new ownership of some of the commercial property and regrets that some businesses have moved.
County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' office did not return repeated calls for comment on the issue. Ridley-Thomas represents the area, and was the strongest advocate for the Crenshaw/LAX Line on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“Kamau Daaood,one of our founders, always says the World Stage is not a space, it’s a sprit,”, said Mercier. “If we have to leave that space, we will establish ourselves somewhere else."
Infographic made by Yuan Feng