Ramona Town Hall, constructed in 1894, is undergoing a renovation that includes a seismic retrofit.
This iconic structure has stood its ground for 125 years, even rising back from the ashes of an arson fire that burned much of the building in the mid-1990s.
Residents of the town today are working to ensure it survives the next big quake that comes along.
Safety is the primary goal of the renovation, but there are other additional perks to the project.
This historic structure – which served as the town’s first library, movie theater, high school, bank, dance hall, courthouse, and more – represents the heart of the community, bridging the past with the present, and now… the future.
The project is expected to bring new life to the downtown area, serving as a central hub to a vibrant venue on Main Street. Public events are planned to fill the streets, and area businesses are looking forward to being a part of the transformation.
Building owners are key to a community’s success
Buildings are much more than walls, doors and windows. They are the living spaces that shape the character of a community.
Investing in them and ensuring their resilience against earthquakes is not only fiscally sound – it is good business and can elevate quality of life for the entire community.
In short, it is the responsible thing to do.
The average age of a commercial building is about 50 years, and mixed-use development is about 75 years old on average, according to SMR Research Corporation. Many of these structures, constructed in the 1940s to 1970s, are vulnerable to damage in a major earthquake.
And, there are literally thousands of them in every major city in the U.S., including San Diego.
Each of these buildings represents hundreds, if not thousands of lives and livelihoods: tenants, employees, customers, students, health care workers and patients, and the list goes on.
A recent Stanford University study found that simple retrofit measures on multifamily residential building stock produce $4 of national benefit for every $1 invested.
“These results show that society can cost effectively protect itself from natural hazard risk in multiple ways, both by mitigating past problems and by preventing future ones,” the study found.
We should all do our part
We all need to share in the responsibility of building resilience in the communities we live and do business in.
As apartment owners, we can all do our part by ensuring that our investments will stand strong in a major quake – that they will continue to provide us with the income we depend on – and will remain ready to provide vital housing for the community in a desperate time of need.
You can learn more at past and upcoming presentations for The Resilience Advantage – an onoing webinar series featuring experts addressing risks, building safety, social concerns, and business and economic impacts associated with seismic resilience of buildings. Optimum Seismic has teamed up with a coalition of leading business organizations and government officials to launch the series. We hope you can join us.
The next webinar entitled “Retrofits Protect Investments, Improve Safety” is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 17 – with others planned throughout the year. For more information, visit optimumseismic.com/the-resilience-advantage. Past webinars are also posted there for those who missed any of the series.
Visit optimumseismic.com for more information, or call us at 323-978-7664.
