Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock

They have an awesome staff and the show i went to was sick!

I am getting married here in summer 2016, at which point I’ll update this placeholder review with a «real» one. An affordable, beautiful space seems like a pipe dream in LA, but thank the gods this place exists. The room is already lovely and any touches you add will just be icing on the cake!
A former library, this would be a perfect spot for a book-​themed wedding — they still have the built in shelves.
If anyone who is getting/​got married here wants to sell me their décor or supplies, please get in contact!

We got married here just a week ago– the center does not provide all the ‘extras’ some wedding venues do like décor and a planner, but that worked out in our favor. No muss, no fuss! We didn’t need to spend the extra money on things we didn’t want or need, and our wedding was still beautiful! They did have a sound system available to rent that was just what we needed and provided a technician to help make sure everything go set up correctly. They allowed us to bring in our own caterer and food, and didn’t require us to work with a set list of overpriced vendors. They were very easy to work with, inexpensive, and were willing to go the extra mile when things didn’t go as promised with their parking, which they assure me is in the process of being worked out. Thanks, CFAER! We had a great day, and we couldn’t have done it without you!

I cannot say enough wonderful things about CFAER. I just got married over the weekend here (10.17.15) and it was fabulous. Not only is this venue a little gem the staff is amazing.
Brian Martinez is a dream to work with. I cannot express enough how wonderful he is. He is very responsive, kind and funny. I was a former Coordinator in another life so I understand the meaning and the importance of following-​up and follow through. This place provides wonderful customer service and it is a beautiful space.
CFAER allows you to make the space your own. If you are a DIY girl/​boy like I was then please go with this place. I created a beautiful setting for my wedding by adding lights and other decorations; not a lot of places allow you to do this. The biggest plus of all is this space is extremely reasonable to rent. I researched a lot of locations and this was the only space that had beauty and charm for under $ 3000. Seriously do yourself a favor and schedule a walk-​through you will not be disappointed.

This venue was perfect for my birthday party! The band complimented the fine acoustics, the caterer was thrilled to have use of a full kitchen, and the guests raved about the classic architecture. The event was on a summer evening and the air conditioning kept the place cool. The staff was helpful and I got my full cleaning deposit back. CFAER is the best!

We had our wedding at CFAER this past March, and we truly enjoyed our time there! We were very glad to have found a place that looked beautiful on its own (with great natural lighting), and that the venue allowed us to choose our own vendors (perfect for weddings on a budget). It was a great space for our 130 people wedding – intimate enough, but also not too crowded. The planning/​coordinating process with Brian was smooth and efficient – he laid out the details of the venue (any regulations for decorations, etc) and costs in an organized manner (so we weren’t bombarded with extra costs or hidden fees), and he answered any questions we had in a timely manner. My husband and I are very grateful we celebrated our wedding day with family and friends at the CFAER, and we would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a venue for their next event/​celebration!

We had our wedding at CFAER and Brian was the sweetest! He was very friendly, accommodating & professional, and so were all of the staff there! It’s also extremely affordable for a bride on a budget looking to have a 100 — 150 person wedding, which is hard to find in LA. The space is a large blank slate with old world fixtures that lends itself well to any style event. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND CFAER to anyone looking to throw a party! GREAT ALL AROUND!

