Santa Fe Freight Depot is a quarter-mile-long building in the industrial area to the east of Downtown Los Angeles, now known as the Arts District.

[8] The renovation was designed by SCI-Arc graduate and faculty member Gary Paige who described the building as a "found object -- one with ceilings up to 20 feet (6.1 m) high and broad views of the downtown skyline.

"[9] One reviewer noted that the structure was a mixed blessing: "Time had been generous to it, giving the interior surfaces a seasoned patina akin to character lines on a wise face.

Enter a studio through its doorway (which has no door), and you are standing on what is more like a stage, looking out through a proscenium framed by new steel posts and girders set parallel to and in tandem with the old concrete columns and beams.

However, the area's revitalization has driven up the property's value and resulted in an expensive legal battle that ended with a determination in June 2005 that SCI-Arc did not have the right to purchase the depot building and land in which its campus is located.