A mid-morning delivery led to the discovery of a partially collapsed roof and resultant flooding in the EXPO Building last Thursday, but a quick response by City officials means the arts & culture resource has remained open for use.

According to Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association Executive Director Blair Cohn, the north side of the EXPO was undergoing roof repairs, when early last week the weather began to turn for the worse.

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday the weather was changing, and apparently the contractor did not prep the roof well enough for the coming rainstorm,” Cohn says.

At 10:30AM Thursday, a BKBIA employee opened the EXPO to receive a delivery of chairs and found “literally rain [coming] through the ceiling.”

“It was not a leak,” Cohn relates, “it was rain literally falling through the roof, through the second floor, to the first floor…It was unbelievable.”

As Cohn and company summoned the roofing contractor (along with the EXPO’s various tenants so that they could retrieve their property), 8th District Councilmember Al Austin happened to telephone Cohn about an unrelated matter.

“I said, ‘Hey, man, we got this disaster. Can you please come by?’ Which he did,” Cohn says. “He saw the scope of the damage happening to the space, and we both agreed that we were going to need some big help, because the roofer was kind of walking around in circles and really wasn’t giving me the answers that we needed. So Al called the calvary, and Public Works shows up and took over the job.”

One of the tenants was the Chrysalis Stage, who was prepping the Back Room Theatre for their Long Beach debut.

“The whole north side of the EXPO was flooded top to bottom,” says Aaron Morgan, Chrysalis’s artistic/managing director. “Water coming through the roof, floor, conduits, walls, you name it. It was a mess.”

Chrysalis has indefinitely suspended their production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which was slated to open February 7. But much of the EXPO was unaffected, and the building will be open as usual during Bixby Knolls First Fridays tomorrow (“The show must go on,” Cohn says), albeit with a temporary wall blocking off the damaged area. A weekend children’s theatrical performance in another part of the building has already gone off without a hitch, Cohn reports.

Austin says he is doing what he can to ensure that the damage is repaired as quickly as possible.

“Obviously the EXPO Building is a tremendous resource not only for the 8th District, but for the entire city,” he says. “[It’s] a hub for arts and community gatherings, and obviously it would be a shame to allow that damage to go unaddressed. And so I got City staff on it and requested to the city manager that there be a full-court press to make sure that the issues are addressed appropriately. And they responded in kind.”

Cohn says the roofing contractor will finish roof under supervision of City, while a remediation specialist is attending to the internal damage; and that the contractor’s insurance will cover all damage and any related loss of property.

In typical fashion, Cohn doesn’t have to look far to see the bright side.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but they’re probably going to get started on it much sooner than later,” he says. “[…] The silver lining is that the building will be in much better shape than it was before.”