County to Sue Over Design of Olive View

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, complaining of a mistake in the design of Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar, on Tuesday ordered the county counsel to file a $1.3-million lawsuit against the architectural firm for the giant hospital.

Supervisors said the lawsuit is an attempt to recover the money the county must spend to correct a design that would have left insufficient space between floors to accommodate pipes, electrical lines and other equipment.

George Tice, director of the county’s Facilities Management Department, told the supervisors the plans had to be redrawn while the building was under construction to add six inches to the distance between each floor of the six-story structure.

Action Likely Next Week

The suit will probably be filed next week in Superior Court against the group that designed the hospital, Olive View Medical Center Architects and Engineers, Tice said.

The medical center was built at a cost of $120 million to replace an earlier Olive View Medical Center, which was demolished by the 1971 Sylmar earthquake one month after it opened.

Although the new facility was dedicated in March after two years of construction, it has yet to open because city Fire Department inspectors ruled that its fire protection system is faulty.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich criticized the Facilities and Management Department for not giving the hospital “the priority it should have been given.”

“It’s just been mistake after mistake,” Antonovich said. “I don’t understand why this has taken so long, and it’s still not open.”

Antonovich charged that there were five major design changes in the last 20 months of construction, which he blamed on inadequate architectural reviews by county officials. Antonovich also criticized Tice for not preparing backup plans in case the current attempt to fix the hospital’s fire protection system fails.

“It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket and then possibly finding out all those eggs are broken,” Antonovich said.

Other supervisors also expressed annoyance.

“This project seems to have been a major goof from the start,” Supervisor Pete Schabarum said.

Delays Criticized

“It seems like this is one of the worst examples of delays in the country,” Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said.

Robert Gates, county director of health services, said the hospital could open in December, at the earliest, if the fire protection system can be modified by installation of larger ventilation fans. The original fans, designed to blow smoke out of the building in case of fire, did not expel enough air to meet Fire Department standards.

In the meantime, the county’s Olive View Mid-Valley Hospital in Van Nuys will continue to operate until the new facility can be opened. Mid-Valley has treated county patients--mostly those too poor to go to private hospitals--since the original Olive View had to be abandoned.

Once the new hospital receives clearance to open, it will take about three weeks for officials to move about 85 patients from Mid-Valley and to inform the public that outpatient clinics have been moved. When it opens, it will have 270 acute medical beds and 80 beds for mental-health patients.

Lawsuit Ordered

The board ordered the lawsuit Tuesday after more than eight months of negotiations with the hospital’s general contractor, Newberg-Brinderson Co. of Los Angeles, and two subcontractors, Sam P. Wallace Co. Inc. and Pierce Enterprises.

The construction companies had sought $4.1 million for extra labor and materials they estimated were required to change their plans. The county eventually agreed to pay $1.3 million, the amount the lawsuit will attempt to recover.