Interview With Hank Hilty

MJ: Hank, thanks for joining us today.

HH: Mark. It's very good to be with you.

MJ: Would you tell us something about the Farmer's Market?

HH: Yeah. The farmer's market started here in Los Angeles in 1934. It was

the bottom of the depression, and Los Angeles, as the rest of the country,

was in a pretty desperate way, and the farmers that were through Los

Angeles had a very difficult time distributing their produce, and of course

the people in Los Angeles, being the depression, they were always looking

for an opportunity to buy vegetables and fruits as inexpensively as they

could. And a fellow came along down through California, he'd been rambling

throughout the country, his name was Roger Dalium. And he came into Los

Angeles, and certainly from his travels realized that the depression was a

very severe event, and had seen in small towns across the country these

farmer's markets where farmers opened stands on the roadside, or brought

their produce to a town center and sold it right to the people in the

towns, and in his travels in Los Angeles, came across the corner of 3rd and

Fairfax, and at that time, it was a large dirt lot. The Gilmore family at

that time were operating two very large stadiums on the property, a

ballpark and a sports stadium, but they were on the north end of the

property. The south end of the property was used mostly for overflow

parking, and it was unimproved, and just dirt. And he came to Mr. Gilmore,

Earl Gilmore, with this idea of starting a farmer's market. And Mr.

Gilmore, always being the one for a new idea or a new way to do something,

said, "Well, go right ahead. You, you know, make your arrangements, and you

can use the property during the day, because most of my sports activities

are going on at night when I need the parking, and we can share the

facility." So Roger Dalium went out and found about, oh, a dozen or so

farmers that thought that that was an interesting idea, to truck their

vegetables right to the end user, the resident in the area, and they came

down and parked their trucks on the property, lowered their tailgates, and

then sold directly to the people in this general area. And he took from

them as rent, he would take, he would charge them 50 cents a day. And he

would... When they would arrive, he would take from them a lug of

vegetables or fruit, as a deposit on their rent, and then when they had

sold enough to pay the rent, they would come and exchange the cash rent for

the vegetables, and then they would get their lug and go back then sell

that. And that went on for a number of weeks, and caught on, and with that

they gradually started to build kind of lean-to's, and canvas tarp covers

to keep the sun off of their vegetables and fruits. Gradually over the

years and years it grew into what we have today, which is a very large

institution here in Los Angeles, the Farmer's Market.

MJ: Would you tell us about your family involvement, and about how you

became the president of this enterprise?

HH: Well, it goes back long before the Farmer's Market. The Gilmore's,

Arthur Gilmore came to Los Angeles in the mid 1800's, and he was a dairy

farmer from Illinois, and came out to Los Angeles and teamed up with a

partner of his, and started a dairy farm down in the eastern part of Los

Angeles. And in about 1880, there was another very large depression in Los

Angeles, and many landowners went broke during that time. And he was

fortunate enough to, in the dairy business, to be quite successful, he and

his partner, and they had an opportunity to buy distressed properties. And

they came to a bankruptcy auction on the west side of Los Angeles and

acquired about 250 acres, which now comprises the Farmer's Market and the

Gilmore Adobe here, and much of the surrounding property, and they started

a second dairy farm in 1880, here on the west side of Los Angeles. They had

a falling out, and divided the properties. His partner took the dairy farm

on the east side of Los Angeles, and he took the dairy farm here on the

west side of Los Angeles. And he operated that for a number of years, and

he was very fortunate. As the tale goes, they were drilling for water in

the area, and they struck oil, and started to develop this property as oil

producing property. He went on, he and his son Earl, at the turn of the

century, went on to develop the largest distributor of oil products west of

the Mississippi. That was the Gilmore Oil Company. During the war, about

1943, '44, the Mobil Oil Company purchased Gilmore Oil Company, and that's

how Mobil made their inroads onto the west coast of the United States.

During that time, Earl Gilmore, while he was operating the oil company, was

also developing the sports facilities here on the property, and then of

course the Farmer's Market in 1934. And he was the president and the... He

and his father and mother owned all of the stock in the company, and they

went on to develop a number of ranches, they were in cattle ranching, they

were in mining, they were in number of different ventures during those

years. And he died in about 1964. At that time, I was just in high school.

