The Lloyd building has stood at 219 Fifth Street since 1915. | Photos by Ryan Burns.

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It’s had a good run, but one of Eureka’s oldest commercial buildings will soon be demolished.

The Lloyd Building, as it’s been known since the middle of last century, suffered its latest blow with last Tuesday’s 6.4 magnitude earthquake, which further destabilized the decrepit structure’s masonry facade and dislodged exterior bricks, one of which went crashing through the roof the audio/video retailer next door. 

Built in 1915 as a lodge for the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the now-crumbling brick edifice at 219 Fifth Street was purchased in 1949 by Eureka High School graduate and local hotel and real estate owner Lloyd V. Bridges, Sr., who named it after his son, the actor Lloyd Bridges, Jr. In recent decades the building has fallen into disrepair, becoming a source of frequent code violations, fire alarms and public nuisances.

Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery says the building’s unreinforced masonry construction is unstable and hazardous, so it must come down.

“It’s not a safe structure, so we took off the [upper facade] for now and we will be proceeding with demolition once we get the results of an asbestos survey,” Slattery said in a phone interview Tuesday. A lead survey is also being performed.

The building is currently owned by Betty Squires, whose husband Floyd Everett Squires III died in September at age 76. As we noted in a 2015 story profiling the history of the Lloyd Building, an office on the second floor long served as the Squireses’ property management headquarters, the space from which they rented out countless low-income apartments and often did battle with the City of Eureka, which sued the couple numerous times over the substandard conditions in more than two dozen local properties — including the Lloyd itself.

Our 2015 story noted that even back then a sign was taped to the lobby window reading, “Earthquake Warning: This is an unreinforced masonry building. You may not be safe inside or near unreinforced masonry buildings during an earthquake.”

At the time, Floyd Squires said he’d spent about $150,000 on seismic upgrades to the building and that his own structural engineer considered it safe. But Eureka’s then-chief building official, Brian Gerving, disputed those claims, saying, “The City still views the Lloyd Building as a significant hazard in the event of an earthquake.”

Reached today by phone, Gerving, who’s now Eureka’s public works director, said not much has happened with the building since 2015. It has been on the market for years with no takers. The Lloyd is not listed on the city’s historic registry, despite its advanced age.

Gerving said that any time there’s a building this old it would be nice to find an alternative to demolition. “But in this case, with the amount of work required from a structural standpoint and the amount of rehabilitation necessary throughout the building, it’s certainly cost prohibitive for the city to do anything besides demolish it.”

Code Enforcement Manager Brian Issa said that when he inspected the building four or five years ago “it was leaking like a sieve.”

Upstairs the Squireses had installed suspended ceiling tiles that were dripping wet. The top floor had columns — perhaps the remnants of an old ballroom — that were cracked and falling apart. “There was feces all over the building,” Issa said, adding that someone had installed electrical wiring without a permit. “It was in rough shape.”

Code Enforcement Officer Matthew Morgan said the last functional business to occupy the Lloyd was Alpha Fitness, a boxing gym that has since moved across town. 

“We used to get fire calls all the time,” Morgan said. “People were breaking into the building and squatting on multiple occasions and there were homeless people living in the doorway.”

At the request of the Eureka Police Department, the city issued a warrant to board up the entrances, which was done this past March.

This morning Slattery said a lien will be placed on the property. Betty Squires could choose to arrange the demolition herself, he added, but one way or another the building will need to come down. Once the necessary reports come back, the City hopes to get the building demolished within 30 days, Slattery said.

“Yeah, my nightmare is only just beginning,” quipped Chris Larson, owner of Northcoast Audio, the single-story audio/video equipment shop next door. He’s still recovering from the physical damage to his store from last week’s earthquake, including the “giant piece of brick” that fell through his roof onto the showroom floor.

“I can’t make this up: It hit the most expensive speaker I own in the shop,” Larson said. Some of his front windows are now covered in plywood, and the front of the store is obscured by chain link fencing and traffic barriers blocking the lefthand lane of Fifth Street.

“It’s about the most awful thing that can happen in what’s usually my busiest time of year,” Larson said of the earthquake damage. He was recently informed by city officials that his problematic neighbor of a building will soon be demolished, and he has mixed feelings. 

“I’m happy overall that it’s coming down,” he said. “It needed to come down a long time ago, but the timing couldn’t be worse. … I’m happy and frustrated at the same time. It’s terrible for business but good for public safety.”

Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, construction continues on a new mixed-use building at the corner of Second and E streets. As we reported earlier this year, the four-story building will include space for commercial retail on the ground floor, one- and two-bedroom apartments on the second and third floors and a fourth-floor restaurant with a rooftop bar.

Out with the old; in with the new!