Historic Helms Bakery is gaining a new atmosphere. Ikea, tasty eats and fresh energy are coming to Culver City, all while keeping the building’s classic look
If you’ve ever driven through Culver City, you might have noticed a historic building called the Helms Bakery complex. Once a famous bakery that delivered bread and pastries all over Los Angeles. Now it’s getting a whole new look.
The Helms Bakery opened in 1931, staying in business for over 35 years. It was so well-known that it even supplied baked goods for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. People remember it as more than just a bakery, but a symbol of community and a historic landmark in the area.
The bakery closed in 1969, with community members attempting to bring it back for only a year in 2024. Although over time, the area has changed significantly. It became a place for furniture stores, home decor and restaurants.
Even though the bakery itself is gone, the building’s classic architecture has remained, making it one of the most recognizable spots in Culver City.
The Helms Design District, as it’s called today, will soon welcome a smaller, city-style Ikea store. Unlike Ikea’s huge suburban buildings, this one will be just 38,000 square feet instead of their typical 300,000- 400,000 square foot locations.
The upcoming changes include a smaller, city-style Ikea, barring its blue exterior, a Japanese restaurant and a new pizzeria. This shows how Culver City is balancing historic preservation with modern development. This isn’t just about newer stores but keeping the neighborhood relevant and lively while respecting its past.
In the fall of 2023, the California Legislature tasked the state’s fire safety regulators with writing a report that some housing affordability advocates say could make it easier to build bigger, airier and better-lit apartment buildings in California’s housing-strapped cities.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal was given until Jan. 1 to come up with a report on single-stair apartment buildings — a type of midsized multifamily development legal in much of the world, but effectively banned across most of North America.
More than a month later, single-stair advocates are still waiting on that report — though a draft version obtained by CalMatters hints that the office may be considering a modest change to the state building code.
“They were given a deadline,” said Stephen Smith, founder of the Center for Building in North America, which advocates for cost-reducing changes to building regulations.
That safety-minded code is meant to provide residents with multiple escape routes in a fire. But it has also become a focal point of criticism among a growing number of housing advocates, architects and urbanists, who say it raises the costs of multifamily construction, limits where apartments can be built, pushes developers toward darkened studios and away from family-sized apartments and provides limited health and safety benefits.
“I know there’s been a real desire among politicians in California to change the state’s image as a slow-moving state, but in this case I don’t see it,” said Smith, who was also a member of the working group of fire service professionals, building-code experts and housing advocates tasked with writing the first draft of the report for the state fire marshal. The group’s last meeting was Nov. 4.
“This report is still under review and we will publish the report as soon as it is approved for publication,” said Wes Maxey, Cal Fire’s assistant deputy director of legislation, in an email. He would not say when the report is expected to be released or what the holdup is about.
The state Legislature regularly assigns research reports of this kind to various corners of the state bureaucracy — and, as CalMatters has reported before, the state bureaucracy regularly blows past its assigned deadlines.
But the single-stair analysis has garnered considerable interest outside of Sacramento.
Rules in California (with the one, recent exception of Culver City) require apartment buildings taller than three stories to have at least two staircases connected by a hallway.
The Legislature was clearly interested in raising that height limit when it ordered the report in the first place.
“Many European countries allow buildings with single staircases and have better records on fire safety than the United States,” said Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Milpitas Democrat, urging a “yes” vote on his bill in the summer of 2023. “I believe having the fire marshal conduct the study will start the conversation about leveraging existing fire and emergency response technologies and strategies to maximize housing projects.”
Local fire marshals, fire chiefs and firefighting unions have, by and large, opposed easing staircase requirements in the building code wherever they’ve been proposed.
The final report is likely to disappoint either those organized fire services — a politically powerful constituency — or “Yes In My Backyard” advocates that have found an ally in Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A draft version of the report circulated among stakeholders in late October included a half-hearted endorsement of a change to the state building code. If the state fire marshal recommends new policy, the draft reads, the change should only be from a three-story maximum up to four. Any new four-story single-stair structures should also be restricted in size and abide by a number of other added safety-oriented restrictions, the report added.
