Los Angeles Facilities Undergoing Facelift

A NEW AND LARGER PUBLIC facility housing the CLUI Los Angeles office is currently being prepared at the Venice Boulevard location, and is scheduled to open by September, 2000. The new, 1800 square-foot facility will have a separate function room for exhibits and events, as well as improved access to research resources, including the library and archive.

The Center has been searching for a larger space in Los Angeles for years, at various times considering a former Nike missile launching complex and an oil company property to house the office and exhibit site. It was finally remembered that "there was no place like home," and the CLUI is now in a partnership with the Museum of Jurassic Technology, located adjacent to the CLUI, striving towards the purchase of the complex that houses the two organizations.

While fundraising continues, generous gifts have been made by private foundations and individuals to secure the down payment on the property and to begin renovations on the CLUI space. The former tenant in the space now being reclaimed by the CLUI moved out at the end of their lease in April, and a CLUI Work Party was held the first weekend in May, whereupon a volunteer army cleaned out the new space in an enthusiastic spasm of productive energy that lasted for five days. Work rebuilding the space is expected to continue through August.

The former tenants, a forensic lab (which operated primarily at night), generally followed the required health and safety regulations for dealing with laboratory chemicals and biological material. "But they did leave a few items," says Erik Knutzen, architect and "thought stylist" for the new space, "we found an opaque tupperware container under a sink, containing a mottled, brown object suspended in fluid. Scrawled on the label with an imprint of someone's health insurance card was a single word that resonated with the pit of my stomach: 'bowel.'