The 62-Story Question: Why? : Firms With No Computers, Offices Learn to Improvise
Somewhere in the fire-blackened vastness of the First Interstate Bank building, there are legal documents that need filing, bank statements that need mailing, computers that need accessing and mementos that need retrieving.
But all that the lawyers, bankers and other businessmen suddenly displaced by this week’s disastrous downtown fire could do Friday was nervously await word on when they could re-enter the Los Angeles skyscraper, as they scrambled to find temporary office space elsewhere in the city.
“If we could just send one man in to turn the switch on our computer, we could get a lot of information out,” lamented attorney Timothy J. Sargent, a senior partner in the firm of Bodkin, McCarthy, Sargent & Smith. “But we can’t even do that yet.”
“We’re trying our best to satisfy our customers and calm people down,” said Anissa Perez of the Bank of Seoul, which was forced to take up temporary office space at another bank building. “We’re even trying to calm our officers. Everybody is frantic.”
“The only hardship is what do you do about getting your mail?” asked Gene Gregg, an attorney with the law firm of Gregg & Armour, who gave up trying to work Friday morning and repaired to the third-floor bar of the California Club. “I finally tracked down where that can be located, (then) you suddenly find that you don’t even have stationery, so that’s another problem I’m trying to resolve.”
The fire that erupted late Wednesday night left an estimated 100 lawyers, nearly 2,500 First Interstate employees and perhaps 1,000 others without a place to work.
Flames damaged the 12th through the 16th floors of the First Interstate building, while water and smoke ruined at least 10 other floors, turning the 62-story structure into a ghost tower. The bank and more than 30 other tenants were without office space.
Sargent, whose 35-attorney law firm was the largest in the building, occupied offices on the 50th and 51st floors. The biggest problem for the law firms, Sargent said, is that they are virtually paralyzed without access to their legal files in literally thousands of civil cases.
“Right now our biggest worry is the files,” he said. “But I don’t think any of the law firms were on floors where there could have been serious destruction. I think the worst we will have is some files that will be smoke damaged and probably smell bad for a long time.”
Trials Start Monday
Sargent said that, nevertheless, his firm is starting two civil trials Monday. He won a reprieve in a third case, Sargent said, when Superior Court Judge Bruce R. Geernaert, who initially refused to grant a continuance, read about the fire.
Friday morning, half a dozen of the firm’s lawyers were huddled in a conference room in the adjacent Sanwa Bank building provided by the firm of Quinn, Kully & Morrow, an offshoot of a now-defunct firm that occupied four floors of the First Interstate building until last July.
“We want to help anybody we can in this situation,” said John J. Quinn, who volunteered the free space to Bodkin’s lawyers. “Right now they can’t even get to their files. That can totally immobilize a law firm.”
In addition to the Bodkin firm, tenants of the building included the Los Angeles office of Coudert Brothers, a major New York firm. Sargent said real estate brokers are expected to have temporary lodging for both firms by the start of next week.
The First Interstate building once had about a 50% lawyer occupancy rate, but in recent years the bank took more and more space as law firms moved out to the city’s new Bunker Hill legal center.
Brad Koppel, a specialist in downtown-area leasing for Grubb & Ellis, said he did not anticipate any significant movement of companies out of the First Interstate Bank building unless severe structural damage is discovered and permanent relocations are required.
“Many tenants might find it easier to close down for two weeks or so than to relocate,” he said. “Leasing new space is a multi-month process, a great deal of work.”
He said that there is a 12% vacancy rate in office space downtown and “plenty of places to go if needed” but that new office space requires weeks of preparation, including carpet installation, construction of partitions, phone line installation and other work that “can take eight to 12 weeks to construct.”
The fire caught both big and small firms off guard.
“We’re calling ourselves Gypsy lawyers,” said Rebecca Mocciaro, who works at the seven-lawyer firm of Leff, Katz, Rees and Mocciaro.
Mocciaro said she is borrowing an office from a fellow lawyer at the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Her partners are ensconced at other borrowed offices around town.
“People are calling us. We go to meetings, and our opposing counsel say, ‘Use our office.’ It’s nice to see the legal profession show a little camaraderie because we’re usually at each other’s throats.”
Because she has no access to her files, she has been driving over to clients’ offices to review theirs. Today, the partners plan to regroup and assess what to do--rent temporary office space for a week? Two weeks?
Mocciaro and another partner, Samuel T. Rees, said they are thinking that they may simply have to move elsewhere permanently.
Both noted that this is the third time they have been evacuated from their offices: for two days after October’s earthquake for structural inspection, then for another full day following a big power outage five days later, and now this.
While the problems of law firms are acute, so too are those encountered by banks that occupied the building.
The Bank of Seoul, which had occupied the 19th floor, quickly redeployed its 30 employees to the second floor of an affiliated bank under construction at Olympic Boulevard and Normandie Avenue.
“We’re in between the construction, paint and everything,” said Anissa Perez, secretary to the general manager.
“They tell us to call every day to find out how the situation is going,” Perez added. “Right now, we don’t have our documents or anything. All our statements that we were supposed to send to our customers, the loan statements, they’re at the First Interstate building. Our general manager is very nervous and frustrated at the moment because we don’t know where to go.”
At the giant First Interstate Bank, meanwhile, hundreds of workers got their second day off Friday with full pay. Others in the bank’s temporary headquarters at 1200 W. 7th St. manned phone banks, looking for available office space to lease in Los Angeles for departments that have special equipment needs or could not be immediately relocated.
At one phone bank, employees were telling workers whether to stay home or report to work at several temporary locations that had been set up almost overnight to accommodate numerous bank functions. Non-critical employees, including much of the support staff, were told to contact a phone number next week that will tell them whether to return to work.
‘At Home Enjoying It’
“They are at home enjoying it,” bank spokesman Ken Preston said. “They will get a few more days off we believe, but no more than that.”
Preston said the bank’s financial planning, loan services, central money desk, foreign exchange and treasurers had quickly been relocated to the building at 1200 W. 7th St. downtown, which bustled with scores of employees wearing “visitor” stickers and trying to find their way to the correct floors.
Credit operations and other departments were moved to offices at Bixel Street and Wilshire Boulevard, while the metro division, which administers the bank’s numerous branch offices in the downtown area, has been relocated to Glendale.
All-important traders, burned out of the 12th floor, were dispatched to offices in New York, Los Angeles and even Tokyo, Preston said. Another spokesman said the bank’s economists were “working out of their homes.”
Robert M. Newell Jr., a partner in the law firm of Donnelly, Clark, Chase & Smiland, was at his San Marino home Friday as he reflected on the week’s events.
“We’re working out of our homes, out of our cars and by telephone,” Newell said. “It’s a challenge.”
As for Rebecca Mocciaro, the attorney said Wednesday is a day she will not soon forget.
Her husband, Perry, who works at the Fox Plaza building in Century City, was locked out of the building for several hours that day when a disgruntled client took a hostage in a lawyer’s office and police lines blocked the entrance throughout the afternoon.
That night, his wife learned that her own office building was burning.
“A great day in the fast lane in L.A.,” Perry Mocciaro said.
Times staff writers Kim Murphy, William Overend and Jill Stewart contributed to this story.
