Bits of Building Sold Amid Protests in L.B.

For sale: a piece of the historic Jergins Trust Building now being demolished. A piece of this city’s history is heading to Dallas and other pieces are up for grabs as panels from the top of the ornate Jergins building go to whoever will pay $800 to $1,000 per slab.

Preservationists contacted last week were surprised, and in some cases outraged, to hear that the city kept five of the 54 panels for preservation while the wrecking company is selling the rest. Some thought it ironic that while pieces of the building are up for sale there is a new movement in City Hall to incorporate parts of old buildings in new developments.

“That’s shocking,” said Planning Commission Chairwoman Nancy Latimer. “They told us all the way through the process that they were beyond the possibility of restoring (the building)” and the gold-toned panels decorated with angels were “too corroded” to be valuable, she said.

Selling the panels “is a slap in the face to the people of Long Beach,” said Latimer, also the founder and past chairwoman of the Coalition to Preserve Historic Long Beach.

Renee Simon, chairwoman of the coalition, was also disappointed that “pieces of Long Beach” are going elsewhere. “They’re irreplaceable. You can’t make history,” she said.

Mark Delano, a marketing and sales representative for In-Tek Demolition, said he was surprised at the negative reaction. “You would think people would be glad you’re trying to save some of them.”

“The price is set by demand,” Delano said. “We’re basically covering what it’s costing to bring them down. We’re not making a huge profit on them.”

Doug Otto, chairman of the Long Beach Heritage Foundation, said he wished the city had demanded more than five of the 54 panels on the top of the building. “It seemed fairly shortsighted if they only required them to save five,” he said.

Planning commissioners, who approved the demolition with the condition that five panels be given to the city, were told that the panels were corroded and not valuable, Latimer said. In addition, Latimer said, she has been told many times that the city’s salvage yard is “overflowing” and there is no room for anything other than examples from a building.

But the preservationists were encouraged that officials plan to inventory historic artifacts in the city’s storage yard and are moving to use leftovers from old buildings in new developments.

A statue called the “Long Beach Venus,” for example, will be placed in the Shoreline Square development under construction on Ocean Boulevard, said Don Westerland, chairman of the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

Nude Being Fixed

For now, the nude that once graced the old Fox West Coast Theatre is in the city storage yard, where workers are filling in tiny cracks and getting it ready for its new home.

Located in the western part of town, the yard is filled with the stuff of bygone days: chunks of decorative buildings, a few gargoyles and rusty giant chandeliers from the castle-like Pacific Coast Club, now under demolition.

With wrecking balls tearing down the Jergins building and the Pacific Coast Club, both on Ocean Boulevard, the storage yard is becoming a depository for even more artifacts. They include wood paneling from Jergins and parts of a 3-ton intricately designed header that topped the front door of the Pacific Coast Club, said Alan Bisson, the carpentry shop supervisor at the storage yard.

Plan for Inventory

Because the number of artifacts is growing, officials plan to inventory what they have, said Robert Paternoster, head of the city’s Planning Department. Latimer said officials also plan to develop a policy and procedures on how the items can be used.

For now, owners of architecturally or historically significant buildings are told what pieces of the structure they need to contribute to the city as a condition for the demolition permit. Typically, the pieces serve as examples of what the building looked like, Paternoster said.

In the case of the Jergins building, the city wanted five of the large slabs from the top floor, one of the smaller panels used two floors below and wood from four suites, Delano said. The rest of the large slabs are up for sale, but the smaller ones are too expensive and difficult to salvage, he said. So far, the demolition company has sold 12 pieces to a Texas developer for a project in Dallas and about half-a-dozen to Long Beach residents, Delano said.

Would Use More

Preservationists said they hope the city will incorporate more of the old into the new.

Some pieces of the past, for example, could be incorporated into the $1-billion Pike Property project unveiled last week, said Luanne Pryor, a mayoral candidate whose platform emphasized preservation. Since the central corridor through the proposed buildings would draw its name from the old Pike amusement park promenade, Walk of One Thousand Lights, maybe some artifacts could be used there, Simon and others suggested.

Rob Bellevue, owner of the Pacific Coast Club, said he hopes to use items, such as detailed pieces that sat on top of columns inside the building, for the new $40-million condominium development. And if the architects can work it into the plan, an old concrete sign reading “Pacific Coast Club”--now in the city’s possession--could be used in the new building, Bellevue said.

“It gives at least some sense of the past to the site,” Bellevue said. “Maybe we couldn’t save the whole club, but it gives it a little piece . . . for people who didn’t have a chance to see it while it was up.”

Gary Felgemaker, the city’s community planning manager, said that if an old item is to be placed anywhere, the same site is preferable. “They have more meaning that way,” he said.

There is nothing new about using the remnants of a structure no longer standing. A mural on 3rd Street near the Promenade, for example, came from an old auditorium where the Convention Center now sits. And the cannon sitting by Shoreline Village spent some time collecting dust in the city’s open storage yard, said Bisson.

But some people believe Long Beach doesn’t do enough about saving and using historic structures and artifacts, and they would like to see more of it.

“I certainly hope,” Otto said, “that the artifacts from our historic buildings will be kept in Long Beach as a reminder of our heritage--and not funneled out elsewhere.”