Last week Village Laguna joined the Laguna Beach Historic Preservation Coalition and Preserve Orange County in challenging our city’s determination that changes to its historic preservation program would have no impact on Laguna’s historic resources and thus on the environment. We didn’t make the decision to join this lawsuit lightly. In our 50-year history we’ve never sued the city. Even though we haven’t always agreed with decisions at City Hall, until now we’ve had enough trust in the public process not to feel compelled to seek legal redress. The city’s egregious decision that individual property owners should be left to decide for themselves if their properties are historic, and that buildings recognized as historically significant since 1981 are somehow no longer historic, gave us no choice. We hope that our action will ultimately cause the city to make reasonable changes that will preserve our historic fabric and improve the preservation process.
For five years Village Laguna has advocated for badly needed improvements to the historic preservation program. Historic resources must be objectively evaluated, like any other aspect of the environment, under the California Environmental Quality Act. We support using state and national codes for evaluation—the same codes used in cities throughout California. The city needs an inventory of local historic resources, and it should be kept current. As a living, working document, an inventory is an invaluable resource for property owners and city decision-makers. When the city chose to drop references to its historic resources inventory from city documents rather than updating it, it created more uncertainty for property owners. If these changes are allowed to go into effect, demolition of historic buildings will be inevitable.
Laguna Beach should make its historic preservation process clear and fair and provide assistance to owners of historic resources. Historic properties are modified all the time, but there are guidelines and laws that should be followed. The city needs to hire a qualified expert in historic preservation and provide adequate training for Heritage Committee, Design Review Board, and Planning Commission members. The distinction of owning a historic property needs to be promoted, and incentives such as property tax cuts and relaxed planning criteria need to be provided to help owners preserve their buildings.
We hope that the suit will help produce a historic preservation program we can all support.
Tax-deductible donations to the lawsuit can be made at gofundme.com.
Support Village Laguna at villagelaguna.org.
Anne Caenn
President, Village Laguna
