Deemed unsafe after last week’s earthquake, 107-year-old Lloyd’s building to be demolished | The lost coastal hotspot

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The Lloyd Building has been located at 219 Fifth Street since 1915. | Photo by Ryan Burns.

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It was well run, but one of the oldest commercial buildings in Eureka would soon be demolished.

The Lloyd Building, as it’s been known since the mid-2000s, suffered a more recent blow with last Tuesday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake, further destabilizing its crumbling masonry facade and displaced exterior bricks, one of which crashed through the roof of the adjacent audio/video retailer.

Built in 1915 as a home for a fraternity of Eagles, the dilapidated brick building at 219 Fifth Street was purchased in 1949 by Eureka High School graduate and local hotel and real estate owner Lloyd V. Bridges, Sr., who named it after his son, actor Lloyd Bridges. , Jr. In recent decades, the building has fallen into disrepair, becoming a source of frequent code violations, fire alarms, and public harassment.

Unreinforced building construction is unstable and dangerous, says Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery, so it should be cut down.

“It’s not a secure structure, so we removed it [upper facade] “For now, we will continue the demolition process once we have the results of the asbestos survey,” Slattery said in a phone interview on Tuesday. A major survey is also being conducted.

The building is currently owned by Betty Squires, whose husband, Floyd Everett Squires III, died in September at the age of 76. As we noted in a 2015 story on the history of the Lloyd Building, one of the offices on the second floor served as the Squires’ property for management headquarters, the space from which they rented countless low-income apartments and often fought a battle with the city of Eureka, which sued the couple several times due to substandard conditions at more than two dozen local properties – including Lloyd’s herself.

Our 2015 story indicated that even at that time a sign was recorded on the lobby window saying, “Earthquake Warning: This is an unreinforced masonry building. You may not be safe inside or near unreinforced masonry buildings during an earthquake.”

At the time, Floyd Squires said he had spent about $150,000 on seismic upgrades to the building and that his structural engineer deemed it safe. But Eureka’s then head of construction, Brian Gerving, disputed the claims, saying, “The city still views the Lloyd Building as a significant hazard in the event of an earthquake.”

Reached today by phone, Gerving, who is now Eureka’s director of public works, said not much has happened with the building since 2015. It has been on the market for years without any buyers. Lloyd is not listed in the town’s historical register, despite its advanced age.

Anytime there is a building of this age, Gerving said, it would be a good idea to find an alternative to demolition. “But in this case, with the amount of work required from a structural standpoint and the amount of rehabilitation needed throughout the building, it would certainly be too expensive for the city to do anything other than demolish it.”

When he inspected the building four or five years ago, the director of law enforcement, Brian Issa, said, “it was leaking like a sieve.”

Upstairs, the Squireses installed suspended ceiling tiles that were dripping wet. The upper floor had columns – probably the remains of an old ballroom – which were cracked and crumbling. “There was excrement all over the building,” Issa said, adding that someone had installed electrical wiring without a permit. “He was in a rough state.”

Law enforcement officer Matthew Morgan said the last job Lloyd held was Alpha Fitness, a boxing gym that has since moved across town.

“We used to get fire calls all the time,” Morgan said. “People were breaking into the building and sitting down on several occasions and there were homeless people living in the entrance.”

At the request of the Eureka Police Department, the city issued an order for admissions, which was done this past March.

Slattery said this morning that a lien will be placed on the property. He added that Betty Squires could choose to arrange demolition herself, but one way or another the building would need to come down. Once the necessary reports are back in, Slattery said, the city hopes to demolish the building within 30 days.

“Yeah, my nightmare is only just getting started,” quipped Chris Larson, owner of Northcoast Audio, the one-story audio/video equipment store next door. He is still recovering from physical damage to his store from last week’s earthquake, including a “giant brick” that fell through his roof onto the showroom floor.

“I can’t make this up: It hit the most expensive speaker I have in the store,” said Larson. Some of its front windows are now covered in plywood, and the front of the store is obscured by the chain-link fencing and traffic barriers blocking the left lane of Fifth Street.

“It’s about the most horrible thing that can happen at the busiest time of the year,” Larson said of the earthquake damage. Recently informed by city officials that his trouble-making neighbor of a building is soon to be demolished, he has mixed feelings.

“I’m generally happy that it’s going down,” he said. “It needed to come down a long time ago, but the timing couldn’t be worse. … I’m happy and disappointed at the same time. It’s terrible for business but good for public safety.”

Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, construction continues on a new mixed-use building at the corner of Second and E Streets. As we reported earlier this year, the four-story building will include commercial retail space on the ground floor and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Bedrooms on the second and third floors and a restaurant on the fourth with a rooftop bar.

out with the old; with the new!

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