Preservation is not a problem; it’s a tool to protect community
At the time of this writing, Assembly Bill 2580 sits on the governor’s desk awaiting his august signature. AB 2580, as some of you may know from the email blasts received from preservation organizations and neighborhood associations, is a piece of legislation sponsored by CAL YIMBY (an anti-single-family, “yes in my backyard” advocacy group). The proposed new law would make it mandatory that the Housing Elements of local governments’ General Plans track and analyze all designations of new federal, state or local historic districts — as well as individual landmarks — for their potential impacts on new housing development.
But what the bill does mostly is frame and stigmatize — as a problem — the preservation movement and the movement’s advocacy for the protection of California historic districts and landmarks.
Our built environment
Preservation is a tool for the management of our built environment; a tool that, like any other, can be misused. We have all heard of the most egregious cases because they tend to make headlines, such as when former City Councilman Paul Koretz attempted to landmark the LA Burger hamburger stand in 2017 (it was denied). However, these stories also are often more complex than they seem at surface level, and they can lead to interesting compromises where elements of historic structures are preserved or whole buildings are integrated into new projects.
But, with barely seven percent of the land in Los Angeles deemed historic, the existing SB 330 already preventing the establishment of new HPOZs (Historic Preservation Overlay Zones), the current availability of only lesser protections from National Register and California Register designations, and the complicated bureaucratic process of getting individual properties listed … preservation is a pretty weak tool to use to prevent development.
To YIMBYs, however, the problem is not that it is a weak tool but that it might be used to stop ANY development at all. Brian Hanlon, CEO of CAL YIMBY, admitted as much: “California’s unique history and historical architecture are worth protecting, but the preservation process is often abused by parties who simply want to prevent the construction of new homes.” He sees AB 2580 as a “critical first step toward identifying how historic preservation ordinances are being used across our state, and helping regulators keep track of instances when they reduce local housing capacity.”
The second step? That most likely would be attempts to defang local ordinances that prevent demolition of historic properties or to enact new limits on what can be deemed worthy of preservation. A developer’s dreamland!
800 Lorraine
Greater Wilshire is currently a flashpoint in this debate in the City of Los Angeles because of the proposed Executive Directive 1 (ED1) project at 800 Lorraine Blvd., which falls within the Windsor Village HPOZ. Filing of an application for this six-story development next to an historic single-family home stimulated Fifth District City Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky to submit a City Council motion, which later passed, to exclude all HPOZs and historic districts from ED1 projects.
YIMBYs were furious at this move — falling back on their most petty weapons by hurling epithets such as “exclusionary,” “segregationist,” “racist,” — despite HPOZs being shown to be among the most ethnically diverse enclaves in the city. Yet, 800 Lorraine was given the city’s green light. It now is the subject of legal challenge from neighbors.
Heritage so rich
If Gov. Newsom would just understand that AB 2580 is nothing more than a “make work” bill that adds to the tasks of local planning departments in putting together their Housing Elements, he would veto it as an affront to the legacy of the multitude that has fought to protect and defend the California historic resources that underpin our state’s history, culture and community sense of place. He would see how — in Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood and the Miracle Mile — historic commercial buildings have been converted to residential use through adaptive reuse … and have brought increases in the housing supply. Understanding that, the governor might even sponsor greater incentives for reusing historic buildings as a “green solution” to housing.
I would hope Gov. Newsom can understand preservation as it was framed in one of the founding documents of the American historic preservation movement — the book “With Heritage So Rich,” which explains that historic preservation is a force to give “a sense of orientation to our society, using structures and objects of the past to establish values of time and place.”
However, and sadly, with respect to the governor vetoing AB 2580, I’m not holding my breath.
Category: Real Estate