Ex-Bullock’s to Be Interim Site of Library

The Los Angeles Central Library’s collection of nearly 2 million books, badly damaged when fire gutted much of the library last spring, will be temporarily housed in the former Bullock’s Downtown building at Broadway and 7th Street, the city Board of Library Commissioners decided Wednesday.

If the process of negotiating a contract with the owner of the building and the logistics of book-moving go smoothly, the temporary quarters will be open to the public by next spring, officials said.

The library’s collection has been stored in various warehouses since April 29, when an arsonist set a fire that destroyed about 20% of the inventory.

Long before the fire, library officials had planned to seek temporary quarters. They had planned to vacate the Central Library next year and return in 1991, when a $150-million refurbishing and expansion of the 60-year-old facility would be completed. The fire forced officials to speed up their search for a temporary home.

Unanimously Approved Bid

The five library commissioners unanimously approved a bid by the L.A. United Investment Co., owner of the 10-story Bullock’s building, to house the collection.

L.A. United will lease the 215,000 square feet of space to the library for $6.5 million over 4 1/2 years. The City Council, which must formally approve the lease, set aside money for the project last year.

The building is in an area known as St. Vincent’s Square, named for St. Vincent’s College, Los Angeles’ first institution of higher education, which broke ground in 1867. In 1907, Bullock’s opened its downtown store on the northeast corner of 7th and Broadway.

The store expanded and flourished for nearly 70 years, but faded as the financial area on neighboring Spring Street began to move west. Bullock’s closed the store in 1983.

Library Board President Ronald Lushing said he hoped that library staff members could begin setting up a book-processing operation in the building’s basement by November to begin shelving the 600,000 library books that were not damaged by the fire.

Some Put in Cold Storage

Another 700,000 books that were soaked by water from firefighters’ hoses were placed in cold storage in the week after the fire and will be slowly dried once shelf space in the temporary facility is available. Several hundred thousand other books that were slightly damaged but not frozen are in another warehouse.

Library commissioners selected the Bullocks building over the old Broadway Centre building at 4th Street and Broadway. Commissioners and library staff members said that far heavier foot traffic from shoppers and workers in nearby office buildings will mean better patronage.

Donald Cosgrove, associate administrator of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which is coordinating the Central Library expansion project, recommended that the Broadway building be chosen.

Selecting it, Cosgrove told commissioners, would be an important boost to his agency’s attempt to revitalize the Broadway-4th Street area and would help develop “an extremely important pathway” between Spring Street and the western side of downtown, where heavy office construction is taking place.

However, library officials criticized the configuration of the Broadway building, the possibility of traffic congestion and the fact that they would not have exclusive use of all floors of the building. In addition, the owner of the Broadway building, Luby Enterprises, submitted a bid that was $1.2 million higher than the L.A. United offer.

In a related development, officials said Wednesday that more than $4 million in donations has been raised to restock the library. After the fire, Mayor Tom Bradley appointed a fund-raising committee to raise $10 million.

There has been no success, however, in capturing the unidentified man suspected of setting the fire, which broke out in the northwest section of the library’s book stacks. Two city Fire Department investigators continue to work full time in the hunt for a “suspicious-looking” man who was seen by library employees inside the second-floor stack area just before the flames erupted.

The man is described as “blondish,” in his late 20s or early 30s, with a pronounced nose and busy mustache, about 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighing about 160 pounds.

About 300 telephone tips on the fire have been received by the Fire Department, a spokesman said. Anyone with information regarding the man wanted for questioning is encouraged to call the Fire Department at (213) 626-1081.