Muir-Chase project manager Bob Luna, left, and foreman Ray Gonzalez, display a set of blueprints used to refurbish and convert the Pacific Electric Building to upscale apartments.

Los Angeles in the early 1900s was a very different place than it is today. The Southern California urban sprawl hadn't taken over, there were no freeways and the way to travel from L.A. to destinations like Santa Ana, San Fernando, Balboa and even San Bernardino was aboard the fabled "Red Cars"-trolleys operated by the Pacific Electric Railway.

The Red Cars moved more than 109 million passengers to and fro on its 1,100 miles of track during its banner year of 1944. Most of those riders passed through the company's hub-a terminal and office building at the intersection of 6th and Main in downtown Los Angeles.

The first nine-story building in the city when it was constructed in 1909, the Pacific Electric Building was a combination terminal and office complex featuring mahogany doors, marble wainscot and staircases, a ballroom and a rooftop garden all wrapped up in a Romanesque/Beaux Arts fa‡ade.

Like many things from the good old days, however, the Red Cars went away, but the building continued to thrive as an office facility-with a remodel and facelift in 1954--until, finally, it was boarded up and abandoned some 15 years ago. During that time it was used as a filming location for a couple of movies, including Spider-Man and Face/Off.

The historic L.A. Landmark has received a new lease on life, however. Just about 18 months ago, the architecture firm of Killefer Flammang was commissioned to convert the building into upscale urban loft apartments. Helping out on the project were general contractor Taisei Corp., structural engineer Nabih Youseff and interior designer Inovus. Plumbing on the project was handled by Muir-Chase Plumbing Co., Inc. of Glendale.

This renovation is part of a current trend which has taken place in other cities as buildings in the heart of the urban area are reclaimed and put to modern use as residential or office space. It has been common practice in other cities across the country, but Los Angeles and its suburban sprawl-and the resulting "car culture" it spawned--have made this type of private urban renewal a relatively new phenomenon in the City of Angels over the past five years.

Now the building-Pacific Electric Lofts--is home to 314 apartments ranging in size from 600- to 3,000 square feet. At deadline, the building had been open to tenants for about two months and was already about 30 percent occupied.

We toured the building with Muir-Chase project manager Bob Luna, foreman Ray Gonzalez and Viega district manager Tim Shippen to have a look at what goes into a project of this type from a plumbing standpoint.

"We pretty much had to gut the building. Ray [Gonzalez] was the foreman on the project, so he was here day-to-day," Luna said. "None of the original systems were reusable. They were all pulled out and replaced. The main risers for the fire system had been remodeled within a pretty reasonable amount of time so they stayed, but we ran new mains throughout each floor. Actually, in the units, they were able to use plastic piping for the sprinklers in the units. I guess because it's considered residential they were able to do that. Somehow they got that through the City and were able to do all the branch lines for the fire system into the units with plastic piping."

About 80 percent of the repurposed building's domestic copper water piping was installed using Viega's ProPress system, which was chosen because of its speed and the fact it would keep open flames away from the building's innards. Luna estimated the project used about 50,000 feet of various piping materials.

"Originally the schedule was 13 months but there were delays," he said. Like any project it got extended. So it was our idea to go with ProPress because of that-to kind of help speed up the installation process for the water piping. We used it in combination with other systems. It's one of those things that are great in certain applications. In some other areas we couldn't use it just because it's too congested."

"There are a lot of challenges you have when you're retrofitting a building that you don't have if it were new construction," Shippen said. "It's a lot harder working in those kinds of conditions."

For example, columns in a new building are all plumb and square, but they've settled in an old building. But the old buildings built very solidly and that's why they're still standing after 100 years or more: "And the funny thing about concrete is that it keeps getting harder and harder as it gets older," Shippen said. "It's a lot different doing chipping, for example, in a building that's only 10 or 15 years old."

Luna said the vintage concrete caused a few problems initially when driving pins to hold pipe hangers-they would bend. He said Muir-Chase usually had up to 25 plumbers on site during the construction phase. However, the plumbing scheme of the building is relatively simple, overall

"Basically all the units are stacked," Luna said. "So all the piping is pretty much vertical and it's all buried in the walls except what you see outside or where the fixtures attach."

The pump room on the ground floor is also home to a large commercial Rheem water heater whose exclusive purpose, Luna said, is to serve an adjacent restaurant.

"One of the biggest challenges for the contractor and everybody is that Cole's Restaurant stayed in operation during all the construction," he said. Cole's Restaurant is an institution in its own right. Billing itself as, "The Originator of the French Dip Sandwich," Cole's story is that it served more than 58 33-gallon kegs of beer on the day after Prohibition ended in 1933.

Most of the plumbing mechanical and HVAC equipment is located on the main roof above the ninth floor. There you'll find a 750 gallon domestic water storage tank and a pair of 2 million btu Lochinvar domestic water boilers, as well as a trio of boilers for the heating side of the HVAC system and the cooling towers. All of the piping runs on the roof are seismically braces using spring-loaded brackets bolted to angle iron braces atop steel pipes bolted to the roof itself.

The apartments themselves are equipped with In-Sink-Erator disposals. The lavatory faucets are from Symmons and Mansfield provided the sinks and toilets. The kitchen faucets look rather similar to Moen units, but Luna said they are, "some off brand" spec-ed by the building's owners. Generally speaking there's nothing high-end on the fixture front, even in the more exclusive "penthouse" units on the 8th and 9th floors. Why? Because they're apartments.

"They pretty much stayed middle-of-the-road or lower," Luna said, adding that tends to be the norm with apartments because they're going to be year-to-year leases. "A lot of the buildings now are going condo and the specs for fixtures are a lot higher," he said.