Pride of Pasadena Has Passed Its Prime

Smack in the heart of Pasadena sits a palace for the people. But it’s a palace with problems.

With its enormous dome, reminiscent of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pasadena’s 74-year-old City Hall is the biggest jewel in the crown of the architecturally rich city.

Residents love the Beaux Arts civic monument, but do they love it enough to pay close to $80 million to renovate it and make it seismically safer?

That’s the amount that may be needed to prevent the imposing structure from partially collapsing and endangering lives in a major quake and for upgrading its aging plumbing and ventilation systems.

“Everyone loves City Hall as a landmark and it’s hard to imagine Pasadena without it. But there is a limit to how much they are willing to pay,” said Harold J. Meyerman, a Pasadena resident and former chief executive of First Interstate Bank Ltd. who serves on City Council-appointed committees studying repairs and funding for the building.

Built in 1927 at a cost of $1.34 million, City Hall is a three-winged edifice surrounding a large courtyard with cloisters and Alaskan marble stairways, and capped by the impressive dome.

The building at 100 N. Garfield Ave. is known to millions of people worldwide through cameo appearances in films, television shows and commercials. It has been depicted as everything from a police station to a palace.

Carts and horses still outnumbered cars in Pasadena in 1923, when voters approved a $3.5-million bond issue to build City Hall, the city library and civic auditorium.

City officials say it may take another voter-approved bond issue, financed with a property tax increase, to bring City Hall back up to snuff.

“It’s a huge price to pay in a city of 134,000,” Meyerman said. But it has to be done, he said.

Vice Mayor Paul Little said he expects the City Council to take up the issue in the next few months.

“I think the city will come up with some of the money. Short of some help from the state or Congress, we’ll be asking voters: ‘Are you willing to pay for it?’ ”

Any such tax increase would require the backing of two-thirds of the voters.

City Manager Cynthia Kurtz said the money must be forthcoming or she will start moving city employees out and into rented office space next year. She has set aside $500,000 in the city budget to pay for the leased space.

“During a major earthquake, this building has the potential to be deadly,” Kurtz said. “We’re on notice and, at some point, we have to make a decision. It’s time to call the question. This year is the year to decide. The community must decide: Is this our City Hall?”

A seismic study five years ago found that the building’s three-story wings could collapse into the spacious interior courtyard in a major quake. The study said the columns supporting the arched corridors also could fail and the dome could crash down during a magnitude-7 quake on a local fault or a magnitude-8 temblor on the San Andreas fault.

The council was given a series of options, including abandoning the building. In 1999, it chose to pursue an extensive seismic retrofitting that would cost $100 million in 2001 dollars. But the project remained unfunded.

A survey funded by the city last year reveals the reason. Pasadena residents in the random telephone survey rated improving schools, expanding law enforcement, building recreation facilities and improving streets as higher priorities than repairing City Hall.

When the 253 residents polled were asked whether they would support a theoretical annual tax increase of $28 to pay for the City Hall work, only 13% said yes. The report was forced to conclude that there appears to be little support for repairing City Hall.

The City Hall Restoration Committee in June chose a less-lavish approach that would cost an estimated $79 million.

The original plan called for a seismic retrofit using shock absorbers, known as base isolators, beneath City Hall’s 200 or so columns, as well as construction of a fourth three-story wing to fill in an arcade on the east side for added strength.

The scaled-back plan would retain the base isolation systems but eliminate the fourth wing. Instead, the building would be made more rigid by constructing a foundation and basement beneath the arcade to achieve a strong square.

It’s a relatively bare-bones approach, said Sue Mossman, a restoration committee member and executive director of Pasadena Heritage, an influential preservation group.

But others note that a large chunk of the cost involves upgrading plumbing, wiring, heating and air-conditioning systems. They say those items could be cut back to produce a less-costly alternative.

Kurtz and other city officials said it does not make sense to tear up the building once for seismic work and then renovate it again later to install the much-needed systems.

The federal government so far has offered to provide $8 million for the work. City officials and the retrofit finance committee are considering a general obligation bond, a utility tax increase or an annual transfer of money from the city-owned utility to pay the city’s share of the repairs.

Critics, however, say city officials should tap existing revenues.

“They are crying wolf when it comes to the need for a property tax measure,” said Ross Selvidge, a member of the finance committee examining the issue. Selvidge, who chaired a task force that helped pass a library bond a few years ago, said potential city budget surpluses could help pay the annual bond debt for the project.

Selvidge said city officials fail to realize that City Hall does not have the same cachet as a library or police station. “A property tax requires a two-thirds vote, and I think it would be a longshot,’ he said.

Others say an educational campaign might persuade voters that the building, designed by San Francisco architects John Bakewell Jr. and Arthur Brown Jr., is more than a place for bureaucrats.

“People think of City Hall as place to pay bills, fines and argue with city government,” Mossman said. “But it is more than that and, with the right arguments, people will support it.”

Not many other city halls host weddings, chalk festivals, carnivals and so many other community events, said C. Bernard Gilpin, Pasadena’s public works director.

“It’s one of the most beautiful city halls in the country, bar none,” he said.

Shauna Clark, a former San Bernardino city manager hired as a consultant for the Pasadena City Hall project, said the alternatives are bleak, including a boarded-up structure and a search for 125,000 to 150,000 square feet of replacement space.

Mothballing City Hall would also hurt the Paseo Colorado, a major shopping and urban living project being built a block away, Clark said.

City Hall, she said, needs to be thought of as more than just an office building.

“People should consider the City Hall public art.”