Lancaster Postpones Razing Art Deco Civic Buildings

Swayed by community opposition, the Lancaster City Council has postponed for 18 months the planned demolition of the town’s oldest surviving civic buildings, but it signaled that the task of saving them will fall to preservationists rather than the city.

In a 4-0 vote, the council agreed Monday night to give supporters time to get the buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places and to seek grants for their restoration. At stake is the county’s original administrative center in the Antelope Valley.

“There are several of us who believe these are just old buildings,” said Lancaster Mayor George Root, speaking for his council colleagues. But Root said city lawmakers also recognized many residents believe the buildings are historic and want them saved.

Preservationists applauded the council’s decision but said they were disappointed the city will not lead the preservation campaign. “I think their plan is to put it off and put it off, and then try demolition again in a few years,” Lancaster resident Lee Duke said.

The Art Deco-style Cedar Avenue complex, a cluster of five downtown buildings built between 1920 and 1938, served as the center of local county government activities from the 1920s through the 1950s. The buildings, in particular a large hall, also served as a social gathering place.

City officials bought the buildings from the county in the mid-1980s intending to demolish them, and now talk of replacing them with offices. The city has shown little interest in saving the buildings, despite a growing roster of experts who consider them historic.

One city consultant in 1988 and another this year judged the buildings eligible for listing on the national register. On behalf of residents, the Los Angeles Conservancy and one of Southern California’s most prominent architectural historians also urged they be saved.

Conservancy preservation director Barbara Hoff, in a letter to the council, said the buildings are “undoubtedly of tremendous historical significance to Lancaster and the Antelope Valley.” She also offered the conservancy’s help in preparing a preservation plan.

In another letter, David Gebhard, an architectural history professor at UC Santa Barbara and expert on distinctive Southern California buildings, called the Lancaster structures “near-perfect examples” of so-called P.W.A. Moderne--Depression-era architecture used for public buildings.

Under the council’s action, city residents who gathered more than 700 petition signatures in a campaign to save the buildings now must pursue their listing on the national register and develop a funding and reuse plan for them by the city’s late 1994 deadline.

The council did not authorize any city money for that effort, although lawmakers said they later would contribute $75,000 or more--the estimated cost of demolition--if the buildings instead are ultimately saved. Some lawmakers have suggested residents should buy them from the city.

City officials earlier this year estimated that restoring the buildings would cost nearly $4.6 million, nearly six times a 1988 estimate by a city consultant. But the city later reduced its estimate to $3.2 million, one preservationists still say is over-inflated.

The council also Monday authorized a historical and pictorial survey of the Cedar Avenue buildings, a step that typically is done as a prelude to demolition. Dismayed preservationists had wanted the city to spend the money on trying to save the buildings or at least to wait until a final decision is made.