New City Hall Has an Air of Environmental Sensitivity : Calabasas: Officials say the municipal facility will serve as an example for developers of the type of project the community hopes to attract.

In planning their first permanent City Hall, Calabasas officials spent extra time to ensure that their municipal headquarters would be one of the few in the country that is friendly both to Mother Nature and to the people who work inside.

And the completed City Hall, dedicated Sunday, reflects that tree-hugging attitude: no exotic rain forest hardwoods, no toxic substances and no smells. Specially designed filters scour the air to remove dust, viruses and other airborne particles.

“It’s the first place I’ve worked with new carpeting that doesn’t smell like new carpeting,” Deputy City Clerk Diane Glass said.

City Hall designer Eve Montana said the lack of a “new” smell is the most obvious sign that the building is free of what she calls “volatile organic compounds,” the gases and tiny airborne particles that can cause illness when recirculated through modern, sealed buildings.

“If you’ve ever been in a brand-new building, the air is just full of gases,” Montana said. “It makes you nauseous. But if you go into City Hall, you’ll be aware of how clean the air smells. It’s almost like being in the mountains.”

The new City Hall is housed in leased space in a block of modern, white commercial buildings just north of the Ventura Freeway near Las Virgenes Road. Soon after Calabasas incorporated a year ago to wrest control of development away from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, city officials decided that their municipal building should serve as a model of environmental consciousness.

“We want to set an example,” Councilman Dennis Washburn said. “It’s one thing to tell developers, ‘We want you, Mr. Developer, to do this or that.’ Oftentimes they say it’s not feasible, that no one has to live by that standard.”

But, Washburn said, the City Council can now point to the very building in which a developer is making his pitch as proof that environmental sensitivity need not drive a project into the red.

Mayor Pro Tem Marvin Lopata said the project cost about $100,000--about $25,000 under budget.

That figure, according to Montana, is about what it would have cost to outfit City Hall with a standard, environmentally hostile design. But it did take extra time to find products that were acceptable to the City Council: Countless meetings were held at which council members sometimes sniffed fabric samples to compare those that contained toxic substances and those that did not.

The result is a 9,500-square-foot office that looks like almost any other. The color scheme is camel and charcoal, decorator lingo for tan and black.

“Visually, it looks as aesthetically pleasing as any other commercial project,” Montana said. “It’s an experiential rather than a visual thing.”

Inside, office furniture and fixtures are made of special particleboard that contains no formaldehyde, instead of wood. Lead-free paint covers the walls, and special glues hold the carpet down. Special lights illuminate all colors of the spectrum so that workers look and feel better.

The 200 residents who turned out for Sunday’s dedication ceremonies said they liked what they saw.

“I think the city is setting a wonderful example,” said Michael Fichera, president of the Calabasas Park Estates Homeowners Assn. “Not only are they espousing environmentalism, but they are putting it in concrete terms.”