Hollow Celebration for USO Week : Military: There was a reception but no tour of the new Long Beach home of the USO club. The club’s remodeling project is already months behind schedule.

Last week was dedicated to the USO in Long Beach. A reception at the Pacific Coast Club featured taquitos and Pepsi. A pair of part-time comedians performed the classic Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s On First?” And about 40 people in suits and nice dresses listened politely as Mayor Ernie Kell declared USO Week and extolled the virtues of the venerable military service organization.

What did not occur was a promised tour of the group’s planned club and Los Angeles area headquarters on another floor of the building. The tour was impossible, organizers said, because the site has no lights and its stairs are dangerous. In fact, they said, 14 months after the facility’s scheduled opening it is still being used as a gigantic storage closet without a single new nail or beam in place.

“It’s been an interesting year,” USO board President Art Gardner told the crowd. “That’s a euphemism for agonizing.”

The delay has been caused, Gardner said, by a long series of mishaps and misunderstandings. And if it continues much longer, he said, it could be the prelude to a major financial disaster.

It was in September, 1988, that the Bob Hope Hollywood USO Club announced that it was relocating to downtown Long Beach. The first facility of its kind in the nation, the club had reached its zenith during World War II, when young soldiers and sailors showed up there by the thousands to rub elbows with famous movie stars serving as entertainers, coffee servers and dance partners.

Eventually the Hollywood club became a model for the chain of USO clubs chartered by Congress to serve the needs of the nation’s military personnel overseas.

Then the war ended and the neighborhood began to change. With the development of entertainment facilities around the region, from Disneyland to multiscreen movie complexes, fewer and fewer military people--most of whom were based in the South Bay, desert areas or Orange County--were willing to make the bus trek to Hollywood. And as the area deteriorated, the Hollywood club, which by the 1980s shared a block with a club featuring nude dancers, began to be seen less and less as a wholesome environment for young people.

The move to Long Beach, USO officers decided, would make the club readily accessible to the estimated 30,000 military personnel stationed at the several major military installations nearby. And by relocating to the Pacific Coast Club, located in a restored historic building that formerly housed a Masonic Temple on the city’s trendy Pine Avenue, the club could attract as many as 2,000 visitors a week, they predicted.

So the United Services Organization of Greater Los Angeles closed shop in Hollywood and rented 5,100 square feet on the bottom two floors of the Pine Avenue building. The space needed some work, including the addition of a few walls, electricity, plumbing, heating and lighting. The estimated cost: about $150,000. The announced intention: to make the alterations and be open for business by December, 1988.

A lot has happened in town since then.

Cal State Long Beach has built a new 50,000-square-foot library. An eight-story office building has gone up in North Long Beach. And the city’s ambitious light rail transit system has evolved from a plan on paper to a project nearing completion.

One thing that has not taken place, however, is progress on the USO club.

People involved with the project attribute the delay to a number of factors, primarily unexpected delays in obtaining required permits from the city and major difficulties in finding a contractor. Initially, said Bob Bernier, executive director, the organization did not realize that a special conditional use permit would be required to operate a club that offered dancing. As a result, he said, the group was late in submitting its application to receive a permit--a process that takes several months.

In addition, Bernier said, progress was slowed by the planners’ initial assumption that one of the USO’s board members, a San Fernando Valley contractor familiar with the project, would do the work. When he dropped out for personal reasons, Bernier said, the group had to start over with other contractors, several of whom surveyed the site and declined to make bids.

The reason they declined, according to Louis Skelton, architect on the project, was that the plans prepared by his office were incomplete. Drawn according to the specifications of the original contractor and board member, Skelton said, the plans assumed some familiarity with the project and therefore lacked the mechanical details required by the new contractors to make intelligent bids.

The problem was exacerbated, Skelton said, by a pay dispute between his company and the USO that for a time stalled the project. “They became a low priority,” Skelton said.

Both Skelton and Bernier now say the dispute has been resolved. Bids from a new group of contractors, Bernier said, are expected this week, with construction slated to begin March 1 and the opening planned in July.

It is not the first time such dates have been projected, of course. Last year, as the weeks stretched into months, several projected opening dates were abandoned. Finally in April, a long-awaited “unveiling” celebration took place--not at the club, but at the nearby Sheraton Hotel.

But this time, according to Bernier, the dates should stay firm. Consisting of two floors and a mezzanine, the new club will house a dance floor, game room, storage areas and administrative offices, he said. Among other things, it will provide military personnel and their dependents with a drop-in center, Saturday night parties, live entertainment, baby-sitting services and something called the “warmline”--a telephone number staffed by volunteers on which latchkey military children can receive much-needed advice and conversation.

At least one of those services--the warmline--has been operating since last year out of the temporary offices the USO occupies six miles away on Anaheim Street.

But the long delay has been costly in money and morale. In addition to the $5,000 monthly rent the organization is paying for the unoccupied space downtown, it is spending an unbudgeted $1,300 a month for the temporary quarters on Anaheim Street. And because the club is not yet a reality, Bernier said, private contributions--upon which the $650,000-a-year organization heavily depends--are down nearly 45%.

“We’re cannibalizing assets, and I don’t like to see that,” said Bernier, referring to a recent bequest that he said is keeping the group afloat.

Among those waiting in the wings for something to happen are members of the local military establishment who say they are looking forward to the elusive opening.

“We’re very happy that they’re coming here,” said Gerald Dunne, commanding officer of the Long Beach Naval Station, where 15,000 sailors are stationed. “It’s another opportunity for young sailors to do something constructive.”

USO officials say they are unlikely to be seriously affected by the potential closing of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, which employs only a small number of military personnel.

But if their luck does not change soon, Gardner said, what has so far been only an embarrassing aggravation could turn into an unmitigated financial disaster. “It’s been costly,” he said. “We can last about two more years without opening. Then we’ll run out of money.”