SR to pay $3 million for AT&T building

The AT&T building that has towered over downtown Santa Rosa for a half-century - casting a shadow of blight along with it - is set to be sold to the city Monday.

The city's Redevelopment Agency intends to purchase the 100-foot-tall monolith for $3 million, ending a decade of frustration by city officials tired of the building's deteriorating appearance.

"It's not a very pretty building," said Mayor Bob Blanchard, who said the building likely will be demolished to make room for a mixed-use high-rise.

"It gives us a major footprint in the downtown. We're trying to create a new synergy in the Courthouse Square area," he said.

The windowless, five-floor structure with 18-inch-thick concrete walls was built in the 1950s just across Third Street from the southwest corner of Old Courthouse Square.

It is now unmarked, and stands adjacent to the SBC Communications building - renamed with the new AT&T logo after the companies merged last year - that has a distinctive curtain of aluminum squares on its west wall.

No plans have been developed on what to do with the property, said Blanchard and Dave Gouin, the city's director of economic development and housing.

But Gouin joked his first order of business "will be to power wash it."

Despite city pleas over the past decade asking AT&T officials to clean up the building's appearance, including a curtain of grime and black mold cascading down from the upper reaches of its facade, the requests have been ignored.

Unless the city purchases the building from its own Redevelopment Agency for use as a City Hall or another governmental use, the site likely will be turned over to a private developer.

Blanchard leans toward the latter. "We would turn it over and let someone else deal with it," he said.

The city would do so through the Redevelopment Agency, which can use property taxes raised from development to make improvements to economically important properties that would be cost-prohibitive solely for a private developer.

The agency has provided that help on several occasions including more than $14 million it spent on toxic cleanup, road improvements and loans toward development of the Hyatt Hotel and conference center.

California Luggage store owner Bernie Schwartz, who has had a clear view of the AT&T building from his Fourth Street store for more than 20 years, said Saturday he's elated by the impending sale.

"It's been a black hole for years. AT&T has been a bad landlord and it just sucks the energy out of the downtown," he said.

"I am assuming they are going to knock it down," he said.

While city officials initially talked of razing the building when they contacted AT&T officials about purchasing it last year, Blanchard and Gouin say that's only a possibility.

But Blanchard admits it's the most likely outcome for the box-like structure.

"We want to make sure that whatever happens there will be stellar. You could do a lot of things to decorate it but it still will look like a bunker," he said.

If demolition is the option, Blanchard foresees a potential office or retail high-rise, topped by residential condominiums, erected in its place.

Demolition is not expected to be easy nor inexpensive.

The building, because of the international importance of the communication equipment it houses, was built to withstand a nuclear blast from 50 miles away.

Portions of the building have been veiled in secrecy because of high-security equipment, including a critical fiber-optic link to Asia, housed in the facility.

An AT&T spokesman last year said that equipment likely would be moved to the adjacent SBC building should the AT&T building be sold.

The city initially placed the potential cost of demolition at $500,000, but Blanchard said it could run higher considering the superstructure nature of the building.

The structure once housed more than 400 employees, a number that dropped to less than five with the advent of high-tech equipment.

The building became available when SBC took over AT&T in a $16 billion merger in late 2005, and then adopted AT&T as the corporate name. The state Public Utilities Commission in December gave SBC approval to sell the old AT&T building as surplus property.