Active street life perks up district.

WHILE portions of downtown Los Angeles have been given new life, he produce district is one neighborhood that never really perished.

The 12-square-block area is busy both day and night, largely because of the Alameda Produce Market, which has been offering wholesale growers a venue to sell their goods to restaurants and grocery stores since 1917.

The market is owned by Richard Meruelo, the son of Cuban immigrants who started out shining shoes outside his parents' downtown dress shop. By 1997, he and his family spent $35 million to buy 35 acres of land and eight buildings, including the landmark 300,000-square-foot market on Seventh Street.

"I think it's a great place to invest," said Meruelo, whose parents began buying buildings when he was young. "I love the action, the commerce, the urban vitality, the diversity of people on the street--from people that are homeless to (people in) business suits and ties."

Most of the buildings have produce wholesalers on the ground floors with small garment tenants above. Meruelo's prized tenant is American Apparel Inc., which operates a noted "sweatshop free" apparel business in the structure.

The City Market of Los Angeles, which has been in business off Ninth Street for nearly 100 years, also now includes space for garment sellers.

Operating as Alameda Produce Market Inc., Meruelo's holdings are spread out from Alameda Street to Central Avenue and from Seventh Street to Eighth Street, easily making him the largest landowner in the produce district.

Each day as many as 6,000 produce wholesalers, retailers and other workers come to conduct business there. Then, overnight and into the early morning hours, an army of trucks rumble in with fresh produce from farms to restock the businesses.

Not far away is the Central Wholesale Market on East Olympic Boulevard, a five-acre operation that co-owner Lisa Quateman's grandfather purchased in the 1940s.

Now operating as Uncle Phil LLC, the holdings she owns with a cousin include a three-story building on Kohler Street and numerous loft spaces.

Much of the daily foot traffic is made up of regular shoppers looking for anything from fresh or dried fruit, to pinatas, Asia spices and brooms.

"We have this great ethnic melting pot here and the tenant mix reflects that," said Quateman, also a partner in the Century City law firm Quateman & Zidell LLP. "It's a mini-United Nations when you walk through there."

Quateman said she gets frequent inquiries from brokers, but she has no intention of selling.

Property is at such a premium in the district that there are few restaurants. The most popular eatery is the Central City Cafe, at Sixth and South Central streets.

Vickman's Restaurant, the venerable eatery at only served breakfast and lunch to some 1,500 customers daily, closed in 1993 after 74 years of operation. It was bought by a longtime customer so he could expand his produce operation.

The produce district isn't a 9-to-5 operation. Instead, the district starts getting busy in the early morning hours as the day's fruit and vegetables are trucked in from all over the state. Then restaurants and supermarkets pick up their loads to get them out before the start of the regular business day.

That has big rigs loaded with product entering and leaving the district for hours under huge floodlights, but by early afternoon the district lapses into quiet.

Produce District

Features

A neighborhood where produce is trucked in and sold to restaurants and grocery stores

Top Landowners

* Alameda Produce Market Inc.

Number of Properties: 9

Square Feet: 867,257

Number of Acres: 36.7

* Uncle Phil LLC

Number of Properties: 18

Square Feet: 150,773

Number of Acres: 5.2

* Los Angeles Unified School District 

Number of Properties: 3

Square Feet: 116,329

Number of Acres: 2.7