Moving Up

For most of Los Angeles, the big moment for Brentwood’s $800-million Getty Center will be opening day in the fall of 1997, when the public gets its first glimpse of the center’s new J. Paul Getty Museum and research and educational facilities, perched high above the San Diego Freeway near Mulholland Drive.

But for 225 Getty staffers, Monday marked the culmination of more than 12 years of planning and work as the Getty’s Education Institute, Grant Program and Getty Trust administration showed up for the first day of work in their new hilltop home. Employees rode the tram from the parking structure to the unfinished 110-acre complex of six Richard Meier-designed office buildings, terraces and walkways of rough travertine marble.

Eventually, all but a few of the 800-member staff of the Getty’s five institutes, grant program and museum will move to the center from office locations in Santa Monica and Marina del Rey. Most artworks will be transported to the site from the Getty’s Malibu villa museum on Pacific Coast Highway, with only the antiquities collection remaining at the villa.

On Monday, employees faced daunting stacks of moving boxes piled against streamlined chrome-and-glass windows overlooking spectacular city views. In recent months, architect Meier has added splashes of bright color--lilacs, greens, pinks and blues--to such ordinary areas as stairwells and hallways, lending the interiors’ corporate coolness an element of fun.

“It’s my first day really here--my office is up in the new section that is just opening up this morning,” said Steve Rountree, the center’s director of operations and planning since 1984. “I came last night and prowled around with my two daughters and my wife, and it was pretty amazing.

“It’s such a long journey, this project--it’s almost like traveling to some distant part of the solar system. It’s great to say, OK, we’ve made it this far.”

Despite Saturday’s massive power outage, the transition to the new site went off without a hitch. “I thought for sure we’d lose all day Saturday, and the computers wouldn’t be up and running,” he said. “But the emergency generators kicked on in 10 seconds, which is what they were supposed to do.”

Construction workers in hard hats still outnumbered Getty staffers 3 to 1. “I think the construction workers really think we’re nuts, trying to move onto a site that is still under construction,” Rountree said.

Other workers noted that they have to line up behind concrete trucks to get into the new parking structure. “I like learning construction lingo, it’s very good,” joked Getty attorney Christine Steiner, who has learned to communicate the word “Stop!” to truckers through the hand sign of a raised fist.

“I’m not all moved in, but very excited to be here,” said Getty Trust President and Chief Executive Harold Williams, looking very much at home in chinos, casual shoes and carrying a coffee mug. “I’ve been on this project for 13 1/2 years; it’s the coming together of everything we’ve worked for. I got my badge, I know a little bit about how to use the phone, I know where the bathroom is--and now I’ll unpack the boxes.”

Williams and most others arriving Monday moved from office space at Fourth Street and Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, with ready access to the bustling Third Street Promenade.

Now, they are visited by deer instead of pedestrians. And while most relished the new opportunity to interact with colleagues from other divisions, a few worried that the isolated hilltop location, more like a college campus than a traditional work atmosphere, might provide a little too much togetherness.

“I had one [colleague] tell me she was worried about having to talk to people on the tram at 7:30 in the morning,” said Marianne Rusk, director of human resources. “We told her she should wear a sign that says: ‘I don’t interact until 8:30.’ ”

Some Getty workers had taken up residence in the new digs before Monday. The 80-member Getty Conservation Institute moved into its new five-story building--with each floor named after one of the world’s continents--on July 29, leaving their former home in a corporate office park in Marina del Rey. Their collection of offices and sterile white laboratories--including such facilities as the “accelerated aging room,” where objects are subjected to aging forces--were already up and running.

The institute itself will become an object of study in the aging room, said institute director Miguel Angel Corzo--in particular, the travertine stone of which the buildings are constructed. “We want to see its aging characteristics, how we can better protect it,” he said.

Another wave of employees, the accounting and publications staff, moves to the new complex in November. Artworks from the Getty’s Malibu museum begin arriving at the new galleries in January and throughout the next three months (security officers say details are tightly guarded). The Getty’s Research Institute building will be completed in spring 1997, with its staff moving in next summer.

Some new staffers will also be added to the Getty. Helen Kidder, manager of security special services, said that the Getty is adding more security officers to patrol the facility (that number is also tightly guarded). She added that Getty security is looking for a special type of guard, who wears a coat and tie instead of badge and gun and “is calm, professional, articulate, and knows what the Getty is about.”

“We want to welcome people to the spaces,” she said. “Most museums place an emphasis on keeping people out.”