Once More Into The Swamp

For the $273 million we’re spending on City Hall, shouldn’t we get a spiffed-up rotunda?

How about clean windows? Shouldn’t we expect clean windows for $273 million?

Or how about fixing the murals so they’re not dropping big chunks of paint onto the marble floors?

And speaking of the marble floors, wouldn’t it be nice to get floors scraped clean of the grime deposited by 70 years of civic history?

I mean, $273 million is a piece of change. It’s nearly double the amount originally estimated to restore our beat-up old City Hall, which was shaken to the bone by the Northridge quake.

You’d think, for that amount, we’d actually get it restored. But no.

As reported today by Times reporter Ken Reich, none of those items are included in the $273-million figure. Somehow, someway, they got left out.

Here’s some more missing items, according to Project Restore, the preservationist group:

* A new roof

* Landscaping

* Outside lights

“There will be tremendous disappointment and resentment,” wrote General Services Department manager Randall Bacon in a memo, “if City Hall is opened, after almost 38 months and $273 million of public investment, and the building appears and operates exactly as it does today.”

I guess so. Especially when we’re now asked to pony up $27 million more to get the restoration we thought we were getting in the first place.

The question is not whether we want City Hall truly restored. Of course we do. The question is how the City Council kissed away $273 million without making sure we got it.

You might as well ask how our subway project ended up a national joke. Or why, even now, L.A. Unified is building the most expensive high school in the country--Belmont Learning Center--when it can’t afford textbooks for all its students.

We’ve gotten very good at wandering into these swamps. Each time, we seem to begin the trek with the best of intentions. And, each time, we end up mired in financial disaster and disgrace.

In the case of City Hall, real estate developer Stuart Ketchum has watched the process with more interest than most. Two years ago, at the request of Mayor Richard Riordan, he headed the task force that tried to persuade the council to stop its high-spending ways. That’s when the budget hit the then-shocking figure of $242 million.

“The current plan should not be implemented,” Ketchum and his cohorts wrote in 1996. “It is unnecessarily complex, poorly managed and extravagant in its proposed expenditures.”

Ketchum’s group drew up a $165-million plan and took it to the City Council. Ketchum told the lawmakers that his plan, though not luxurious, would do well by City Hall. The council listened and then voted to spend $273 million.

OK, so what did the City Council want that Ketchum wasn’t offering? It appears the members wanted a more elaborate feathering of their own nests.

To understand that conclusion, you have to understand a rough breakdown of the costs. Getting that breakdown is not easy because there’s no single person, or single office, in charge of the project. You get one number here, another number there.

And little by little, they start to add up. Here’s how the big picture looks:

* Earthquake retrofitting: $100 million. That’s a very high figure for earthquake retro, and it represents the installation of a state-of-the-art system known as base isolation. Still, Ketchum recommended the same system at the same cost. So the two plans are even on earthquake retro.

* Office renovation for City Council and the mayor: $122 million. This includes tens of millions to move workers into temporary quarters so the offices could be gutted and rebuilt. Ketchum proposed a far more modest rehab that would not require a move-out.

* Office renovation for the higher floors: $51 million. More gutting, more move-outs.

* Historical preservation of rotunda, council chambers, murals, ceilings, etc.: $0.

So you can see where the emphasis lies. The money is going into the offices that will be occupied by the City Council and its upstairs departments.

But what of it? Doesn’t the City Council deserve a comfy working place? Surely it does and surely we should pay for it. These offices have hardly been improved since City Hall was opened in 1928.

Still, there’s a mystery about these numbers that stems from their sheer size. City Hall contains about 500,000 square feet of office space. We are now spending roughly $173 million to rehab that space, including the move-out costs.

That comes to $346 per square foot.

I called Wayne Ratkovich and asked him about that number. Ratkovich is one of the best-known rehab specialists in Los Angeles.

He was impressed.

“I’ve never heard of a number that big,” said Ratkovich. “The most expensive figure I’ve come across for full rehab is $100 a square foot in a New York City building.”

In other words, we are spending three times as much money per square foot as any project Ratkovich can recall.

Let’s get a little perverse and look at it another way. Remember the historic renovation that the City Council somehow forgot? The renovation now estimated to cost $27 million extra?

Well, there’s approximately 250,000 square feet of rotunda, City Council chambers and other public space in City Hall. That’s where most of the $27 million will be spent.

Grind the numbers and it comes to $108 per square foot. Within the range that Ratkovich describes.

Keep in mind, those public rooms are the most elaborate in City Hall. Historic renovation of these rooms, with their murals, painted ceilings and ancient fixtures, is expensive.

So why are we spending triple the amount on offices as on the grand public spaces? Or, better question yet, where is all that money going for office rehab?

We don’t know. Yet. As ever with our financial swamps, the process of rehabbing City Hall is so veiled that it’s nearly impossible to know how the dollars are getting spent or who’s authorizing any single decision.

Still, there’s time to find answers and retreat from this swamp before it sucks us down. Many contracts have not been bid. Indeed, a general contractor has not yet been selected.

So the City Council can still mend its ways. Among other things, it can scale down its office rehab from the current heights of $346 per square foot. And some of the saved money could go to the forgotten historic preservation.

The rest, just maybe, we could keep in our pockets.

Seventy years ago, City Hall opened amid a great celebration. Bands played, and movie mogul Louis B. Mayer sent truckloads of searchlights to roam the sky.

It was a grand evening. When Mayor George Cryer stood to speak, he remarked that the $9-million building had been erected, “without a suggestion of graft or the breath of scandal.”

Everyone cheered. Let’s hope, one day, we can do the same.