As its surroundings morphed – the Grove opened and the Farmer’s Market lured hipsters to share Patsy D’Amore’s habit-forming pizza with comedy writers in bifocals – the Farmer’s Daughter made its turnaround after decades of stagnation in style and substance.

It hadn’t had a facelift because the Farmer’s Daughter, despite its central location – it’s on Fairfax Avenue, jogging distance to Beverly Hills and a straight shot to downtown – never really kept up with L.A. Before 1997, it was owned by a Chinese couple who lived in Hong Kong. They dropped by occasionally and seemed to be satisfied with full rooms even if prostitutes and drug users were the primary guests.

“I am not sure they cared what the hotel looked like,” said Mark Panatier, a vice president at A.F. Gilmore Co., which owns Farmer’s Market. “It was not well-managed. I don’t think the owner paid much attention to how the hotel fit into the neighborhood.”

The first real improvement in years came in 1997, when Korean-born William Cho and his wife bought it. They began operating it with the help of their daughter, Christina and soon, with another daughter, Ellen, and her husband Pete Picataggio, began to shift the course of the 66-room property. They renovated it with a younger, savvier customer in mind, turning it from a motel to a hotel and adding a restaurant, Tart, which was recently finished.

“This was a typical motel. The model needed to change. The area certainly called for it,” said Picataggio. “It didn’t take a genius to see the property value had to go up. We saw an opportunity to put our own flavor into it.”

It wasn’t the first time the Chos had had picked up overlooked real estate on the upswing. They had purchased a hotel called the Minute Man on what is now the Las Vegas Strip and, with Vegas taking off, hit the jackpot selling it to a corporate development firm. They also fashioned delis and lofts out of a building in New York’s TriBeCa and were rewarded when the neighborhood became home to a Robert De Niro-backed film festival and a favorite of Wall Street execs with alternative tastes.

The family suffered a tragic setback before extensively overhauling the Farmer’s Daughter. Christina died in a car accident. Reeling from the loss, Cho asked Ellen, 36, and Picataggio, 37, to take over the place and spearhead the renovations. Ellen had a bit of business experience, having watched her parents’ work, but Picataggio had been trained as an engineer and came out of large corporations in Silicon Valley without a hospitality background.

“I was a (preferred) member of Starwood and a (preferred) member of Marriott,” Picataggio said. “Does that qualify me?”

Picataggio did have strong ideas about how to reinvigorate Farmer’s Daughter. It had to appeal to a desirable demographic – the 30-year-old to 40-year-old professional who totes rolling luggage and racks up the frequent flier miles on trips between New York, San Francisco and L.A. – without the exclusivity of many boutique properties.

Picataggio, a half-Portuguese, half-Italian family man with two young sons, wanted to make the hotel suitable for guys like himself, who are not too trendy, but willing to spend money for a unique experience. At some unrelentingly hip hotels, he often felt uncomfortable. “You would have some great looking model serving you, sticking his or her nose up at you,” he said. “I never liked the pretentiousness.”

Criminal element
Picataggio’s vision and the reality of the Farmer’s Daughter were out of sync. It did draw customers who came to L.A. to be contestants on “The Price is Right,” the perennial game show filmed across the street at CBS. But a criminal element was prominent; vagabonds and prostitutes who could pay the cheap rates of under $60 per night were frequenting the motel.

“There was a time that unless you were shooting up heroin, you weren’t staying here,” said Picataggio. Since professionals and heroin addicts don’t mix, the Farmer’s Daughter would have to drive out the latter to attract the former. The word had to get out on the street that criminal behavior wasn’t tolerated at the Farmer’s Daughter.