On November 2015 the City of Los Angeles approved an ordinance mandating the seismic retrofit of wood soft story structures and non-ductile concrete buildings within the city. There are thousands of buildings within the city that will need to be evaluated, and potentially retrofitted, to meet the seismic performance requirements of the city ordinance. Other cities in Southern California are also implementing similar ordinances, such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. Our office has been actively talking to owners, architects, contractors and developers to find ways to be part of this effort to make our city more seismically resilient.
We are working on several soft story projects related to this ordinance, with half of our projects currently under construction or completed. Additionally we have been in conversations with owners of non-ductile concrete buildings, with whom we expect to work on the seismic evaluation and retrofit design of their structures. Owners of non-ductile concrete buildings have a more generous compliance deadline than owners of soft story buildings (25 years vs. 7 years), therefore we expect that it will take some time before we see owners of non-ductile concrete buildings initiating the process of evaluation and retrofit of their buildings.
