Angeles River on the east and from First Street on the north to the Santa Monica Freeway on the south. Expansion First and Alameda 1898–99. In 1898 an entrepreneur named A.E. Weeks had gathered enough properties from some thirty to forty owners to announce his plans to build a new wholesale center of four blocks on the west side of Alameda Street and the west side of Vine Street between First and Jackson streets and on the north and south sides of Jackson between Alameda and Wilmington streets. The purchase price was "well up toward a million dollars," and the sale was made to P.M. Daniel of the Pacific Crockery and Tinware Company, president of the Los Angeles Board of Trade, who was presumed to be representing other investors as well as himself. Buildings on the site were to be leveled, and "fine business blocks adapted to the need of wholesale houses" would be constructed in such a way that the Southern Pacific Railroad would have access to the Alameda frontage for easy loading and unloading of goods. The idea for such a district was taken from a similar project in St. Louis, Missouri, and its backers stressed the advantage for Los Angeles merchants in competing with San Francisco in Northern California. It was said also that the new center would "enable the Southern Pacific Railroad to place its cars at the very doors of the various wholesale houses, and the saving to the trade of this city will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a result of dispensing with drayage." The destruction of some sixty cottages and tenement houses was envisioned. A lumber yard had to be removed from First and Alameda to a new location near the La Grande depot A Los Angeles Times opinion article on January 6, 1899, however, argued against completion of the project, which would redound to the advantage of the Southern Pacific as opposed to its rival Santa Fe Railroad. The Times stated that the "proper place" for a new wholesale district would be between the Southern Pacific's Arcade Depot and the Santa Fe depot in the Palmetto Street-Santa Fe Avenue area because "The tracks of the two companies are only about 1700 feet apart there, so that switches could easily be made into warehouses." The plan envisioned freight cars being brought from the Southern Pacific line on Alameda