Coliseum Warning Unheeded

On Dec. 2, 1992, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission unanimously approved a “project description” for its $15-million Coliseum renovation for 1993 that stated that no “permanent seismic retrofit or seismic strengthening work” was to be done on the facility, according to official minutes released Monday.

The vote came a year after Nabib Youssef, a structural engineer working for the commission’s architects, HNTB of Kansas City, Mo., submitted a report warning that the Coliseum did not meet the city’s seismic safety code and could be subject to severe damage if a large earthquake struck.

But the commission president at the time, labor leader Bill Robertson, and the chairman of its renovation committee, attorney N. Matthew Grossman, now say they and other commissioners did not see that report and knew nothing of the seismic risk. The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday will consider ordering an investigation of whether anyone is liable for not showing the report to the commissioners.

The ban on a seismic retrofit was incorporated in the renovation contract with the Tutor-Saliba Co. and approved by the commission. The renovation, completed last August, lowered the playing field and put in thousands of new seats close to the action.

Now that the Coliseum has sustained major damage in the Jan. 17 quake and ensuing aftershocks, some suggest that the failure to alert commissioners to the seismic risk could lead to a lawsuit. The 1991 Youssef report was not turned over to the commission until last week--16 days after the quake.

Councilman Joel Wachs said the inquiry would “find out who knew the information about the danger when, and then, legally, was there a duty to disclose it?

Neither Youssef nor the architect at HNTB who directed the preparation of Coliseum renovation plans, Terry Miller, returned telephone calls inquiring why the report was not turned over.

Meanwhile, the Coliseum’s private manager, Spectacor Management Group, has backed off from earlier statements that a copy of the report had been submitted to it but not turned over to the commission because it was viewed as only a “preconstruction” document.

A spokeswoman for Spectacor, Cindy Rubin, said Monday: “No one at SMG remembers getting the report. . . . It was done for HNTB. We’re trying to find out who they gave copies to.”

Jay Hagerman, a Spectacor employee who became Coliseum general manager in 1993, said: “We are currently working to put together a complete chronology of events to determine who received copies.”

Spectacor, he said, gave up its role in Coliseum renovation in August, 1992, and “since that time, we have not had access to information relating to the renovation.”

The commission’s renovation project manager, Don C. Webb, said Monday he too was kept in the dark about Youssef’s report.

Webb and others said the Los Angeles Conservancy, a preservationist group, suggested the ban against a seismic retrofit.

Officials of the group said they wanted to forestall work that would change the appearance of the Coliseum, a national historic landmark, without an environmental review.

The officials said they would not have opposed a retrofit had they been told it was necessary.