Culver City, west of downtown Los Angeles, passed a single-stair ordinance last year to nix the second-stair requirement in certain apartment buildings up to six stories. Six stories is also the cutoff in New York City, Seattle and Honolulu. In Georgia, Vermont, Puerto Rico and Portland, Ore., the maximum is four.
The draft report, which is not final, also went out of its way to emphasize “the near unanimous feedback from California Fire Departments who are opposed to permitting single-exit stairway construction … greater than 3 stories.”
Whenever it is finalized and published, the report won’t have the force of law. But should state legislators opt to take up the issue in the future, its final recommendations are likely to carry weight with undecided lawmakers.
L.A.’s Westside is finally getting its first Ikea outpost.
The furniture company known for its Swedish meatballs and blocky “Kallax” shelving units has found a home inside the old Helms Bakery complex in Culver City.
The store, slated to open this spring, will be its 11th in California and is the company’s first “city-center” store in Los Angeles.
It will occupy a roughly 40,000-square-foot portion of a lot formerly used by L.A. luxury furniture retailer HD Buttercup, which went out of business last year, said Wally Marks III, owner of the Helms complex.
Ikea chose to open a location in Culver City because residents “spend a significant amount of time commuting and are increasingly impacted by affordability challenges,” spokesperson Briana Lehman said in a statement.
“We’re bringing the IKEA experience closer to where people live, work, socialize, and shop—just in a smaller footprint,” Lehman said.
The Helms building was chosen because it is a historic Los Angeles destination known for its restaurants and home furnishings businesses, Lehman said.
The complex has other furniture stores, including a Scandinavian Designs store, The Rug Warehouse and Room and Board.
The expansion is part of Ikea’s strategy of opening smaller stores targeting urban customers.
Unlike the larger suburban stores in Burbank and Carson, this Ikea won’t have signature vibrant blue exterior walls. The exterior of the beloved Art Deco building won’t change, Marks said.
There will, however, be showrooms with fully-furnished home kitchens and bathrooms tailored for a local L.A. audience.
Meanwhile, unlike the tiny 9,000-square-foot Ikea store that opened in Arcadia’s Santa Anita Mall in 2024, the Culver City location will feature a food court.
In 2023, Ikea opened an 85,000-square-foot location in downtown San Francisco.
In 2025, Ikea U.S. reported $5.3 billion in sales, including $1.9 billion in e-commerce sales, according to a company statement.
Ikea U.S. interim Chief Executive Rob Olson said in the statement that the company was able to grow in 2025 “despite a challenging external environment.”
In 2026, the company plans to “build on this momentum, focusing on continued investment in the U.S. to make IKEA more affordable, accessible and sustainable,” Olson said. The company has set a goal of opening 10 new stores during its 2026 fiscal year, which began in September.
The 11-acre Helms complex is the former home of the Helms bakery, famous for the butter yellow trucks that once zoomed across Southern California delivering fresh bread and for being an official supplier for the 1932 Olympics – a distinction still proudly displayed on a rooftop sign.
The bakery shut down in 1969 because the founder did not want his company to unionize, The Times once reported. The Marks family real estate firm bought the property in 1972 and turned it into a center for home furnishings and antiques.
A new version of Helm’s Bakery opened inside the Helms Design District in November 2024 but closed in December due to lagging sales. That 14,000-square-foot lot has found its next tenant, Marks said.
No extra parking is being built for Ikea, but patrons can use the existing Helms Bakery lots across Venice Boulevard, Marks said. The store is a short walk from the Culver City light rail station and bus lines, he said.
Culver City community members and business owners criticized — and made fun of — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday after she briefly discussed Culver City during a fiery Capitol Hill hearing over the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
Bondi Wednesday repeatedly clashed with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during her testimony at a Justice Department oversight hearing as they questioned her about the Trump administration’s handling of the case involving the late convicted sex offender.
When U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, whose district includes the Westside, questioned Bondi, the attorney general shot back by mentioning Culver City’s crime.
“Her district includes Culver City, and she’s not talking about any crime in her district,” the attorney general said.
But local officials disputed Bondi’s claim after no homicide was reported in the city in 2025. The city’s overall crime was down 9.7% in 2024, and it was reduced by another 6.1% in Quarter 3 of 2025, according to Culver City Mayor Freddy Puza.
