Preservation: Lost Long Beach Landmarks

Friday at the Farmer’s Market in Long Beach I was saddened to see the Barker Brothers Building being torn down to be replaced with yet another parking lot. The Promenade will no longer be a Promenade, just a couple of buildings surrounded by parking lots.

Is this the message the downtown businesses want to convey? If any more of these buildings come down, I think that all the efforts to renovate downtown will be wasted. The Redevelopment Agency, which has historic preservation guidelines, has facilitated many historic renovations on Pine Avenue, including the Kress Building, First National Bank and the Bradley Building (Birdland West). But they have not accomplished historic preservation in the Promenade.

Downtown doesn’t begin and end on Pine Avenue, and the downtown businesses better realize that preservation of our historic buildings has an important economic impact.

Seven more Long Beach historical landmark buildings could be torn down in the next year or so. They include the Masonic Temple, the Long Beach Professional Building near 8th Street and Pine Avenue, the Insurance Exchange Building, the former Terry’s Camera Building, Art Deco Commercial Building, Hancock Motors and Harriman Jones Clinic.

These buildings may very well be torn down because the owners have not or will not meet seismic code requirements written in the 1970s peculiar to Long Beach, which require all buildings built before 1934 to be retrofitted regardless of construction type. Performance of buildings in recent quakes indicates that these older buildings do well, and the buildings not up to code from the ‘60s and ‘70s did poorly. None of these historic landmarks are brick or unreinforced masonry, which are the most hazardous types of buildings.

When owners could not afford to retrofit buildings like these in other cities such as Claremont or Pasadena, the buildings would be vacated and closed until they could be rehabilitated and seismic work done. Seismic technology is being revised continuously and Long Beach needs to find a more acceptable solution.

For example, the Masonic Temple needs only about $100,000 worth of reinforcement, but the owner is ill and can’t get a loan. This building has seven ballroom theaters, with murals, mahogany and brass fittings, and a huge pipe organ. It would be absurd to demolish this building when it needs so little work.

Building and Safety seems to have its own schedule, while the Redevelopment Agency has a separate schedule. The two need to coordinate their plans. If people care about this issue they need to let the city know.

SARAH C. ARNOLD

Long Beach