Tower Workers Find It Still Hot at the Top

It’s hot. It’s sticky. You’re sweaty. And the air conditioning is kaput . Life at the top isn’t supposed to be like this.

But for hundreds of Century City lawyers, brokers and bankers, those were the working conditions once again Thursday, as the gleaming towers just west of Beverly Hills went without Southern California’s second-most precious commodity for the third straight day.

At least they had water.

“People are just dying,” said Bivona & Cohen attorney Robin Paley. “Unless you have a fan in your face, you can’t function.”

A foot-long crack in a massive, concrete cold-water pipe buried 20 feet below the ground cut off air conditioning Tuesday afternoon to 19 buildings in the Century City complex. Crews have been working steadily ever since to repair the pipe.

Most of the buildings probably will remain without air conditioning until sometime today at the earliest, said Donald Girard, spokesman for Pacific Energy, which operates the complex’s cooling plant.

Trailer-sized cooling units and portable generators were hauled into place Wednesday morning to give some relief to the Century City Hospital, the Century Plaza and a high-rise condominium complex.

For the rest of the plaza’s tenants, however, the air-conditioning breakdown meant misery. Stale, heavy air clogged elevators, hallways and offices. Breathing was the topic of the day in the plaza outside.

“It feels like you’re breathing yesterday’s air up there,” said legal secretary Kate O’Connor. “Must be close to 90.” She was referring to temperatures inside; on the plaza, conditions were mild, even breezy.

Renee Braun, receptionist for the law firm of Sidley & Austin on the 34th floor of one of the plaza’s twin towers, had two fans on her face--a foldable, hand-held fan that she waved while answering telephones, and a large electric fan placed a few feet away.

“It really is hot,” Braun said.

How hot was it, Renee? It was so hot that . . .

Attorneys shed their silks and woolens and showed up for work in shorts and tank-tops--not a pretty sight.

Air breaks replaced coffee breaks, with receptionists and secretaries from high-pressure firms going downstairs for oxygen every half hour or so.

Loads of highly paid talent, unable to take the heat, went home early.

“We’re clearing the whole office out after 1,” said Kent Halkett, a Sidley and Austin partner. “I’m going to take stuff home and read on my deck.”

Halkett, of Manhattan Beach, wore shorts to work Thursday, but a suit hung on the back of his office door and his black wing tips waited at the ready. “Just in case,” he said.

In the other tower, Paine Webber office manager Gail Lesniak wore shorts and sipped iced tea at her desk; fans whirred all around. A few floors up, the tony offices of Seyfarth Shaw Fairweather & Geraldson were dark in an attempt to bring the temperature down a few degrees, while office messenger Darren Davis lugged in another box of ice from the Roxbury Market for his bosses to rub on their foreheads.

Investment banker Sy Lippman, meanwhile, had abandoned the sultry building--for the ground-floor confines of the Century West Club, where he churned away on a stair-climbing machine in the club’s non-air-conditioned gym.

“It’s better here than it is in my office,” Lippman said. “There’s no circulation at all there.”

Plaza florist Barbara Garakian had mixed emotions about the heat wave. “The plants love it because of the humidity,” she said. “But it’s wearing out our stamina.”