Civic Pride on a Budget

They say you can’t fight city hall. In Mission Viejo, just finding the place can be a challenge.

Little green signs point the way through tidy neighborhoods and past strip malls to an office park and a generic glass box with industrial carpet inside.

City Hall is a second-floor rental. Sandwiched between lawyers and real estate agents, it is a symbol of governmental authority in an anti-government age.

“We get school and Boy Scout tours here,” said Dan Joseph, Mission Viejo’s city manager. They look around at democracy in action, and the response is always the same.

This is it?

Not for long. Mission Viejo is about to begin construction on its $14.5-million City Hall, a 52,000-square-foot facility designed in a contemporary Mission style at the geographic center of town.

City officials say the project will save money in the long run, but its significance goes beyond the bottom line.

The new City Hall embodies a coming of age for this community of 98,000--an attempt through architecture to move beyond its roots as a master-planned community that served as a blueprint for suburban growth nationwide.

From the U.S. Capitol in Washington to Los Angeles City Hall, public buildings have been symbols of authority and aspiration.

“People used to take pride in big city halls,” said James Steele, a professor of history and design at USC. “But there’s been a whole shift in public trust in government institutions and the authority of government, and it’s a shift that’s been reflected in civic architecture.”

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The shift is a direct outgrowth of the political upheaval of the 1960s and taxpayer revolts of the last 25 years, Steele said.

“As institutions have been devalued, there’s no need for having buildings that convey power and authority,” he said. “People want convenience. People want a place to hang out and have fun.”

Shopping malls, recreation centers and youth sports fields have replaced city halls as the focal point in many new suburbs. When public buildings are proposed, often their cost, rather than any enduring legacy, is paramount.

“Instead of wanting to lavish money on a symbol of a community, city officials want to save as much money as possible,” said Robert Harris, director of USC’s graduate program in architecture. “If a mayor and council want to get reelected, they know what to do.”

In 1992, a proposed City Hall was overwhelmingly rejected by Mission Viejo voters who thought it was too big and expensive--an extravagance for a town that had incorporated only four years earlier.

“The buzzword is Taj Mahal,” said Joseph, the city manager. “Any time government builds something, somebody is going to call it the Taj Mahal.”

In 2000, an advisory vote on a new project--smaller and more centrally located than the previous plan--easily passed.

A case was made, Joseph said, that the city’s 100 employees had outgrown the leased space, which was costing taxpayers more than $500,000 a year and expected to increase.

“It’s a statement that we’re here to stay,” Joseph said.

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The project at La Paz Road and Marguerite Parkway comes 35 years after Mission Viejo’s first residents moved into homes on the former cattle ranch, and it is being watched by other maturing South County cities, where the question of whether to rent or own is increasingly being considered.

Laguna Hills, which is building a $25-million community center and sports park, is studying options for when its City Hall lease expires in 2002. Lake Forest has two years left on its City Hall lease and is looking to acquire land.

“It’s a business decision,” City Manager Robert C. Dunek said. “But we’re also looking to create a sense of community.”

Laguna Niguel has an office lease that runs until 2005, but a permanent City Hall is “a long-term dream,” City Manager Tim Casey said.

Even San Juan Capistrano, one of California’s oldest communities, is studying whether it can afford a new home.

Officials there moved into a “temporary” City Hall in the mid-1970s--a converted public works building to which trailers have been added out back.

“It doesn’t convey great civic pride,” Assistant City Manager Jennifer Murray said.

In the suburbs, civic pride in a public building still remains less important than fiscal conservatism.

“Today, the most important building in a city doesn’t have to be a government building,” said Donald White, Laguna Hills’ assistant city manager, who says he’s proud that his city staff is the leanest in Orange County. “It’s not a cultural mandate anymore.”

In Mission Viejo, part of the sales pitch was to build City Hall across from the popular, 3 1/2-year-old library, creating a civic center.

The library replaced a county branch located in a storefront. The $6.8-million facility holds 120,000 volumes in a building with stacked stone walls and a curved cedar roof topped with copper.

Some 3,000 people showed up for the library’s dedication in 1997. Since then, the number of registered borrowers has tripled. More than 450 volunteers logged 19,000 hours last year to keep the place running.

“It has really invigorated the community,” library director Valerie Meyer said.

A $5.2-million expansion of the library will be built in conjunction with City Hall. Combined, the complementary buildings will create a place “where the governed interact with the government,” said Jim Wirick of LPA Inc., the Irvine architect who designed both.

“The library will be the younger sister and City Hall the older brother,” Wirick said. “We’re basically building a home for the city.”

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A courtyard will host cultural events. Community rooms will provide meeting space. Subtle design touches are intended to defuse any criticism that a palace is being erected for the political elite; the floor in the council chambers, for instance, will be sloped so the audience is eye-to-eye with its elected officials.

The stonework on the building’s exterior will offer another message.

It’s called “Mission Viejo rock.” But it isn’t rock. It’s cast concrete and costs a third as much as the real thing.

“It addresses civic pride, but it does it on a budget,” Wirick said. “You don’t need to tell the world the stone is fake.”

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City Central

Mission Viejo officials are hoping a new civic plaza, complete with a $14.5 million city hall and an expanded library, will give the city a stronger identity.

Source: LPA Inc.

Graphics reporting by RAOUL B. RANOA / Los Angeles Times