Arts & Entertainment

Watch: For Expo, Track 16 Demolished

Video by Santa Monica Museum of Art shows demolition of the Track 16 building to make room for the Expo Light Rail.

Bergamot Station Arts Center said its final goodbye Tuesday to one of its industrial-style buildings that up until just a few weeks ago housed the Santa Monica Auctions, Track 16 Gallery and Robert Berman Gallery.

The building was leveled Tuesday and captured on video by the Santa Monica Musuem of Art:

There is now a hulking new overpass on Cloverfield and Olympic Blvds. and today (January 22, 2013) we witnessed the demolition of Track 16—a bittersweet goodbye to this local icon. We watched with awe as the giant claw of the excavator ferociously devoured the building.

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Track 16, which sold fun, vintage American memorabilia and served as an events venue, has dropped "gallery" from its name and is now located in a warehouse in Culver City, according to its website. Robert Berman’s Gallery and Auction House, however, has found other space on the Bergamot grounds, according to KCRW.

The City Council has big plans for Bergamot once the train arrives. Earlier this spring, it approved a proposed makeover that could include the addition of an 88-room boutique hotel and a parking structure, and, possibly, a new home for the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

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The museum's executive director, Elsa Longhauser, has said she is eager for the changes. The new Expo Line is expected to carry tens of thousands of riders from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.

“The city has been talking to us about providing the land, the building shell, and the core," she said in June of a new home for the museum. "They know we need a minimum of 20,000 square feet and they are comfortable with that.”


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