$30,000 Study to Consider Fate of Civic Auditorium

The Glendale City Council voted Tuesday to spend $30,000 on a study that will look into building a new civic auditorium rather than renovating the existing 48-year-old structure.

With little discussion, the council voted, 3 to 2, for the study, which follows an architectural survey completed last year. The survey found the Glendale Civic Auditorium to be structurally sound but in need of more than $1 million in repairs and renovations.

The new study is expected to evaluate several alternatives to make sure that Glendale has the space for business meetings and exhibitions to match the city’s growth as a financial center.

Alternatives Listed

Among the alternatives are construction of a new building at the auditorium’s present site on North Verdugo Road, finding a new location, tying in a new auditorium with the possible construction of a high-rise hotel downtown and renovation of the old auditorium.

The cost of building a new auditorium has been estimated at $4 million to $6 million. The study is expected to include suggestions for alternative methods of financing a new building.

The contract for the new study was awarded to the Los Angeles consulting firm of Economic Research Associates and architect A. C. Martin, who, in their combined bid, estimated that it will take 16 weeks to complete the job.

The council called for bids on the study at a meeting in June after Councilman Larry Zarian suggested that the city build a new auditorium instead of doing a “patch-up job” on the old, 60,000-square-foot structure.

2 Who Opposed Study

Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg and Councilman Carl W. Raggio held out against the study at the meeting this week and in June. “My vote will indicate I’m totally against a new civic auditorium,” Bremberg said Tuesday in registering an emphatic “No.” No other council member commented on the issue.

The council had been considering spending $1.2 million to renovate the auditorium, a popular location for trade shows, dances, seminars and meetings. The auditorium is booked solid nearly every weekend but, because of an awkward floor plan, only about half its space is considered usable for certain conventions and trade shows.

The two-level building needs $800,000 worth of repairs to the roof, floors, ceiling, walls and mechanical systems, according to the architectural survey conducted by EdCon, a Thousand Oaks consulting firm. EdCon indicated that it would cost another $400,000 to upgrade the building with elevators, a kitchen, a new entrance, improved fire sprinklers and more rooms for meetings, storage and arts-and-crafts programs.

The Economic Research Associates study will also consider what to do about the Verdugo Swim Stadium next to the auditorium. The stadium’s 50-meter pool, which is used 12 weeks during the summer, loses 2,000 gallons of water a day because of cracking and a faulty pipe system.