Perfect Sunday Wedding: I felt like the luckiest girl in the world the day my betrothed, so handsome in his tuxedo, stood gazing up at me as he waited at the bottom of the beautiful old wood stairs and led me down the red-​carpet-​laid aisle past our smiling wedding guests. The time was 4:20, and the sun hadn’t set yet, so lots of lovely light surrounded us as Jake, our meditation teacher/​wedding officiant, began our ceremony by guiding everyone through breathing exercises. (Yes, breathing exercises – this is So Cal, after all.)
Up to this point, I’d been sequestered in the upstairs patio with my girlfriends, soothing my bridal nerves with Jameson shots, and waiting to exhale, so to speak. I hadn’t seen my husband since 9am when he’d left our hotel suite to set up, so by the time I walked into our wedding and saw just how enchanting he’d made everything for me, I felt suffused with a joy I’d never known before. Adding to the magic as we walked down the aisle was hearing my husband’s dearly missed buddy singing (Daniel Johnston’s incredibly beautiful «Go»), as though he could see us from Sparklehorse heaven, «So you think you’ve found the one… Take her in your arms and be wed…»
The center had been an old library, which suited us because my Pete had proposed to me in front of the Allen Ginsberg Library and we wanted to fill the place with beatitude and books. Initially, it took some emailing and waiting around to get anyone to secure the place for our wedding, but they are a small non-​profit, and everyone there was quite nice. I also liked how DIY they were, compared to most other attractive wedding venues that specify in-​house catering services and basically force you to pay for their silly quasi-​wedding-​planner schemes. My husband is the sexiest artist I know, so naturally I left the look of our wedding entirely in his hands, and he made the place even more magical than it already is.
We booked the venue for the maximum time available on a Sunday (10am to 11pm), and the Center’s staff person in charge of us, Luis, turned out to be one cool ninja. Brian, the director of CFAER, was terrific too, letting us store rental furniture at the place an extra day without charge, and being impressively prompt about returning the $ 500 cleaning deposit. A month before our wedding, we met Brian at the center, and he was totally accommodating, showing us where everything was, letting us explore on our own, and even staying graciously out of sight when we had a little pre-​wedding spat. I was nervous about what the place would look like on the morning of our wedding because another private party had booked the night before, but ’twas all good. We had all-​day free parking at the Bank of America, while open parking spaces right in front of the building made it convenient for my husband’s setting up and also for my niece to sneak me up the back elevator an hour before the start of our wedding.
Between 10am and 3pm, while my husband and brother-​in-​law were setting up, the venue doors stayed comfortably open for the different wedding helpers coming through the place. My husband hadn’t had a chance to change into his tuxedo until 3:30, but the restroom at the center was fine as a changing room, and the kitchen area was open enough to accommodate caterers and friends helping my husband with boutonnière and cufflinks. Oh, and the gorgeous circulation desk that faces the main doors to the building served as the perfect bar and guestbook space. Next to the circulation desk, there was plenty of room for catering to set up a big buffet as well as drink and dessert stations, and the main room easily held eleven large dining tables while still leaving space for dancing and, of course, our wedding ceremony.
After the collective breathing exercise that opened our wedding ceremony, five friends read breathtaking poems, we exchanged rather lengthy (thoughtful!) vows, placed rings on each other’s fingers, Jake pronounced, «You may now kiss your Henny,» and the amazing Mr. Ortelevision did just that as our friends and family cheered. The rest of the evening was grand and heartfelt and flowing with love and appreciation, and I will always treasure CFAER, where, dear reader, I married the love of my life.

Wedding — Okay, this is like the longest review ever.
Overall I had a very positive experience, but want to address some of the concerns voiced here from my personal perspective.
What do you care about in a wedding venue?
— Location: in Los Angeles, not far from Burbank Airport and not terribly far from LAX for out of town guests.
— Price: cannot be beat
— Service: please remember their non wedding industry pricing is likely dependent on their status as a community art organization, thus no wedding lady lecturing about how special their place is and demand 5k for venue. If you are in a hurry to book, like I was, I just kept calling them like 2x a day until I got someone.
I would call between surgeries after the first case was finished and the OR was being cleaned. And honestly, I only had to call like 3 or 4 times to get someone.
They got a ton of stuff going on all the time, like Friday morning yoga, lots of gigs etc, just go to one of those gigs and check it out. When I finally showed up at the venue for a tour, the tour was like 10 minutes, there isn’t that much to it. It’s a big beautiful room with a basement room and some pretty outdoor space, and a sorta small kitchen. If you go to an event there, and see the place, then pee in the bathroom, you had seen 80% of it. You can email later with questions, but the tour is basically go there and take a look, so you can just go there yourself.
Once you are booked, it’s very easy to get ahold of them. Just the inquiry can be a bit hard
— Environment: gorgeous, minimal decoration required.
I booked this place sight unseen (looked at lots of pictures online) due to some personal circumstances and my attitude that if my wedding blows up, it’s no biggie — however, the place turned out to be extremely gorgeous. If you really want to see the place without going there, the «Danielle & Jerod wedding» by William Kim photography shows how the place is laid out the best of all the wedding photos I looked like. The place looks like that — very bright if desired, less bright with some curtain or schedule at closer to sunset time. You can see the back of the hall and stuff as well in that particular wedding photo entry
— Food service: BYOB (or BYO bartender), lots of good restaurant that can cater in Eagle Rock. We used Max City BBQ (around the corner from the art center) and Four Café (cross the street from the art center) and our guests were extremely happy with both the food and service.
— Parking: parking not too hard for anybody. Can park at B of A after regular bank hours, so after 3-​ish on Sat was fine for our wedding.
Some of the rando questions I had while planning the wedding?
What’s up with that big window and the blinding light?
I attempted to calculate the angle of the sunlight on my wedding to figure out if it’s going to be blinding …
The light is actually fine in person. We had our wedding about 1.5 hours prior to sunset time late Sep. We didn’t use a curtain, but now I look at the initial pictures it seems like perhaps a sheer curtain might help with the photos to come out better. Make sure you notify your photographer about this giant window for best effect. Some of the wedding photos online appear like the messiah was coming from that window. definitely alert your photographer about this.
Why does the room at night not look very romantic
Again, I think these is some descripency between photo and human eyes.
There are 3 or 4 switches for the big overhead light and wall lights, so you can turn a few of them off after awhile, and the light get a lot softer. If you don’t turn half of the light off, the photos will come out not as romantic. It seems some people hang little globe lights overhead, Given how beautiful the original interior is, I thought it was not necessary at all.
Is the basement room too ghetto for getting ready
Again see «Danielle & Jerod wedding» by William Kim. — it’s the room with the drawing on the ceiling. t’s like an arts and crafts room with lots of kiddie stuff. If you dig cool looking hotels, there is a cool looking Westin a few miles away in Pasadena. If you don’t care, it’s perfectly fine with good natural light (a door).
How big is the kitchen?
Small, comparable to a home kitchen. One cater we inquired said they had to rent a whole new kitchen setup pretty much for like a grand, so we said nvm and went with max city BBQ nearby which smoke their meat at the restaurant and bring it over (5 min driving distance), and got sides from Four Café (across the street… 1 min driving distance, 5 minute walk distance).
How big is the frig?
It’s like those larger home frigs. We had to cut our ¾ sheet cake (for 60 ppl) in half to shove it into the frig — ¾ of a sheet cake was wayyy bigger than I imaged as well. just FYI.
We brought a king size blow up mattress down there just for sitting around or when people need a break, it was great. Also candles, a lot lot of candles look really great at this venua

