Preserve That Piece of History! : Should the Herald Examiner building really be razed for a parking lot?

The story is, sadly, familiar: A building of historical, architectural value has stood vacant for too long. Developers have big plans for a gleaming shopping center or a skyscraper on the site. Or perhaps, given the city’s high office vacancy rate, they plan to hold on and wait for better times. But in the meantime, the owners want to cut their maintenance costs and earn some money by demolishing the building and operating a parking lot there.

While this strategy makes business sense, it is not the only strategy that does. The Herald Examiner building, at Broadway and 11th Street downtown, is one case in which preservation should be the prime consideration. Finished in 1915 and vacant since 1989, when the newspaper ceased publication, the building is such a prime example of Mission Revival-style architecture that the Los Angeles Conservancy has nominated it for the National Register of Historic Places. But the Hearst Corp., the building’s New York City-based owner, is thinking about razing it for a parking lot.

Another approach that can make sense for Hearst, and for Los Angeles, is to take a hard look at new, imaginative uses of the existing structure. Federal tax credits available to the owners of buildings on the National Register who renovate rather than raze are not peanuts. And the new-use approach has worked here. The Beverly Hills Waterworks, once a water treatment plant, was also threatened with demolition until preservationists persuaded the owners to think again. The result: restoration of the waterworks was completed last year to kudos all around; the building now houses the Center for Motion Picture Study, part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Herald Examiner building, with its fanciful tile domes, its ornate, arched lobby and patterned floors, could be reincarnated as unique commercial or retail space. Demolishing the building--the work of Julia Morgan, one of the few female architects of her day, who went on to design the famed Hearst Castle--”would be a tragedy, a disgrace,” warns the Los Angeles Conservancy.