Entering the Renovation Business

In the living room of a century-old Pasadena house, beaming like a proud father, Ron Marshall stands on the hardwood floor. He admires the plaster wall with a finish as smooth as ice cream.

To understand why Marshall, a state construction supervisor, is so proud one need look no further than upstairs in this state-owned landmark. There, waterlogged plaster, buckled floors and gang graffiti, awaiting attention from his crew of skilled laborers, give evidence to what workers found when they started on the home.

“It was like a bomb hit when we got inside,” he said. This is one of 80 historic but dilapidated houses along the route of the proposed Long Beach Freeway extension that the California Department of Transportation is spending $20 million to restore.

Since the 1950s, Caltrans has acquired more than 500 homes along the route, which would connect the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways, cutting through Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno.

Protracted political and legal battles have stalled construction of the extension for decades, and work on the freeway is not expected to begin for at least 10 years.

Over the years, scores of the homes bought to make room for the freeway have become vacant, sitting decaying and vandalized and blighting once well-kept neighborhoods.

By 1995, a quarter of the homes were unrentable or empty. Dozens of historically significant homes were rotting despite promises they would be spared through relocation or other means.

Amid mounting pressure from politicians in Washington and Sacramento, Caltrans abandoned its long-held view that the bulldozer was just around the corner for these properties and decided to fix them up.

“Years of neglect took their toll,” Caltrans Chief Environmental Planner Ronald J. Kosinski said.

After nearly a year of work, the blighted Pasadena neighborhood along St. John and Pasadena avenues, home to numerous Caltrans-owned vintage abodes, is beginning to blossom again.

Preservationists are praising the agency they once castigated, although a few critics say the work is too costly and that some of the homes no longer in the proposed freeway’s path should be sold.

The work is pricey, with some homes requiring up to $500,000 worth of repairs. Many of the historic structures need strengthening against earthquakes and have lead paint and other problems that federal preservation guidelines dictate must be resolved.

Miles of new copper plumbing must be installed. Even the lumber sizes on such old structures are different from those available today, one official said. So far, more than $8 million has been spent to restore 14 historic homes and to begin work on 15 others, Caltrans officials said.

John Snyder, the agency’s top architectural historian, is overseeing the project, even re-creating the original color schemes on homes.

“We are trying to make these houses as close to the way they were originally,” said Snyder after inspecting a four-bedroom Craftsman the agency spent $442,000 to refurbish.

Like many of the structures, its foundation was river rock that erodes over time and had to be replaced.

Pasadena preservationists say the progress is remarkable. “It’s actually getting pleasant to drive down St. John Avenue,” said Bob Winter, a local historian.

Neighbors on nearby upscale Pasadena streets are elated. “We are so really pleased in the neighborhood,” said Claire Bogaard, who had written Caltrans for 20 years complaining about the places.

One local state senator said he is pleased with the progress and plans to introduce a bill this week requiring that the rents collected from historic homes be placed in a fund to pay for their maintenance; currently they go to Caltrans’ general budget.

“These grand old homes cannot be allowed to turn back into eyesores by a lack of adequate maintenance again,” said state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank).

Agency critics say the program is a selective face-lift with a high price.

“Caltrans is excessively paying for work on a few historic properties, but what about the rest of the homes?” said attorney Chris Sutton.

He used as an example the more than $650,000 Caltrans spent to repair the two-story Grokowsky House, built in South Pasadena by Viennese architect Rudolf Schindler in 1928.

Members of a tenants group question the quality of the work, saying that in some houses, rooms are being left in disrepair as money runs short. “This is a disservice to the homes,” said one leader of the Historic Property Tenants Assn.

Tenants are also angry at a 25% rent hike in the newly restored homes. “Why should we pay for 20 years of state neglect?” one said.

Caltrans defends the rent hikes as reasonable for such homes and says structures such as the Grokowsky House need major rebuilding. “Schindler [the architect] wasn’t a very good structural engineer,” Kosinski said.

He said that in approving the freeway extension, federal officials last April mandated that all the houses be rented and maintained.

About 100 of the properties are no longer needed for the freeway, but the agency has no plans to sell them, despite requirements in state law to dispose of excess property.

Kosinski said the agency cannot be sure what is truly unneeded until the road is designed and further route shifts are ruled out.

Meanwhile, on Pasadena Avenue, the restoration work continues.

Construction supervisor Gary Bouchard is demonstrating the unique hand cranks that his team was able to preserve on a historic bungalow.

“You don’t see windows like this anymore,” he said.

A few hundred yards away, Marshall offers an improvised history lesson at the turn-of-the century home.

“The woman who owned this donated some of the land for the Huntington Hospital,” he said. “So this is a piece of history.”