L.A. May Revert to Height Limit on Spring, Broadway

Nearly 30 years ago, Los Angeles voters scrapped the city’s 13-story building height limit and opened the way for a surge of downtown skyscrapers towering as high as 62 stories.

Now an influential group of officials is moving to reinstate the height limit and prevent skyscraper construction on two major downtown streets, Spring Street and Broadway.

The officials say that new high-rise developments there would overshadow the streets’ historic financial buildings and motion picture palaces, built during the 46 years the height limit was in effect.

The officials also have another goal: to provide a protective height barrier--sort of a vertical buffer zone--around the huge new California State Office Building planned for nearly an entire square block between Spring and Main streets south of 3rd Street.

Construction Stalled

Approval for constructing the 14- and 17-story twin tower state building had been stalled for several years when Jerry Epstein, a member of the city-state joint powers authority appointed to see it through, recently came up with the idea of a height limit.

“New buildings are fine,” said Epstein, a Marina del Rey real estate developer, “but if they start to dwarf the state building . . . (well) . . . nothing should overshadow it.”

Anxious to get the state building started, Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency officials presented Epstein’s idea to City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay as a “necessary vehicle” to get the three-member authority’s agreement that the massive building project should proceed, a spokesman for the councilman said.

The three-member authority--which includes James M. Wood, chairman of the redevelopment agency, and Milan D. Smith Jr., an attorney--decided in May that the project should go forward, and paved the way for completion of architectural drawings for it.

Lindsay then got City Council approval for the Planning Department to start work on lowering building height limits for the area.

Stresses Preservation

Lindsay’s council motion, however, made no reference to the state building. Instead, it stressed the desirability of preserving the Spring Street and Broadway historic districts.

Both streets are listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of their fine period architecture.

The old height limit--13 stories or 150 feet--was imposed in the early 1900s to give the city “harmonious lines.” But it saddled downtown with a flat, uninspired skyline. Only City Hall, at 27 stories, broke through the height limit, from which public buildings were exempted.

Before the new height limit can take effect, it will have to be approved by the city Planning Commission and the City Council.

The affected area would encompass all or parts of about 20 blocks, including one of the world’s busiest Latino shopping streets--a six-block stretch of Broadway where noisy merchants besiege throngs of shoppers from buildings that once housed some of the city’s finest shops and stores.

On Spring Street, the mood is a little different. Trying to shake off the effects of nearby Skid Row, Spring Street has been getting an infusion of government offices and public employees to help it regain some of the status it once enjoyed as the West’s financial center.

Some Owners Angry

Initially, the height limit proposal attracted little attention. But as property owners learned more about it, particularly its long-term implications for land ripe for intense development, some were angry.

One property owner with extensive holdings along Spring and Broadway called the height limit “a hardship . . . a disaster,” but insisted that he not be quoted by name.

An officer of another major property owner, L & R Auto Parks, had almost the same reaction. Harry Lumer Jr. said downtown landholders should not be restricted more than others elsewhere in the city. Among its 20 downtown holdings, Lumer’s firm has four parking lots and a parking garage in the affected area.

“It (the height limit) would impose unfair regulations,” Lumer argued. “(Furthermore), it’s ridiculous that they want that building (the new state building) to be noticeable. It doesn’t make sense. . . . You won’t be able to see it till you get right next to it and . . . look up.”

While acknowledging that no one likes arbitrary height limits, Alden McKelvey, president of Western Management Corp., which also has holdings in the affected area, said he does not believe that the height limit would be a major setback for the Spring-Broadway district.

No Tall Structures

He said no tall structures are planned for the area in the near future.

The Community Redevelopment Agency has a special stake in the State Office Building, which will provide space for nearly 3,000 workers.

Backed by millions of dollars in tax funds generated by downtown’s new office, hotel and condominium/apartment projects, the agency is the guiding force behind the central business district’s redevelopment plans.

It also is a key planning and financial partner in getting the state building project under way to boost Spring Street’s revitalization.

The $175-million State Office Building, scheduled to start construction in the fall of 1986, with occupancy expected in 1989, will be the state’s largest office building and an architectural departure from most of the rest of Spring Street.

With its taller tower 178 feet high, the new state building would have about a 30-foot advantage over most of the Spring-Broadway area’s existing buildings.

Concern About Shadows

Since energy efficiency has top priority in the building’s design, Epstein said he is concerned about taller buildings casting shadows on the structure and affecting its energy-saving features. The state building, for example, will make supplemental use of natural interior lighting.

Once Los Angeles’ banking and high-finance center, Spring Street is lined with monolithic structures reflecting its bygone glory days from the turn of the century to the early 1960s--an era closely paralleling the years Los Angeles’ building height limit was in effect.

The Historic Spring Street Financial District reaches from 3rd Street to 7th Street and has 31 buildings of various types. Of those, 25 are important parts of the street’s history, including the 11-story Van Nuys Building. The Van Nuys Building was built for office and banking use in 1911 but was converted into a retirement housing complex a few years ago.

A block away on Broadway, the street’s old buildings went up as lavish movie showplaces, merchandising establishments and office structures during a 40-year span starting in the mid-1890s.

Extending from 3rd Street to 9th Street, the Historic Broadway Theater and Commercial District has a total of 99 buildings, of which 63 are considered worthy contributors to the street’s historic character. They include the famed 1890s-style Bradbury Building, at only five stories. Others, such as the mid-1920s Orpheum Theater and office building, range up to the 13-story limit that prevailed during most of Broadway’s building-boom years.

Enlarged Buffer Zone

Downtown’s new height limit zone would take in more than the two adjoining historic districts. It also would include an area east and north of the State Office Building, providing an enlarged buffer zone with a high potential, unless checked, for future development. Much of the space now is vacant except for parking lots, and may be intensely developed later.

However, the area, embracing a section of Main Street, also includes some downtown landmarks likely to remain undisturbed for many years, among them St. Vibiana’s Cathedral and the classic-revival Farmers and Merchants Bank building, now a Security Pacific National Bank office. Both are city cultural-historic monuments.

Almost everywhere else downtown, buildings can still rise to almost any height depending upon the size and location of the property.

Governed by a floor area ratio that projects total allowable floor space, downtown developers may build up to six times the ground area of their property or, in some sections, as much as 13 times.

Arch Crouch, principal city planner, said Los Angeles sometimes uses “absolute” height limits, such as the zone planned around the new state building. The city has only a few in effect now, he explained, and the limits are much lower. As examples, he cited sections of Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles where “absolute” height limits range up to six stories or 75 feet.

Crouch said changing the height limit for the Spring-Broadway area would be coupled with a zoning change that would limit land uses, now mixed, to commercial only. That would conform to the city’s General Plan.