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Pasadena Central Library closes due to seismic safety issues The main entrance to the Pasadena Central Library. (Roger Wilson / Times Community News) May 4, 2021 8:58 PM PT Print The recently reopened Pasadena Central Library has closed its doors to patrons due to seismic safety issues, officials said this week. City Building Official Sarkis Nazerian ordered the property at 285 E. Walnut St. immediately closed after an assessment found that most of the building was composed of unreinforced masonry walls. The library will remain closed until the hazardous conditions have been corrected, according to the order. The Central Library, along with Pasadena’s Hastings and La Pintoresca branch libraries, had reopened last month to limited in-person services after L.A. County entered the orange tier, the second-most-lenient of the state’s four-phase reopening blueprint during the coronavirus pandemic. ....
PASADENA, Calif. The city of Pasadena’s historic Central Library has been ordered closed pending further review due to seismic safety concerns. The nearly century-old Mediterranean Revival-style building had just reopened for in-person services following a pandemic closure when the closure order was issued Monday, the city said in a statement. A recent structural assessment revealed that most of the building is constructed with unreinforced masonry bearing walls that support concrete floors and walls. So-called URM buildings are known to be a life-safety hazard because they can collapse in an earthquake. Advertisement “While Pasadena passed an ordinance in 1993 mandating all URM buildings to be retrofitted, vacated or demolished, no record has been found as to why Central Library was not identified and addressed as a URM building,” the city said. ....
In 1993, Pasadena officials passed an ordinance requiring all buildings with unreinforced masonry be retrofitted, emptied, or demolished. The Central Library was not in that list. Mermell said the city hasn t found any record of why the building wasn t identified as part of that project or whose job it was to do so. He says the city is now considering setting up a satellite location for the library s 350,000 + items. So there s also a need to figure out where those items are gonna go, Mermell said. People still want to be able to get items, and they can still do that by visiting our branches, so we re gonna need to find a way to get to the collection. ....
URM buildings have been widely recognized as a hazard to life safety due to their potential to collapse during an earthquake, Derderian said. Although Pasadena passed an ordinance in 1993 mandating that all URM buildings be retrofitted, vacated or demolished, no record has been found as to why the Central Library was not identified and addressed as a URM building, Derderian said. Additionally, the results of the review provided to the city indicate that Central Library does not meet current seismic standards recommended by the American Society of Civil Engineers, she added. Therefore, given our present state of knowledge, the building is unsafe to occupy. ....
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