Move Shakes Up the Movers and Shakers

Ron Deaton’s new office is larger than John Ferraro’s.

It’s also larger than Mayor Richard Riordan’s. But that hardly matters because Nate Holden’s office is the biggest of all.

But, then, it doesn’t have a wet bar like Deaton’s.

Who, you might ask, is Ron Deaton and why should his office be bigger than the mayor’s or the City Council president’s? Deaton, who rarely contradicts those who refer to him as Los Angeles’ “real mayor,” is the city’s chief legislative analyst and, more important, Czar of the Move.

Over the past week, the City Council and its staff, the media and assorted city departments have emptied downtown’s historic 70-year-old City Hall and moved into new quarters across Main Street. It’s an 18-story, modern building with grimy windows, notoriously slow elevators, but working air-conditioning. City Hall will undergo seismic retrofitting at a cost of $273 million; it will be closed for at least three years. While the cost of moving the top brass wasn’t broken out, it will require $58.3 million to shift all city employees and revamp their former quarters.

The council held its final meeting in the old chambers last week; lawmakers will meet this week in a spacious but sterile third-floor room with obstructed views of the council. So obstructed, in fact, that city workers have installed video screens on three pillars so the audience can see the proceedings.

If they can’t see, they’d better not count on greater scrutiny of the proceedings by the media. In the old quarters, the offices of the various news organizations were situated in the corridors around the Council Chamber.

Now, they are nine floors and a very, very slow elevator ride away.

But that’s another story. Back to The Move.

By all accounts, crossing the street hasn’t been easy. Imagine the aggravation of moving a single family, then multiply that more than a dozen times.

“It’s a big task moving 15 council members, two floors of legislative analysts and a council chamber,” said Jim Krakowski, a legislative analyst who is overseeing the move for the Czar. “This was a big job.”

And, being that it’s this City Council, nothing’s ever easy.

Those Personal Touches

The 15 council members were given a generic blueprint for their offices--all with conference rooms, bathrooms next to their personal offices and kitchens. The offices are all basically the same size--unlike the spaces in old City Hall where some council members, particularly those who had been in office for quite some time, had more spacious quarters than their colleagues.

Not surprisingly, almost none of the council members stuck to the blueprints; in some cases, their changes were dramatic.

The result? Most of the offices are as different as the council members themselves.

(Deaton, of course, also designed his personal office complete with built-in cherrywood cabinets and the wet bar. Leading off his personal office is a conference room with an enormous marble table that seats at least 15, since it was used in the old building for the council’s closed sessions.)

Considered by some to be the invisible 16th council member and by others as Los Angeles’ prime minister, Deaton happily gave up his dingy second-floor office in the old City Hall and says privately that he and the council will never move back.

But while Deaton’s office has raised eyebrows, it is Councilman Holden’s that has sparked the most lunchtime and elevator conversations.

“Have you seen Nate’s kingdom?” one council aide asked.

The office, with three windows that overlook Los Angeles Street, has a wall-length built-in cabinet with a hanging closet. His staff members have small offices, mostly without windows.

Holden claims that he’s the only council member who knows “space engineering” and that the others are “jealous” of the way he designed his offices.

By contrast, Councilman Joel Wachs designed his space in what his staff is calling “the newsroom approach.” They have few permanent walls, just modular furniture with the chief of staff’s cubicle located in the middle. That way, they say, they can easily communicate with each other rather than running in and out of offices.

Then there’s Councilwoman Laura Chick’s office, which has one of the smallest kitchens--it’s a hallway, really--but most of her staffers were given offices with windows--and used furniture.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas chose to locate his kitchen in the back of the office, closed off by a door. His conference room is just off the reception area so visitors don’t need to traipse through the office to attend a meeting.

Ridley-Thomas says he didn’t like the idea of, say, developer Eli Broad getting hit with a pizza as he tried to make his way into a meeting.

Three council members--Chick, Mike Feuer and Cindy Miscikowski--chose to share their bathrooms with their staff members so the bathroom doors are located outside the council members’ private offices. That way, staffers can use the restrooms without trespassing on the council members’ inner sanctums.

All the bathrooms are large, designed to meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. Most have mirrors. But city staffers neglected to include a cabinet or counter, so those are being hastily installed as council members’ request them.

(Deaton doesn’t have the private bathroom, perhaps preferring to keep all the space for his office.)

Feuer’s suites are rather straightforward, with his office overlooking Parker Center. Councilwoman Ruth Galanter has an airy space with a large, open kitchen.

Councilman Richard Alatorre’s office is somewhat chopped up, with lots of cubicles for interns and other staff members, as well as smaller offices for deputies.

Then there’s Ferraro’s office with a commanding view overlooking Temple Street and the Children’s Museum. He has a smaller office than he had in the old building, where he worked for 32 years. And the books lining the window vents are there to help control the air-conditioning’s otherwise uncontrollable blast.

His chief of staff’s office is adjoining, one of the few that are actually that close. (One staff member said it was preferable to be a little farther away from the boss: “We see a lot of each other anyway,” the aide said.)

Because some council members, like Ferraro and Wachs, have so many years’ worth of files, the council members were given storage space below their offices, in the underground mall. Getting into those spaces has been a chore.

Movers carrying boxes and boxes of files recently lined up outside the area, surprised by a change in the locks. It took some time before the new key was located.

“It was like the Keystone Kops,” said Greg Nelson, Wachs’ chief deputy, who was among those in line. “Someone changed the locks and didn’t tell anyone about it.”

There have been other problems, as well.

The first day that Wachs and Chick moved, his calls were somehow routed to her office.

Then there was the computer printer in Ferraro’s office that somehow lost the ability to print the letter R in the move across the street.

Out With the Old, In With the New

The real test of this move, however, will probably come Tuesday. The council will hold its first meeting in the new chamber, which is equipped with technology the members never have used before. And let’s just say that some of these council members probably wish we all still used manual typewriters.

On each council member’s desk is a computer terminal that will display the agenda items and votes. Large video screens are behind the desks, so at least some of the audience also can see votes and agenda items, as well as speakers.

It will be the first time the council will sit facing the audience; in the old chamber the council sat in a horseshoe, where members on the sides could--and did--make sneaky exits and entrances.

In fact, this meeting room will make this council quite a bit more visible, something that has not been lost on some lawmakers who already are moaning that they might just have to stay for all agenda items.

Hard plastic chairs will fill the rows facing the council. One aide quipped that he wished the chairs were nailed down: “You never know what could get thrown around here.”

Council members felt a bit nostalgic last week, biding farewell for a while to City Hall’s majestic chamber with its marble pillars and mosaics. The location of many a film shoot--”Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential” among others--and many a good, if not particularly fair, fight.

“I already miss that old building,” said Wachs, who worked in City Hall for the past 27 years. “You feel the history of that building, you really do. You feel the character of it.

“This,” said the councilman, looking around at the barren walls, muted tones and dull carpeting, “is exactly the opposite.”