Critics Claim Landmark Designations Too Political : Fryman Canyon: Opponents say declaration of empty land as culturally significant is a new weapon in the war on development.

Except for the hum of cars zipping along the Ventura Freeway a few miles away, there are few indications that Fryman Canyon--where developer Fred Sahadi plans to build 26 luxury homes--sits in the midst of a densely populated urban jungle.

Large trees and colorful wildflowers flourish there, nourished by a trickle of running water that has carved out a stair-like formation in the rock.

Few would deny that there is a peaceful beauty to Fryman Canyon. But can acres of brush and trees--land virtually untouched by humans, where no events of particular historical note took place--be considered culturally significant, worthy of city landmark status?

Last week, at the urging of local residents and environmentalists, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission said that it could, and recommended that half of the 63-acre Fryman Canyon parcel be designated as a cultural monument.

But critics say the campaign to have undeveloped land declared a cultural landmark demonstrates how the city landmark designation process has become highly politicized, the latest weapon in the ongoing war between slow-growth activists and developers.

Several times in the last year, slow-growth neighborhood groups have nominated sites with little apparent cultural significance as potential landmarks in efforts to stop new developments planned for the properties. It is a tactic that critics say threatens property owners’ rights to use their land and undermines legitimate historic preservation efforts.

Perhaps the most notable example was the movement by San Fernando Valley residents last year to have a Studio City carwash declared a landmark to prevent a developer from building a $15-million mini-mall there. But there have been other examples. Earlier this year, a group of Woodland Hills homeowners nominated the 25-year-old domed Valley Music Theater, which architects called “crudely constructed,” as a landmark in an unsuccessful bid to prevent apartments from being built on the site.

Tenant groups around the city also have used the tactic when landlords announced plans to tear down their buildings. And earlier this month, the commission voted not to declare two World War II-vintage hangars at Van Nuys Airport as landmarks. The designation had been sought by Volpar Aircraft Corp. President A. E. Saava, who leases the hangars from the Los Angeles Department of Airports.

Saava and other landmark supporters said the hangars should be preserved because they had housed many aircraft-manufacturing enterprises, including a maintenance facility for the U-2 spy plane. City officials, however, claimed Saava was seeking the status only as a ploy to salvage his company’s lease.

If a site is nominated for landmark status, the commission has 60 days during which to decide whether it deserves such a designation. The property cannot be altered until the decision is made.

Even if the commission recommends landmark status and the City Council approves, the site is protected from change or demolition for only a year. The ordinance was written with the idea that the year’s delay would allow preservationists time to find alternative buyers who might be willing to protect the historic structure.

“The people who are anti-growth activists recognize that this is a tool in their arsenal where they have very little risk of losing,” said Douglas R. Ring, a Century City attorney who has represented several developers before the Cultural Heritage Commission and is suing the city over the landmark designation of a building in Hollywood.

As the nomination of “carwashes and canyons will tell you, it is a process which has been abused,” Ring said. “The rules, the limits as to how far the commission can go, are truly not well defined.”

Under the city’s 1962 historic preservation ordinance, a landmark designation can be awarded to “historic structures or sites in which the broad cultural, political, economic or social history of the nation, state, or community is reflected, or which are identified with historic personages or with important events.” Buildings that are architecturally significant can also be designated as landmarks.

But critics say that the vague wording of the ordinance leaves it open to abuse by people with other agendas.

The applicants seeking landmark status for Fryman Canyon were a group of Studio City residents and environmentalists who banded together as the Urban Wilderness Coalition. They argued that the land deserved protection because it is a reminder of the peace and solitude that Angelenos found in the hills before massive development took place there.

However, attorney Benjamin M. Reznik, who represented Fred Sahadi at Wednesday’s commission hearing, contended that the site has no significant historical or cultural value. He said the coalition was attempting to delay construction so the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy--which offered to purchase the property, but could not meet Sahadi’s price--could buy the land for less than the market value.

“You are being hijacked,” Reznik said. “This is an attempt to use your powers--which are broad and awesome--for something for which they were not intended.”

Critics also say that the application two years ago by members of the First Southern Baptist Church of Hollywood is a prime example of an attempt to use the commission’s power for something other than historical preservation, in that case to prevent an entire block from being razed.

Church Pastor Gary Tibbs said he sought landmark status for a 1923 building owned by the church after learning that the entire block, the 1500 block of North Wilton Place, was being considered as a potential Metro-Rail route.

By obtaining landmark status for the building, which had housed the first Conservative Jewish synagogue in Hollywood, he hoped to force transportation planners to drop consideration of that possible route.

“We were exploring all of our options and we thought that if the commission landmarked the buildings then they wouldn’t be able to destroy the block,” Tibbs said.

The commissioners toured the site, but before the vote, Tibbs tried to withdraw the nomination. He had learned that the landmark designation could not save the building, much less the block, from destruction but could prevent the church from making any alterations to the former synagogue building.

“We found out that they could still demolish the building even if the culture commission is protecting it, but if they landmark the building you don’t have any control over it,” Tibbs said. “We didn’t want the commission to tell us what to do with it.”

To honor Tibbs’ request, the commission let the 60-day time limit lapse without ever formally voting on the issue, in effect allowing the nomination to be withdrawn, said commission staff member Nancy Fernandez.

