Los Angeles’ Historic Fire Station 54, in the Crenshaw neighborhood, is currently defunct but is on its way to becoming a major arts facility for locals in the community: the Manchester Junior Arts Center. In July, the station was presented to Los Angeles’s Board of Cultural Affairs Commissioners.
General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Daniel Tarica, said: “Manchester Junior Arts Center is a voter-mandated youth arts facility intended to remedy inequitable access to arts infrastructure across Los Angeles and give young people practical, culturally relevant training connected to multidisciplinary arts, performing arts, technical production, and economic opportunity.”
He continued, “The approach for the use of spaces and facility design was informed by the development of preliminary arts programming supported by input from the Local Volunteer Neighborhood Oversight Committee consisting of members and leaders from the surrounding community. DCA envisions flexible youth programming, responsive to the desires of the community, as part of a larger strategy to make this facility a cultural anchor for South Los Angeles, create training and job pathways, provide equitable community access to the arts, support local artists and organizations, and elevate cultural experiences and traditions of surrounding cultural diasporas. As is the case with all DCA facilities, programming is developed in collaboration (partnership) with the community.”
The fire station will be converted into the Manchester Junior Arts Center, located at 5730 S. Crenshaw Boulevard in Hyde Park. It is an $11.5 million adaptive reuse project, spearheaded by Perkins&Will, a global architecture and design firm widely known for its human-centered, sustainability-focused, innovative approach to design.
An official completion date has not been announced yet. Tarica clarified to Our Weekly that the $11.5 million is not the settled project total yet.
“$11.5 million is not the settled project total. The final project total is yet to be determined. The new facility will be open during the school year, plus additional weekend, school-holiday, and LAUSD-vacation-days, and will host classes/curriculum, hands-on technical training, performances, drop-in opportunities, one-on-one youth development, community events, job/entrepreneurship preparation, and partnerships with schools and community organizations.”
The community-focused move will also help keep the neighborhood’s look and character intact, but how do community members feel about it?
Tarica also discussed balancing city-led programming with the need to ensure the facility remains responsive to local neighborhood feedback “through a broad communications/community engagement plan”. It will conduct outreach to “solicit an understanding of the neighborhood’s cultural legacy to help determine how it will support youth, families and residents of South Los Angeles.”
Retired LAFD Firefighter and Inspector Jabari Jumaane used to direct the day-to-day operations of Fire Station 54 through a program called the AFIBA (African Firefighters Benevolent Association) Center, which occupied the space from 2000 – 2021. He is currently President of AFIBA, but they are no longer at Fire Station 54 after receiving an eviction notice in 2019.
Fire Station 54 was initially a one-story station that opened for service on June 6, 1924, and closed on Sept. 20, 1989, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive.
Jumaane obtained a lease for the property to support the AFIBA Center, which operated as a community hub in the retired Fire Station 54 and, for more than 20 years, hosted cultural, economic, health, and spiritual programs for residents. He credits Councilwoman Ruth Galanter with allowing the group to occupy the space in 2000, whereas previous attempts to engage with Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas in 1992 were unsuccessful.
Ultimately, he stressed that during the duration of his attempts to open the AFIBA Center, dating back to 1992-2000 (and the late 2010s leading up to 2018), he experienced multiple moments of being brushed off by the three Black Councilmen of District 8 – Mark Ridley-Thomas, Bernard Parks, and current President of the Los Angeles City Council Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
“Those council people, in order, [were] Mark Ridley-Thomas and that short stint that they gave that area to Ruth Galanter, then Mark, then Bernard Parks and Marqueece Harris-Dawson… Three of those four [were] Black men. One of them [was a] white woman. The only one that ever did anything for us was the white woman.”
He further added, “All of this is connected to disenfranchise and dismantle Black power. It can best be done by Black people. That’s what’s being done with Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Destination Crenshaw is a smokescreen.”
From 2000 to 2018, the AFIBA Center provided many services for the community, including monthly groups and programming focused on workshops centered on education about African heritage and culture, economic development, holistic health, and more.
Jumaane says the eviction from Fire Station 54 was not just a bureaucratic decision by the city, but something personal, driven by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. In his view, once he started publicly questioning gentrification, Destination Crenshaw, and the councilmember’s lack of responsiveness, the eviction functioned as retaliation against AFIBA and its work in the community.
