A Bit Much : Immense, Ornate New Civic Center Blossoming in Beverly Hills

It’s bigger than Union Station, bigger than the Sports Arena and when its pieces are added up, it’s bigger than almost every other public building in Southern California. What is it? A hint: The parking structure can hold as many as 553 Mercedes-Benz convertibles.

Yes, it’s the new Beverly Hills Civic Center, now taking shape over 10 acres and spanning Rexford Drive, at a cost of $83 million. Even Mayor Max Salter says the structure is, well, a bit much.

“There’s no question in my mind that it is overbuilt somewhat,” Salter said. “But as against piddling around for another 20 years until you’ve finally decided on something, I’d opt for what we have. Quality is remembered long after cost is forgotten, and that’s what people should remember.”

Made up of city offices, a library, a firehouse, a police station, a jail and parking facilities, the complex totals nearly 600,000 square feet. By comparison, there is 507,715 square feet of usable floor area in Los Angeles City Hall.

Long in Coming

The new civic center has been long in coming. There was a ground-breaking ceremony in 1985, and the project was originally scheduled for completion in 1987. It was held up for redesign after a theater and a cafeteria were dropped to save money, and delayed again after the discovery of asbestos in the walls of the existing library building.

Some of the work is finished: The parking structure and the fire station, complete with two shiny brass poles, have been in business for two years.

But the police station, library and a pedestrian bridge over Rexford Drive are still under construction, and work is also under way at the 58-year-old City Hall, a Mexican baroque landmark that sticks out above the low-rises on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Salter said he is determined to move into his new office by December.

“Every day I take out the whip and give them a few lashes here and there,” he joked. “We’re going to have a sensational City Hall when it’s all completed, and it’s going to serve the people for the next 100 years.”

Inside the old City Hall building, which also housed a courthouse, police station and morgue when it opened in 1931, the City Council chamber has been expanded by removing a small room that was once used for study sessions.

Craftsmen from A. T. Heinsbergen & Co., the same firm that created the elaborate ceiling in 1931, are about to restore the gilded paint job and duplicate its floral motif in the extension and in the old courtroom down the hall, where it was hidden for decades by a false ceiling.

The City Council chamber, which once seated 80, will now have room for 130. Two-way audio-visual links with other meeting rooms will enable as many as 400 people to take part in debates.

Workers are about to restore the colorful tile work and reapply gold leaf to a knob atop the cupola of the eight-story tower, but A. T. Heinsbergen, son of the man who did the original job, said he wanted no part of that assignment.

The gold work is especially tricky, he said. The gold leaf is just one two-thousandth of an inch thick and can easily blow away. The glue that holds it on has to be applied the night before and it can be too sticky or too dry, depending on the humidity, he said.

“They didn’t ask me to do it and if they did I wouldn’t have, because my dad told me he lost his shirt on it in 1931,” Heinsbergen said. Another contractor, Pacific Coast Painting, has taken on the job.

Building codes were considerably less stringent when the old City Hall was built, but tests have shown it to be structurally sound, said John Hartsock, the consultant who is managing the construction project for the city.

The architectural details--leaves, flowers and other delicate forms cast into concrete from hand-carved wooden molds--were also a testimony to the workmanship of those days, he said.

But the building’s interior walls, made of hollow clay tiles for fire safety, had to go for fear they might collapse in an earthquake.

Across Rexford Drive, the new police station, complete with the latest in communications equipment, full-scale locker rooms for officers of both sexes, 10,000 square feet for evidence storage, 35 individual jail cells and a firing range in the basement, will finally match the image of the Beverly Hills cop shop depicted in the movies.

“From our perspective, the talk about this thing being too large doesn’t hold water,” said Police Capt. Bill Hunt. “We were so cramped (before) that it definitely impacted our ability to provide service.”

City officials are just as proud of the library, which has been gutted and revamped to make way for video facilities, an electronic book retrieval system and a two-story-high reading room illuminated by skylights.

“If you remember the old library and its cramped quarters, this will be what the public sees the most, and it’ll be a show-stopper,” said Howard Rattner, city economic development manager.

Architect Charles Moore used three oval courtyards to link the two city blocks that make up the Civic Center.

The palm-lined courtyards are strung together on a diagonal line, with traffic flowing through a central ellipse on Rexford Drive. The two smaller ovals will be for pedestrians.

‘Wonderful Solution’

“I thought that was a particularly wonderful solution to what seemed to be an intractable problem,” said Eugene J. Johnson, a professor of art at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who has written about Moore’s work.

Moore, a professor at the University of Texas and at UCLA who is involved on other projects in cities from Santa Fe, N.M., to Eugene, Ore., was not available for an interview, but one of his associates acknowledged the debt to an Italian master.

“Borromini is an Italian baroque architect whose work Charles (Moore) is very fond of,” said Stephen Harby, c) Moore’s design manager for the Beverly Hills project.

Moore’s vision of a Civic Center was picked from a field of six finalists in a competition in 1982.

Faithful to Vision

Frank Dimster, a professor of architecture at USC, acknowledged that Moore was faithful to the vision of the original builders, but asked, “Is it still appropriate to do so in today’s context?”

“What I’m trying to raise is, if that display of values for a city hall is an appropriate one,” he said. “In some ways, to have a building that is very ornate and very opulent, you could structure an argument that it might not be the best display of service to the community.”