Content area
Full Text
Still bearing scars from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the Van Nuys City Hall building went under the knife Thursday for a $15 million seismic retrofitting project that is supposed to restore the building to its 1930s grandeur.
City officials and preservationists touted the Sylvan Street building - built four years after the downtown City Hall - as a San Fernando Valley landmark worth preserving. Its renovation comes about two years after the completion of a $300 million project to strengthen the downtown City Hall against earthquakes and beautify its interior and terra cotta facade.
The Valley building deserves a similar treatment, city leaders said during a ceremony Thursday morning to mark the beginning of the project.
"It is about to become what it should have been all along: the focal point for the entire San Fernando Valley," said Ellen Stein,...