Homeowners lose their ‘freedom of choice’
Preservationists won a special election Friday that upholds the city’s power to designate private homes as historic, which could limit a property owner’s developments rights.
Proposition A asked whether homes can be designated historic by the city without the owner’s permission — a power that the Landmarks Commission has held for more than two decades.
The measure lost by a margin of 6 percent with 8,649 people voting for it and 9,913 people voting against it.
After City Clerk Maria Stewart read the final tally at City Hall, a group of about 25 opponents broke out in applause. A handful of supporters sat quietly in their seats.
“This has been a wonderful time for our city,” said Bea Nemlaha, spokeswoman for “Save Our Neighborhoods,” the group opposing the measure. “It’s enabled people who care about our community to come together and protect it. The community’s awareness of preservation has really been raised by this campaign.”
Nemlaha said she wasn’t nervous for a minute about the early returns, which showed the measure’s supporters slightly ahead.
Because of the way Santa Monica’s voting districts are numbered, neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of homeowners were counted first. Districts with a higher percentage of renters were counted later.
437,“I knew that my home neighborhood of Ocean Park would come through with a bang,” Nemlaha said.
Tom Larmore, an author of the Homeowner’s Freedom of Choice Initiative, acknowledged that the odds were against him before the final votes had been counted. When the final results were posted, a resigned Larmore said the next step was to “rest and recover.”
“A lot of people really poured their hearts and souls into this,” he said, referring to the canvassing by supporters that lasted through election day. “It was very disappointing but I’m just very proud of everyone that worked so hard.”
The measure’s backers have no plans to pursue the issue further, Larmore said.
Property owners throughout the city last fall forced the measure to the ballot box after they collected nearly 13,000 signatures for a special election.
When a city-hired consulting firm found in 2002 that hundreds of homes in Santa Monica could have the potential to be historically significant, residents became nervous that the future of their properties could be controlled by the Landmarks Commission.
They argued that the Landmarks Commission has made it too difficult to remodel their homes, and in some cases, prevented them from tearing down old, dilapidated structures because they are considered historically significant.
But preservationists argued they want to protect the character of Santa Monica by keeping its buildings and architecture intact. If a home is deemed historic or a structure of merit, there are limitations to what can be done to its exterior, but not its interior.
Voters in 1976 passed a historic preservation law intended to save the Santa Monica Pier. But it also gave power to the Landmarks Commission because it’s required to review demolition permits and proposed changes to buildings older than 40 years old.
The goal, officials said, is to ensure that important architectural and historic buildings are not torn down, or changed significantly.
Only 16 Santa Monica homes have been deemed of historic significance since the law passed. Only two historic districts exist in Santa Monica today: The Third Street neighborhood, which extends from Beach Street to Hill Street and the Bay Street cluster, made up of four properties on Bay Street.
But homeowners feared that hundreds of properties in Santa Monica could become officially historic after a study identified them as having the potential.
The debate over historic districts surfaced when the city hired Historic Resources Group, a West L.A.-based consultant, to conduct a study of the single-family homes north of Montana Avenue.
The city hadn’t taken inventory of buildings and homes that could be potential landmarks or historic structures of merit since 1986. In its recent study, the consulting group found that nearly two-thirds of the 158 homes identified as historic had been either demolished or altered enough to render them historically insignificant, officials said.
Consultants looked at 3,900 homes and found about 9 percent of the residences, or 358 homes, were of historical merit. The report said less than 1 percent of the potential historic properties in the area had been designated or preserved.
The report identified six potential areas for designation as historic districts — the Palisades Tract between Ocean Avenue and Seventh Street, the San Vicente Apartment Group, parts of Adelaide Drive and Georgina Avenue, several homes along 18th Street, and parts of La Mesa Drive.
Homeowners banded together in September of 2002 and gathered 12,947 signatures to petition for a special election that challenged the Landmark Commission’s power to designate homes as historic.
The City Council voted to make the special ballot Santa Monica’s first mail-only election, a move that officials said increased voter turnout. It cost the city $100,000 to hold the election.
The two sides raised more than $300,000 during the campaign, but two-thirds of the money came from supporters of the measure, who are mostly homeowners, developers and real estate interests.
- Bea Nemlaha, spokeswoman for “Save Our Neighborhoods”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 22, 2003. Read the original PDF.