And there was a man that worked for him by the name of John Gostivitch that

was, became the president and general manager of the company, and then in

the '80's............ Mr. Gilmore died in the mid '60's. He had a man that

was working for him by the name of John Gostivitch that became the

president and general manager for the company. And he worked in that role

until his retirement. During that period, I was working for the company. I

was.... started out as a bookkeeper, and then was trained as an accountant,

and over the years he gave more and more responsibilities to me to manage

the market and then on into the other affairs of the company. We own a

commercial bank among other things, and so I became more involved in

different aspects of the company. When he retired, I was then put in the

position of being the president and chief executive officer of the company,

which I still have that responsibility. We have many employees like myself

that have worked for the company for many many years, men that work on our

maintenance crews, to executives in the bank and the company here. We're a

very family oriented company, and we have long, deep history that we enjoy.

MJ: We're here in the middle of L.A. There's movie studios, t.v. studios,

recording studios all around us. And right in the middle of all this sort

of madness, there's this quiet little area. Do you sometimes feel like

you're stepping in and out of two different worlds here?

HH: It's... That's true. This is like a sanctuary, here on the grounds.

Right in the middle of Los Angeles we have CBS as a neighbor. Sometimes the

quiet sanctuary is broken by the sounds of their helicopters. Other than

that, we don't hear much of what's going on around the city. We have cats

and chickens and all sorts of wild animals that kind of roam through the

gardens, and it is an unusual setting. The Gilmore's, when they acquired

the property, the house was, part of the house was on the property. The

gentleman that had homesteaded this property, he built the original portion

of the house in 1852, so it goes back a long long way. It's one of the

oldest existing adobes in Los Angeles, and we pride ourselves on

maintaining it and using it for our family business.

MJ: What responsibility do you feel you have, or do you feel you have a

responsibility to your parents, grandparents, and now great-grandparents in

keeping up the various traditions?

HH: Oh, yes. There's... This is a family business. The, all of the

interests of the company are owned and controlled by the family. Of course

the family's much larger now than it was 120 years ago. But it continues to

be of much interest to all the family members; what's going on, the

development of the company and the businesses that it's in, and they take a

very active interest in that, and therefore I have a direct responsibility

to them to make sure that the company and the operations are managed in a

manner that they would respect. And I think that we've been very successful

over the years in doing that.

MJ: What about the Farmer's Market? Could you talk a bit about that, and

what you oversee on a day-to-day basis?

HH: Well, the market is, it's grown. As I said, it started with just a

handful of farmers. It's grown into a facility that has, oh, probably about

100 tenants at any one time, and these are all owner-operator tenants.

They're not like the typical shopping center or mall in southern

California, that are the businesses that are controlled by large companies

or have multiple facilities. These are all owner-operators. So they come in

the morning, they open their shop, they interact with the customers, they

sell the best produce, fruits, and products that they can possibly manage

to acquire, and they interact with their customers on a one-to-one basis.

They close in the evening, and they have to do that seven days a week. And

we're only closed a handful of days a year, so it's a devoted tenant,

merchant that comes into the market and conducts business here. And that

hasn't changed in the history of the market. We have several tenants that

are original tenants to the market. They can trace their businesses back to

the beginning of the market. None of them are the original merchants,

they're daughters or grandsons, or even in some cases great-grandkids of

the original founding farmers.

MJ: How do you oversee the operations?

HH: We have a staff of individuals that help and assist in that. We have a

market manager that watches things day-to-day, and we're responsible for

the maintenance of the facility. We pick up all of the debris and trash. We

maintain all of the buildings and facilities. We... the company provides

most of the services to the tenants. The tenants' responsibility is to

merchandise their products and interact with the customers and sell their

products. So we are not in the retail side of it, we are in the service

side of the market.

MJ: And you still collect 50 cents a day from them?

HH: No, it's not 50 cents a day. That's changed a lot over the years. It's

not that inexpensive anymore to provide those sorts of services as well as,

you know, a loaf of bread is not a dime anymore either. But the rents that

we do charge, we seem to be able to hit a happy medium where we're able to

continue to perform the services we that need to do, the tenants are able

to conduct their business, and to provide, you know, all of the necessities

that they need to provide for their own families. And we move forward.

