Preservationists mobilize to save historic buildings; coalition forms to offer low-interest loans and grants.

When bulldozers reduced the famous Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant on Vine Street to rubble in the aftermath of the Jan. 17 earthquake, community preservationists cringed with disappointment.

They cringed not only because it was the end of a restaurant known as the place where Gable proposed to Lombard and where Marlene Dietrich walked in wearing slacks, but because it was the first of several historic buildings to be demolished due to damage from the Jan. 17 earthquake.

Some preservationists insisted the 65-year-old restaurant was demolished in vain. The city of Los Angeles Building and Safety Department called it an imminent hazard and ordered the owners to repair it or demolish it. The owners - businessmen Larry Worchell, Steve Ullman, and Paul Ramsey, who had vacated the building in 1985 - opted to demolish.

"The real part of the Brown Derby that was historic was burned in a fire many years ago," said Ramsey, a principal at the Hollywood-based brokerage firm Ramsey Shilling Commercial Real Estate Services Inc. "The Building's been vacant since then. All the business people in the area wanted to get rid of it. So I guess everybody's happy."

Sandy Farrington-Domingue, a building and safety deputy for Los Angeles City Council member Jackie Goldberg, whose council district includes Hollywood, said most property owners base their decisions on money rather than historical merit.

"There are a lot of things that come into play when (private-sector) property owners are making these decisions," she said. "Usually it's money. Those owners who did retrofitting already, some of them had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in retrofitting. They're just not willing to spend $300,000 to $400,000 more on it. If a property owner wants to demolish, there's not much that can be done."

A state law enacted in 1989 following the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California requires that no officially designated building can be legally demolished unless it poses an imminent threat to life or adjacent property. If it does not pose on imminent threat, the State Office of Historic Preservation must evaluate it and determine if rehabilitation is feasible.

William Delvac, a principal of Hollywood-based Historic Resources Group, a preservation consulting firm hired by the state to determine which buildings are historic, said the law does not apply to buildings which are not officially designated. An officially designated building is one deemed historic by a national, state or local agency.

The subject of the Brown Derby and other quake-damaged historic buildings that may have been demolished unncessarily has become a political hot potato - one that critics say was created by panic.

"What concerns me is the immediate red tagging (after the quake)," said Scott Field, a preservation architect with Parkinson Field Associates in Los Angeles. "The city relied on volunteers in the beginning. If they saw some crumpled walls, they immediately red-tagged (designating the building unsafe to enter)."

The chaotic city response forced preservation groups to mobilize in the first week following the earthquake. Several months later, they have a solid plan to help building owners of the thousands of historic structures in the Los Angeles area who may need assistance for quake-related repairs.

The coalition calls itself Historic Preservation Partners for Earthquake Response, a partnership between federal, state and local non-profit and private agencies. Its purpose - to help historic building owners with architectural and engineering assistance, construction and repairs and funding through low-interest loans and grants.

The group is made up of the L.A. Conservancy, a private, non-profit organization for preservation and revitalization of the local historic architectural resources; the San Francisco office of the Washington D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation, a non-profit organization; the California Office of Historic Preservation, a state government office; The California Preservation Foundation; the Getty Conservation Institute, an operating program of the Los-Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust, a group that raises public awareness of the importance of preserving cultural heritage; the National Park Service, U.S. Department of Labor; and First Interstate Bank of California.

The Getty Conservation Institute donated money to hire coordinator Pam O'Connor, a Santa Monica city planner and preservation consultant, who works out of the L.A. Conservancy office. She took over in late February and slowly has instilled calm to a previously chaotic situation.

Concurrent with her hiring, the group received $5 million from the federal government to be used for grants.

While the grant money won't fund any building owner's entire rebuilding project, it should help bridge the gap, O'Connor said.

First Interstate Bank, the National Trust, the L.A. Conservancy and Getty already had established a Historic Property Stabilization Loan Fund offering loans up to $20,000 - with little or no fees and an interest rate of only 4 percent.

Earlier this month, the partnership went even further to help historic property owners. It began hiring temporary help. By early May, the partnership expects to have hired three field representatives, a financial specialist, a grants administrator and an administrative assistant.

The financial specialist will be hired to help building owners figure out what other funding may be available in addition to federal grant money.

Field representatives will be hired to work with building owners to help them hire the right architect and/or engineer for their repairs.

Lisbeth Henning, assistant director in the Western Regional Office of the National Trust, said that organization gave out $75,000 in grants after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

The group has already doled out more than that for the Los Angeles quake, suggesting that preservation organizations are becoming savvier at finding money.

The partnership has been receiving advice and information from preservation committees involved in restoration work after the 1989 quake, learning what works and doesn't work, O'Connor said.

"It just takes a certain amount of time to gear up," said O'Connor. "We don't want another disaster. But let's face it, every time there's a disaster, we get more experienced at how to get up and running and how to get funding."

The experience is beginning to pay off. Recently, O'Connor and group of other preservationists attended a Building and Safety Commission meeting to plead for more time to save the Cahuenga Fire Station at 1355 N. Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood.

That city-owned station was designed by noted architect P.K. Schabarum and built in 1930, then was designated a monument in 1976. The station, which the city plans to make it into a fire museum, was red-tagged as an imminent hazard immediately after the Jan. 17 quake. But it has since been shored-up and is not on the current demolition list.

"That was crisis intervention," O'Connor said.

But Marc Caspe, a structural engineer with M.S. Caspe Co. in Los Angeles, said some property owners see having a historic building as a monkey around their neck.

"There are limits to what you can do with the building," he said. "That might change the value of the building. Building owners weigh the cost of repairing to the cost of demolition."

Tim Brandt, a director and board member with the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which is assisting the L.A. Conservancy, said it is difficult to determine how many historic buildings are in danger of demolition.

Some 72,000 buildings were damaged in the Jan. 17 quake, 11,000 of which sustained moderate to major damage.

Property owners are encouraged to call the L.A. Conservancy at [phone] if they believe they may have a historic building or home, he said.

Preservation groups have ways of helping owners ascertain whether or not their buildings are historically significant.

"We can pull permits on the date it was constructed and find out who built it," Brandt said. "There are buildings where we may be able to help the owner, economically."

Typically, building that qualify as historic are at least 50 years old and/or on the National Register of Historic Places, Brandt said. A building may qualify to be designated historic if it was built by a well-known architect, either nationally known or known to the region; if it is a local building important to the city; if it is associated with a famous person; or if something important to the history of the city happened there. Despite meeting the above criteria, however, a building could be deemed ineligible for historic designation because it has been so drastically altered, Brandt said.

Building owners who want to apply for loans or grants, or who need general technical information, can call the L.A. Conservancy. Grant applications are due May 31.