Law Shakes Owners : 600 Buildings Face Costly Quake-Proofing Work

Marvin Prichard and his wife learned about the city’s earthquake safety ordinance the hard way. It cost them their house.

The couple had to virtually raze their Spanish-style home at Newport Avenue and 2nd Street and rebuild it to meet the city’s strict earthquake abatement ordinance--billed as the toughest in the state. The only things left from the original house are the hardwood floors and one bathroom, Prichard said.

The couple’s experience, which they said cost them “lots of money and nightmares,” is an extreme example of what can happen as owners of about 600 affected buildings begin trying to meet a 1991 deadline for complying with the Long Beach earthquake law.

On March 10, 1933, Long Beach took the brunt of a 6.3 earthquake centered off Newport Beach. The quake killed 115 people and caused about $40 million in damage.

Almost 40 years later, city officials adopted an ordinance requiring that all structures built before 1934 and not constructed of wood be reinforced by 1991 to withstand earthquakes. The ordinance is tougher than those in effect in Los Angeles and other cities, which have ordinances dealing only with unreinforced masonry buildings. Buildings constructed after 1934 are not affected because they had to meet stricter codes.

The most hazardous buildings, numbering about 300, have been destroyed or upgraded. More than 600 other buildings in the city fall into a less-hazardous category but must be upgraded. By 1991, they will either have to meet the earthquake standards prescribed by the 1970 Uniform Building Code or face demolition.

That concerns preservationists, who note that the list includes some historically significant buildings, such as the Breakers hotel, the Villa Riviera Apartments and the Farmers & Merchants Bank in downtown Long Beach. It also poses a dilemma for hundreds of smaller businesses that must choose between pouring thousands of dollars into upgrading their structures or moving out.

Bud’s Auto Seat Covers, for example, has been in the same spot on Anaheim Street for 29 years. Four years ago, the owners spent $18,000 to reinforce the brick building, according to one of the partners, Andrea Chandler. But city officials said that the effort was not enough, and now owners have another three years to determine how much it will cost to further upgrade their building or whether they will move to another site, she said.

“They’re forcing a lot of people out of business,” Chandler said.

Only a few doors away, B & B Motors faces the same problem. “With the cost of the remodeling, you may as well just build a new one,” said manager Bob Landers, who could not say what will happen to his family-owned shop.

The two businesses have plenty of company on Anaheim Street, where 129 buildings--the largest number on any street--fail to meet earthquake safety standards.

Yet to Decide

Many owners of small commercial buildings have yet to decide how to tackle the challenge posed by the city’s ordinance. On the other hand, owners and tenants of some of the larger buildings have hired engineers to study and then implement plans to bring their buildings up to code.

Structural engineer James A. Hill, for example, was hired to study three high-rise buildings downtown. Hill is reviewing proposals for the Sovereign Apartments and the Lafayette Apartments, and he completed a plan for the Willmore Apartments that calls for the addition of concrete walls to the first four floors.

The owners in the mostly residential, oceanfront Villa Riviera building also hired an engineer and they now await the final figures, according to Florence McKendry, who has an office in the 60-year-old building. In the meantime, owners can’t really consider selling their apartments or offices because “people don’t like to buy mysteries,” McKendry said.

Over at the ornate Lafayette building at Linden Avenue and 1st Street the situation is the same. Residents Joseph and Jean Krause, like their neighbors, wait to find out how much it will cost to renovate their building. They suspect the tab Lafayette’s 151 owners will have to share will run between $200,000 and $400,000. That’s a lot of money--especially for some of the elderly owners, who bought the condominiums at a fraction of what they would cost today and have already paid them off, said resident Joseph Krause.

“We’re people who moved into downtown because we like the area. We like these neat old buildings, but we’re being sorely taxed for it,” said Krause, a Cal State Long Beach professor who owns what used to be a 3,000-square-foot ballroom.

Among the options available to reinforce a building is the traditional use of steel beams and a newer technique that calls for drilling holes down the center of some walls, reinforcing them with steel and then filling them with a polyester and sand mix.

