City Hall won’t be moving

Andrew Glazer

COSTA MESA--The City Council has decided not to move City Hall to an

elegant building at the corner of 19th Street and Newport Boulevard.

Instead, the city’s redevelopment agency will aggressively seek a tenant

for the building, which has been vacant since 1991, city officials said.

The owner of the Spanish-style building, Los Angeles businessman Nickolas

Shammas, did not return calls for comment Friday.

“It has become a landmark symbol, done in the style of old-school

architecture that used to be at that site,” said Councilwoman Libby

Cowan, who voted against moving City Hall and the Police Department

there. “We’d love to find someone who will maintain it as it is.”

But Shammas appears to be driving a hard bargain, too hard for the dozens

of businesses he said have expressed interest in the building, which

Pacific Savings Bank occupied until it folded.

And too hard for the city, whose appraisers valued the building at much

less than the $30 million Shammas once said it was worth, Deputy City

Manager Donald Lamm said in February.

City officials still haven’t released the appraisal to the public.

“I don’t think he has a realistic sense of what’s possible,” Cowan said.

The councilwoman said she would have liked City Hall there, but saw that

her colleagues didn’t and chose not to spend any more city money on

appraisals. The last appraisal cost the city $20,000.

Earlier this month, Shammas said maintaining the empty building has cost

him $100,000 a month.

“I felt we should continue to pursue the building,” said Mayor Gary

Monahan, who, along with Councilwoman Heather Somers, voted in favor of

moving.

“Our City Hall is in need of expansion and upgrading and I think that

building would handle it much better than our current site.”

Earlier this month, the council committed to spend up to $800,000 to make

its present facility safer in the event of an earthquake.