“It was news to me that Culver City is full of crime and criminals. That’s not the case,” Puza said as he welcomed people to come, walk or bike around the city. “We have a great inclusive, welcoming city, so I just don’t see what they are talking about.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to NBC Los Angeles’ request for comment. It was not immediately clear why Bondi brough up Culver City.
Comedians like Heather Gardner poked fun at the comment, saying the crimes in the city involved coffee, bagel and ice cream.
“The worst crime in Culver City is that my favorite Mexican restaurant used to serve $3 margaritas, and now they’re $5 margaritas,” the comedian said.
Jennifer Casper, who owns Village Books and Coffee, agreed that Culver City is a great place to raise a family as it is a “lovely place to do business.”
“I hate to put down Los Angeles because I live in Los Angeles and I love it, but two blocks away in Los Angeles, there’s a much bigger crime problem,” Casper said.
One proud Culver City resident named Colin Miller even took a step further by inviting Bondi to visit the area, offering to be her tour guide.
“Pam, I would love to (show you around),” he said. “I have a girlfriend, but I can do it as a friendly thing, just to help her out.”
In the architectural age of minimalism and millennial gray, a wild and whimsical antidote made of old clinker bricks and jumbled shingles sits on a quiet street at the edge of L.A. and Culver City.
Formally, the spellbinding property is named the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments, named after the Disney artist and his wife who obsessively spent three decades building it. But locals call them the Hobbit Houses — fitting, since they look straight out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
The complex looks comically out of place amid Culver City’s commercial corridor along Venice Boulevard. It’s surrounded by modern apartment buildings, boxy and inoffensive, built to blend in with today’s taste.
A bathroom in one of the Hobbit houses in Culver City adorned in glass tiles and ornate fixtures.
Amid that urban blur, the Hobbit Houses beg for your attention.
An electric lamppost flickers, mimicking fire. The tree in the front yard features a face, with eyes and a nose. The homes are filled with quirky leaded glass windows, uneven angles and heaps of wood shingles, resembling a thatched straw roof.
This year, the property hit the market for the first time. Offers poured in, and it sold to perhaps the most fitting possible buyer outside Bilbo Baggins himself: real estate agent Michael Libow.
At $1.88 million, Libow didn’t have the highest bid. His main qualification was that he owns and lives in one of the finest examples of Storyboook style in the region: the Witch’s House, a medieval-looking masterpiece that is more befitting a “Hansel and Gretel” adaptation than the streets of Beverly Hills.
The broker, seeing his connection to the style, promoted Libow to the seller, an out-of-state bank trust. The Hobbit Houses were his.
Michael Libow peers through a heavy wooden door of a Hobbit house that he purchased in early 2025.
“It’s like a companion piece to my own home,” Libow said. “It’s a little oasis in a city that’s been overdeveloped.”
Now that he owns both, Libow has declared himself, tongue-in-cheek, the “King of Storybook,” and said he intends to protect the property and be a spokesperson for the style.
“This is my legacy: bringing a little bit of joy to as many people as I can,” he said. “It’s about preservation, but it’s also about bringing a sense of awe and wonder to the world.”
The Hobbit Houses are one of Southern California’s finest examples of Storybook architecture, a fantasy style that fittingly emerged in L.A. in the 1920s around the start of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Inspired by cinema setpieces and centuries-old European cottages, architects designed playful homes with turrets and gables on the outside and nooks and crannies on the inside. When done well, the finished product looks lifted from a fairy tale.
A cat digs around on the roof of a Hobbit house in Culver City.
Disney artist Lawrence Joseph built the Hobbit Houses from 1946 to 1970. Over the years, the property developed a lore all its own. He rented out spare units to Hollywood tenants such as actor Nick Nolte and dancer Gwen Verdon, and the place also housed one of the men who kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son (authorities found most of the ransom money Sinatra paid, $240,000, in one of the units).
Lawrence died in 1991, and his wife, Martha, got to work protecting the property. She obtained landmark status in 1996 and donated an easement to the Los Angeles Conservancy, ensuring that it can’t be remodeled or torn down.
