Saturday, June 6, 2026

Altadena Homeowners Can Meet Manufacturers Monday Ahead of Rebuild Push

The showcase gives homeowners direct access to manufacturers and suppliers as construction work nears

Homeowners rebuilding after the Eaton Fire are being invited Monday evening to a materials showcase that puts them, for two hours, in the same room as the manufacturers and suppliers whose products are vying to go into their next houses.

The event, scheduled from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at 409 East Woodbury Road, is co-hosted by Alta Design Works, a community-design group that opened the Woodbury Road hub last September, and LA Fire Justice, the post-fire legal coalition led by the former Pasadena mayor Chris Holden.

It was announced Friday by the Altadena Coalition, the grassroots network founded by Freddy Sayegh that has organized rebuild-resource programming since shortly after the January fire.

Organizers said the showcase is meant as a rebuilding resource rather than a sales presentation, and that attendees would be able to compare materials side by side and ask manufacturers about cost, durability and maintenance before committing to a specification.

They said multiple homeowner projects are expected to move into construction in the next 30 to 90 days.

The lineup includes Andersen Windows & Doors, Kohler, Sherwin-Williams, Ganahl Lumber, Home Depot and MSI, along with smaller specialists in light-gauge steel framing, lighting, water filtration and concrete and masonry work — a roster organizers said is intended to span the system-level choices a rebuild requires.

The setting matters because, in Altadena, the rebuild remains in its early innings.

Los Angeles County, which administers permits for Altadena because the community is unincorporated, had issued 2,667 rebuild permits and received 3,576 applications as of mid-2026, against roughly 6,000 residential structures destroyed in the Eaton Fire — part of a broader toll of more than 9,400 total structures lost — according to the California state government’s fire recovery tracking dashboard.

The median time from application to permit having grown to 155 days.

An updated UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute analysis released in April 2026 found that roughly 44 percent of fire-affected homeowners had fully approved permits to rebuild, but only about 30 percent had begun construction. Despite the surge in permitting activity, the Los Angeles Times found that to date just 33 new homes had been completed and more than 1,000 were under construction — a pace that lagged well behind the rebuilding rates seen after comparable Northern California wildfires.

That widening lag between paper and shovel is the gap Monday’s event is pitched into.

The session is the latest in a recurring series at the Woodbury Road hub: Alta Design Works and the Altadena Coalition staged the daylong Altadena Rebuild Expo at the same address in January, and LA Fire Justice has run rebuild workshops since the summer.

California’s updated Wildland-Urban Interface Code, in effect since Jan. 1, raises the bar on what materials a rebuild has to meet — which is, organizers say, why a face-to-face conversation about specifications is worth two hours on a Monday night.

The Materials Discussion & Showcase, part of the Eaton Fire Rebuild Workshop Series, takes place Monday, June 8, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Alta Design Works, 409 E. Woodbury Road, Altadena, 91001. Admission is free. Parking details were not provided in the announcement. For more information, email info@thealtadena.org or visit altadesignworks.com.