The Parallel Universe at City Hall : HEARTS of the CITY / Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news

Over the years, certain spots in Los Angeles have acquired a dual reality. They seem to exist in parallel universes. The first universe is the everyday world that we can touch or walk on, the same world as can be found in any other city.

The second reality is unique to Los Angeles. It’s the universe created by 75 years of movie making and television making on our streets and in our buildings. We have seen some parts of our city so many times on celluloid that they now seem inhabited by the characters of the movies as much as by our own corporeal bodies.

I cannot walk into the Beverly Wilshire, for example, without seeing--in my mind--certain scenes from “Pretty Woman” or “Beverly Hills Cop.” If I stand at the front desk, I sense the ghostlike presence of Detroit policeman Axel Foley, a.k.a. Eddie Murphy, standing beside me, wanting to know exactly how much a room costs at the Beverly Wilshire. And expecting the answer to be $39.95. The scene only happened in the movies, but I smile anyway at its memory.

Most everyone in L.A. has their own version of this experience. It lends an out-of-body feel to the city, making it all the more elusive and tantalizing. New York or Toronto may also serve as the backdrop for movies, but no other city in the world has been shot so many times as Los Angeles. So often, in fact, as to create this second universe.

For all the above reasons, we seem to extend our urban affections to the more famous location spots in the city, much as the residents of say, Boston, extend their affection to famous spots of history. For us, the shooting of “Pretty Woman” amounts to history.

And that’s why so much pain is created by the prospect of losing one of these spots in Los Angeles. Especially the greatest one of all.

Want to guess which one? How about Rodeo Drive, or certain mansions in Hancock Park, or a few stretches of beach in Malibu? Negatory to all. The winning answer is City Hall.

For reasons that are partly easy and partly difficult to explain, City Hall has served as the site of hundreds of location shoots and has acquired a dozen different identities. I remember, as a kid in Tennessee, watching the slow, bottom-to-top shot of City Hall that opened many of the “Dragnet” shows. Even today, I can feel the iciness of the Sgt. Friday monologues when I pass it going to work.

Before that, Martians attacked and destroyed it in “War of the Worlds.” When the tower exploded under the impact of their great ray guns, you sensed that mankind had succumbed and was doomed.

On and on go City Hall’s credits. It served as the Daily Planet in the 1950s “Superman,” as the halls of the Vatican in “The Thornbirds,” as innumerable courthouses and capitols.

It also served as our honest-to-God government center, of course, probably the most recognizable building in the city. And now, incredibly, City Hall stands almost as a derelict. Badly damaged by the Northridge earthquake, the building has been emptied from the fifth floor up. A project to retrofit and repair it has been shut down, and no one seems to know just how to get it started again.

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The rub, as always, is money. Originally estimated at $92 million, the retrofitting first ballooned to $153 million and then, unofficially, to $300 million. That last figure should be regarded as breathtaking. In comparison, the brand-new luxury office building just completed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in downtown--a building about the same size as City Hall--cost $146 million.

Or another comparison: In the early 1980s, California refurbished the state Capitol in grand style. A huge confectionery pile in Sacramento, the Capitol was stripped to bare walls and put back together in all its Victorian glory. At the time the price was regarded as scandalous. It came to $68 million.

So preposterous was the price for retrofitting City Hall that the Riordan administration shut down the project. The inevitable panel was then appointed to study the matter and its conclusions were both depressing and appalling.

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A bare-bones retrofitting would cost $165 million, the panel said, advising the city to pursue that course. The $165 million would include a very expensive technique to safeguard against future quake damage known as “base isolation.” This technique requires implanting huge rubber pads underneath the building to dampen the swaying. More than 500 pads would be needed, each of them put in place at enormous effort and cost.

But the $165 million would not do much more than repair the damage from Northridge and stiffen the building against future damage. Much of the dinginess acquired over its 68 years of life would remain.

“In an old building, everything you do structurally costs four to five times what it would cost in a new building,” said Stuart Ketchum, the developer who headed the panel. “That’s the disadvantage of retrofitting rather than tearing down and starting over.”

In the aftermath of the panel’s report, some have suggested that the building remain virtually empty except for the grand third floor where the City Council and the mayor have their offices. All the rest would become something like a movie set piece, a structure that looks like a living, breathing building but actually is merely facade, a fake.

Such a plan would offer some cheap irony here in L.A. But surely we can do better. In many ways, the plight of City Hall stands as sort of a test for the city. No other building incorporates so much of our history, both real and imaginary.

We would not only lose the tall symbol erected by our young city in 1928 to show that it had come of age. We would not only lose the City Hall that got us through the Depression, World War II, the building boom of the ‘50s and all the difficulties that came later.

We would also lose the home of Superman, the pope and Joe Friday. All in all, too high a price to pay.

Martians attacked and destroyed [City Hall] in “War of the Worlds.” When the tower exploded . . . you sensed that mankind had succumbed and was doomed.