A Working-Class Monument

The question that goes before the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission for a second time Wednesday is relatively straightforward: Does the Chase Knolls Garden Apartments complex in Sherman Oaks merit designation as a city historic-cultural monument?

The commission’s own staff architect, the Los Angeles Conservancy and other recognized preservationists say yes. They describe the 1940s-era complex, with its Modernist buildings and park-like setting, as a prime example of mid-century garden-style apartments built for the working class.

Legacy Partners, which bought Chase Knolls in January with plans to tear it down and build luxury apartments, says no. It argues that the attempt to secure historic status is merely a ruse by tenants of the rent-controlled complex to stall eviction.

Week before last, an often emotional three-hour hearing on the question left the commission, with two members absent, deadlocked 2 to 2. So it sent the question, without recommendation, to the City Council. The City Council sent it back.

The issues behind the question are anything but simple, involving as they do property owners’ and tenants’ rights, the need for affordable housing and the need for dense, in-fill apartments. But these are not for the commission to resolve.

A positive recommendation, even one agreed to by the City Council, wouldn’t guarantee preservation. What it would do is set into motion up to a yearlong study that would reconsider demolition and analyze whether such options as full or partial rehabilitation are feasible.

Yes, this could delay evictions, as Legacy Partners charges. The irony is that preserving this example of working-class architecture wouldn’t mean its present working-class tenants could stay for long; extensive renovations could force them out at least temporarily, and increased rent, for good.

But whether or not they get to stay, they are also fighting to save a place, one that seems to cast a spell over those who live in or near it. Even long-ago tenants and neighbors who have since moved away have come back to fight for its preservation.

You don’t have to be an expert to recognize that there’s something special about Chase Knolls, with its courtyards, rolling lawns and ample trees, that stands out from the cookie-cutter clutter that passes for development in most of the San Fernando Valley.

Often it takes the threat of demolition--or in the case of open space, development--to make us appreciate what we could lose. Too often appreciation comes only after loss. The commission has a chance to recommend that the City Council at least consider what it could lose before it’s too late.