Wilmington Still Waits for Its Ship to Come In

The ultra-modern recreation center was supposed to be a gift from the Port of Los Angeles to neighboring Wilmington, a community hard hit by the side effects of the harbor’s phenomenal growth.

Some gift.

Twelve years after its conception, Banning’s Landing now sits half done, a hulk of steel girders and questionable construction--another eyesore on the industrial landscape.

According to the initial plan, the project was going to be a $12-million recreation complex on the very site where its namesake, Phineas Banning, established the port more than 130 years ago.

Even after harbor officials cut the square footage in half and reduced the budget to $2.5 million, the community continued to support the project to regain public access to the waterfront. Construction began almost four years ago.

But work ceased when the builder walked away from the site in 1998. Today, the metal and wood skeleton of the ship-like community center sits at the foot of Avalon Boulevard.

The estimated cost of the project has almost doubled. Its framework is riddled with so many flaws that substantial remedial work must be done before the structure can be completed. The original builder has sued the port, and completion is not expected until next spring.

“They’ve told us everything will be done by April 2001,” said Gertrude Schwab, secretary of Friends of Banning’s Landing, which has worked on the project for years. “We don’t put much faith in what the port tells us any more. If it’s ever finished, we will shout hallelujah.”

Harbor officials acknowledge that Banning’s Landing has been a frustrating experience for everyone. But, they say, the port remains committed to overcoming the construction problems and finishing the project within a year.

“We could have let this sit fallow until the lawsuits were resolved,” said Dennis McCarbery, the port’s public information director. “But we are moving ahead with the building, and we are going to get it done.”

Schwab and other local activists say a community center like Banning’s Landing is long overdue in Wilmington, which has endured the negative impacts of port-related developments for years.

Caravans of trucks rumble through the streets, pulling 40-foot shipping containers and fouling the air. Port acquisitions of land for future cargo operations have steadily eaten away at Wilmington’s property values, tax base and local employment opportunities.

Against a backdrop of oil refineries, junkyards for the jetsam of the maritime industry have proliferated, as well as storage facilities for steel cargo containers. A mountain of them forms a sort of tombstone at the head of a historic cemetery that holds Civil War veterans.

Wilmington residents say the Harbor Department is finally doing something good for the community by building Banning’s Landing, but it has not been able to deliver on its promise.

The project was conceived in the late 1980s as a way to restore public access to a waterfront that has been steadily lost to industrial and port uses. Initial plans describe a community and interpretive center of 20,000 square feet.

Billed as a “window on the water,” the center was to include a museum with displays and models related to the shipping industry and port operations. Other phases of the project provided for the purchase of surrounding property for parkland.

Then port officials formed the Futures Commercial Task Force to assess redevelopment and land use in the harbor district. It concluded that Banning’s Landing would not be a major tourist attraction. The plan was scaled back to a $2.5-million facility of 10,000 square feet.

“It was not commercially viable to put something that large down there,” McCarbery said. “But everyone was still interested in doing something on the waterfront, so we came up with the community center.”

The ensuing delays and changes prompted George De La Torre, who led an advisory group on Banning’s Landing, to step down as its chairman. After five years as head of the Wilmington Community Advisory Committee, the longtime owner of Juanita’s Foods said he was disappointed by the lack of progress and the scaling back of the original plan.

“I had many feelings of frustration,” De La Torre said. “Working with the Port of L.A. is quite an experience. It is a very bureaucratic organization. The wheels turn slowly.”

In 1996, the port hired architect Ted Tanaka of Marina del Rey and the Gorham Co. Inc. of Temecula to design and build the project. Tanaka came up with an unusual ship motif for the center, and construction began shortly thereafter.

But two years into the project, Gorham walked away from the site, claiming the structural design of the building was unsafe and that harbor officials were ignoring the company’s concerns.

According to consultants’ reports to both Gorham and the port, the structure could undergo excessive movement in an earthquake, parts of the frame might not be able to bear the weight of the building, and design and construction modifications were necessary to ensure the integrity of the structure.

In a pending lawsuit filed by Gorham in 1998, the company charges that the engineering and structural plans for the building are defective. The firm also claims that the port’s inspectors were more interested in trivial details about the structure than the big picture.

Tanaka could not be reached for comment. Port attorneys contend that Gorham’s work was so shoddy that a substantial number of fixes are necessary before the building can be finished.

“We have had to tear out quite a bit of the work so we can proceed,” said Deputy City Atty. David McKenna, who is handling the case. “Our position is that the Gorham Co. was over its head.”

McKenna contends that the port’s inspectors repeatedly asked the company to make corrections. When the problems were not addressed, he said, the Harbor Department withheld payments from the builder.

As the matter proceeded in court, the port hired Pinner Construction Co. to resume building the project, which now has a price tag of close to $4.8 million. If Gorham loses its case, McKenna said, the port will be able to recover much of the cost from the company.

Meanwhile, Wilmington waits. Had Banning’s Landing been a new cargo terminal, supporters of the project say, it would have been finished a lot sooner.

“If the port was going to make money on this, they would be pushing it,” said Lucy Mejia, whose family has lived in Wilmington for five generations.