GLENDALE : Repair Costs for Goode House Still Uncertain

Glendale officials have yet to determine how much it will cost to repair earthquake damage to the historic Goode House, which sagged onto the ground and shifted as much as four feet after its foundation collapsed.

Beth Stochl, an administrative analyst for the city’s housing department, said Thursday that city officials still are planning to restore the 1890s Victorian-style home at 119 N. Cedar St. as long as expenses do not increase substantially.

“It depends on how much the cost is for doing the additional work” to rebuild the foundation and to lift the home back onto it, Stochl said. “If the (restoration) cost was doubled, we definitely would bring it back” to the Glendale Housing Authority for approval.

The Housing Authority had set aside $400,000 in 1992 for the project.

Jolted by the Jan. 17 quake and its aftershocks, the Goode House finally gave way last weekend, officials said. The damage was discovered Saturday afternoon after neighbors reported hearing creaking sounds from the boarded-up landmark, slated to be turned into an office and recreation center for the disabled by early 1996.

A preservation consultant hired by the city to restore the home surveyed the collapsed foundation and determined that the building was still salvageable.

“The building is not lost,” said Lawrence Winans, who runs his own restoration service in Downey. “We feel that the building can be lifted and put back to where it belongs and a new foundation system put under it.”

Even if aftershocks were to continue, “it can’t topple over now,” he said.

On Tuesday, Housing Director Madalyn Blake told the Glendale Housing Authority that it would need to reassess the restoration costs for the building in the next week or two.

Winans has said repairs to the foundation alone would cost about $35,000. He is expected to meet with housing officials Tuesday to renegotiate a contract to repair and restore the historic building.

‘We’re doing the best we can to bring it forward,” Winans said.

The Goode House, named after former Glendale civic leader Edgar Douglas Goode, is to be restored as part of a 22,500-square-foot housing project with the Crippled Children’s Society of Southern California Inc.