Perhaps no cultural center in town has experienced so prolonged and so operatic a death rattle as La Casa de la Raza, located at 601 East Montecito Street on the city’s Eastside, which was reportedly finally sold at auction sometime in March to its leading creditor Tomas Castelo, who — incidentally — was also the organization’s very first president back in 1971.
What Castelo plans to do with the old 26,000-square-foot building — a reconstructed onetime lumber supply center — remains uncertain. According to Lanny Ebenstein, who attended a meeting with Castelo this Monday morning, the plan is to create a temporary Founders Holding Trust to own the property pending final determination for future plans.
When La Casa opened in 1971, it marked an infrastructural celebration of Latino pride that was just coming into its own. La Casa was designed to function as a political, cultural, educational, sports, and service center for the Latino community throughout the South Coast, and for many years, it did just that. It offered a low-rent venue for all kinds of concerts, featuring a range of headliners that transcended any neat demographic cubbyholes. It served as a launching pad for such groups as Bici Centro, Zona Seca, and PUEBLO, a precursor to today’s CAUSE.