civiccenterwhenopened

Last week, the Long Beach City Council voted to approve the Civic Center RFQ selection and proceed to the next stage of progression, the RFP from the three presenting teams. This progression was approved by the City Council with Councilmember Suja Lowenthal and Vice Mayor Robert Garcia leading the charge and only councilmember, Gerrie Shipske, abstaining. It was a complete endorsement of a single idea: that the only way to fix the endemic problems with the Main Library and City Hall tower is to create a ground up, entirely new Civic Center complex as part of a public private partnership with a yet-to-be determined team.

The “herding” continued with occasional pandering to the library advocacy groups who reacted with cheering whenever Garcia or Mayor Foster would promise a new shiny facility.

There is no other way! It won’t cost any money! You will die if you don’t!

The logic train proceeded with all the expectations that the citizenry would follow head-to-tail to the conclusion that there really is no other way and that the City should proceed with great immediacy.

Here’s the thing: The greenest building is one that’s already built.

The Mayor and City Council have refused to consider updating the existing Civic Center, pointing towards a skewed analysis created by appointed city staff members in which it has radically inflated the cost of seismically updating these buildings in order to make new construction more attractive. The staff’s opinion is that required earthquake standards for both the library and the tower leave no alternative other than demolition and reconstruction of both of these buildings.

This is absolutely untrue.

Seismic updating is a common practice among many city hall buildings including recently the Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Monica, and San Francisco buildings. It has proven feasible and cost effective in each of these cases. The underlying, unspoken truth is that our City Hall building is ugly. There – I said it! This concrete, Brutalist building is, like any architecture, an encapsulation of the cultural climates of the time they were built – and hey – the 70‘s were a very different culture from where we are today. While as an architect I appreciate the concept of the design, they are outdated not only in appearance but also in function, the way in which they are used and the technology they employ.

But the good news is this is fixable.

At the last meeting the City Council approved $500,000 to each of the three RFP respondents to prepare their proposals and structured it so that the winning team pays the others. On the books it looks like the city is not paying, but indeed the winning team marks up their services to cover this and in the case of no selection by the council, it is probable that the city would need to pick up this $1.5M tab. 

$1.5M to envision a new Civic Center, but not one cent for a study to look at the reuse of these buildings.

The City has allocated some resources to structural seismic study, but rather than release the results of these studies, they have only made public their interpretation of the data—of course skewed to support their original premise. These same studies have also inappropriately married the problems of the City Hall Tower to the issues of the Main Library building when they are, in fact, entirely different problems and require radically different tactics to resolve their respective challenges.

In comments at the council meeting, I proposed to the Council that they offer an “open ideas” competition – which they/we don’t pay for – to study the adaptive possibilities. It would be a volunteer effort by local professionals on their own dime and time until the competition is completed. There was no response from the council directly on this and they insisted on the immediacy required to get a nifty new presentation before they had to leave office in a few months.

Structural engineers are great at identifying and quantifying problems in the structure of a building, but if you want to solve a complex problem involving design, aesthetics, feasibility, fiscal impact, function, community impact, and, and, and… You need an architect. Throughout all of the analysis regarding the update of the City Hall and Library, there has been no architectural contribution to this process. One is left to conclude that it is the intent of the powers that be to focus on the problems of the structure rather than on the most equitable and possibly more visionary solutions.

{loadposition latestnews}

Anyone else beginning to feel as if the agenda was set from the beginning?

This council wanted to tear these buildings down from the start and have proceeded to manipulated all of the studies and data being released to fit their uncompromising agenda.

Having structural engineers assess the cultural possibilities of a building is like having a cosmetologist perform eye surgery.

So here are some of the hard numbers released in the RFQ package:

The City has set up parameters for the RFQ process which includes a stipulation that the city will not spend more than its current “$12.6M annual budget, which includes off-site annual lease costs of $2.13M” and “loan servicing of $2.5M” on what Mr. Conway, director of Business and Property Development, guessed would be over $20M still owed. The premise is that the new Civic center will cost no more than what the existing structure costs. So if you have a total of a $12.6M annual budget, the majority of the expenses do not disappear just because there is a new facility. At best you may be able to save on some maintenance and operational expense but very likely, over 80% of this budget would be unaffected and not available to be used as capital towards a new Civic Center. The approximately $2M a year will not even buy ashtrays for your nifty new Civic Center. The council believes that partnership with the Port, structured as a public/private partnership (P3), is going to pay for their new buildings. Maybe – but at what cost?

The existing square footage of the Main Library (135,000 Sq. ft.), City Hall (225,000 Sq. ft.), and the offsite buildings to be incorporated (112,500 Sq. Ft) requires 472,000 Sq. ft. (with no accommodations to expand existing spaces).  If we wanted to calculate the cost of a new Civic Center, all that is required is to find a similar P3 partnership construction to compare it too.

Good news: we have one in the new Federal Court House building next door! It’s 545,000 Sq. Ft and it was just completed for a cost of $490 Million. This works out to $899 per Sq. ft.  Our NEW Civic Center requires 472,000 Sq. ft. of building, not including site improvement and parkland costs, which at the same $899/Sq. ft. rate, the new Civic Center would cost $424M. The expectation is maintained that, as is stated in the RFQ, the new P3 partner would pay for it – really.

This puts the potential P3 partner in a situation where they must create incredible profits adequate to cover the $424M-plus costs that the city demands. In order create profits sufficient to pay for the civic buildings, there must be a huge profit mechanism in the Civic Center project. This could take the form of retail, housing, office space, or probably a combination of these, but whatever it is it will need to be at a staggering scale that dwarfs the city demands in order to cover the costs. If a new development is able to get a 20% profit margin, they would be doing great. Which means that the new development would need to be approximately four times larger than even the Civic Center demands.

Now we start to understand why the Library has been inextricably linked to the City Hall: its valuable corner location becomes a large part of the funding source. The City needs this prime location and a sizable amount of the existing Civic block to be privatized in order to assist in funding this new development. This will all become evident in a few months after precious time and millions of dollars are wasted when the RFQ proposals come out.

By Michael Conway’s own exaggerated budget, the cost of earthquake retrofitting the Library is around $70M. In my conversations with him, he indicated that this includes new sprinklers, computers, relocation fees, and many items which although nice amenities, are not required by seismic upgrade demands. Actual seismic update is by the assessment of my team closer to $20M. Using the same P3 building rate from the Federal Courthouse in order to replace the 135,000 Sq. ft. the Main Library currently has would cost $121M. This corresponds with the building costs of the recently completed San Diego Library, which Garcia touts as a great example, and which cost $145M.

Is this crazy? Cost to repair the library is $20M while the cost for a new library is $121M-plus and the council refuses to consider proposals to update the library? Really?

The City Hall tower has more serious seismic issues but it is still not unfixable. By Mr. Conway’s own (exaggerated)  numbers it would only cost $600/Sq. ft. to repair and update and would costs $899/Sq. ft. to replace. The former offers a savings of $67M. Yet again: why is adaption and updating not being considered? This seems beyond negligent and leaning toward irresponsible.

There are exciting possibilities in the update and cultural adaption of the Civic Center, City Hall and Main Library. It’s not only more cost effective to consider these options, but it’s also more sustainable, maintains the historic legacy of Long Beach and if done correctly can even be better than a scorched earth new development. We need to create the possibility to consider these options seriously before rushing into dead-end strategies that do not help our city.

Cameron Crockett AIA, LEED, is Principal at Ultra-Unit Architectural Studio, based in Long Beach.

Read more:

{FG_GEOMAP [33.7682,-118.19546700000001] FG_GEOMAP}