MJ: Can you give us an idea of some of the products that are available, and

maybe even some restaurants, and just a flavor of the market?

HH: Well, the... On the fruits and produce we have a half a dozen stands

that sell fruits and produce, fresh fruits and produce. They no longer get

their produce from the, just the Los Angeles area. You can find fruits from

all around the world. You can find grapes in the market year-round. They'll

get them from Chile when they're out of season in Southern California.

They'll get apples from New Zealand. It's become a world produce economy,

and they've learned how to gain access to that, to those producers. We have

fresh meats and chicken, poultry in the market. We have sausage makers, we

have bakers that bake everything from very fancy cakes to basic breads and

rolls. Restaurants, we have probably 20 restaurants that range everywhere

from the most convenient of restaurants where you can just get a beverage

or a pastry to very sophisticated restaurants that will serve everything

from Japanese to Chinese to American barbecue. There's Cajun, there's

modern food which is kind of a new terminology for the kinds of foods that

are coming out of California, very representative of the type of produce

and the seasonings that the new chefs are making. It's a very broad range

of restaurants in the market.

MJ: What are you favorite things to get in the market?

HH: That's always a dilemma. We go over... there's about three of us from

the office here that go over at the same time and eat lunch, and we always

find ourselves walking inside of gate 1, standing inside of the east patio,

and stopping, and saying, "We've had all morning to think about what we

want to eat. Now we're confronted with it. What are we going to choose

today?" And it's usually something different every day. There's no

favorites that I have.

MJ: How has it changed over the years?

HH: It's changed in very subtle ways. Originally, when you go back to the

very beginning of the market, the people that were merchants were truly

farmers. They were the people that had the home farms, and toiled in the

fields, and grew their own produce and vegetables and fruits, and then they

would come and sell them to the public. That's changed. We only have one

tenant in the market that is truly a farmer. The balance of them are

merchants. They are produce merchants. They will go down to the central

marketplace and find just the handpicked vegetables and produce and fruits

that they know their clients will want, and then they will bring them here

and then sell them. They have relationships with farmers where farmers will

bring their produce in to them to sell, but when you're operating our

hours, which are pretty extensive, and seven days a week, you can't be a

farmer and a retailer both. That's changed. The type of foods found in the

market has changed. At one time, originally, the breadth of restaurant food

was pretty narrow. Now it's world-wide cuisine. You can find almost any

type of cuisine here. Or if we don't have it now, we may have had it in

years past, or we may have it in years to come. It's a very broad range of

food products. The same thing with dry goods; dresses and gift items,

crystal and jewelry. That's all changed over the years. The type has

changed, people's tastes have changed, and the market, being

owner-operators, they're much better prepared to respond to the change that

goes on, and they will change their product mix to respond to the changing

tastes of their clients.

MJ: Can you give us idea of how many people come through the market, and

what types of people or groups do you see?

HH: We don't know how many people come to the market. We have no

turnstiles, we don't charge for parking, there's no way for us to really

monitor how many people come through the market. The types of people that

come; we have three principle groups of people that come to the market.

There's the general resident that lives within, oh, several miles of the

market, to even longer stretches, because people will come and buy things,

special cuts of meats, special prepared products that they can't get

anywhere else. They'll come here. But generally we're a grocery store to

the community. So a big part of our clientele are people that come to the

market to use it as a grocery store. Another segment of the market are the

people that come and use it as a restaurant. They'll come in the morning

and have breakfast, and then they'll go on to work. They'll come at lunch

and buy lunch in the market, and then go back to work. And the third

segment are the visitors, the tourists. They come from everywhere to come

to the market. They'll come from overseas, they'll come from Orange County,

just, you know, miles away, they will come and use the market as a place to

visit and sit and enjoy and relax.

MJ: What things do you do consciously, or subconsciously.... to keep this

place from becoming too modern or becoming too much like its surroundings?

HH: Well, we spend a lot of time, whenever we need to make a change or

modification, whether it's a... to bring something new into the market, to

update the market in recognition of changing codes or requirements in the

city and the state, or whether it's a repair, we spend a lot of time in

trying to assess and analyze how to do it in a manner that makes it

disappear into the background and the fabric of the market. So you can go

around the market, I'm quite confident, and I can show you things that

might be anywhere from a year to five years old, and they feel like they

just fit in the market, and they've always been there. We spend

considerable effort in trying to maintain that sense of the market.

