GLENDALE : The Galleria’s Parking Lot Reopens Soon

Ten months after the Northridge earthquake virtually destroyed it, a 1,500-space parking structure has been rebuilt to reopen Nov. 15, in time for the holiday shopping crush.

Three sections of the garage on the Galleria’s west side, between the Broadway department store and the mall’s food court, were razed in August. Mall officials said it has taken 33,000 tons of concrete, 260 miles of steel beams, 135 workers on a fast-track construction schedule and $12 million--partly funded by the city--to rebuild them.

“We’re looking forward to reopening the structure and getting back to normal,” said Melissa Beissner, a mall spokeswoman. “We’ve been fortunate to have the cooperation of the city since the earthquake. In spite of the parking situation this has been a good year.”

When the garage was first closed in January, area streets were jammed on weekends as customers searched for parking. Shortly thereafter, several city-owned vacant lots across the street from the mall on Central Avenue were paved for temporary parking lots.

In the meanwhile, the Glendale Associates Limited Partnership, which owns that part of the mall, searched for an economical way to rebuild the structure, officials said.

The partnership, headed by developer Donahue Schriber, also includes the Broadway, J. C. Penney and Robinsons-May department stores and city’s redevelopment agency. They eventually asked the city for help getting a low-interest federal loan to pay a $4.5-million insurance deductible on the garage.

Derrill Quaschnick, the city’s assistant redevelopment director, said the redevelopment agency agreed to pay back about one-fifth of the loan, or about $1 million, because it is one of the five partners. The city will also use reserve funds to guarantee repayment of the loan, he said.

“Normally under this federal program the city’s (community development) block grant monies act as a guarantee for the loan, but we did not want the city’s block grant programs to be perceived in any way to be in jeopardy,” Quaschnick said.

City finance records show that the Galleria did about $37 million in business during the first three months of the year, roughly the same as it did during the same period of 1993.

Mall officials say that’s no mean feat, since parking was at a premium. They also said business increased during the summer.

Sales were probably helped by the fact that several malls in the San Fernando Valley were severely damaged by the earthquake.

“Areas like Glendale benefited from the quake because people realized how addicted they’d become to shopping and they were willing to travel,” said Bob Scott, past president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. But the boom is probably over, he said.

“Now that the Valley malls are reopening, people are coming back to them with a vengeance,” Scott said.

City and mall officials are optimistic about the holiday season at the Galleria, but they said the mall’s parking problems are not entirely over.

Quaschnick said the city and mall will decide next year whether it is more economical to upgrade that section of the garage to current quake standards, or to raze and rebuild it.