Soft Story Retrofitting A soft-story building is a multi-story structure built with a first floor that is less rigid than the floors above. In Los Angeles, for example, a typical soft-story building is an apartment building of three or more stories located over a ground level that has openings for tuck-under parking garages, commercial store

The City of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and others nearby, developed and implemented similar soft-story retrofit programs that are mandated by law to help prevent this structural failure from occurring in the future. In short, within these cities, soft-story retrofitting is no longer optional. Property owners must put a plan in place and