But even though some nominations initially are prompted by concerns about growth or development, commissioners and members of their staff say the sites in question may have true historic or architectural value.

“Just because a tenant files an application it may look as though the tenant just doesn’t want to move, but it may well be that the building is significant,” Fernandez said.

Commission chairman Amarjit Marwah said that a two-month delay for a developer is a small price to pay to guarantee that important sites are not inadvertently destroyed.

But many people in both the development and preservation community agree that the landmark designation process should be changed to ensure that property owners are treated fairly while the public interest in historical preservation is still served.

Reznik said the commission’s procedures need “major reform” so the nomination of a site as a landmark cannot be used as an 11th-hour tactic to stall a city-approved project. If preservationists want a property declared a landmark, he said, they should nominate it while the project is still under consideration by other city departments.

“This has become a court of obstruction,” Reznik said. “It has become the panic button that people can push at the last minute.

“The city needs to refuse to accept applications after final approval for a project is granted,” he said. “When you wait to use it at the last minute, that is extremely powerful. It stops all your permits. That is an awesome power.”

In the case of Fryman Canyon, Sahadi received grading permits from the Department of Building and Safety in 1988 and was about to begin work this April when he received a stop work order from the city, notifying him that his property was being considered as a potential landmark.

The commission’s decision Wednesday to designate half of the canyon as a landmark will not prevent Sahadi from proceeding with the development, since his plans already called for those acres to be preserved as open space and donated to the conservancy.

But now that the decision has been made, his building permits have expired, and the Department of Building and Safety has denied him a routine extension on the permits, saying he must conduct further environmental study on the site.

Architects say the commission needs to adopt more stringent guidelines to help them determine what meets the standard of a historic site.

“They need to clearly define what a cultural heritage building is, and what saving it does for the community,” said architectural historian Jerry Viniegra, who said he has testified at more than a dozen commission hearings, as well as at similar commissions in cities across the Southwest. “Just because a building was built in the ‘20s, ‘30s, or ‘40s does not make it significant.”

Viniegra and other critics say that the commission sometimes votes without verifying the information that is presented to it in support of an application. And sometimes, they say, the commissioners seem to vote based primarily on their personal feelings about a building, rather than on solid evidence of historical importance.

Ring is suing the city over the recent designation of the Ontra Cafeteria, a Hollywood building that was slated for destruction because it was seismically unsafe, as a cultural landmark.

“They had no evidence to justify the historic designation,” he said. The preservationists who sought landmark status for the building presented the commissioners with “materials that factually were grossly in error, and even if they were true, would not have risen to the level necessary for historic designation.”

“I want to preserve things that are unique and valuable, but it’s an enormous amount of responsibility. You are playing with other people’s property,” Ring said. “The dilemma that occurs is that you get things that are declared historic and that only preserves it for an additional year, but that costs some human being a lot of money.”

Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit historical preservation organization that works closely with the commission, agreed that many people seek landmark status for buildings when they feel they have no other recourse to stop rampant development in their neighborhoods.

Rounds, who recently directed a thorough analysis of the city’s Cultural Heritage Program, predicted the number of applications from anti-growth groups will soar as development pressure in Southern California mounts and city residents discover that the zoning in their neighborhoods allows for much greater density than currently exists there.

“Development issues are coming face to face with legitimate environmental issues and there are not enough mechanisms for looking at the overall quality of the neighborhood,” Rounds said. “I don’t blame people for seizing whatever mechanisms they can find.”

Rounds refused to comment on the Fryman Canyon decision, saying that he did not know enough about the issue. But he said the commissioners generally have not let outside factors influence their decisions on whether a site deserves to be designated as culturally significant.

Commissioners generally do “a credible job of screening out things that are inappropriate,” he said.

Still, he said, inappropriate applications take a toll on the commission, which already faces an increasing workload and does not have time to spend considering frivolous applications.

In the fiscal year 1988-89, 77 properties were designated as Los Angeles historic-cultural monuments, as opposed to an average of 14 properties a year for the previous 26 years. After the city Planning Department completes a survey identifying historic sites throughout the city, the number of applications to the board is expected to soar.

The conservancy study recommends an increase in staff, to filter out applications with little merit so that commissioners would not have to spend so much time evaluating such sites. Currently, Los Angeles has only two full-time staff members for its historic preservation efforts. New York, by comparison, has 76 staff people, and New Orleans has 15.

Some people say that the public would be better served if the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, included more professionals in architecture, history, planning or related fields.

Of the five people now serving on the board, only one, Takashi Shida, is an architect. Other commissioners include chairman Amarjit Marwah, a dentist; Harold G. Becks, an attorney; Reynaldo R. Landero, a physician; and Helen Madrid-Worthen, a gas buyer for Southern California Edison.

City attorney Mark L. Brown has written a new ordinance for the commission that would increase the panel to seven members, a majority of whom would have to be professionals in fields related to the panel’s mission of historic preservation. That ordinance is scheduled to be reviewed by a City Council committee on Monday.

BACKGROUND

Under the 1962 city ordinance, a landmark designation can be awarded to “historic structures or sites in which the broad cultural, political, economic or social history of the nation, state, or community is reflected, or which are identified with historic personages or with important events.” Buildings which are architecturally significant can also be designated as landmarks.