To pay for the costly retrofitting, Krause said he would like some assistance from the city via low-interest loans or other financial aid. Earlier this month, the City Council instructed City Manager James Hankla to review the possibility of a bond program that could help owners pay for bringing their buildings up to earthquake codes.

At the request of planning commissioners, the council also asked Hankla to consider conducting a survey of all the buildings on the list to identify those that are historically or architecturally significant.

Right now, city officials “have no idea” how many of the buildings are significant “because they’ve never been surveyed,” commission Chairwoman Nancy Latimer said.

Planning commissioners also have asked that city officials contact all the owners affected and encourage and help them to “immediately” start working on bringing their buildings up to code. City officials said they do not know how many owners are working toward the 1991 deadline.

Latimer said she fears that some owners will wait until the last minute and then take the “easy” route of demolishing their buildings.

To give owners an incentive to fight procrastination, planning commissioners are considering a couple of zoning ordinance amendments--including one that would allow, via a grandfather clause, nonconforming uses such as a parking-space shortage--to be retained in the remodeling. (Now, an owner rebuilding a structure has to comply with existing codes, losing any nonconforming rights.)

Completed the Job

The Prichards, who had to tear down their home and start from scratch, may be among the few facing the 1991 deadline who have already completed the work.

The Prichards’ home is one of only a handful of houses on the list of 600 buildings. The couple said that when they first moved into their home in 1981, the city mistakenly mailed a notice about the earthquake abatement ordinance to the broker instead of them. So they never heard about the required changes, they said.

Two years later, they said they requested--and got--permits for some major remodeling in the house. Again, the city did not inform them of the necessary changes. If they had known, the Prichards would not have bought the house--much less remodeled it--since they later had to demolish and rebuild it to meet the earthquake standards. The couple sued the city and the broker. Earlier this year, the lawsuits were settled in their favor, they said. They declined to disclose the amount of the settlement or the cost of the construction work.

Although few houses are included on the list, many larger residential buildings are targeted. And because a number of those apartment buildings house low-income tenants, some people are concerned that the ordinance will displace the poor. A few have suggested that part of the reason the ordinance was created in 1971 was to get rid of the older, dilapidated buildings in town.

“I know from past experience that the city has used it (the ordinance) just to move people out cheaply (because they can condemn a building without paying for relocation),” said Dennis Rockway, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach.

Cites Example

As an example, he cited the city’s condemnation of the Queensview Hotel a few years ago. At first, city officials said they had to shut down the building because it was not earthquake safe, Rockway said. Then, after the Legal Aid Foundation threatened a lawsuit, the city condemned the building, which was in a redevelopment area, and offered its tenants relocation money, Rockway said.

“I think it’s subject to a lot of abuse,” Rockway said.

Eugene J. Zeller, the city’s superintendent of building and safety, said he “can categorically state” that the ordinance is not used “as a tool of redevelopment.”

Charles Greenberg, now a private attorney who was a deputy city attorney in the early 1970s, said the same thing. Noting the 1933 earthquake, Greenberg said officials here have taken the lead to prevent tragedy should another major shaker occur.

But some people remain skeptical of the original impetus behind the ordinance.

John Pritchard, an architect who owns an office in the Willmore building, pointed out that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “the city was pretty derelict” and officials “wrote and encouraged policy that would get Long Beach moving.” Pritchard said he believes that movement, which has resulted in a boom of development for the city, included the 1971 earthquake hazards abatement ordinance.

That same drive, he continued, cost residents the loss of the Pacific Coast Club and the Jergins Building, two historic downtown buildings being razed to make way for new development. But now, city officials are beginning to recognize the importance of these older buildings--particularly in light of public pressure, Pritchard said.

“There’s something inherently nice about the character of old buildings,” Pritchard said. “I think the city is beginning to see this.”

Denying a connection between redevelopment goals and the earthquake law, city officials said Long Beach’s law encompasses all pre-1934 buildings, except wood structures, which are considered to be more earthquake-safe because they “give” when the earth moves, as a safety measure for its residents.

“The City of Long Beach has responsively faced the problem of earthquake-hazardous buildings,” Zeller said, “and fulfilled its duty of public trust to ensure that the occupants and users of these buildings will not be subjected to the extraordinary hazards that could surface in probable future earthquakes.”