SECOND OPINIONS : Saga of Mall Rebuilding Reflects a New Attitude : After the 1994 earthquake, city workers and departments rose to the occasion in their efforts to reopen the Northridge stores and return business to normal.

“W e are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.”

--Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

“Fer shure, fer shure.”

--anonymous Valley Girl

Queen Victoria, meet the Valley Girls--a culture clash of momentous proportions that takes some explaining.

At the end of 1993, 27 days before the Northridge earthquake, Northridge Fashion Center was bought by a company that traces its beginnings back 150 years to the England of Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens. Headquartered in Dallas with office buildings and malls throughout the country, MEPC American Properties Inc. made the Northridge mall its first investment in California. So when the earthquake hit, the company received more shocks than most.

The saga of the mall’s rebuilding is the story of how the city of Los Angeles has changed its attitude toward business. After the earthquake, most city departments rose to the challenge. The words of some of the participants in this complex project tell its story:

“If I have my way, this place won’t open until December.”

--city employee

Fortunately for homeowners and businesses, this attitude does not reflect most of the city’s departments. And bad attitude doesn’t always infect whole departments. For example, the Building and Safety Department is generally regarded as helpful, while the Bureau of Engineering is widely considered to be the biggest bottleneck in the city. Both, however, have exceptions.

Northridge Fashion Center’s first obstacle to reconstruction was asbestos. Its abatement took nearly eight months. So from the time the actual reconstruction began, it was only 11 months until the mall reopened its doors. The earthquake energized city departments into action.

“You can’t put a fountain there. Santa Claus won’t have any place to sit at Christmas!”

--city inspector

Remarks like this point out just how important Northridge Fashion Center is to the community. City employees live nearby and shopped at the mall before the earthquake. More than one city inspector commented that their spouses wanted them to make sure everything was done to get the mall open as quickly as possible.

In the final weeks before the mall’s July 17 pre-opening, and in the two weeks between then and the formal opening Aug. 2, city workers spent nights and weekends, in addition to their regular hours, seeing to it that everything had been done correctly.

On July 17, the anxious shoppers pressing their faces to the closed doors at 9:55 a.m. were unaware that one city inspector had been at Northridge Fashion Center at 5 a.m. to complete final sign-offs so stores could open on time. An army of Fire Department and Building and Safety inspectors spent several nights into the early morning hours conducting final tests on the computerized fire alarm and smoke evacuation system. This was not the L.A. city worker who has been negatively portrayed by politicians and media alike.

“We naturally assumed that the city required the most complicated answer. Who would have guessed it was the simple one?”

--mall employee

Sometimes it takes a tragedy such as the Northridge earthquake to give everyone a wake-up call. Northridge Fashion Center was the largest single rebuilding job after the quake. The city and its workers rose to the occasion. The new mall is as much a testament to a new government attitude as it is to our community’s determination to dig out, clean up and move forward.

Now if we could just figure out a way to shorten the lines at the Cinnabon store.

Paul Clarke of Northridge is a corporate political consultant. He worked with Northridge Fashion Center to secure its approvals from Los Angeles city and county and California state agencies.