We have the final word on the fate of the Looff’s Lite-a-Line roof–and it is “goodbye,” from no less than the city’s Historic Preservation Officer Jan Ostashay. The Looff’s Lite-a-Line roof will be outta here by the end of 2007.

Quick background: Looff’s Lite-a-Line was one of the last vestiges of the city’s Pike Amusement Park–located just south of Ocean Boulevard and Chestnut Place.

Owner Mike Cincola sold the building and the land to condo builders Camden Property Trust back in 2000, and moved the original 1941 game–wiring panel by wiring panel–to 25th Street and Long Beach Boulevard. Camden built the condos–and it was supposed to reuse the Looff’s roof for a visitors center, raising a new building under it.

That never happened, and while it never happened, everyone else in town looked at the roof. The Chamber of Commerce considered it, Ostashay says, as did the Long Beach Historical Society–before the Society found its current ex-Harris Furs location in Bixby Knolls.

The city even contemplated building a gazebo under the unique, multi-sided structure, which has handsome, old wood bracing–and a tiny cupola, an ornament not unlike a little belfry, atop it.

Look at the roof, and you can see it as a giant gazebo. You can see the Municipal Band playing there–or the Spit and Argue Club reforming.

Looff’s was one of the few remaining links to such long-gone institutions as the Spit and Argue Club, the Rainbow Pier, the Checkerboard Cafe, and the Cyclone Racer rollercoaster. It was also the last free-standing Pike business–but apparently that wood wasn’t as good as it looks, except to termites.

“After doing some studies, it was going to be a $5 million cost” to build a gazebo, Ostashay says–$5 million after the city repaired the extensive termite damage and, probably, put a new roof on the roof.

“It was decided that, ‘Was it really a historic resource?’ since the rest of the building was gone,” Ostashay says–an interesting change of position, considering the city and Camden agreed seven years ago that the roof was indeed significant.

“The eaves, a lot of the things have been chopped off of it,” Ostashay continues. “With the approval of the Cultural Heritage Commission, it was agreed to let the roof be demolished, but have pieces of it be salvaged.”

Not sure if they’re taking requests, but the cupola is already spoken for. Camden will still build a kiosk–one dedicated to historic preservation–at Pacific Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, topping it with the tiny Looff’s cupola. (Maybe you can ask for some asbestos.)

And because it didn’t use the whole roof, Camden has donated $3 million to the city–half of which will go into a preservation endowment fund that would fund future historic preservation efforts.

That’s an interesting denouement–one you may see more of. If a developer doesn’t wind up doing the historic preservation it set out to, the city may hit the company with what amounts to a fine, Ostashay says, cautioning The District–and, one hopes, developers–against viewing the scenario as a means to buy your way out of historic preservation.

“The last resort is that,” Ostashay says. “It’s not a small chunk of change.”

And she has harsh words–in that curious way city folk have of speaking–for the whole think-system that will lead, during the next two months, to workers dismantling the Looff’s roof, shingle by shingle.

“Ultimately what should have happened from the beginning would have been to have looked at the whole [building] instead of just the roof, but that didn’t happen,” Ostashay says.

Yep, that would have been great. Too bad it didn’t happen that way.

Tags: California, Camden Property Trust, Jan Ostashay, Lite-a-Line, Long Beach, Looff's, Looff's Lite-a-Line, mike cincola, Nu-Pike, Pike Amusement Park, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas