Seismic Report on Coliseum at Center of Dispute

The dispute over who was responsible for failing to provide a 1991 structural engineer’s report of Coliseum earthquake danger to the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission has degenerated into finger-pointing, with the stadium’s architects and its managers blaming each other.

A central issue--to be investigated by city, county and state attorneys--is why a warning of possible Coliseum earthquake damage was never acted upon. The warning by engineer Nabib Youssef came in a seismic report to the HNTB architectural firm, which at the time was preparing Coliseum renovation plans.

Youssef’s report stated that the Coliseum did not meet current seismic construction codes and described potential damage that did, in fact, largely occur in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake.

HNTB architect Terry K. Miller said in an interview last week that in 1990 and 1991, Spectacor, the Coliseum’s management company, and the Los Angeles Conservancy, a preservationist group, rejected any seismic retrofit at the Coliseum.

Miller said that Spectacor officials informed him in 1991 that a retrofit would cost several million dollars, more than the firm could afford.

He added that as early as a 1990 workshop on Coliseum renovation, conservancy representatives opposed a retrofit because it would alter the appearance of the stadium too dramatically.

Officials of Spectacor and the conservancy disputed Miller’s statements.

“We never told (HNTB) that seismic retrofitting was out,” said Peter Luucko of Spectacor, who was responsible for managing the Coliseum at the time. “We simply told them to meet our design and financial criteria. I’m not going to tell anyone what criteria to use, because we’re not qualified to do that.”

Tom Michali, a member of the conservancy board who was present at the 1990 workshop, called Miller’s statements about the conservancy inaccurate. Opposing a seismic retrofit as such “is not something we would ever say,” he said. “What we would want is a retrofit that would be sensitive” to the appearance of the stadium, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The leader of the workshop, Michael John Pittas, noted in a separate interview that the final report of the workshop characterizes a retrofit as likely. “The conservancy signed on to that report,” he said.

Miller--the chief architect at HNTB who was concerned with designing Coliseum renovations--said that the firm has documents that prove it gave Youssef’s report to Luucko of Spectacor. But he said the firm would not release the documents at this time.

“We were not in a position to determine what was going to happen to the report” once it got to Spectacor, he added, saying it was the prerogative of the managers and not the architects to decide whether to give it to the Coliseum Commission.

“We were not working for the commission at the time,” Miller said. The commission, the Coliseum’s governing board, hired Spectacor in 1988 to manage the facility and the adjacent Sports Arena.

Luucko, however, said he received 200 to 300 separate reports from HNTB, and he does not specifically recall receiving Youssef’s report.

“These were very technical reports, and you rely on your technical people,” Luucko said. “All I can say is, it didn’t send up a red flag. . . . I might have gotten it and it didn’t register.”

Chris Joseph of Environmental Planning Associates is also unhappy that Youssef’s report was not provided. Environmental Planning Associates was charged in 1991 with preparing a draft environmental impact report for Coliseum renovations.

No final environmental impact report was produced because the ambitious renovation project was dropped. But there was a draft of several hundred pages prepared by Nov. 20, 1991, that Miller said HNTB relied upon, in part, for concluding that the earthquake danger at the Coliseum was not particularly ominous.

The environmental report said quake damage at the Coliseum would diminish in direct proportion to the distance to earthquake epicenters, and it put most faults at a considerable distance. This was at variance with discoveries in some previous earthquakes--such as the 1985 Mexico City quake and the 1989 Loma Prieta quake--that severe damage could occur irregularly at varying distances from the epicenters.

Joseph, however, said that HNTB should have passed Youssef’s report, which was dated Dec. 4, 1991, to him. If Joseph had received it, he said, Youssef’s assessment would have been incorporated in later versions of the draft environmental impact report.

“This is damage control by HNTB, or spin control,” Joseph said of Miller’s statements. “We should have seen the Youssef report. . . . The bottom line is that HNTB blew it. . . . I can’t imagine them doing it intentionally, but it probably just slipped through the cracks.”

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Tom Bonaventura, chief assistant Los Angeles city attorney, said he does not know how long the inquiry into the matter, ordered by the Los Angeles City Council, will take.

Bonaventura has served as an advisory attorney from the city to the commission. He said another longtime commission adviser, Donovan Main, the county’s attorney advising the tripartite commission, and Richard Magasin, the state’s legal adviser to the panel, will also participate in the inquiry.

None of the attorneys saw the Youssef report either, until it was delivered to the Coliseum Commission more than two years after it was first made, 16 days after the Northridge earthquake, Bonaventura said.

As the controversy swirls, the disputing central parties remain active at the Coliseum and are working together on current plans to repair the Coliseum. Miller is the principal architect, Spectacor still manages the Coliseum, and the L.A. Conservancy has an important consultants’ role. Youssef was hired last month to evaluate the quake damage.

The commission itself came under criticism Tuesday in City Council for awarding a Coliseum repair contract to the Tutor-Saliba construction company without bids or a precise price tag. First estimates put the cost at $35 million, with funding expected from the federal and state disaster relief programs.

(Southland Edition) Quakes and the Coliseum

Here are some of the key events regarding the Los Angeles Coliseum since late 1990:

* Sept. 11, 1990: Raiders owner Al Davis signs an agreement to keep his team in Los Angeles, contingent on a $145-million renovation of the Coliseum by the Spectacor Management Group.

* Dec. 15: Four-day environmental workshop on Coliseum renovation concludes with little public discussion of seismic reinforcing. Final report calls such work likely.

* Nov. 20, 1991: A draft environmental impact report on the proposed renovation notes that 123 earthquakes over magnitude 5 have occurred within 100 miles of the Coliseum since 1800, the closest a magnitude 5.3 one mile away in 1905.

* Dec. 4: Structural engineer Nabib Youssef submits a report to Spectacor’s architect, HNTB, saying that the Coliseum walls do not meet seismic safety codes and would be seriously damaged in a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on the nearby Newport-Inglewood Fault.

* Dec. 31: Spectacor, blaming the bad economy and disappointing sales of club seats, puts the renovation on hold. The firm later cancels it and gives up its role in renovating the stadium.

* Dec. 2, 1992: Coliseum Commission, approving a scaled-down $15-million renovation to be done with its own funds in 1993, states that no “permanent seismic retrofit or seismic strengthening work” is to be done as part of the work.

* Sept. 4, 1993: The $15-million renovation is completed.

* Jan. 17, 1994: The magnitude 6.8 Northridge earthquake, centered 20 miles away, seriously damages the Coliseum, which is red tagged by city building inspectors. First damage estimates are $35 million.

* Feb. 2: The Coliseum Commission meets and demands a copy of the Dec. 4, 1991, Youssef report. Later that afternoon, it is delivered--16 days after the earthquake.

* Feb. 9: The Los Angeles City Council instructs City Atty. James Hahn to investigate who is responsible for the failure to apprise the Coliseum Commission of the Youssef report until after the earthquake.