My god, what a bummer! I was gobsmacked by the article I saw in the other day’s Daily Journal regarding the city’s incomprehensible new demand on the Palace Hotel’s hapless owner (for the moment), Jitu Ishwar. I mean, have we really been plunged into a real-life Groundhog’s Day?
Year after year, decade upon decade, those whose job it is to deal with the real world of buildings, infrastructure etc., keep on demonstrating a shocking level of ignorance or reticence to make the hard decisions that their leadership positions demand of them! It makes me want to hunt down whatever petifogging bureaucrat came up with the brilliant idea of this latest demand of Mr. Ishwar, that he squander even more money than he has already to pay some structural engineering contractor to waste their and their employee’s time doing studies and calculations (for the third time over the years!), on the rotting corpse of the old Palace Hotel, and demand to know how he or she arrived at this foolish idea, and what possible public service they think might be accomplished by such a foolish waste of time, creating something that will have absolutely no value to anyone once the economic reality of the situation finally seeps through to even the most adamant preservationists. Likewise, what kind of professional malpractice would it be for a reputable engineering contracting outfit to take on such a pointless project?!
What, will they miraculously find that, despite the last five or six years of saturated building materials rotting within this scenic brickwork compost bin, that golly gee! The building has somehow magically become even more rehabilitatable then it was five or six years ago?! I don’t think so!
Something that always gives me a chuckle as I drive by the ill-fated corner is the fact that someone is paying to regularly go around inside the building and staple up plastic over the old window openings. Really?! What exactly do they think they are preserving from the ravages of weather at this point?! UNBELIEVABLE!
I remember years ago when an earlier City Council, apparently just as reticent to take executive action as the present one, punted the stalled project then owned by Eladia Laines of Marin County to the courts, where a judge who may or may not have had any idea about buildings and city planning, appointed this ‘public receiver’, who hailed from some far distant part of the state, to ‘take over the rehabilitation of The Palace’. Eladia Laines, despite spending a lot to do the public service of asbestos removal, was basically zeroed out and lost all the money she had invested in the project by judicial fiat.
This was the whole idea’s original sin; that rehabilitation is even in the cards. IT’S NOT! It was clearly not economically feasible 30 years ago, when, despite that fact, The Palace became the recipient of generous federal makework subsidies which made possible the brief heyday many of us enjoyed. However, with each passing year the impossible dream became that much further from economic feasibility.
The Journal article makes much of the fact that whatever state agency is involved with groundwater pollution chooses not to go on the record in favor of razing the old structure (only old by California standards, in much of the world it would not even be considered old or historic), giving some mealymouthed verbiage about never having required the demolition of the building to assess possible groundwater contamination underneath it. It makes me wonder if this kind of noncommittal butt-covering answer was elicited by the fact that their interlocutor/reporter happened to be one of the most strident opponents of any option other than the impossible one of propping up the existing crumbling megatons of brickwork before anything can be done there.
Think about it; can anyone tell me how it might be possible to adequately address the likely existence of a large concrete fuel oil tank believed to exist within the building’s footprint without removing the thousands of tons of rotting garbage on top of it?
I’ll never forget my dismay years ago when at long last it had dawned on that City Council that Eladia Laines simply did not have the wherewithal to do anything beyond stripping the beautiful ivy off of the north wall and removing the asbestos from the building, and finally chose to have this highly touted ‘public receiver’ take over; I couldn’t believe it when I read that this receiver would, “be authorized to borrow against the equity in the property to pursue the rehabilitation”. Excuse me, equity? The previous owner had just lost all the money she had spent on it. WHAT EQUITY?! I felt sure that no one would be foolish enough to lend a nickel on such a bottomless money pit, but I didn’t figure on the hapless Mr. Ishwar, whose redevelopment bona fides are amply demonstrated by the stalled Economy Inn remodel a couple of blocks south of The Palace. Apparently his business skills are on a similar par; if he had done the slightest bit of due diligence before squandering .9 mil on that public receiver’s pointless seismic retrofit design, he might have realized that, like Ms. Laines, it was likely that he would lose all his investment, rather than making a tidy profit on the deal.
At this point one has to be blind to the facts to believe that holding out for preserving and remodeling the existing shell of this ruin is anything but demanding that nothing be done there, ever. The cost of doing so is such that only some gigantic state or federal make-work ‘redevelopment’ waste of the taxpayer’s money boondoggle would ever even think of taking it on.
SUCH a disappointment to those of us who were finally given hope recently that something useful might eventually happen there when the city demanded that the building be either stabilized or demolished! Like Groundhog’s Day, are we condemned to go over this exercise in futility endlessly?
John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.