CITY BREAKS BANK TO PAY FOR MOVING TREASURY SAFE.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles officials have been planning the relocation of City Hall offices during a $273 million renovation of the historic building for years. But on Thursday, it was clear that they hadn't planned well enough.

With a month to go before moving the city treasurer's office six blocks away from City Hall, officials suddenly realized they had no safe to store the city's multimillion-dollar stash of cash.

No one had thought about the impossibility of moving the 1928 walk-in 400-square-foot bank vault.

Facing financial penalties for delays, they scrambled to find a new safe place. So they spent $132,000 on 13 new 2-ton safes - only to find that the eighth-floor offices in the old Security Pacific Bank headquarters weren't strong enough to support the weight.

So they had to spend $110,000 more to shore up the structure with steel beams - and then hope the building did not collapse.

``I was just closing my eyes and hoping it worked out. . . . We'd end up on the ground floor if they fell through,'' said Gerald Capodieci, the chief deputy treasurer, whose office manages city assets totaling $3 billion.

With the cost of the treasury move soaring move from $650,000 to almost $900,000, city officials now are questioning why nobody was thinking about where to keep the money safe.

``To not have thought of it in the first place and take that into account, it's very typical of how money is wasted around here. . . . It's irresponsible,'' said City Councilman Joel Wachs.

``People get paid good money to think about these things and plan the move. It's just money down the drain.''

Deputy Controller Tim Lynch said his office is asking questions about the treasury glitch and others that are running up the cost of the renovation and the $58 million temporary relocation.

``We have not gotten the answers we requested,'' he said.

The vault problem emerged about a month before the scheduled Feb. 5 move of the treasurer's office. Determining the built-in City Hall vault could not be moved, treasury officials settled on the old bank building at 215 W. 6th St., expecting to use old vaults in the basement to store city securities and bonds.

The problem was the vaults were no longer operable and they were located in a basement that was not up to code as it lacked a fire exit.

That's when Plan B emerged: buy the 13 new safes and put them in the old bank's eighth-floor offices that the treasurer and his staff would be using for the 38-month relocation.

But it didn't take the movers long to figure out that the eighth floor wasn't up to the 26 tons of 6-foot-tall safes.

``First it was, `It might be a problem,' and then it was, `It is a problem,' '' said William Koenig, a city assets manager overseeing the move.

That's when Plan C was hatched: build a better floor, a $110,000 floor.

A city engineer and private architect designed a system to strengthen the floor by installing steel beams between the columns holding it up.

Koenig noted that waiting could cost $47,000 in additional renovation fees for every day of delay in vacating City Hall.