SANTA ANA : Bankruptcy Extinguishes New Lighting Contract

The city has had to break a $168,000 construction contract for new lights in the Civic Center Super Block Parking Lot and a park facility because of the Orange County bankruptcy, said City Atty. Edward J. Cooper.

Cooper said the parking lot is jointly operated by the city and county under the Civic Center Authority, and the county recently informed the city that it does not have the money to split the cost of new lights due to the December, 1994, bankruptcy.

Cooper said it is the first contract in the city to be canceled because of the bankruptcy.

Adams/Mallory Construction Co. was scheduled to replace the parking lot lights for $163,000 and to add lights to a multipurpose room in a city park for $5,000, Cooper said.

In a closed session Monday, the City Council voted to award the construction company $18,000 in damages for breaking the contract, Cooper said. Because the park is city-owned, the county will pay just under half the $18,000 in damages.

Replacing the existing parking lot lights with taller and more powerful lights was not so much an issue of safety but of maintenance, said Ron Ono, the city’s design manager.

Ono said the 8-foot-high lights in the outdoor parking lot date to the 1970s and are constantly being vandalized. Ono said replacement parts are no longer sold, and the city must use parts from similar lights that have been taken down.

The brightness of the lights is measured in candle feet, and Ono said the current lights give out about a half-candle foot of light. At night, that definition translates into a parking lot that is, by most standards, dim.

Ono noted that the law requires new parking lot lights to give out one candle foot of light.

Ono said the new lights would have been 18 feet high and put out five candle feet of light.