N-Word Encounters a Roadblock in Downtown Lancaster

Among city government leaders in Lancaster these days, the big word is new-- a new auto mall, a new performing arts center, and plans for a new library and sheriff’s station to help anchor a planned new downtown along Lancaster Boulevard.

Old has never been a big part of the municipal vocabulary, except to briefly mark the passing of the latest old building being torn down.

So it was business as usual earlier this year when Lancaster officials proposed demolishing the town’s oldest surviving civic facility--a downtown complex of five former county buildings built between 1920 and 1938--to make way for a new office building or other private construction project.

The result has been anything but routine. Outraged at the city’s plan, a broad coalition of local historic groups, old-timers and newer residents has been fighting back, demanding the city save one of its few remaining historic structures.

More than 700 people have signed petitions favoring rehabilitation. Members of the influential Los Angeles Conservancy, the premier regional agency for preservation, has urged that the complex of buildings be saved.

And the battle--which comes before the City Council tonight--has evolved into a strange municipal drama, complete with charges by preservationists that city officials have misstated and suppressed information in an attempt to prevail.

Lancaster officials have admitted a huge overestimation of their costs for rehabilitation, but insist it was just a mistake. City officials also say they don’t know how to pay for restoring the buildings, regardless of the cost. And City Council members seem divided.

At issue is the so-called Cedar Avenue complex at the southwest corner of Lancaster Boulevard and Cedar Avenue downtown. The complex was the original center for county government activities in the Antelope Valley from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Until county offices began moving away to newer and larger quarters, the Art Deco complex also was the Antelope Valley’s main meeting place. It remains anchored today by a Memorial Hall large enough to seat 500, built with Depression-era federal Works Progress Administration funds.

According to records, a one-story jail was built in 1920, followed by a one-story Pueblo Revival-style health center in 1930. The two-story hall and library building and the one-story sheriff’s substation and garage followed in 1938.

To many longtime valley residents, the complex is a place of nostalgia where they went as youngsters for polio vaccinations, where dances and community meetings where held and where the Red Cross worked during World War II.

One part of the complex was used as a county health facility until the late 1980s. A community theater group, the Cedar Street Theater, has been using the auditorium since 1979. The city has used the rest for offices and storage.

“With all of the vacancies in office buildings around the valley, the last thing we need, especially when financed by taxpayers’ money, is a new office building,” said Milt Stark, a local historian. He and others want the city to preserve the complex as a museum and center for community groups.

What the city thinks of the complex depends on when the question is asked. When the city bought the property from the county in 1985 for about $395,000, it planned demolition and the development of a commercial building. But residents in 1985 also protested and persuaded the City Council to favor preservation by a 5-0 vote.

In 1988, the city applied for a $450,000 state grant to help restore the complex as a historical museum and estimated the total cost at about $782,000. The city did not get the money, but its application spoke in glowing terms of the buildings and judged them in “good” condition.

“The Cedar Avenue buildings are of a few remaining structures in the City of Lancaster that have historical significance. This is a fact that was stressed when the community organized to save the buildings and is understood by all today,” the city wrote in its grant application.

The city’s oldest surviving historic building is the 1880s-vintage Western Hotel directly across the street. After a community group bought it, the city restored it in the late 1980s and still operates it as a museum.

A city consultant in 1988 called the Cedar Avenue complex the “the only unaltered Art Deco structures in the city” and termed it “a handsome example of the style in a restrained and dignified manner.” Many original features remained intact, making restoration feasible, according to the consultant’s report.

In proposing the demolition this year, however, the city found the buildings “to be in general disrepair” and said “much of the mechanical and electrical systems are obsolete.” And the city said an elaborate restoration would cost $4.6 million, nearly six times the city’s own 1988 estimate.

Preservationists soon discovered that city officials had based their new estimate on a 23,000-square-foot complex when in fact the buildings totaled only about 13,000 square feet. So the city reduced its estimate in February to $3.2 million, one which preservationists say is still outrageously high.

Preservationists believe the actual cost would be $500,000, and suggest that a combination of public grants, partial leasing and volunteer work could make up that amount.

Residents have also chided city officials for not including information about the 1985 council preservation vote and the 1988 consultant’s findings in their original presentation to current council members. Four of the five current council members were elected after 1988.

Under pressure from the community, the city recently hired another consultant, Stephen R. Van Wormer and Associates of Chula Vista, to assess the buildings. That report, released only last week although dated March 3, contained mixed blessings for preservationists.

Although the consultant found the complex “architecturally and historically significant” and said all but the garage could qualify for the National Register of Historic Places, he only offered options instead of making a specific recommendation for the buildings’ future. Five options were listed, and one was preservation.