Santa Ana Freeway Plan Delayed : Widening Project Set Back by Study of Historic Buildings

Planning for the critical widening of the Santa Ana Freeway has been delayed 10 months by the required study of two historic buildings, one of them a 1917 power company substation believed to be designed by the same architect who did Los Angeles City Hall and Memorial Coliseum.

The completion of the Environmental Impact Statement for the widening of the freeway between the Garden Grove Freeway and the Riverside Freeway was delayed when a survey found two buildings in Anaheim, the 1929-vintage Melrose Abbey and a Southern California Edison relay station, qualified for historic preservation.

“We have basically lost 10 months that can’t be made up,” said Tom Fortune, Orange County Transportation Commission spokesman.

Barry Rabbitt, deputy district director for Caltrans, said the delay happened because previous historical surveys had failed to identify the Edison building. “It was not until late in the environmental process that a historian said this building might have some historic value,” Rabbitt said. “We didn’t want a delay, but compliance with the law, the National Historic Preservation Act, required us to perform the research.”

Casen said the delay is an example of “U.S. bureaucracy at its prime. . . . There is a lot of red tape to cut through.”

The Melrose Abbey, at 2303 S. Manchester Blvd, was built in mission-revival architectural style and designed by San Diego architect Robert Halley Jr. The abbey’s twin towers are easily visible from the freeway.

The Abbey is not physically in the way of the freeway expansion but will be affected by noise. But the Edison building is in the path of the proposed widening. One alternative is to move the building, another is to have it photographed, rendered in architectural drawings and then demolished, said Caltrans planner George Casen.

Anaheim City Councilman Irv Pickler, an OCTC commissioner, said he wished that the commission had “gotten wind” of the delay in the Santa Ana Freeway planning sooner.

While more than a dozen road projects in the county are on schedule, including the Santa Ana widening project between the El Toro Y and the Costa Mesa Freeway, there is also a seven-month delay in the widening of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.

Casen said the Edison building was probably designed by John Parkinson, a Southern California architect who designed some of the most prominent buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including City Hall, Union Station and the Pacific Mutual building.

Ruth Ann Lehrer, former director of L.A. Conservance, said Southern California Edison was one of Parkinson’s major clients early in his career.

“He designed an Edison building on 4th and Main Street in Los Angeles and a huge substation on North Main Street north of downtown,” she said.