Library Gets $1.28 Million for Roof Repair

Thousand Oaks will receive $1.28 million to repair the main library’s leaky roof, in a settlement agreement reached after three years of negotiations with the building’s architect, construction manager and sub-contractors.

With most of the settlement cash in hand, city officials on Monday said they plan to immediately begin working on the roof, which has leaked since the $9-million library was built in 1982.

“You felt like you had to use an umbrella inside the building,” recalled Kathy Lewis, president of Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library.

To keep the books, computers and patrons dry, engineers plan to redesign the entire roof, adding slopes so water no longer pools on the skylights and aluminum catch-basins during heavy storms, administrative services manager Ed Johnduff said.

They will also replace the skylights with heavier models, less susceptible to warping and leaking. And they will install bigger drainage pipes to whisk water down, away from the roof.

By October the repairs should be complete--allowing librarians to toss out the turkey-basting pans they kept on hand to catch drips during past rainy seasons.

Although the work will take two to three months, officials plan to keep the library open through the summer. Construction workers will take up their tools mainly in off-hours, and patrons should be able to safely meander through most sections of the library even during the repair work, Johnduff said.

As the roof reconstruction begins, the library will also undergo other work to repair an estimated $2 million in damage caused during January’s Northridge earthquake.

Indeed, Johnduff said the roof redesign will complement efforts to reconstruct the library’s interior ceiling, which crashed to the floor in metal shards during the violent jolt.

“We’ll get the library back much sooner, which is good news,” said Toni Hagopian, chairwoman of the Library Restoration Committee. “It will be better than new, of course.”

So far, Hagopian’s committee has raised more than $62,000 to replace the books damaged by ruptured water pipes and tumbling shelves during the quake. The city is also still waiting for expected funds from a private insurance policy and from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, finance director Bob Biery said.

In the settlement announced Monday, the Los Angeles architectural firm Albert C. Martin and Associates agreed to pay $895,000, thereby avoiding trial in a lawsuit the city had filed in October, 1991. Five other construction management and contracting firms added a total of $385,000 to the settlement fund.

No firm admitted responsibility for the leaky roof.

“We don’t believe it was a design problem,” said Robert Stellwagen, an attorney for A.C. Martin. “There were construction problems . . . (because contractors) didn’t follow the plan specifications.”

But the city’s attorney, James Negele, said the design “was a screw-up--I don’t think it was well thought out.”

Whatever the cause of the leaky roof, city officials and library users said they were glad the problems had been resolved. And although the settlement will not cover every penny of repairs and legal costs, Negele said he thought the agreement would serve Thousand Oaks well.

“The city could have gone to the wall and said, ‘We want 100 cents on the dollar,’ but they were reasonable,” he said. “They figured, ‘We don’t want to risk the books anymore, so let’s take a compromise.’ ”

In addition to A.C. Martin, firms contributing to the settlement fund are: Turner Construction Co. of Los Angeles, $170,000; the now-defunct Coastal Steel Structures, $100,000; Model Glass Inc., $80,000; Award Metals Co., $25,000; and Kennedy Plastering Inc., $10,000.