Volunteers save historic collection

COSTA MESA — Weekend rainstorms almost soaked some irreplaceable pieces of the city’s past when a clogged roof drain led to flooding at the Costa Mesa Historical Society.

It’s the latest in a series of maintenance issues at the city-owned building on Anaheim Avenue that houses the historical society.

With no funding to rent a new space and plans for an eventual museum in Fairview Park still in the dream stage, society members may have to keep their buckets and brooms at the ready.

“We don’t have any damage to the collection, and that’s important,” said Art Goddard, who volunteers for the society with his wife, Mary Ellen. “A lot of this stuff is irreplaceable.”

The society manages a 70,000-piece collection of items including old photos and newspapers, military displays, and stone tools from the city’s Native American period, which began as long as 2,500 years ago.

Journalists, lawyers, school children and people researching the history of their homes are among those who ask the society for information or to use its collection.

The Goddards spent Monday cleaning up, and Art wasn’t sure if they’d be ready to open for their normal public hours Thursday and Friday. They may be what saved some of the collection, rushing to the building around 5 a.m. Saturday after getting a call from the building security company that the alarm had been tripped.

The single drain in the building’s flat roof was clogged with dirt and leaves, so as the rain showered down, it accumulated on the roof and then poured in to the building through air vents. Ceiling tiles became waterlogged and leaky, and the Goddards ran around spreading sheets of plastic and moving items that were under the wettest parts of the ceiling.

Now things are drying out and the city plans to replace the soggy ceiling parts. But the falling tiles revealed evidence of more termite damage than officials were aware of, emphasizing the building won’t last long.

The temporary modular building “was at the end of its life span about 10 or 15 years ago when we got it, and we’ve just been band-aiding it together,” city recreation director Jana Ransom said.

Actually, it’s even older than that — Goddard said the society has leased the building from the city since moving there in 1981. With the building in such bad shape, it’s unclear where the historical society will make its home in the future.

As a nonprofit organization run by volunteers, the society doesn’t have the money to pay market rates to lease a modern space as large as it needs, Goddard said.

City officials have talked about building a permanent historical museum at Fairview Park as part of a project that would include an interpretive center and other features, but Ransom said that would likely cost at least $4 million, and nothing is budgeted for it so far. Ransom said the city will seek grants for the work.

In the meantime, society volunteers will keep on doing what they do — offering monthly historical talks, running the adobe at Estancia Park, putting on the annual Santa Ana Army Air Base reunion, and safeguarding information about the city’s past.

“We’re woven into the fabric of Costa Mesa, the way I see it,” Goddard said. “People can rely on us to get the straight story.”

ALICIA ROBINSON may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or at alicia.robinson@latimes.com.