Council OKs Seismic Retrofitting of City Hall

The Los Angeles City Council gave its final approval Wednesday to a five-year, $273-million seismic retrofitting and rehabilitation of City Hall. The vote was 11 to 2.

The mayor and City Council will be moved to City Hall East in 16 to 18 months during the work, said city legislative analyst Ron Deaton, who will be a member of a committee overseeing the work.

This will leave the seven-decade-old building vacant during the installation of the base isolators and the remodeling, which will include new stairwells, offices, furniture, electrical and mechanical systems, and replacement of many outside tiles.

A $126-million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, plus $230 million in seismic bonds approved by city voters, are available to fund the work.

Mayor Richard Riordan will recuse himself from the matter because of a business relationship with the designer of the project, A.C. Martin. Therefore, council President John Ferraro will sign the authorization instead.

Ferraro joined the council majority in saying that although the cost of the work has soared to three times the original estimate, the project is necessary to protect City Hall from earthquakes and prepare it for the 21st century.

“There are those who say we ought to tear this down and build another,” Ferraro said. “Can you imagine the reaction of preservationists if we tried to do that? It would be tied up in the courts for years, while nothing was done.”

Only Councilmen Joel Wachs and Rudy Svorinich Jr. voted no, both expressing fears that the price will rise much higher than $273 million. “We’ve gone for the Cadillac retrofit when we could have done it with a Chevy,” Svorinich said.

Councilman Marvin Braude said, “This may well be a billion-dollar project.” But Braude ended up voting for it.

The approval apparently spells an end to efforts by a blue-ribbon panel appointed last year by Riordan and city Controller Rick Tuttle to scale back the work to $165 million. Retrofitting work was suspended last year because of rising costs, estimated then at $240 million.