MJ: Would you tell us a little bit about your own family, and will your

children be taking over your work someday?

HH: Well, I don't know. They're... I have two boys, one is 18 and the other

is 16. They're still in school. They are still trying to find their feet

and their direction in life. My wife and I live in Van Nuys, which is a

suburb of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. Our one older boy is off

to college, so we don't see him much. And I've spent my entire professional

career working for the company. But when I was younger and out of college,

I didn't think that I would work for the company. It was a set of

circumstances that brought the opportunity to me, and I took it and tried

it, found that I enjoyed it, and have continued in that capacity. We have,

I have a number of cousins, and I have three sisters and three cousins, all

of us are in about the same age group. Only one of that group besides

myself came to work for the company, and that was my cousin. He worked for

the company for a number of years and found that it really wasn't what he

wanted to do, so he went off and took a different career path. At that time

I came in and found that I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the challenges, I

enjoyed interacting with the different people; there's a just lot of

variety to this company, and I've enjoyed it and gone on. There's always

that opportunity for anybody in the family to come and work for the

company, but there's... I don't think that they've ever felt that it's a

requirement, that it's necessary. It has to be something that they want to

do, and they of course would be welcome.

MJ: Would you tell us about the building behind us here?

HH: The building goes back a long ways. It was built in 1852 by a man by

the name of James Thompson. He didn't build the entire house, he built just

the southern portion of the house, where he lived and ranched on this 250

acres that was part of a much bigger rancho. But he acquired the property

in 1852, and built the original portion of the adobe. When the Gilmore's

acquired the house in, the house and the property in 1880, they expanded

the house. Being in the dairy business, they had a call and a need for

ranch hands and additional people to tend to the herd, and to tend to the

dairy product, and so they added onto the house to provide housing for

those ranchers. And the house kind of grew piece by piece as they added on

to their ranch hands. Then when the Gilmore's got out of the dairy business

at the turn of the century, they went back into the house and converted it

into a single family residence. So really what you see now goes back to

about the turn of the century.

MJ: And today your offices are in this building?

HH: Yes, today we have our offices, part of our offices are in the adobe.

When Mrs. Gilmore passed away in the mid 1980's, we were left with a

dilemma. We had our offices in another building on the property, but we had

a dilemma on what to do with the house. All of the, all of my family, every

member of my family, each one of us, wanted to be the ones to be able to

live in the house. Well, we couldn't all do that, and there was no way to

rotate the living in the house, so we decided that nobody would live in the

house, and that added to the dilemma on what to do with it. And finally out

of frustrations, we just decided to move the company offices into the

house. So we've been there ever since. And I'm not sure I'd want to change

that now seeing that I'm the one that gets to be in it as everyday. So in a

way, I'm the one that got to live in the house, by being the president of

the company and having our offices in there. We have our administrative

staff, is in here, the staff that operates kind of the day-to-day

operations of the market, or in the market itself. Most of the other

business comes out of that adobe.

MJ: Thanks for joining us today, Hank.

HH: Mark, thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

MJ: And your offices are in here today?

HH: Yes, the administrative offices for the Gilmore Company are in the

adobe. In about the mid-1980's, Mrs. Gilmore, who was living in the house,

passed away, and we were faced with a dilemma. We didn't know what to do

with the house. Every member of the family wanted to live in the house, so

that just wouldn't work. And out of frustration we just moved our corporate

offices in. We had our offices in another building on the grounds, so it

wasn't a difficult move. We just moved everything into the house. So the

living room now has the accounting department, the dining room is the

chief financial office. My office is in the old sitting room, and in a way

I was the lucky one of the family. Now I spend every day in the adobe.

The... all of the administrative functions for the company come out of the

offices here in the adobe. The administration day-to-day work for the

market is still housed in the market. We have offices there, but the

administrative function of the company is in the adobe.

MJ: Thanks for joining us today, Hank.

HH: Mark, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.

MJ: Thanks for joining us today, Hank.

HH: Thank you very much Mark. It's been a pleasure.