A Work in Progress : Rebuilding: Three-quarters of needed repairs are under way, but only a small fraction are completed, records show. Those still looming include many of the bigger jobs.
The block of earthquake-crippled apartment buildings and condominiums on Kingsbury Avenue in Granada Hills is a “ghost town†no more.
But neither is it reborn.
Instead, 18 months after the Northridge quake, the cul-de-sac is like a movie back lot, bustling with the sounds of construction in a surrealistic scene juxtaposing finished handiwork with gaping wall-less facades. “Grand Opening,†declares a sign on the Kingsbury Villas, a perky Cape Cod gray apartment complex that is now 40% rented after having its second and third floors raised on jacks while its first floor was rebuilt from scratch after the Jan. 17, 1994, quake.
Across the street, the exposed wood frame of a block-long, 161-unit apartment complex hulks on wooden pilings, its repair on hold during a change of contractors. “The view is not really pretty from those windows†for new tenants, said Shirley Bode, property supervisor for the Kingsbury Villas. “We’ve just been honest with those people. ‘You’re going to be pioneers.’ â€
The Kingsbury Avenue score card--five structures completely repaired, six still under construction, two vacant and untouched since the earthquake, and one bulldozed into an empty lot--closely mirrors the mixed progress of rebuilding across Los Angeles.
“Despite the large amount of money available, the pace of reconstruction, except for freeway and bridge repair, has not been rapid,†UCLA economist Nancy Bolton concluded in a March report.
A Times computer analysis of the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department’s earthquake-related building permits shows that although about three-quarters of quake repairs are now under way, only a small percentage of the work was completed through the first six months of 1995.
Among the findings:
* Of 73,758 earthquake-related building permits issued since the quake, work still continues on 56,742, or 77%.
* The owners of 1,294 red- and yellow-tagged buildings have yet to take out any permits, and only demolition or grading permits have been taken out on another 670 properties. Red-tagged buildings are those that must be vacated; yellow-tagged properties can be partly occupied but have structural damage requiring repairs.
* The value of repair projects that have been completed over the past four months has fallen sharply, while the valuation of new permits issued continues close to the peak of last July.
All this means that the quick and easy quake repair jobs are out of the way, concludes Bill King, chief building mechanical inspector in the Van Nuys office of the Department of Building and Safety. “It reflects that we’re getting into the bigger repairs now that take longer†to finish, he said.
The largest share of unfinished work is in the San Fernando Valley communities surrounding the epicenter--Northridge, Granada Hills, Chatsworth and Canoga Park--but the percentage of buildings without any repair work done is higher in badly hit Sherman Oaks and Hollywood.
Building inspectors from the Van Nuys office are making 1,000 calls a day, 300 in Northridge alone, examining every step of the construction process from footings to insulation, King said.
As quake repairs continue, however, building owners and their contractors keep discovering more hidden damage that continues to push up the overall cost of the recovery.
Industry estimates of the total insured property damage from the Northridge quake are now around $12.5 billion, up 7% since a survey in May. In June, a team of USC economists, calculating lost employment and business output, added another $6 billion to the $20-billion estimate of the quake’s overall cost.
Meanwhile, the bill for repairs of hidden damage to steel-frame office buildings could easily rise to the hundreds of millions of dollars in the next two years.
Not surprisingly, quake repairs on commercial buildings have gone much faster than in private homes. Nearly 30% of retail, office and apartment repairs are now complete, contrasted with only 17% for single-family homes and 14% for condominiums in Los Angeles, according to city building records.
Financial incentives and experience both help the business owner to make repairs swiftly, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County. “They’re more sophisticated in dealing with issues like this,†Kyser said of businesses. “They have done previous expansions. They sort of know how the system works.â€
Conversely, any homeowner or small-scale apartment investor who hasn’t done a major remodeling faces “what in the best of times is a prickly process, and all of a sudden, you’re doing it under duress,†he said.
There’s been plenty of fanfare accompanying commercial success stories--such as Monday’s reopening of another part of the Northridge Fashion Square shopping mall, after the complete rebuilding of three parking structures and seismic retrofitting of the main concourse. But the rebound of retail stores may mask the financial and bureaucratic obstacles besetting tens of thousands of apartment owners and homeowners.
Dennis and Angie Carter have been out of step with city officials and their mortgage companies since the 11-unit Sherman Oaks apartment building they own was red-tagged shortly after the earthquake. The couple got an Small Business Administration loan commitment to rebuild, but with half their $400,000 equity already wiped out by recession and a second mortgage to settle, plus dealing with their first mortgage holder, Home Savings, they couldn’t work out a deal.
“SBA agreed to buy out Home Savings,†Dennis Carter said, but, “Home Savings didn’t want the second [mortgage holder] to get anything.â€
When the holder of the second mortgage demanded cash, Home Savings filed for foreclosure last August in Superior Court, going not only after the building, but also the Carters’ Westlake Village home, he said.
Eventually, Home Savings dropped the suit, accepting a compromise in which “everybody ended up . . . not being totally happy,†Carter said.
