Officials Say Long-Awaited Gym in Encino May Open Next Week

After standing almost completed but locked for two months, a gym and recreation building in Encino may open early next week, officials of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks said Thursday.

“We’re anxious to get this thing done and open to the public,” said Frank Catania, the department’s director of planning and development. “We feel we’re very close to that happening, virtually a matter of days.”

Access to the 17,000-square-foot building in the Sepulveda Basin can’t come soon enough for San Fernando Valley residents upset over a decision by Los Angeles school authorities to withdraw permission for youth sports leagues to use school facilities. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s budget-cutting decision, which will remain in effect until a user-fee plan is ironed out, provides added impetus to open the Encino gym, Catania said.

“It became very clear to me and department management that we had to get this building open right away,” he said.

But some Valley residents, who believe the gym could have been opened long ago if it weren’t for bureaucratic delays, remain skeptical. “We’ve been hearing this for the last nine months,” said Rob Glushon, president of the Encino Property Owners Assn.

Construction of the $2.5-million facility started in June, 1990. The building--which includes a gymnasium, meeting rooms, a kitchen, a weightlifting room, a stage and lockers--was scheduled to be completed in April, 1991, Catania said.

However, a hiring freeze left the department with only one architect to supervise 17 building projects, Catania said. February rains slowed construction. And some modifications also had to be made to the architectural plans during construction, Catania said.

“It’s not unusual for a building that’s more than half an acre in interior floor space to have these kinds of problems,” Catania said.

Catania said that the department plans to ask the Department of Building and Safety today for a temporary certificate of occupancy. Such permits, issued for 30 to 60 days, allow people to occupy a building before all of the finishing touches and changes requested by Building and Safety are made.

However, any shortcomings that affect the safety of occupants must be remedied, said Art Devine, chief of the building bureau for the Department of Building and Safety.

Corrections that need to be made to the Encino gym before even a temporary certificate can be issued include putting white tape on the stairs to make them more visible and installing grab rails in the shower, Devine said. Catania said that those revisions are being completed.

Glushon, who organized a mail and phone campaign earlier this week to open the gym, said he hoped that was the case.

Tens of thousands of youngsters involved in youth sports programs in the Valley were displaced by the school district’s decision, according to John Pierce, director of municipal sports for the Department of Recreation and Parks.

Mark Wapnick, an Encino attorney who coaches a city league basketball team for 8-year-olds, said the children found a new place to play. But their schedule was delayed, which means some of the children will be on vacation during games. In addition, the children must practice on regulation 10-foot-high baskets rather than the special 8-foot-high baskets they normally use.

The problems, he said, are not Earth-shattering, but having a gym that is mostly completed sitting unoccupied is aggravating.

“If it’s going to open, terrific,” he said of the gym. “Now, somebody explain to me why it sat there.”