St. Vibiana’s Could Be Razed Next Month : Landmark: City agency says study should take only 20 days. Preservationists express outrage.

St. Vibiana’s Cathedral could be torn down in mid-July under a Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency plan for quick environmental review announced Monday.

However, preservationists protested the decision, calling it “so outrageous” that they may challenge it in court.

Trying to please Cardinal Roger M. Mahony while fulfilling a recent Superior Court order, the city agency said that taking the 120-year-old church off the city’s landmark list and razing it should require a study of only 20 days. In theory, that means demolition could start July 16 if no other delays arise, officials said.

Working over the weekend, city attorneys and agency staff produced a 17-page document that declares the church’s demolition “will not have a significant effect on the environment” because of mitigation efforts. Those include the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s promise to incorporate many pieces and artifacts of the old, earthquake-damaged church into a new cathedral complex, the report says.

Mahony has warned that he will decide by July 15 whether to build a proposed $50-million replacement cathedral away from the downtown site, possibly out of the city, if preservationists’ lawsuits and the high price of adjacent land delay his plans. He has scheduled a news conference for today to discuss those issues, an archdiocese spokesman said.

CRA administrator John E. Molloy predicted that his agency’s so-called Mitigated Negative Declaration would satisfy a Superior Court ruling last week that St. Vibiana’s demolition requires environmental review. “We certainly believe it does [fulfill the ruling]. The best folks we have, who are pretty good, believe it does,” Molloy said. The report also will pass any legal muster, he added.

Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, strongly disagreed.

“We think this is flat out wrong,” Dishman said of the agency’s report. “What they are trying to say is that if you take a building apart carefully, it’s not demolition. We don’t buy that.”

The conservancy’s board of directors will decide over the next few weeks whether to undertake legal action to seek a more comprehensive environmental study, she said. Calling the 20-day comment period “so outrageous,” Dishman said a more appropriate study would take about six months.

In his temporary restraining order in favor of the conservancy, Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien did not specify what type or depth of environmental review would satisfy state law.

In a preliminary 13-1 vote last week, the City Council moved to strip the Spanish baroque church from the city’s list of official landmarks and ordered the CRA to devise appropriate environmental study. Final council action was scheduled for today but Molloy said he would recommend that action be delayed until the comment period is over on July 15. John McNicholas, an archdiocese attorney, described the agency’s report as ‘wonderful news” that may help persuade the cardinal to keep the new cathedral on the original downtown site. “I think it is a point in that direction,” he said.

An archdiocese committee looking for other locations for a new cathedral was expected to deliver a report to the cardinal today.

In its most controversial portions, the report deals with St. Vibiana’s designation in 1963 as a city “historic-cultural” monument. After questions about possible effects on air, water and traffic, the document asks whether demolition would “result in adverse physical or aesthetic effects to a prehistoric or historic building, structure or object?” From a choice of three answers--yes, maybe and no--the CRA declared “maybe.”

The archdiocese “will identify and exercise all reasonable efforts to remove, preserve and properly store for potential incorporation into a future Cathedral Square (if and when it is designed)” many features already removed from the existing cathedral, the report said. Those include the organ, stained glass windows, altars and statues. In addition, the CRA said cathedral architect Jose Rafael Moneo would try to reuse the bell tower, doors, wood moldings, brick masonry, columns and arches in a new church complex and courtyard.

Demolition will disrupt the soil and might have negative effects on air emissions, water drainage, traffic and noise, the CRA said, but those will not be major. The report described the neighborhood, with homeless encampments nearby, and dryly noted that there “are no unique, rare or endangered species of plants on the site.”

Although Molloy conceded that the council wanted quick action, he said the archdiocese didn’t receive extraordinary treatment.