He said calculated moves by City Council’s Harris-Dawson and other city officials led to numerous claims that AFIBA lacked valid proof of insurance, failed to maintain the building properly, and refused to let city engineers access the building for inspections.
He said that throughout the multiple disputes at various community council meetings with the city that took place in 2018-2019, before the City issued an eviction and a padlock was issued in February of 2021, he provided proof of insurance, he provided receipts to the city for maintenance, and that city workers said the building was in good shape. He refuted claims that city workers didn’t have access, even citing security camera footage of inspections.
Jumaane also said that Destination Crenshaw is a “gentrification project: and “smokescreen… something shiny to give to the Black community,” in attempts to eliminate a cultural hub in favor of ushering in a new project, the Manchester Arts Center, all the while Destination Crenshaw has yet to be completed. He also refuted claims in an article published by Secret Los Angeles that said the AFIBA Center had been vacant since the 1980s.
He characterizes the recent coverage of the incoming Manchester Arts Center as a “smokescreen that ‘we’re doing something in the community’”– allegedly spearheaded by Harris-Dawson – after Tavis Smiley repeatedly called out Destination Crenshaw for five to six weeks, leading up to a town hall meeting on July 30 that was covered by KBLA Talk 1580 Operator Tavis Smiley at Bethesda Temple Church.
Assata Umoja, president of Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment (HOPE), was present at a community meeting about Destination Crenshaw in 2018, according to Jumaane. She echoed Jumaane’s sentiments about the removal of the AFIBA Center.
“All of these [stipulations and claims] were lies that were told in order to grab the AFIBA Center, lock the doors and lock the community out.” She continued, “It was punitive. It was just because the AFIBA Center, along with community members, didn’t agree with his whole idea about Destination Crenshaw.”
Brent Burton, a retired LA County Fire Department fire captain and historian for the Los Angeles Black firefighters, provided more context about the conversion and the AFIBA Center. He said, “Good work was already being done there.”
“They [City of Los Angeles] took the building from Jabari — just evicted him — even though he was doing some real good work all the way up until the end.” He continued, “Jabari and a lot of folks were doing community work and already engaged. We can’t understand why it was taken from them, and I’m still sad he was put out of that place.”
Our Weekly contacted the President of Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who responded directly to the claims. “From the moment we brought this to Jabari, he resisted. He bounced between calling the city racist and saying I was doing gentrification, trying to kick him out. I worked very hard to try to rectify the situation because I knew there were good programs at the Afiba Center.”
He continued, “In an environment where Black elected officials are being charged and incarcerated for very minor violations, I was not going to stand by and let him flout the terms of the lease. So, we intervened to end it.”
Harris-Dawson rejects the retaliation claims, saying the eviction followed repeated lease violations, especially the alleged refusal to allow city engineers to inspect the city-owned building and to host neighborhood council meetings. He also said the Jumaane “is conflating his past political clash with former Councilmember Bernard Parks with current events.” He disputes claims that AFIBA met all requirements or that he sought Jumaane’s removal as director, calling those assertions lies and fiction.
Councilman Harris-Dawson also said Jumaane filed two lawsuits that did not succeed in court: one against him for defamation and another against the City of Los Angeles to extend the lease of the AFIBA Center. Our Weekly independently verified court records and found that in the lawsuit against Councilman Harris-Dawson for defamation and extension of the lease, the judge did not rule in Jumaane’s favor. The hearing date was on Jan. 26, 2023, and the case number is 22STCV19506.
In response to a statement from Jumaane and other community members about Destination Crenshaw being a “gentrification project,” Harris Dawson said, “Black culture is not a side activity; it is the activity. It generates more revenue and more business than almost anything else the Black community produces. By putting culture in our space and making the world come to our community to consume it, we get more customers, more traffic, more investment.”
He continued, “Crenshaw Boulevard is now one of the biggest centers for affordable housing in Southern California and the only commercial corridor where Black ownership and development have increased. None of the people making these charges can point to a place where investment in Black art and Black culture created gentrification — Black investment in Black culture usually does the opposite.”
