Bid to Save Miracle Mile Apartments Fails as Panel Rejects a Moratorium

Efforts to preserve older apartment buildings north of Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile appeared doomed Wednesday after a Los Angeles City Council committee voted in favor of a developer who wants to replace them with luxury apartments.

The Planning and Environment Committee Tuesday night turned down a proposed moratorium that would have temporarily prohibited demolitions and new construction permits in a neighborhood that currently is home to roughly 3,500 people, mostly young professionals and the elderly. The area is generally bounded by Detroit Street, Hauser Boulevard, 3rd Street and Wilshire.

The moratorium, originally proposed by John Ferraro, councilman for the area, requested a stay on new development while the city studies possible zoning changes or determines whether the area qualifies for a special zoning status, known as a “historic preservation overlay zone,” that protects significant architectural or historical structures.

Most of the buildings in the area are two-story Spanish Colonial, Tudor or chateau-style apartment buildings dating back to the 1920s. They have been described by the Los Angeles Conservancy as a “rich and cohesive” example of a “type of period housing.”

The moratorium effort, which had the support of local tenants and homeowner groups, began when a Los Angeles developer, Homestead Group Associates, bought 14 properties late last year and announced plans to demolish 12 buildings and build 298 new units in five projects. An estimated 300 tenants, a local tenants’ coalition said, would be evicted.

As Homestead waged a well-orchestrated campaign against the moratorium proposal, which won the backing of several area apartment owners, the fight over this small area turned into another chapter in the continuing conflict among community residents, developers, preservationists and property owners over control of a neighborhood’s future.

The controversy also raised the issue of whether the zoning established for the area in 1976--when the city designated the Miracle Mile area a “center” for concentrated development--is still appropriate given current concerns about overdevelopment, traffic congestion and the rising cost of housing.

While the city originally intended periodic review of its community plans, Ferraro said: “Here we are going on over 10 years and we’re nowhere near to review.”

But committee members Pat Russell, Hal Bernson and Mike Woo did not consider the zoning issue at all. And despite testimony from the Planning Department and the Los Angeles Conservancy about the area’s architectural quality, they dismissed the preservation argument as a smoke screen by tenants to protect the many rent-controlled apartments in the area, and declared themselves in favor of more housing. “I suspect this is a rental subsidy issue,” Bernson said. “For us to say we’re going to stop preventing the area from growing. . . . I can’t go along with that.”

“I consider housing to be one of the major overall problems,” Russell said. “I feel the overriding need in this city is housing.”

“The city doesn’t care about our needs, but the needs of people coming here 10 years from now,” Marsha Mann, a tenant leader, said Wednesday. “We’re trying to preserve an entire community. That consists of people and buildings.”

In their unanimous decision, the planning committee, however, did recommend the moratorium proposal be rewritten to double city-required relocation assistance fees, to $5,000, for those tenants evicted during the next year who are elderly, handicapped, have incomes under the poverty level or are single parents with minor children. (Such increased relocation assistance is already under council consideration, but this provision would protect tenants in the area who are evicted before that is enacted.)

The panel also recommended that “aesthetic standards” be part of Planning Department review of future construction.

After the committee vote, Homestead general partner Ronnie Schwartz said, “I’m pretty relieved,” and then added, “I hope this will be the end of it.”

The tenants will still continue to work for the historic preservation zone, Amy Forbes, an attorney and renter in the area, said. “We’re going to continue to go on, and intend to fight to preserve the neighborhood.”

The proposed moratorium was considered earlier this month by the city Planning Commission, which recommended one of up to six months, but allowed Homestead’s demolitions to take place. The council committee acted Tuesday on an alternate Ferraro proposal for a one-year moratorium, but voted against the Planning Commission recommendation as well.

Both proposals now go back to the Planning Commission, city officials said, which must choose between the two.