But the vacant building on Murietta Avenue still stands, unchanged from the day of the earthquake. Last year, the city volunteered to tear it down for Carter at Federal Emergency Management Agency expense. He declined, hoping to have the building repaired. Then in February, after concluding that building it from scratch would be just as economical, he asked the city to tear it down. Though a demolition order was issued March 15, the Department of Public Works has yet to get to the job.
Carter now expects it to be done this month, and hopes to start construction soon and to reopen 10 months later. He’s hoping that the Valley economy and real estate market will gradually improve so that he will regain his pre-quake equity in 15 years.
All told, the city designated 17 areas such as Kingsbury “ghost townsâ€--those sites with a high number of deserted quake-damaged buildings close together. Today, many other smaller ghost towns, scattered across the city, remain boarded up or fenced off with no sign of activity by owners who often guard their anonymity.
On Vista Del Monte Avenue in Sherman Oaks, a street full of condos and apartment complexes, apartment owner Mel Wank hopes to complete repairs in a month or two on his building. But Wank is concerned about luring tenants because of the lack of any progress on a nearby building that has apparently been sold and whose owner he has never spoken to.
“If they need help, I’ll be glad to help them,†Wank said. “But I have no way of locating them.â€
Although dwellings make up by far the largest category of buildings that remain closed because of the Northridge earthquake, city building records show that the earthquake doldrums can strike anywhere: Hotels, restaurants, theaters, amusement parks, schools, public utilities and hospitals are among the red- and yellow-tagged buildings for which no building permits have yet been issued.
The city’s largest commercial project--on which no apparent progress has been made--is the $20-million replacement of a research laboratory and a nursing facility at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Los Angeles.
After shifting the research and nursing services temporarily to other buildings, Cedars-Sinai embarked on months of negotiations with FEMA before concluding that the buildings should be razed rather than repaired, said President Thomas Priselac.
Now, Priselac said, the hospital is studying how best to fit the new buildings into its long-range plans. “Once we finish our own internal process, we have to go through the permitting and approval with the regulating agencies,†he said. “It could be several years†before repairs start.
And even that delayed reaction may ultimately seem like a lightning reflex to the congregation of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church in Canoga Park. Despite the pleas of the Canoga Park Historical Society, church members have decided to tear down their 1919 neoclassical columned sanctuary riddled with quake cracks.
“Just to get wheelchair access would cost as much as to build a new building,†said office administrator Karen Moore.
Based on its membership of 130, the church didn’t qualify for a large enough SBA loan to start the estimated half-million-dollar rebuilding. It has raised $200,000 in pledges, still not enough.
So the church carries on in two trailers, one an office and the other classrooms. On Sundays, the senior citizens center next-door becomes its sanctuary.
The repairs are “definitely going to happen,†Moore said.
She just doesn’t know when.
Times data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this article.
* TIMES POLL
For most quake victims, life is back to normal. A1
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Permits by Construction Type
A breakdown by type of construction shows that residential housing accounts for the largest portion of quake-related damage, but lags behind in repairs. Progress in repairing offices and stores has jumped ahead of all other building categories.
In Millions:
NO PERMIT DEMOLITION/ BUILDING RED/ GRADING WORK WORK TYPE YELLOW TAGS PERMIT ONLY UNDER WAY COMPLETED TOTALS Single-Family $34.34 $0.51 $443.32 $97.70 $575.86 Apartment 51.88 0.21 133.86 54.77 240.72 Condominium 16.69 0.24 154.15 27.69 198.76 Retail 6.21 0 73.87 31.41 111.50 Office 5.91 0 41.93 17.59 65.43 Manufacturing 12.53 17.93 21.38 10.74 62.57 Other 30.57 44.78 97.24 24.52 197.10 Total $158.14 $63.66 $965.74 $264.41 $1,451.95
PERCENT BUILDING PERCENT TYPE COMPLETE Single-Family 17.0% Apartment 22.8 Condominium 13.9 Retail 28.2 Office 26.9 Manufacturing 17.2 Other 12.4 Total 18.2%
Source: Los Angeles City Department of Building and Safety
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
The Pace of Rebuilding
A computer analysis of Los Angeles building permits and U.S. Small Business Administration loans shows that 18 months after the Northridge earthquake, the recovery effort is just getting into high gear. Construction permits have been taken out on most of the buildings that suffered major damage but only about 22% of those projects have been complete.
L.A. CITY BUILDING PERMIT VALUATIONS BY ZIP CODE
The size of the pie charts shows the estimated dollar value of earthquake damage in each ZIP code in the city of Los Angeles. The three slices in each pie represent the percentage of the estimated cost of repairs that have been completed, that are in progress and, for red- and yellow-tagged buildings that have not yet begun. The largest pie charts represent $128 million in damage.
SBA LOANS
These loans are considered a good indicator of construction starts. Payments have climbed steadily over the last six months, but a $1.57-billion gap remains.
(see newspaper for chart)
Source: U.S. Small Business Administration
BUILDING PERMITS
Building officials say the sharp drop-off this year in jobs completed represents a shift from smaller earthquake repairs to major projects.
Source: Los Angeles City Department of Building and Safety
*********************
Source: Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety
Researched by DOUG SMITH and SANDRA POINDEXTER / Los Angeles Times
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
