University Officials Won’t Sue Faulty Garage’s Builder

State University officials said Tuesday they do not plan to sue the builder of the 2,500-space Cal State Northridge parking garage that collapsed in the January, 1994, earthquake, although the university’s own consultant found the design of the structure “conspicuously flawed.”

A day after CSUN administrators released the accusing report, state university system officials added that they were reviewing the changes it recommended for improving the quality of construction projects at the system’s 21 campuses.

And the garage’s builder defended his company’s work, saying all of the many similar garages it built locally survived the quake intact.

“Given the outcome of the report, there is no plan to pursue anything in terms of litigation at this time,” said Steve MacCarthy, director of public affairs for the Cal State system. “That’s about all I can tell you,” he said, declining to elaborate.

The report by the Los Angeles office of Dames & Moore Inc., an engineering firm hired by CSUN officials to study why the $11.3-million garage collapsed and to identify any problems with its construction, concluded that the structure failed to comply with both the requirements and intent of the state building code.

The report conceded, however, that its design criticisms involved areas of judgment, not specifically mandated provisions. And Cal State officials themselves in 1990 allowed construction to proceed despite having been warned by an independent review firm that the garage would be susceptible to quake damage.

MacCarthy, the Cal State system spokesman, said officials will review the consultant’s recommendation that future projects be designed by engineers independent of the firms that do the construction work. And Cal State officials said they already have adopted the critique’s other major recommendation, that plans be reviewed by independent agencies earlier in the process.

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Meanwhile, the president of A.T. Curd Builders of Glendale, the company that built the four-level CSUN garage in 1990-91, vehemently disagreed with the Dames & Moore findings, insisting the garage was built to code requirements but was overwhelmed by unexpectedly strong earth movements. But, Andrew Curd added: “There’s not much we can do about (the report). I’m helpless to do anything.”

Although the CSUN garage was the company’s first project for the Cal State system, Curd said, the company built at least 15 similar parking garages within about 24 miles of the epicenter of the Northridge quake and none of those suffered structural damage.

Curd said the company’s other local projects include three garages with about 6,000 spaces at the Media City Center in Burbank, an 800- to 900-space garage at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences headquarters in North Hollywood, and three for Paramount Studios in Hollywood with about 3,000 spaces.

The Dames & Moore report said that the standard parking garage designs accepted in the industry, such as the one used by Curd at CSUN, are inadequate and that a well-designed structure might have survived. But Curd insisted the survival of his other projects shows the CSUN garage simply fell victim to unusually strong ground movements near the quake’s epicenter.