LAGUNA NIGUEL – The rolling hills of Laguna Niguel are expansive yet predictable, saturated with suburban homes, winding parks and stretching shopping centers.

But long before private development took hold over this bedroom community, one building dominated the quiet, barren landscape: The Ziggurat.

It’s an odd sight, appearing to be one part government building and two parts apocalyptic stronghold.

Beige textured walls stack heavily on one another, sliding into seven floors that recess as they reach a flattened top. It’s a Babylonian construct amidst a sea of Spanish revival homes – a visual anomaly.

But over the years, it has become as natural as a corner Starbucks or the Santa Ana winds. For most South County residents, it has been the only constant in an ever developing locale.

‘White Elephant’

Today, the structure touches elbows with a Wal-Mart, a high school and a string of business parks, but the Ziggurat was once very alone in the years before South County’s development grew.

Located in the heart of a shallow valley surrounded by the San Joaquin Hills, the site’s solitude determined its fate. The government fortress was first built by North American Aviation in 1968 to house the company’s corporate offices on the top floors and hold an electronics manufacturing plant on the bottom two.

“It was built there because it was a very protected area,” said Mary Decker, a local historian who has co-written two books with her husband about Laguna Niguel. “They wanted a location that was going to be secure.”

Construction took roughly three years – finishing in 1971 – but much of the building was ready to be occupied by 1969. The Mesopotamian architecture was the brainchild of William Pereira, an architect known for his eccentric and futuristic designs.

The Ziggurat’s construction came at a transformative time in the defense industry: In the midst of the project, North American merged with Rockwell International, a now-defunct manufacturing conglomerate that worked in the defense and space industries.

As to why this building never came to be filled by Rockwell, a couple of stories are circulated.

The more common tale is that as the Vietnam War wound down, Rockwell’s defense contract with the federal government fell through, leaving the company with an imposing structure with no work for it to do.

“They were supposed to have over 7,000 employees,” Decker said. “But before it was finished, the war came to an end and it was pretty much an empty building – a white elephant.”

The other is more dramatic. William “Art” Morris, a corporate architect for North American who contributed to the Ziggurat’s design, told the Register in 1993 the building was deemed too fanciful for its line of work.

“The chairman of the board came to take a tour,” Morris said of a 1969 visit to the Ziggurat. “He got to the fourth floor and he said one thing, a short sentence: ‘This is far too nice for an electronics firm.’ And everything came to a screeching halt.”

Whether a victim of war or of design, the empty building soon became the government’s problem. Rockwell swapped this “white elephant” for two surplus government buildings near Los Angeles International Airport in 1974 and four years later the trade was official. The unofficial “Ziggurat” became the Chet Holifield Federal Building, named after the late U.S. congressman from California.

The new name, though, didn’t bring new tenants, and much of the building remained empty for the next decade. After an attempted sale in the 1980s went sour, the federal government finally decided to keep the Ziggurat.

“I’m pleased,” Holifield, the building’s namesake, told the Register in 1987. “It is a beautiful building and I think it will have a very useful future.”

Place of pride

While the outside of the Ziggurat conjures up images of ancient elegance and hanging gardens, the building’s inside is a bleak contrast: cold and Spartan.

Past security and up parallel escalators are the building’s bottom floors, marked by stark white walls reflecting glowing fluorescent lights. All along the corridors are individual doors leading to various government agencies.

The long empty hallways hark back to the building’s initial years as a bare office wasteland. NARA was the building’s first tenants, and clerks used to travel up and down the stretching corridors on tricycles.

But for all its simplicity, the inside’s multiple moving parts – with its seven floors and hodgepodge of federal agencies – make it appear as a world of its own, and those who walk its halls protect its name like an oft picked-on sibling.

“People say it’s ugly, but we love it,” GSA Senior Property Manager Sherry Hutchinson said. “It’s our building – we’re proud.”

Contact the writer: mlemas@ocregister.com