‘Low-Build’ Alternative to Freeway Extension Dusted Off Again : Preservation: Critics say Caltrans never seriously considered it, a charge state officials deny. In response to concerns by federal panels, the option backed by South Pasadena officials is being re-evaluated.

In response to concerns by federal preservation and environmental officials about the proposed Long Beach Freeway extension, Caltrans is once again studying the proposal known as “low-build.”

In its environmental study last year of the 6.2-mile route between the Los Angeles-Alhambra border and Pasadena, Caltrans said that it had analyzed--and dismissed as ineffective--the low-build alternative.

Touted by South Pasadena officials at last Monday’s California Transportation Commission hearing, the low-build approach favors improvements to local streets, use of high-tech devices to speed traffic flow and create “smart streets,” and the expansion of public transit.

A key idea of low-build is to escalate construction of the Blue Line light rail system from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena and to rapidly extend it eastward through the San Gabriel Valley.

Freeway critics from South Pasadena, one of the communities along the proposed path, say Caltrans has never taken a serious look at the low-build option as a way to prevent damage to the environment and to historic structures.

Several dozen historic structures are among the approximately 1,000 buildings threatened by the freeway extension project. State highway officials have said they will do all they can to move or protect the historic sites.

Although state and federal highway officials say that in past years they have thoroughly considered the low-build alternative, they are again closely reviewing the idea.

Last winter, the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an agency that has long been critical of the freeway proposal, raised its concerns about the project with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The Council on Environmental Quality directed the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and federal highway officials “to come to an understanding” on the low-build issue, said Douglas Bennett, a senior planner in the Federal Highway Administration’s regional office in Sacramento.

In August, the historic preservation group oversaw a public workshop on low-build in South Pasadena.

In addition to the low-build concept, the Council on Environmental Quality also urged state and federal highway officials to take a closer look to see if they had neglected to identify some historic structures along the proposed freeway route.

Preservationists have charged that Caltrans has consistently overlooked certain houses and historic districts in the path. South Pasadena City Manager Kenneth C. Farfsing said Caltrans did “very shoddy work” in this regard.

Although Caltrans officials deny this, they say they are undertaking a thorough review of possible historic structures in neighborhoods of South Pasadena, Pasadena and the El Sereno section of Los Angeles.

Diane Kane, Caltrans staff architectural historian, said, “I will agree there were three buildings we missed in South Pasadena that are probably eligible” to be on the National Register of Historic Places.

But she and Caltrans’s chief environmental planner for the Los Angeles regional office, Ronald Kosinski, disagree with the charge, leveled by the federal advisory council, that historic surveys were outdated and inaccurate.

State and federal officials said that work on the historic home survey and the low-build review are expected to be completed by November in time for consideration by the California Transportation Commission, which is deciding whether to approve the proposed route.