These guys did a spectacular job working with us to make our wedding day perfect. Brian, specifically, responded promptly to all our questions and gave us great ideas of how to use the space effectively. CFAER displayed a genuine interest in our wedding and was willing, at the drop of a hat, to let us walk through whenever. Don’t hesitate to visit this place it’s even more beautiful than the pictures.

We wanted to check out this place for our wedding but decided not to. Customer service is really really bad. Made two appointments with Mike but he didn’t respond until weeks later that he couldn’t make it. We have contacted many venues and got emails back within a couple of days. I guess they don’t about customers or business.

The venue before we entered was close by and amazing coffee shop (Sworks) which is a huge plus ! We went to this venue for a concert and I cannot deny how on point everything was. The light fixtures and all the little details in the venue is so awesome ! The hundred waters concert was one to remember. This is such a wonderful venue that it is on the back of my mind often.

We celebrated our wedding here on July 19, 2014 and it was wonderful.
We went through their website and emailed their events staff and they responded in a timely manner. They gave us a list of potential days and times to look at the venue and we booked one. We went in and looked at it on a Friday evening. We met Luis (who is really nice and super cool). The building itself is beautiful and has a distinct reverent churchy vibe without being an actual, you know, church. It was a library and we are bibliophiles, so it was perfect for us.
We did end up considering some other places, but we had completely fallen in love with the Center so we emailed and booked an appointment with Luis to get our contract in order. We actually booked our date a year in advance and that help us a lot as far as planning the rest of the event (because we were set on the venue).
Everything else went according to plan. We booked caterers and bartenders, etc. and got our event insurance (the only real «additional» cost (under $ 200) and they helped us with finding an agency to get it through).
As the day got nearer Brian took over and was great at booking and helping us through a walking through and making sure everything was in order for our big day. We had to add additional time last minute (like, the week before) and Brian handled that like it was no big deal at all.
The day of the event the doors opened when they were supposed to and Luis was on hand to help us. He was awesome, and the venue was clean and ready to be set up.
Overall the place is beautiful staff was really cool (chill, no pressure, but responsive). Some of the reviews mention communication problems, but that wasn’t our experience at all (if anything as we got closer to the date they were a lot better at following up than we were).
Awesome space, great people, and can’t beat the price. Perfect for us!

Update: I responded back to Mike on May 21 at 3:18 pm and he never responded back. Please recheck your emails. Thanks.
I really, really wanted to put this on our potential place to get married at but unfortunately, confirming a date to come in for a site visit was practically impossible! The emails from Mike were nice but once we got a date going, the time or date changed and when I asked if it was confirmed for the changed time/​date, we never received a response back. So, with a ton of confusion, we decided not to bother anymore. I was so sad, especially since I was so excited to check the place out as it is a beautiful place. :(

We rented the Center for the Arts for our wedding. It was a great experience!
Brian was extremely helpful, almost always available, and the process on the whole was a very smooth one. I’d definitely recommend this venue for your event. Why, you ask?
** It’s beautiful inside and out
** Price was very reasonable
** Sunday parking at the B of A across the street
** Elevator for vendor set-​up
** Good acoustics for music
The only thing to be aware of – if you’re having a wedding and need a place for the bridal party to get ready, they may want to choose somewhere else (like maybe a room at the Comfort Inn a block down the street). The only staging area is downstairs, and it’s not really set up for hair and makeup. It was however a good place for the bridal party to «sneak in» via a side door, and make their grand entrance from the back of the main hall (once the stairs were negotiated).
We had a beautiful wedding and will never forget the Center for the Arts!

