October, 1998 Initiative may rescue naval station   By Bill Hillburg Staff writer Preservation: Foes of demolition have 180 days to gather signatures to force a vote. LONG BEACH - An 11th-hour effort to save the former naval complex from the wrecking ball has moved a step closer to the polling booth. Late Friday, City Clerk Shelba Powell issued a formal copy of an initiative, reviewed by the City Attorney's office, that would ask city voters to bar the demolition of facilities at the former Long Beach Naval Station and the adjacent Navy Shipyard. Under a reuse plan approved by the Navy in June, the city and its port plan to raze the entire Naval Station and most of the shipyard to make way for new container and non-container cargo terminals. A portion of the shipyard is to be reused as a private ship repair facility. Ken Larkey of Long Beach, who authored the measure and filed it with the city Oct. 13, and other preservationists now have 180 days, or until April 21, 1999, to qualify the initiative for the city ballot. They must collect signatures from a minimum of 18,821 registered Long Beach voters, or 10 percent of the city's electorate. According to Powell, the earliest the measure could go on the city ballot is March 7, 2000. The proposed initiative "would prevent the demolition of improvements located on the former United States Naval Station and Shipyard property, and the removal of assets therefrom." It further calls for the Naval Station to be preserved and reused as a museum and public recreation area and that "shipyard improvements be preserved and used for shipyard and related purposes." Meanwhile, Richard Fine, Larkey's attorney, late Friday filed three separate requests in federal and state courts for temporary injunctions seeking to halt demolition, pending the outcome of the March 7, 2000 vote. A hearing on a fourth injunction request will be held Nov. 9 in U.S. District Court by Judge Dean Pregerson. On Monday, Pregerson denied Fine's initial injunction request and set a hearing for that date, ruling that "there is no indication that the naval base will be destroyed before Nov. 9." Fine and his preservationist clients - which also include Ann Cantrell, a Long Beach environmental activist; and Huell Howser, a Los Angeles TV host - say that the destruction has already begun. "We're telling the courts they are the only ones that can save the base now," said Fine, who included copies of Larkey's proposed initiative and his clients' recent photos of the base with his injunction motions. "We fear it won't exist by Nov. 9." Preservationists have focused their efforts on saving a collection of Naval Station buildings that were built in 1940 and designed by Paul Revere Williams, a famed African-American architect. In 1996, the Navy designated those structures and their surrounding grounds as the Roosevelt Base Historic District. The Navy also found that the district, which includes the Allen Center Officers Club, Administration Building and a recreation complex, was eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. On Thursday, Art Wong, spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, denied that any historic buildings on the base are being demolished at this time. He said that work by Viking Equipment Corp. the port's contractor, is now limited to removing trees and other landscaping, razing of non-historic Navy structures and removing asbestos and other hazardous materials from historic buildings. On Saturday morning, the Long Beach Fire Department was adding to the demolition effort by setting and fighting a practice blaze in Building 257, a non-historic Navy housing building. LBFD plans several similar training exercises on the base. Citing the dangers of demolition activities and the presence of hazardous materials, Wong denied a media request to inspect and photograph work at the base, which has been sealed off from the public with new fences. At the Allen Center Officers Club, the only historic Navy structure visible to the public from outside the secured zone, landscaping has been removed and interior work on hazardous materials removal is under way. Furnishings in the buildings were removed by the Navy in 1996. Larkey expressed confidence Saturday that his petition drive, which will be led by the 500-member Roosevelt Base Foundation, will easily qualify his measure for the March 7, 2000 ballot. He cited the results of the "Speakout" feature in Saturday's Press-Telegram on the Navy controversy that drew 878 responses, a record for the three-month-old feature. A majority of respondents favored putting the base's fate in the hands of the voters. But Larkey also expressed fear that without injunctive relief the Navy installations will be erased long before voters go to the polls in 2000. "It that happens, we'll scrap this initiative," he said. "But then we'll go for one that would set up a citizens' panel that would have the power to review and veto all decisions concerning the port."