Reconstruction

The waiver of fees for building permits, plan checks and inspections for earthquake repairs has been extended to Jan. 17, 1997, the third anniversary of the Northridge earthquake. The original deadline was June 30. The legislation to extend was designed to ease continuing residential and commercial repair and reconstruction projects, according to City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who introduced the measure. It was passed by the City Council last week.

Work has begun that will allow removal of the black shroud around the top of Los Angeles City Hall--an eyesore and lingering reminder of the Northridge earthquake nearly 2 1/2 years ago. The first of 2,000 terra cotta blocks, weighing 50 pounds each, have been installed as the skin of the 25th and 26th floors, and the job should be finished by late September, said project manager Maria Teresa Carvajal.

Homeowners who have been at odds with their insurance carriers since the Northridge earthquake will soon have somewhere to go other than the courts to resolve disputed claims--a mediation program to be launched Monday by the state Department of Insurance. The two-year pilot program will initially target about 300 policyholders who have already filed complaints with the Department of Insurance, said David Stolls, chief of the department's Claims Services Bureau.

At the behest of residents in Sherman Oaks and Studio City, the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to do away with a controversial emergency earthquake recovery project for those communities. The project was one of six efforts adopted last year in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to use the taxing and condemnation powers of the city's Community Redevelopment Agency to speed up earthquake repairs.

The advisory panel on Los Angeles City Hall seismic retrofitting recommended a scaled-down $165-million project Wednesday, sacrificing earlier plans to modernize the building and confining the work to preserving its safety. The plan, advanced by the 14-member group headed by real estate developer Stuart Ketchum and including several seismic experts, foresees the eventual reoccupation of all City Hall floors with the exception of the observation deck on top.

Who says they don't build 'em like they used to? When the time came to replace Los Angeles' first television broadcast tower, engineers decided to duplicate the old one. Right down to the last foot and the last steel strut. The old tower was built 57 years ago above the landmark Hollywood sign for the city's first television station, W6XAO. More recently, the 350-foot spire has been used for police, fire and other governmental two-way radio transmitters.

Restoration of the Venice Pier, a once-popular site for fishing and tourism, passed a major hurdle Thursday when the California Coastal Commission approved a multimillion-dollar overhaul of the long-closed landmark. The commission's action paves the way for reconstruction of the pier to begin in the next two months. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks plans to replace half of the pier's 1,200-foot-long concrete deck, repairing the other half where it has deteriorated.

After months of delays caused by wrangling over the cost of earthquake repairs, work is scheduled to begin within the next few months on the historic Lopez Adobe in San Fernando. The 115-year-old landmark has been closed to the public since the January 1994 Northridge earthquake, when the building's chimney and part of the roof collapsed. In March 1995, the city hired a historic preservation firm to perform an inventory of the building's furnishings.

Cal State Northridge will receive nearly $26 million from the federal government to pay construction managers and to repair buildings and communications equipment damaged in the 1994 earthquake, officials announced Friday. The money is the latest in a string of Federal Emergency Management Agency grants for CSUN, which has struggled for two years to recover from the 6.7 earthquake that damaged 107 buildings on campus.

In the bureaucratic equivalent of a hat dance, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed Tuesday to rebuild the El Sombrero nightclub on Lankershim Boulevard without admitting that the MTA's subway tunneling caused its floor to sink up to 13 inches. Club owner Isabel Lopez said she was delighted to learn of the offer on Tuesday from Charles Stark, the MTA's Red Line project manager, but remained skeptical and anxious. "There's no documents, it's all word of mouth so far," she said.