L.A.'s 97-year-old Cecil Hotel, which looms almost as large on Skid Row's skyline as it does in our imaginations, will be turned into affordable housing for 600 homeless Angelenos and others facing housing insecurity today. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9:45 AM this rainy morning was held by the Skid Row Housing Trust, which will operate the building for New York-based owner Simon Baron Development, which teases a mixed-use development on its website.
Los Angeles Magazine details the housing plan, which will offer residents single-room occupancy units along with small "efficiency" studios, with secured entry as well as access to community kitchen spaces, laundry facilities, and a rec room.
Echoing an earlier report by Curbed L.A., eligible residents of the SRO units must make 30 to 60 percent of the area median income, though a majority of the Cecil units are being held for those who make less. Management services will be handled by Skid Row Housing Trust Health and Social Services and are said to be funded and self-sustained by private capital.
The three-headed hotel, a grand dame of downtown’s streetcar and theater mecca in the early part of the 20th century, had notoriously fallen into disrepair in the decades following the 1940s, mirroring the rise and expansion of surrounding Skid Row. The fading hotel’s hulking skeleton, “low daily rates,” and reputation for macabre occurrences, scant oversight, and casual crime has turned it into a place of morbid curiosity for many around the world. It is also an officially recognized L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument.
The hotel’s first suicide was recorded in 1927, with an estimated 12 to follow. Serial killers including Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez and Austria’s Jack Unterweger are both believed to have stayed there amidst their killing sprees. At least one brutal, unsolved murder was recorded between its walls.