Historic preservation overlay zones may be generating controversy in the battle over how to preserve the integrity of older buildings, but it’s hardly the first type of action taken by communities to preserve neighborhood character.

Over the last 30 years, cities all over Los Angeles County have enacted various ordinances, set up design review boards and dangled incentives for property owners and developers all aimed at making sure that any development is sensitive to existing dwellings and residents.

The tendency to enact these and other similar measures has ebbed and flowed over the decades, usually heating up during a boom in the real estate markets when there are intense development pressures and then easing up afterwards.

“(Residents) want to preserve the character of their neighborhoods, whether or not they meet the definition of historic,” said Bill Fulton, publisher of the Planning and Development Report and a Ventura city councilman.

During the most recent boom, the focus has been on design codes and blanket restrictions on neighborhoods, but that stands in contrast to tactics dating from the post World War II period, when the prevailing attitude was to tear down older structures and put up new more modern ones.

All that began to change, though, when in 1962 the city of Los Angeles took a second look at the wrecking ball and passed the first historic preservation ordinance of any major city in Southern California.

The ordinance, passed two years before a similar one in New York City, essentially required a six-month delay for a demolition permit for any property deemed a historic landmark. That breathing period was designed to give time to come up with a plan to save or move a landmark, though after the waiting period the demolition permit could be granted.

Later historic preservation ordinances, including one in Santa Monica, allowed for a ban on demolition even without the property owner’s consent. But these ordinances were only one approach that cities used to try and direct development.

During the real estate boom of the mid-1970s that ultimately led to the backlash of Proposition 13, community activists began to use the just-passed California Environmental Quality Act to challenge the scope of some developments.

They would use the act to raise concerns about a project’s impact on the environment, which included the surrounding neighborhood. This forced developers to write environmental impact reports, further delaying the projects.

Meanwhile, historic preservation advocates pushed for the creation of special commissions and advocacy groups to stop the demolition of specific historically or culturally significant structures. The Los Angeles Conservancy, for example, was launched in 1978 in response to the proposed demolitions of the Los Angeles Central Library and the Wiltern Theatre. The group brought community pressure to bear to preserve both of these buildings.

Tax relief


On the other side of the ledger, the state Legislature passed the Mills Act, which gave local governments the authority to offer tax relief to owners of properties deemed historic, as long as those owners agreed to plow the savings into maintenance and upkeep of the property.

“This is one of the few financial incentives that we have,” said Ken Bernstein, the longtime director of the Los Angeles Conservancy who was just tapped by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to launch the new city Office of Historic Preservation.

The residential and commercial real estate boom of the mid-1980s saw several forces converge. While community activists honed their techniques and used the state environmental quality act to tie up projects in court for years, worsening traffic congestion resulted in broad anti-growth measures passing throughout the region.

The most significant of these was Proposition U, which L.A. city voters passed in 1986. It put strict limits on the square footage of commercial space that could be developed in the city. Proponents were vocal in their view that rampant development was ruining the character of their neighborhoods.

Builders tried to fight these measures at the ballot box and in the court. They labeled them as examples of the “Not in My Backyard,” or NIMBY, syndrome that was making housing more expensive, pushing it out of reach for most residents in the region. Then the real estate market collapsed in 1991 and the issued faded.

Meanwhile, other communities were tackling a slightly different but related issue: “mansionization.” In the mid- to late-1980s, many property owners seeking to maximize the value of their property decided to tear down their bungalow-sized homes and erect large homes that filled most of the lot or were multiple stories.

This prompted cities like Glendale to enact design review ordinances, which not only limited the mass of structures in relation to the size of a lot but set up special boards to review them to ensure that they were in keeping with the character of the community.

“The purpose was to look at the scale, the configuration and the compatibility of each project, to make sure it didn’t stand outside what the community regarded as acceptable,” said Arlene Vidor, president of the Glendale Historical Society.

Some design review boards went to extremes, including one famous case in Orange County in which a home painted “egg-shell” white was deemed out of character with surrounding homes. But others have tended to be less restrictive, allowing most projects to go through. “It all depends on who’s on these design review boards,” Fulton said.

Development pressures


The mansionization issue has not gone away, however. It has resurfaced in recent years during the residential real estate boom, especially in areas filled with tract homes, like Sun Valley.

“It’s really a sign of pent-up demand, where homeowners want bigger homes but can’t afford to buy them outright,” said Holly Schroeder, chief executive officer of the Greater Los Angeles-Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association, which is an opponent of many restrictions.

Mansionization opponents disagree, saying that the real motive behind the tear-downs and rebuilding with larger homes is to maximize the profit at resale. Whatever the case, the tear-downs resulting from mansionization have provided some of the impetus for the latest tool of historic preservation and neighborhood advocates: historic preservation zones. The other major factor is the move towards infill development as environmental opposition has put a stop to much of the development on the outer fringes.

As development pressure mounts in established communities, it is impacting people living in post-war bungalows and ranch houses. And many developers, chastened by years of prolonged struggles to get their projects approved, have begun to accept the inevitability of neighborhood preservation measures; some have even welcomed them.

“It all comes down to what the driving force is behind the action the community is trying to take. If people are genuinely interested in finding a way to provide housing that fits in with the community, we want to work with them. But there are plenty of times when these efforts are no-growth efforts in disguise,” said Schroeder.

One developer who has decided it’s best to take a cooperative approach has been Daniel Sullivan, a principal in Navilus Development, which specializes in the reuse of historic buildings, including the Mayan Theatre and the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange buildings.

Sullivan said he conducts an architectural review of buildings up front, before the design phase. Then he takes preliminary designs out to the community, seeking input.

“You’re never going to make everybody happy. There are those who want these buildings kept as museums with absolutely nothing going on. But these buildings can be reused in a way that’s compatible with the surrounding community,” Sullivan said. “That’s the key realization that people have come to.”