On a stretch of Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, where cars whip by at 50 miles per hour and the Valley’s landscape of parking lots, fast food chains, office blocks and strip malls feels particularly drab, a once-abandoned Denny’s resembles a fractured art piece, with its metallic white scrim exploding into pieces over a colorful base. On a connected lot, outside a former Comfort Inn, a large neon green sign reads “Hope.”
This is the new 4,500-square-foot Betty Bazar Community Resource Center — a recently-opened meeting space and early childhood learning center that serves residents of the Woodlands, the converted Comfort Inn, which now offers 100 transitional housing units for families, in addition to case management and meal service, thanks to funding from the state’s Project Homekey initiative.
Founded and operated by nonprofit partners Hope the Mission and the Child Care Resource Center (CCRC), the complex takes its name from its key sponsor, Betty Bazar, the late former CEO of Sensor Systems, one of the world’s largest suppliers of aviation antennas.
The building’s designers, Eagle Rock-based Kadre Architects (pronounced KAH-dray), drew from this aviation story in crafting the kinetic screen — which recalls the flaps of a wing, filtering light while creating a dramatic presence on the street. Inside, skylights cut into the rounded ceiling suggest a fuselage bathed in daylight. Colorful graphics crisscross the floor, and a bright, retro-inspired mural references images of aeronautics pioneers and the families using the facility itself.
“The building needed to hold its own on a boulevard where everything is moving fast,” says Nerin Kadribegovic, Kadre’s founder. “It’s unapologetic — a proud part of the neighborhood.”
Inside there’s a sense of calm, order and welcome — flying in the face of what is, in many cases, a sterile, institutional environment. Glass garage doors bring in natural light and when lifted open the space to the Woodlands’ courtyard — a former parking lot invigorated with, among other things, colorful paint, light landscaping, outdoor furnishings and (not quite enough) shade structures.
The classrooms are also bathed in daylight via skylights and clerestories, with sunbeams touching the playfully angled surfaces. Pastel tones and playful graphics stretch across walls and floors. Bathrooms are child-scaled, with bright tiles and whimsical signage. Retractable doors open onto a small pink and green courtyard, and, around the corner, a larger play space shaded by the building’s kaleidoscopic canopy. There are nooks and benches for quiet reading and wide communal tables for group projects.
The school, now functioning in a limited capacity, is still awaiting its license to operate full-time. CCRC Early Care and Learning Division Director Betty Zamorano-Pedregon says that should move ahead in just a few weeks. When it does, it will accommodate about 60 preschoolers at a time, for at least eight hours a day. For many parents at the Woodlands, childcare had been an impossible barrier, added Zamorano-Pedregon. Without it, they couldn’t work, attend job training, or even attend medical appointments. On a typical morning, parents here can simply walk their children across the courtyard to their classrooms. While kids spend the morning playing and learning, parents may head next door to classes and workshops in the community center wing. By late afternoon, families can spill into the outdoor courtyard and play space, or linger in the communal hall. On weekends, the community space already hosts birthday parties, support groups, and community movie nights.
“It’s really about building a complete social mobility ecosystem,” says Ken Craft, CEO of Hope the Mission. “Families don’t just need a roof; they need childcare, job skills, therapy and community. This building is where it all comes together.” Residents describe the center as the “living room” of the Woodlands. Funding has been approved to add two mobile classrooms, which Kadre will play a role in sprucing up, said Zamorano-Pedregon.
For Kadribegovic, the project has personal resonance, adding to his sense of urgency. Raised in Sarajevo during the brutal breakup of Yugoslavia, he fled the Bosnian war as a teenager. His family, once middle-class professionals, were suddenly displaced — navigating life in refugee camps and temporary housing.
“That experience never leaves you,” he says. “You understand what it means to lose everything, to depend on strangers, to feel like stability is impossible. When I design for families coming out of homelessness, I remember those feelings. Architecture can give people dignity and hope.”
Kadre has become a specialist in emergency and transitional housing in Southern California. The Woodlands is one of five properties it has transformed — with eight more in progress — as part of the $3.78-billion Project Homekey initiative — launched in 2020 to fast-track the conversion of motels, hotels and other distressed properties into housing for people experiencing homelessness. (Their community centers, like Betty Bazar, are not funded by Homekey.)
While each project differs according to site, budget and constraints, design strategies across the board include dynamic patterns, active outdoor spaces and targeted architectural interventions, from skylights to introduce natural light to shaded balconies and patios. Kadre has transformed a Lyfe Inn in MacArthur Park (now the Alvarado), a Sands Motel and Tropics Motel in Lancaster (the Sierra), and Tropicana Motel in Compton (the Lemon House), which sits next to Kadre’s recently completed Compton Community Center, a folded, bright yellow and white space for supportive services replacing a storefront next to an existing transitional housing facility. Future work includes permanent supportive housing in Hollywood and community centers in Palmdale, North Hills and Lancaster.
Few buildings within Homekey — where design criteria generally takes a back seat to practical concerns, said Kadribegovic — have the exuberance that Kadre has given them, despite extremely tight funding and timelines. The Woodlands took nine months from award to end of construction and cost $4.5 million, he said. Since its existing motel rooms were already in decent condition, a decision was made to only lightly touch them. So the major interventions went to new office and support spaces and outdoor common spaces. Even then, the firm could remove only a small portion of the parking lot’s asphalt, lest they trigger local low-impact development codes. (The bright colors act as cooling agents on what would otherwise be a baking blacktop.) Even now the team is fighting for more — at Betty Bazar’s recent ribbon cutting, the team got a commitment from a state senator to fund more shade structures, said Kadribegovic.
The work, by definition, can’t be perfect, which is a challenge in a field (architecture) full of perfectionists.
“You have to let go of certain things. You have to be real,” he said. “You have to understand what’s at stake here. We’re going to make it the best it can be and we’re going to get those people housed.”
The extra emphasis on design, against the odds, softens the landing in each neighborhood, he adds. “Neighbors feared crime, blight and property devaluation. But when they saw what we designed — colorful, open, safe, full of life — many opponents became supporters.”
And it can be the difference between hope and dejection at what is a very precarious time for most families.
“A child who grows up in a place filled with light and joy will carry that feeling forever,” says Kadribegovic. Craft notes that both the Woodlands and Betty Bazar are just first steps. “This is not a landing pad — it’s a launching pad,” he says. “A place where families can rebuild their lives.”
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