SPECIAL REPORT * Since the ’94 quake, estimates to repair L.A.’s top landmark have gone from $153 million to $300 million. Now a push for $27 million in restoration work is forcing leaders to face political questions about the . . .Growing Retrofit Costs at City Hall

With the 15 City Council members finally poised to move out of City Hall, the 3 1/2-year seismic retrofitting of Los Angeles’ most recognizable public building is about to begin in earnest.

But exactly how big a project will it be?

Will the project be expanded to include additional restoration and modernization?

And how much will it all cost?

These fundamental questions remain unanswered, because the City Council has yet to decide on the project’s full scope.

At the moment, a nonprofit preservationist group, Project Restore, is lobbying lawmakers to add at least $27 million in restoration work. In fact, two of the project’s managers--City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie and city legislative analyst Ronald F. Deaton--plus the retrofit’s designer, Nabih Youssef, are members of Project Restore’s board. Moreover, City Council President John Ferraro is a vocal proponent of restoration, as well as retrofitting.

But city Controller Rick Tuttle, who opposes expanding the project, warns that an escalation in its costs could fuel the secession movements brewing in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere.

“They could point to City Hall, and use that as a powerful argument for splitting the city,” he said last week.

Although a $126-million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and as much as $230 million in voter-approved seismic bonds are available for most of the work, there are legal obstacles to using that money to finance work that has nothing to do with earthquake safety.

What was originally authorized as a $153-million project has doubled in cost to about $300 million, according to its architect, Christopher C. Martin. About $80 million of that has been spent on moving people out of the building and into City Hall East or on renting them other quarters around downtown.

“That’s everything,” Martin said, “unless there are change orders or directions from the council to redo all the space configurations on floors one to four.”

Martin is sensitive to cost escalation, because the day the council approved the $153 million, on July 29, 1994, he signed a “promise” to then-Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky that he would bring in the project on time and on budget.

It is unfair to bring that up now, the architect said, because no one told him everyone would have to be moved out of the building during the work. And no one then could know the project would be delayed for four years.

Although Martin and project director Carey McLeod last week used a $300-million figure, developer Stuart Ketchum--head of the panel named two years ago by Mayor Richard Riordan to try to pare down the retrofitting cost--said he believes that the cost will increase to at least $350 million.

Comrie and Deaton, however, said last week that they expect to bring the project in for $273 million, and on time--October 2001.

“It’s within the $273 million,” Deaton said. “At worse, the bids came in $10 million over budget, but that’s well within our contingency fund. . . . We’re on schedule and on target.”

A general construction contract is about to be let, probably, according to McLeod, for $111.8 million with the Clark Construction Co. That is the bid Deaton referred to as coming in for about $10 million more than had been foreseen in the $273-million plan. The contingency fee is said to be $15 million to $20 million, with Martin giving the lower figure and Comrie the higher.

Now, the question is, what may be added?

Tuttle says the $27-million price tag that Project Restore has attached to its recommendations is “a low-ball estimate.”

Still, the controller said, “this is a very powerful and influential group of insiders, and they are not going away.”

The group’s chairman, David Abel--who publishes newsletters, including one labeled an “insider’s guide to public investment in the region”--said its proposal has been scaled back.

Its original suggestion was that City Hall’s exterior granite and terra cotta be restored. Now, Project Restore is willing to settle for simply cleaning it, at a projected cost of $1,320,000.

Adamson Associates has estimated the cost of other items on Project Restore’s agenda as follows: $1,188,000 for signs; $660,000 for replacement of roof finishes; $1,260,000 for new elevator cab finishes; $7,920,000 for “tenant improvements on first through fourth floors”; $1,782,000 for tenant improvements to council members’ offices; $1,650,000 for new finishes to council chambers; $1,287,000 for landscaping and irrigation.

The total would be $27.3 million, if the work is done in conjunction with the retrofitting; it would cost $34.6 million if the city waits, said the person who did the estimating, Nicholas J. Butcher.

Butcher said his estimates assume 5% inflation per year.

Abel said: “It is intelligent to do all the restoration needed now, while the building is vacated and other major work is done, rather than do a half-assed job now and have to undertake a new project later.”

Ferraro agrees.

“We’d be remiss if we just repaired City Hall now and then had to go back and do all these things in the future at greater cost,” he said. “Obviously, we should do it as cheaply as we can, but we have to get it done.”

Yaroslavsky, now a county supervisor, said: “This project was always susceptible to scope creep, and that’s what’s been happening. City Hall is worth saving, but it doesn’t have to be a Cadillac. It can be just fine as a Chevy or a Ford.”

Ferraro and a majority of council members favor a big project, a fact that looms particularly large because Riordan has recused himself from participating in the process because he and the project’s architect are co-owners of a downtown building.

Before recusing himself, Riordan put together Ketchum’s panel in an attempt to keep the project’s costs down.

Thus, Riordan, who opposes an expensive project, is not in a position to block it. Yet two of the project’s three overseers--Comrie and Deaton--sit on Project Restore’s board of directors.

According to the city attorney’s office, that does not pose a conflict. Last week, Comrie said that the city has contributed some funds, as has the state, to Project Restore, and so he does not think that a conflict has arisen.