SBSUN: Vacant for 15 years, a downtown San Bernard... getting new life

Link to Article: https://www.sbsun.com/2023/02/14/long-empty-landmark-in-downtown-san-bernardino-getting-new-life/

Transcript from Article:

Luz and Sergio Zuniga were hunting for a second San Bernardino location for their popular furniture store when they found a long-empty 1929 building downtown. Said to be modeled on the city hall in Seville, Spain, the Spanish and Italian Renaissance building at 440 Court St. immediately caught their fancy.

“We’ve been to Spain and have always liked this architecture,” Luz told me. “All the details.”

Intricate representations of curlicues, grapes and seashells decorate the exterior’s upper levels. Inside, the entry rises to a hand-painted ceiling two stories up. The atrium level is surrounded by a wrought-iron railing. Above that is a third level with a commanding view of downtown.

The Zunigas quickly realized the building wasn’t a good fit for another Guadalajara Furniture, their five-store chain that includes one location on San Bernardino’s Inland Center Drive.

But they bought the building anyway, paying $950,000 and taking possession Feb. 1.

“It was a very good price,” Sergio said, telling me the listed price had been $1.2 million.

“It was a good opportunity,” Luz said.

Built in 1929 for the Pioneer Insurance Title Co., this building on San Bernardino’s Court Street reflects Spanish and Italian Renaissance architectural styles. After a sale, it’s being prepped for new uses after 15 years of dormancy. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

A lot of empty or underused buildings stand in downtown San Bernardino. Few are as old or as lovely as 440 Court St., dubbed The Heritage Building.

It opened in 1929 as Pioneer Insurance Title Co. The president of the California Land Title Association came to the opening and declared: “It is the finest trust building in the state.”

That’s according to a 2014 column in The Press-Enterprise by Mark Muckenfuss, who lamented that this gem had been vacant since Carlos O’Brien’s, a restaurant and nightclub, had closed six years earlier.

It’s now been some 15 years since the building was occupied. It’s got plenty of company. The remains of Carousel Mall are a half-block away and awaiting demolition. Also within sight is City Hall, unused since being red-tagged in 2016, and the defunct Convention Center, where some windows are covered in plywood.

In other words, it’s impossible to overstate the challenges of downtown San Bernardino. But there are positives too, like the renovation and reopening of the 1927 Andreson Building at 320 N. E St., also near the Heritage Building. And the Zunigas are raring to go.

A crew on Monday was on the third level, tossing junk out of a window toward a dumpster in the parking lot.

The interior already looks better than two weeks ago, the couple assured me.

“Trashed. There was glass everywhere,” Luz said as we walked the first floor. “It looked like someone had been living here.”

The building has no electricity or water and needs a new roof and updated restrooms, as well as repairs to a few water-damaged ceiling panels, polishing of the exterior stone and fresh landscaping. The Zunigas expect to invest $500,000.

“There’s 120 windows we need to change,” Luz said. Suddenly I wished I were in the window business.

But the building is sound and benefited from a $200,000 restoration in the early 1980s.

Luz and Sergio Zuniga stand at the atrium railing beneath a ceiling mural at the Heritage Building, which they bought this month in downtown San Bernardino. “We came to see it and loved it,” Luz says. They are busy cleaning it up and preparing it for new uses. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

The Zunigas’ plans for the building’s 23,000 square feet are evolving. The third floor seems ideal to them for an event center, where families could celebrate a quinceanera or civic groups could hold meetings. The second floor might serve as a showroom for their furniture.

The first floor is more of a blank slate. A portion might work for a low-intensity food or beverage use. They were thinking of coffee until I pointed out there’s a coffee shop around the corner. Maybe pizza and salads instead, they said.

City Hall is cheering them on. “The current number of employees working in downtown San Bernardino can support many more food and coffee vendors than are currently here,” said city spokesman Jeff Kraus.

The Zunigas’ aim is to open in July. That’s ambitious, but so are they.

“She is a real great dynamo,” said Mike Radlovic, the broker who handled the transaction.

Luz, 46, and Sergio, whose 45th birthday was Monday, have worked at furniture stores their entire adult lives.

“We met, actually, at a furniture store,” Luz said. “He was a janitor and I worked in the office.” Through hustling, he rose to shipping and receiving, then to sales.

Married in 1999, they opened their first Guadalajara Furniture store in 2011 in Riverside. Luz was eight months pregnant on opening day. Within three months they were outgrowing the store’s 1,200 square feet. They expanded into a vacant space next door, then into four other cities: Fontana, Montclair, San Bernardino and Santa Ana.

The couple thinks of their stores, most of them 10,000 square feet, as family-owned competition for Living Spaces and Ashley Furniture.

Longtime Riverside residents, the Zunigas have watched as that city’s downtown has blossomed with restaurants, lofts and a reborn Fox Theater. San Bernardino seems to them to have similar potential.

Ornate details are stamped into the exterior of downtown San Bernardino’s Heritage Building. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Activity at the long-dormant Heritage Building is drawing eyes. One city inspector told the couple he danced there in the Carlos O’Brien days. As the Zunigas and I spoke on the sidewalk, a passerby asked if she could pop inside to take a photo.

David Friedman, whose family owns property in that square block, said reviving the Heritage Building seems like a tough project, but the couple’s reputation gives him optimism.

“I’m really excited,” Friedman said. “It’s a beautiful building. If she can pull it off … it’ll show the world things can get done here and it’s not a hopeless city.”

Friedman, who is spearheading a proposal for a business improvement district, is also enthused to have another property owner with a stake in downtown.

I asked if, at 29, he had any personal experience with the Heritage Building.

“That’s a question for my dad,” Friedman said wryly. “I’ve always known it as being an empty building.”