Cultural Heritage Ordinance to Return to Planning Commission on July 9

The draft Cultural Heritage Ordinance amendments will be returning to the City Planning Commission for consideration this coming Thursday, July 9th, after 8:30 a.m., at L.A. City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., Rm. 1010 (10th Floor). 

The proposed amendments are aimed at strengthening demolition review procedures, clarifying criteria for historic designation, and enhancing notifications and protections for private property owners. The City of Los Angeles' Cultural Heritage Ordinance, originally approved by the City Council in 1962, created the procedures for the designation and protection of significant Los Angeles buildings and sites as Historic-Cultural Monuments. While the Ordinance has undergone several minor, procedural modifications, it has never been comprehensively updated to give our City a state-of-the-art historic preservation program.

The Cultural Heritage Commission held public workshops and hearings on these ordinance amendments last year. The amendments have since gone through additional refinements as recommended by a Cultural Heritage Ordinance Working Group, convened by the OHR and the Office of Council President Eric Garcetti, that met five times between June and October 2008. The City's Cultural Heritage Commission voted on November 20, 2008 to recommend these amendements, which represent a significant overhaul of the City's historic preservation ordinance.

The City Planning Commission held an initial public hearing on the ordinance on June 11, The Commission took testimony on the ordinance from nearly 60 speakers during a three-hour hearing, before giving direction to Office of Historic Resources (OHR) staff to continue discussions with affected parties and to report back at the July 9 meeting on 13 specific issues raised during the public testimony.

Since the hearing, staff has worked to address these issues, and has also continued discussions with representatives of the development community, Monument property owners, and the Los Angeles Conservancy. These discussions have resulted in a number of proposed changes to the draft ordinance, addressing the following issues:

* Designation of Interiors: At the June 11 hearing, several property owners argued that the regulation of interiors raises privacy concerns and potential issues surrounding the legitimate police powers of local government.  A majority of big-city preservation ordinances either prohibit designation of interior spaces altogether or significantly limit interior designations to areas that are regularly accessible to the public. The Department is therefore recommending new language that would restrict designation of interiors to publicly accessible spaces.  Private interior spaces could still be included in the designations upon agreement of the property owner, and would automatically be included when interior work is reviewed as part of a Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit project or Mills Act Historical Property Contract.

* Inventory of Character-Defining Features: Many property owners have requested greater clarity as to the specific "character-defining features" covered by a Historic-Cultural Monument designation.  Under the ordinance changes, all new Monument designations would contain an inventory of these features.  In addition, any existing Monument owner may request preparation of such an inventory at any time, by submitting a draft inventory to the department, based upon a report by a qualified historic preservation consultant. 

* Transition Rules: The new draft ordinance includes transition rules, to ensure that Monument applications or proposed projects filed prior to the effective date of the ordinance would be governed by the current version of the Cultural Heritage Ordinance.

* Reconsideration of Previously Declined Monument Nominations: The new draft ordinance proposes a prohibition on re-submission of a Historic-Cultural Monument nomination for five years after a nomination was denied, except where the Commission determines that significant new information makes the new nomination materially different from the previous submittal.  

* Certificate of Hardship - Demolition Standard:  The new draft ordinance has somewhat changed the language in the hardship tests necessary to demolish a Historic-Cultural Monument.

* Owner representation on Cultural Heritage Commission: The new draft ordinance now proposes a requirement that two of the seven members of the expanded Cultural Heritage Commission be owners of Historic-Cultural Monuments: one shall be an owner of a residential Monument, and one shall be an owner of a commercial or industrial Monument. 

* Administrative Certificate of Appropriateness review: The new draft establishes a 21-day time limit for department staff to approve an Administrative Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) request for minor rehabilitation work.  

* Feasibility of rehabilitation: The new draft adds language directing the Commission to take into consideration the reasonable economic, environmental, and technical feasibility of the proposed work in determining whether to issue a Certificate of Appropriateness for a project

* Notification: To ensure appropriate and timely notification of property owners regarding any future changes to the Cultural Heritage Ordinance, the draft Ordinance now requires 60-day notice to all owners prior to initial consideration of any amendments. 

A supplemental staff report containing a full summary of the proposed changes, along with a new draft ordinance, is attached below (click on the last attachment). 

The OHR believes that the new ordinance will significantly improve the review process for owners of Monument properties, in the following ways:

* The new ordinance will create greater clarity for owners and make clear that certain work, such as ordinary maintenance and repair, is exempt from review altogether.

* The historic preservation standards on which approval is based will not be changing. These standards, used in every local government's preservation law, are meant to allow significant change to historic properties, not to "freeze" historic buildings in time.

* The new ordinance will, for the first time, ensure that property owners have the right to participate in all public hearings on the potential designation of a property as a Monument.

* The ordinance will create a more "up front" system of preservation review, rather than continuing to surprise owners with review of proposed work only at the "back end," at a project's permit phase.