On a 3-2 vote, the West Hollywood City Council on Monday approved new seismic retrofit provisions for soft-story structures as part of a vast undertaking to strengthen the city’s building stock over the next 20 years.

“We live in seismic country,” said Councilman John Duran. “We know there’s going to be a quake. A 5-point-something, 6-point-something (earthquake), we’ll all get through it. Anything over 7.5, 8, it would radically reshape all of Los Angeles, including West Hollywood. And with loss of life and infrastructure and transit systems and economy, it would be devastating. And that’s a possibility. Los Angeles is well overdue for something of that magnitude.”

The 1994 Northridge earthquake showed how soft-story garages cannot withstand a seismic event.
(photo courtesy og Pressbook Sites)north

The provisions approved on Monday create a framework for minimum design standards to reduce risk of collapse and to improve performance during an earthquake. The ordinance will take effect in one year, on April 1, 2018, and the city will require owners of soft-story buildings to prepare plans in anticipation of mandatory retrofits.

The ordinance requires retrofitting for the existing 780 wood-frame buildings with open ground floor space. The “soft-story” buildings were commonly built in the 1950s and 1960s. City staff will notify owners of buildings that have been identified as such, and the city will give them five years to comply with the requirements.

Without a clear plan on how the improvements will be funded, and pending further analysis for larger buildings, Councilman John Heilman voted against it because he did not want to move forward with an incomplete ordinance.

“This is an incredibly important and serious thing that we’re doing,” he said. “I hope we don’t try to rush through it and we give it all the consideration that it warrants. This could impose significant costs on property owners in the city, and I don’t think we should move forward with it lightly, and maybe  even not move forward tonight.”

He said a building owner with 40 residential units might be able to sustain $40,000-$50,000 of improvement costs over a few years, but he said too much was unclear about how owners of larger steel-framed and concrete buildings would sustain larger costs.

“I definitely got conversations from Empire West, Sierra Towers and homeowners there,” Heilman said, adding that those buildings were built to code when they were constructed. “The impact on an individual unit owner could conceivably be $100,000. So you’re going to make these units safe, but the existing residents will have to move out of them. … That’s the kind of discussion we need to have tonight. We keep putting off how this going to be paid for. I don’t see how we can proceed without having that conversation.”

All five council members acknowledged that they still have to figure out how the mandatory costs will be assessed, or if landlords will be able to pass some of the cost to renters. A majority of soft story buildings could cost between $40,000-$160,000 to retrofit. Non-ductile or concrete and steel frame buildings could cost millions of dollars. The city has retained a consultant to review pass-through cost frameworks and will return to the city council with cost sharing options.

In contrast, Duran voted against the ordinance on Monday because it did not go far enough. He also wanted the framework approved to start the process for larger concrete and steel-framed structures.

Duran pointed to other cities that recently pushed similar ordinances forward without all the details pinned down or the financing mechanisms set, and said the city can’t wait to have all the facts laid out before moving forward.

“Because we would never move,” he said. “To not move forward in some way with some ordinance, I think we’re ostriches with our heads in the sand. We have to move something forward,” he said. “[An earthquake] is the most horrific thought any of us can imagine so we don’t ever want to think about it. We just suspend our beliefs about it. And hope it doesn’t occur in our lifetimes while we’re here. But I think that’s short-sighted.”

He said when the city started the process, they knew financing would be the biggest road block, which is why the Community Development Department separated that issue from the discussion on the retrofit requirements ordinance.

“Let’s get through the ordinance, and we’ll deal with the financing that’s going to be the major headache,” Duran said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get our hands and heads around the complexity of all the issues – whether they’re engineering or financing. But we have to push something forward incrementally.”

The city will allow property owners to apply for extensions, and Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath directed staff to return with a more defined process for extensions and for the tenant impact mitigation plan. Additionally, staff will return with further analysis for larger concrete and steel-framed buildings.

The council is expected to then approve the part of the ordinance for larger concrete and steel-framed buildings. Seismic strengthening for these types of structures requires a complete building analysis by an engineer to determine what deficiencies exist. There are estimated to be approximately 55 concrete buildings within West Hollywood. There are also an additional 60 buildings that are classified as ‘undetermined’ building types.