Retailer Says City Neglects Downtown Quake Safety : Ventura: A Main Street merchant charges that landowner influence has kept the council from requiring building upgrades.

Controversy over whether the city of Ventura has done enough for earthquake safety erupted Thursday when a Main Street merchant accused the City Council of yielding to influence from the largest downtown property owner.

Bill Zwirn, who owns The Paul Bunyan Shop, charged that the city should have required upgrades long ago to make unreinforced masonry buildings safe enough to withstand the major earthquake that scientists say is inevitable in Southern California.

But Zwirn, who posted a sign in his window Thursday saying that his building could become a “death trap” if an earthquake hit, said the largest downtown property owner, Ventura Realty Co., had influenced the City Council to defeat an earthquake ordinance two years ago.

“Nonsense,” said Tom Wood, general manager and attorney for Ventura Reality, which is predominantly owned by members of the Lagomarsino family. Wood, a nephew of Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura), said the company was founded by his great-grandfather in 1908.

Wood said he has long supported an ordinance requiring the level of upgrades needed to protect life in the event of an earthquake. But he said he fought against the more stringent law that city engineering consultants recommended in 1988, which would have required extensive upgrades to preserve the buildings as well as save lives.

The upgrades to save the structures could include adding steel bars to reinforce walls, replacing mortar between bricks or making the foundation more stable.

“You can’t fault the city for trusting in their consultants,” he said. “But you can’t fault us for influencing legislation that was unwarranted either.”

Wood said he hopes that the city’s next ordinance, which is expected to be introduced next spring, will not “destroy what it is trying to protect.”

The city of Ventura has 143 unreinforced masonry buildings, mostly downtown. Improvements on those buildings might already be under way if city consultants had not pushed for the more stringent ordinance. The tougher ordinance created opposition among merchants and property owners, including Wood, who said they could not afford the expensive work.

Despite a change in the ordinance to require the minimum level of upgrades, threats of lawsuits from two property owners, including the owner of the building that houses The Paul Bunyan Shop, led the council to defeat the ordinance, said Everett Millais, Ventura’s director of community development.

But he said, a new law must be passed soon.

“It’s an ordinance that should have been on the books a long time ago,” he said. “We are sort of tempting fate.”

Millais said a city environmental impact report, which was ordered after the lawsuits were threatened two years ago, is due out in mid-January. He said the report recommends that the city require owners to begin the first level of upgrades by tying walls to roofs and floors.

However, over 20 years, the report recommends that the building owners should do much more extensive reinforcing, bringing their properties up to a second or third level of upgrade, Millais said. If the owners chose not to upgrade the buildings, they would have to pay to have them razed and removed.

Wood said two of the seven unreinforced masonry buildings that Ventura Realty owns downtown may have to be razed and rebuilt in several years. Those two buildings, in the 300 block of Main Street, are just plain “cruddy” buildings, he said, and not worth the money to fix them.

Ventura Realty has already spent $100,000 to perform the first level of repairs on the building that houses Franky’s Place on Main Street. The face of the building remains dismantled while Wood decides whether to install a steel bar the width of the building to begin the second level of upgrades.

He said he understood Zwirn’s frustration with his building, because the owner, Andrew Chakires, has done no earthquake upgrades and vehemently opposes any ordinance that forces even minor earthquake repairs.

Chakires said Thursday that the state has not proven that unreinforced masonry buildings are at high risk of crumbling in an earthquake.

“They have only shown us anecdotal evidence,” he said, referring to the crumbled buildings in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Coalinga and Whittier. “You’re at higher risk of getting cancer from benzene when you buy gasoline than you are from getting killed by an earthquake.”

But Zwirn said he wants all downtown shoppers to know about the condition of the buildings.

“All the other merchants on Main Street are afraid to say anything because they are all worried about their own little businesses,” he said. “But they don’t understand that people are afraid to shop downtown because they are afraid of what would happen in an earthquake.”