By Ted Winterer
Many thanks for Melody Hanatani’s informative article (“Has Dogtown had its day?”) in the Oct. 11 issue of the Daily Press.
It saddens me to think that my Ocean Park neighborhood may lose two touchstones of its funky beach town history — the surf and skate shop, which was the birthplace of modern skateboarding, and an artist’s studio still used by John Baldessari, one of our region’s more accomplished artists.
Moreover, the changes afoot at 2001-2011 Main Street are a microcosm of the challenges we face in modifying our land use policies for the next 20 years so as to accommodate moderate growth while preserving the essence of Santa Monica.
For instance, during the public input to the update to our land use policies, residents were quite vocal about their desire to preserve our history. Yet here on Main Street, history may be demolished in the name of progress.
At the same time, the public also spoke loudly about its interest in promoting green buildings. The mixed-use project that will replace Horizons West touts itself as the first privately owned LEED-certified apartment complex in Santa Monica (LEED is a yardstick for measuring the environmental benefits of green buildings). The new development will devote 30 percent of its roof space to solar energy, and the conscientious developer apparently would like to devote 100 percent of the roof to renewable energy, but is prohibited from doing so by the City of Santa Monica (and what’s up with that in a city that promotes itself as a leader in sustainability?). On the other hand, developer Juli Doar asserts that another green benefit of the building is that it won’t have air conditioning.
Since the project is two blocks from the cooling breezes of the Pacific and since few people in Ocean Park use AC because of the benign climate, I’m not so sure that feature will by itself do much to diminish global warming. Perhaps the project could be greener?
Anyway, one public goal of preserving history may be shoved aside to serve another community ambition of embracing sustainability, depending upon the action of the Landmarks Commission. Which is more important? Does one have to be chosen over the other? Perhaps not. Santa Monica residents have also made it clear they’d like to see more adaptive reuse of older buildings in lieu of demolishing structures to build anew. Interestingly enough, reusing vintage buildings is about the greenest approach one can take in environmentally sound construction, and in fact, the LEED standards award points for adaptive reuse.
So why not preserve all or at least part of Horizons West and the studio and build around and on top of them? That way both history and sustainability can be served and the project will be even greener.
Interestingly enough, just across the street, a similar opportunity to adaptively reuse part of a structure while preserving our history was lost a couple of years ago. On the other side of Main Street, between Bay and Bicknell streets, once stood the Boulangerie bakery, now being replaced by a mixed-use project designed by architect Howard Laks (also the architect for 2001-2011 Main). Mr. Laks spent considerable time responding to community feedback and redesigning the Boulangerie project so it would look more like historic Main Street. Then, when the old bakery was demolished, historic tile signs and storefronts from decades-old retail establishments were discovered beneath a mansard overlay installed by the bakery. What better way could there have been to make the new development look like historic Main Street than to incorporate these old storefronts?
Alas, history lost out to progress at the Boulangerie site and the tile signs were not even preserved for use elsewhere. Perhaps it’s time to learn a lesson from that fiasco and incorporate history into the redevelopment of 2001 — 2011 Main Street.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 20, 2006. Read the original PDF.