Conservancy Is Underdog in Cathedral Battle

It was an astonishing coincidence, officials insisted, that the Los Angeles Conservancy was busy with yet another cathedral project. A cathedral in Paris this time, not in downtown Los Angeles.

As part of its annual fund-raising programs showing classic movies at historic Broadway theaters, the conservancy screened the 1939 film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” at the Orpheum Theater on Wednesday night. Actor Charles Laughton, as Quasimodo, battled the world from his bell tower lair in the Paris cathedral.

The conservancy’s efforts to halt what it contends is the illegal demolition of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral last week has embroiled the preservationist group in a much publicized legal battle against Los Angeles and the Roman Catholic archdiocese. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and some City Hall leaders have sharply criticized the conservancy as obstructionist, as a Quasimodo pouring hot oil on downtown revival and even trampling religious freedom. Today, Mayor Richard Riordan will help lead a rally in support of the archdiocese, where the conservancy can expect another public pummeling.

So when conservancy President Kathryn Welch Howe took the Orpheum stage to introduce the film, she could not let the cathedral coincidence pass unnoted. “I want to say how thrilled we are to say that St. Vibiana’s Cathedral is still standing,” she proclaimed to the middle-class crowd that hardly reeked of radicalism.

But even before such sympathetic listeners, Howe felt compelled to defend herself and her group from the cardinal’s accusations, from the image of a bunch of lawsuit-happy fringies with too little respect for others’ religious rights.

“The conservancy did not plan to sue, we did not intend to sue, but we frankly felt we had no choice,” she said.

In its 18-year history, the conservancy has filed only two other lawsuits, ones involving the Ambassador Hotel and the now razed Philharmonic Auditorium downtown, Howe noted. That is not the record of a litigation-hungry group, she contended, but of one that was negotiating until cranes plucked off the church bell tower’s top June 1.

Yet, whether in court or in the media, the St. Vibiana’s dispute may prove to be the toughest ever for the 5,400-member conservancy. With seven paid staffers at its 7th Street offices and an annual budget of $600,000, the group is clearly now the underdog against Riordan, downtown business interests and leaders of the nation’s most populous archdiocese. Still, that position could promote awareness of its self-described role as “a voice for the historic buildings of our city.”

To reinforce that point, Howe and conservancy Executive Director Linda Dishman carefully chose a setting for a recent news conference about the cathedral dispute. The location was in front of the beautifully restored and expanded Central Library downtown, a landmark that survived demolition threats and two ravaging fires to become an oasis of urbanity. The conservancy was born out of the complicated campaign to save the library.

The conservancy knew that its current lawsuit, seeking longer review of a demolition permit, would trigger controversy, said Dishman, conservancy executive director for the past four years. But the situation had implications beyond the cathedral site at 2nd and Main streets, she added.

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“I think we were more concerned that there would have been even greater harm to the future of preservation in our city,” said Dishman, 39, a former Pasadena city planner and architectural historian for the National Park Service. “That this was such an egregious violation, a Saturday morning illegal demolition, that to not speak would mean it’s OK in this city to do this, to illegally demolish a monument.”

Conservancy leaders are aware that the cardinal has bested them several times in the scramble for TV air time and newspaper space.

“When you are dealing with somebody who has the respect and popularity of the cardinal, they are always going to get the first paragraph,” Dishman said.

A city official knowledgeable about the cathedral situation said the conservancy lags far behind the cardinal in political muscle and media savvy. “Look, he is a better poker player than they are,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Howe, 44, and the conservancy’s volunteer president for the past two years, said she was surprised by the harshness of criticism from Mahony and City Hall. “I think it has been very divisive. I think it has been very bad for a city that needs healing,” said Howe, who previously was a real estate investment banker and vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. (She is married to Con Howe, Los Angeles city planning director, and says the two keep their private and professional worlds apart.)

The cathedral was the 17th of the now 624 structures or places declared a formal city historic-cultural monument. At the heart of the dispute is whether the seismic damage at St. Vibiana’s is threatening enough to exempt the archdiocese from the reviews usually required to raze a landmark.

But it’s not just the oldest of the old the conservancy moves to protect; it also has worked to preserve buildings from the post-World War II era, such as the 1950s McDonald’s in Downey, the chain’s oldest remaining hamburger stand.

Thomas Hunter Russell, vice president of the Cultural Heritage Commission, which reviews landmark nominations, said he doesn’t always agree with the conservancy, but he added: “I don’t know any other group that has done so much to preserve the historic fabric of the city as they’ve done.”

That is not easy in a young city like Los Angeles, said Michael Rotondi, director of Southern California Institute of Architecture. Although he questions the architectural merits of saving the 120-year-old St. Vibiana’s, Rotondi praises the conservancy for “raising the consciousness” about preservation in its popular tours and other activities. “I think it’s been very positive for the city,” he said.

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Among its recent victories, the conservancy helped get R.H. Macy & Co. to return in 1994 nearly all the historically significant fixtures and furnishings the firm had removed from its closed Bullocks Wilshire store. The landmark Art Deco store is being converted into a library for Southwestern University School of Law.

But critics call the conservancy a major pain whose interference can cause costly delays even without a lawsuit. And as is the case with the cathedral, some are skeptical about the group’s chosen battles.

Some people snickered when the group unsuccessfully tried to save a Studio City carwash. The conservancy lost a previous church fight over St. Athanasius Episcopal Church in Echo Park; the Craftsman-style church was razed in 1992 to make way for a new Episcopal Cathedral Center of St. Paul, which in turn replaced St. Paul’s Cathedral, demolished downtown.

O’Malley Miller, one of the archdiocese’s attorneys, also represented developers of another project involving the conservancy. The proposal to build a large hotel and office complex on 7th Street died, he said, because of the complicated delays that the conservancy caused over two existing buildings on the block. The conservancy may not sue often, but it can scare off developers, he contends.

Howard Heitner, an attorney and past conservancy president who worked on the 7th Street hotel, denied Miller’s allegations and said the hotel development collapsed because of the developer’s financial problems.

In the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the conservancy was a crucial player in helping to obtain and distribute $10 million in federal and state funds to repair damaged historic structures. That experience bolstered preservationists’ belief that St. Vibiana’s can be made seismically safe with external bracing and other repairs totaling less than $5 million. A more complicated archdiocese plan suggests a $20-million price tag, money the archdiocese says it cannot afford.

As a strong public hint, the conservancy gave the archdiocese an award last month for restoring St. Monica’s Church in Santa Monica, a 71-year-old structure that was condemned originally after the Northridge temblor. The good feelings did not last long. The cardinal last week contended that the conservancy lawsuit may force a new $45-million cathedral from the original downtown site or even out of the city.

In the cathedral dispute, conservancy members fear that they are being made the scapegoat for the high price of adjacent land the archdiocese wants to buy and for pressure from suburban Catholics not to build downtown.

The conservancy is bracing itself for more political heat. “If we only stood up for historic buildings when it wasn’t someone powerful, then we wouldn’t be doing our job,” Dishman said.