The property, which includes nine units across four buildings, needed some work when he bought it, so Libow and his property manager, Ben Stine, have spent the last few months playing a developer’s version of “Minesweeper,” trying to make small improvements for the tenants — electric work, a tankless water heater — without disrupting anything protected by the L.A. Conservancy easement.
The Hobbit Houses came with a 15-page report detailing all the things protected on the property: not just the buildings themselves, but also the facade, landscape features and the interiors, including the custom furniture that Lawrence carved himself. Even the wallpaper can’t be touched.
“Protections within a structure are very unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Libow said.
Detail of the flooring inside a Hobbit house in Culver City.
That means for renters, much of the furniture is included with the rent. The latest vacant unit — a two-bed, one-bath with a den — includes bar stools and a rocking chair that Lawrence carved.
The house is wrapped in clinker brick, a term for when clay bricks are set too close to the flames when being fired in a kiln, giving them distorted shapes and colors. Such bricks were sometimes trashed in older architectural eras, but these days, they’re prized for the unique look they bring to buildings, and perfectly natural for Middle Earth architecture in Culver City.
Inside, Lawrence’s sailing background shines through with nautical-themed interiors. A ship’s wheel serves as the chandelier, hanging above vertical-grain boat-plank floors that lead to a galley-style kitchen with a curvy bar.
“The idea behind Storybook is to have something fanciful and whimsical, which involves movement rather than rectilinear rooms,” Libow said. “There’s barely a right angle on the entire property. Everything’s amorphous in shape.”
Detail inside a Hobbit house in Culver City.
There are no knobs to be found; doors open with hidden latches and levers. A built-in fold-down desk pops out in the living room. In the master bedroom, a “cat door” slides open to provide easy access for felines that hang around the property.
The nine units range from 200 square feet to 1,200 square feet. The vacant unit, which spans around 1,000 square feet, hit the market a few months ago for $4,500 per month.
It’s a high price for the neighborhood — most two-bedroom apartments nearby fall in the $3,000 range — but interested renters still swarmed.
“These aren’t your typical tenants that need four walls and a sink. We get a lot of people in the creative industry,” Libow said. “You’re renting a lifestyle here.”
Libow said like his own home, which serves as a regular stop for Hollywood tour buses, the Hobbit Houses are a regular resting point for people walking through the neighborhood.
“Construction workers will walk by on their lunch to look at the turtles in the pond. It’s a break from reality, even if just for a minute,” he said.
Michael Libow outside one of his Hobbit houses in Culver City.
Libow and his property manager spend a lot of time on the grounds, looking for projects or small improvements they’re allowed to make under the conservancy. But for Libow, who bought it as a collector’s item as much as an investment, it’s a labor of love.
“It’s not the most functional style of architecture, but it is the coolest,” he said. “It’s weird, but I’m weird myself. I connect with weird.”
A man has been arrested on suspicion of breaking in to a Culver City home last month and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl, police said.
Marcos Maldonado, 35, was on a bus headed to Bakersfield when it was stopped by police and he was arrested Thursday, according to the Culver City Police Department. Police identified Maldonado through DNA evidence.
Maldonado was booked on suspicion of felony aggravated sexual assault of a child and is being held on $1.25 million bail, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jail records show.
On the morning of Dec. 2 , Culver City police responded to a call of a sexual assault in the Blair Hills neighborhood. Investigators said that Maldonado allegedly entered the child’s home around 2 a.m. and left around 7 a.m. The family reported the crime a short time later, police said.
Officers immediately canvassed the surrounding area for witnesses and additional evidence, recovering video surveillance footage that showed the suspect leaving the area. At the time, investigators released images from that video.
“From the day that this crime occurred, detectives have worked tirelessly to identify and locate the involved suspect,” Jennifer Atenza, a department spokeswoman, said in a news release.
Culver City police collaborated with the UCLA Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center and the Los Angeles district attorney’s office throughout the investigation and will continue to do so for the filing and prosecution of this case, authorities said.
The police department has not received any reports of Maldonado’s connection to additional crimes in the Culver City area. The department said it will continue collaborating with other law enforcement agencies to identify any potential additional victims.
