Village Matters

Preservation Paralysis

After months of hearings on a revised historic preservation ordinance, the heritage committee and the design review board agreed on an approach that would allow more flexibility in historic property review and integrate California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements into the city’s processes.

Now that the ordinance is being reviewed by the planning commission, new approaches are being suggested that will back-track on the previous work and make historic status more uncertain for property owners.

Let’s say we bought a building that was built in the 1920s (or ‘30s or ‘40s, it doesn’t matter) with the intention of tearing it down and building our dream house. We hire an architect, go over all our wishes and ideas. The architect, after several iterations comes up with a plan we really love. “So let’s submit it for city approval,” we say eagerly. The architect meets with staff and hears, “Well, wait, considering the age of your existing house, it may be a historic resource. We have this process…where your property is preliminarily reviewed by the director of community development. If he thinks it is potentially a historic resource he will require that a historic report be prepared.”

“What!?” we say, very upset. “How were we supposed to know this? We didn’t want to buy a historic house. We just want to build our wonderful new house.”

A similar scenario occurred recently for a house that had not previously been noted as historic on Coast Highway near 1000 Steps Beach. There was a historic assessment and two peer reviews, an appeal to the city council focused on the historic issue and now there is a Coastal Commission appeal and a lawsuit.

This kind of situation does not benefit the applicant, neighbors or historic preservation. But this is what the current draft of the historic preservation ordinance is setting us up for by delaying a historic determination until an applicant comes to the counter with a proposed project.

Currently the city’s historic evaluation process is based on having an adopted inventory of historic resources that the public can refer to in order to understand in advance if a property is presumed to be historic. We have an inventory adopted in 1982 that was updated in 2014. A supplemental inventory is needed to document properties that were missed or have become historic since the first one was prepared. This combination would relieve uncertainty and avoid the last minute surprise scenario.

But instead of using this approach, at its last meeting the planning commission directed that the historic inventory be dropped from the ordinance.

This means that instead of using an inventory of properties that are “presumed to be historic” to advise property owners of their building’s historic status, each property would be considered individually when applications are made. This would not only be costly for applicants and the city (the ordinance requires the city to pay for historic assessments) it would add tremendously to the contentiousness of project review. As well as adding to the uncertainty for owners, this approach would ultimately result in the loss of more historic structures because of the overlooking of potential historic resources and misunderstandings, and it would diminish support for the historic preservation program.

We are looking at lifetimes of disputes and hearings over historic properties, one by one. Our planning processes may be difficult now, but this will paralyze us.

There are numbers of property owners who have objected to the ordinance meeting after meeting. They want the city’s historic preservation program to be voluntary and then they will “opt out” or they want their properties removed from the inventory.

The planning commission’s idea to eliminate the inventory altogether seems to be an attempt to placate these property owners.

This approach may quiet the objectors for this ordinance review cycle, but it ultimately does property owners a disservice by giving them the false impression that taking a property off of an inventory or not having an inventory means their property is not a historic resource and doesn’t have to comply with historic preservation rules.

But that is not the case. Just leaving references to the inventory out of the ordinance doesn’t mean that the properties listed on it are no longer historic.

If a property is a historic resource, it does have to comply under CEQA and with the provisions that apply to historic resources.

With the continued use of the inventory, making the inventory as complete as possible, and giving appropriate disclosures, property owners would know early in their decision-making processes. They will learn of the benefits of being part of Laguna’s historic preservation program and how a preserved and embellished historic property can become a dream house with a story like no other. They can plan to take advantage of the incentives, including property tax relief and relaxed building, parking and setback standards. This will rarely happen if the news of having a historic property is a last minute surprise.

Removing the inventory from the ordinance only kicks the can down the road, leaving the contentious disputes to poison our review processes for years to come.

The planning commission will consider the historic preservation ordinance next at its meeting of Sept. 6.

The author is a landscape architect and former council member.

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PS Thanks to all the sympathetic readers who have asked how our cat Bonita was doing.   I am sad to report that on eclipse day she spent her last hours with us. We are grateful for the 14 years we had with her, even though the time seems now much too short.