Very dope venue/​center with good acoustics to listen to OM drone out. I really liked the feel of the place and definitely would return to see other bands perform.

We just had our wedding ceremony and reception here on Saturday and it was awesome! This is such a beautiful building and our guests just loved it! Brian and Luis were very helpful throughout the process– they do not assist with planning (although they can recommend vendors and can make suggestions on what works in the space), as they are a non-​profit art center, not really in the wedding business — so we did all the coordination ourselves, which gave us the freedom to really make the wedding our own. Both of us being designers, we really wanted to put our own spin on it, and everything came out just as we envisioned. This is a great spot if you are looking for a more diy approach and less traditional type of wedding, like we were.
Major perks: gorgeous historical building, great natural lighting, supporting non-​profit organization, unique location, indoors (don’t need to worry about rain!), free parking!, freedom to bring in own vendors, alcohol, etc. = major cost savings & lots of control!
Only drawback (depending on who you are): need to either hire a coordinator or be really organized, as you will be putting this on by yourself. We were fine, but are used to this kind of coordination and knew up front that this is what we were in for. The venue does not come with really anything, you have to provide everything and the staff needed to put your wedding on– just something to keep in mind. It is not a «choose wedding package a, b, or c» type of place, which is why we love it, but others may want something more all inclusive.
All in all, we give the venue 5 stars!

This venue is so beautiful! As a wedding photographer I just fell in love with all the light streaming through the big windows… it makes the whole place look quite magical!
Its both beautiful and affordable and you can have your ceremony and reception here if you want to… makes for a very relaxed and fun wedding day!

Beautiful setting for a friend’s wedding. It’s a former library that looks like a church. Worth stopping in to see.

(Volunteered 10÷05÷13 SA @ 9:00am): You had me at ARTS!
As a new wrinkle for me, I decided to work as a volunteer at the 15^th Annual Eagle Rock Music Festival, produced each year by the Center For The Arts — Eagle Rock.
Outside of being the driving force behind this semi-​influential music block party, the facility also held intimate concerts, art installations, fitness classes, an annual art auction, and can also be rented out for weddings, conferences, etc.
Check out their calendar of events for very affordable entertainment, and remember, all proceeds are reinvested into such community-​driven offerings.
Service — The staff I dealt with were completely friendly, helpful, and professional. Mad props to Henny Alamillo who was the Volunteer Coordinator for the event. Granted, it wasn’t the staff whom I imagined were in charge of the various camps, exhibits, workshops, and various other programs. But in some cases, I felt you’d be safe to judge fellow associates to be cut from the same cloth. I definitely needed to make a return visit for another event.
Parking — As far as I could tell, they didn’t have their own parking lot, so there’s non-​metered parking on the cross-​residential street of Rockland Ave. or metered parking along the main drag of Colorado Blvd.
Atmosphere, décor, ambience — Formerly the original Eagle Rock Library, the architecture was of Spanish motif with some amazing saucer-​looking lights that hung from the high ceiling.
Plenty of natural lighting shown through the many windows that covered this building.
On this particular day, the floorplan was completely opened, and there appeared to be an exhibit closed off from the public that filled the front alcove window. However, quaint was an apt way to describe this place. The walls were snow white, with a kitchen and office area towards the back. A thin staircase led upstairs to what I figured were more offices, and there was a check-​in area of sorts at the base of the stairs. No TVs, and all I kept thinking was how this looked like when it was a library?!
Attire — Generally speaking, all events in conjunction with this business were pretty casual, so I’d be in a t-​shirt, boardshorts, and flip-​flops.
Overall, from what I could tell the Center For The Arts — Eagle Rock offered a wealth of programs that supported the community not only in the realm of the arts but so much more. As with most community centers, they were a non-​profit organization where most of their funding came from donations and the kindness of volunteer hours. I found very good value based on the prices, service, and experience noted above (total experience was around $ 0.00; no tip required), but if you learned anything about me through my reviews, I’m a big proponent of helping local communities especially when the arts, children, fitness, and history were involved. People needed to take more pride in their surroundings and give back whenever they could. Although I couldn’t say for sure if it was accepted for any onsite programs, my credit card of choice was accepted for online donations or membership… AMEX!