C. Erwin Piper Technical Center

Despite the sign in front of the building’s parking lot that says «personnel only», stop by the security guard’s station there and ask for city records. On the third floor after parking, go to the extreme right to a small, tucked away door. We walked the entire length of the building on top looking for it.
The guy working here is helpful and cheery.
Good luck!

While I dislike the location of the archive, the people and archivists here are fantastic and I LOVE them. Todd Gaydowski runs an efficient ship and Michael always is friendly and interested in our work. When we send people to them, they always report a successful and productive visit. I wish I could give them more stars because they are the heart of the archive. Thanks for your GREAT work.

Ugly but functional building. Not open to the public.
But the cool factor here are the following:
* They do a lot of City printing here.
* The BAT Mobile is here. AKA Mobile Blood Alcohol Testing.
* LAPD Helicopters are parked here. You could see them from the 101 Freeway.

This is the place where city vehicles get fixed and have their maintenance taken care of. Due to the economic downturn, there are not enough city mechanics and too many vehicles for them to check on. So expect a long wait if you are dropping off a city vehicle for maintenance. As the previous poster before me said, you will find a lot of LAPD personnel in the premises since this is where the LAPD Air Unit is stationed.

Ah, good olé’ Piper Tech. The City of Los Angeles’ garbage dump of city archives.
Over the past few years, I’ve come here occasionally to do City research for my job. I will tell you that it’s a drab, dreary place – worthy of an emo-​teen with side-​swept bangs and a seemingly insignificant rubber band around his wrist (but it’s actually really significant). However, the stuff contained WITHIN the building is pretty damn cool.
It’s mostly used for LAPD purposes so you’ll be seeing a lot of police cars and city vehicles parked all over the place. I believe this is where they take their smashed up LAPD cars after a high-​speed chase because I always see them here. Supposedly, the building also dons the world’s largest rooftop heliport, better known as the heliport in «Blue Thunder». ~giggle~
The city archives are on the 3^rd floor, which is a pretty dull physical environment. Yet it’s cool to see little old ladies doing their research through old photos and newspapers for their historical societies or even an occasional detective looking through old bloody photographs to solve a cold case ~cue music from time period and slow motion video~
If you ever need to look through some aging City of LA archives, this is the place to go. Just figure out the box number you need them to pull out of the archives and go to town! You gotta pay 10 cents per copy and you gotta call ahead of time to give the archive people time to find the box and bring it out – give ‘em an hour. Then you can have lunch at Denny’s next door and take the metro home from the Patsaourus metro center, or whatever it’s called. The perfect plan.