Famed architect vanishes and leaves unpaid creditors behind.

Famed architect vanishes and leaves unpaid creditors behind

Internationally acclaimed architect Arthur Erickson, designer of the largest development project in downtown Los Angeles, California Plaza, has been evicted from his West Los Angeles office and has quietly left town, leaving behind a trail of angry and unpaid consultants.

"We get suspicious when we called over there (to Erickson's L.A. offices) and their phones had been disconnected," said Stephen Hellman, a Mid-Wilshire mechanical engineer who claims to be owed $100,000 by Erickson. "So my partner and I went over there and it looked like somebody had walked in and said, |Let's get out of here.' There were drawings left on the desks and papers everywhere. It wasn't an organized move."

A dumpster in the alley behind Arthur Erickson Architects' offices at 125 N. Robertson Blvd. was filled last week with blueprints, renderings, sketches and various architectural documents.

Erickson, in a phone interview from his offices in Vancouver, Canada, last week confirmed that he had been evicted from his L.A. offices.

"We had a dispute with the landlord and it wasn't handled properly; it was partially our fault," he conceded. "We just didn't get back to him in time and negotiate properly. He finally just got fed up because nobody would answer the phone."

Erickson claimed he was unaware that his unpaid creditors had not been kept informed of his L.A. office closing.

"It was my presumption that communication (with unpaid creditors) was being kept open," he said. "My area of expertise is design, not the business end. For that, I have to rely on others and, unfortunately, sometimes that doesn't work out."

Erickson would not identify the "business-end" person or persons responsible for not keeping his unpaid creditors informed.

Earl Walls, a laboratory design consultant in San Diego who also claims to be owed money by Erickson, advised his fellow stiffed consultants to forget about collecting any time soon.

"Mr. Erickson is an excellent architect, but he's a lousy businessman," Walls asserted. "He's very apolegetic about the pickle he's in, but none of us (consultants) are getting paid."

Walls may be willing to write off Erickson's debt, but Hellman said he and his partner plan to actively pursue the matter. The two partners have arbitration clauses in their contracts with Erickson, so they are precluded from filing a lawsuit. But they have filed for a hearing with the American Arbitration Association, Hellman said.

George Hayakawa, principal of a mechanical/electrical engineering consultancy in West L.A., reported last week that his attorney is preparing a lawsuit against Erickson.

Despite what some might describe as a lynch mob awaiting Erickson in L.A., the deposed architect revealed last week that he is already planning a comeback to the City of Angels.

"We're currently negotiating a merger with a larger company in Los Angeles," he said. "We'll probably try it on a trial-marriage basis for about three months, however, before making any kind of official public announcement."

Erickson would not identify his prospective L.A. merger partner.

Erickson is the latest of many distinguished architects to suffer financial distress.

Frank Lloyd Wright, widely considered an architectural genius, was plagued with money problems throughout his celebrated career. Philadelphia architect Louis I. Khan, another internationally acclaimed designer, had an estate worth a negative $500,000 when he died in 1973.

"When you practice architecture as a very high art, as opposed to a business, it's very difficult not to go into debt," explained Jack MacAllister, a partner at the architectural firm of Anshen & Allen and a long-time friend of Erickson. "The attention architects of (Erickson's) caliber pay to detail becomes almost obsessive, and rarely do the fees cover that. It's a very sad thing to see."

Erickson was cruising at stratospheric heights during the sky's-the-limit 1980s, branching out from his Vancouver roots by opening a Toronto office and then, in 1982, a Los Angeles office.

In 1986, the American Institute of Architects named Erickson the recipient of its highest honor, the Gold Medal, declaring him the top architect in the land.

His Robson Square and Courthouse, a sprawling government complex in Vancouver, was featured in Time magazine.

As recently as early 1989, Erickson's L.A. office was booming, too. Some 45 architects were pumping full-steam-ahead on plans and revisions for California Plaza, the San Diego Convention Center, two Metro Rail substations, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Baldwin Hills and a raft of West Coast university projects.

But then the recession hit; construction lending screeched to a halt; and Erickson, along with scores of other architects, fell on hard times.

The third phase of California Plaza, sometimes referred to as Rockefeller Center of the West, was delayed several times. Funding could not be found for the project's proposed $20 million-plus dance gallery.

Erickson finally had to shut down his Toronto office in late 1989, and now his L.A. office has suffered the same fate.

He was able to stave off closure of the L.A. office by telling local consultants that he had not yet been paid by his developer-clients. But at least one of those consulting firms, frustrated by Erickson's continued non-payment, took matters into its own hands.

"Erickson owed us money for consulting work we performed on two state-funded projects, one at UC Irvine and one at West Washington University," explained Hellman. "He kept telling us he hadn't been paid (by the universities). So we decided to call the universities ourselves, and they told us the funds had already been distributed (to Erickson)."

Erickson said his firm is still actively working on eight Southland projects.

"We have about half a dozen architects working on those projects in the L.A. area," Erickson said. "At the moment, some of them are working out of clients' offices, and some are working at home."

Ed Carfagno, who ran Erickson's L.A. office for about a year, was fired last October in a cost-cutting move.

Carfagno, who now works at Rossetti Associates/Architects Planners in Santa Monica, said the Persian Gulf War may have been the crushing blow for Erickson's L.A. office.

"We were within an inch of starting work on a new headquarters building for the Kuwait Oil Ministry when Hussein invaded," Carfagno recounted. "The money was on the books, but that project never happened."

PHOTO : Designs for Cal Plaza in a dumpster outside Arthur Erickson's office: The best laid plans . . .