Chips off the old block

Rick SORDINI looked about as relaxed as someone who is likely to be evicted soon can look.

Reclining on a beach chair on a recent sun-tinged Saturday with a cigar between his teeth, Sordini and neighbor Mark Neeley were taking advantage of the balmy winter weather to unload some odds and ends on the patch of lawn in front of their Santa Monica courtyard apartments.

But just over Sordini’s shoulder, a roughly 3-square-foot sign pounded into the turf offered a disconcerting backdrop to the yard sale. The sign is a notice announcing the owners’ intent to have the house demolished. And it’s just one of more than a dozen that have been placed in front of older Craftsman bungalows and Spanish Revival apartment houses in a neighborhood bounded by Montana Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard to the north and south, and 4th and 26th streets to the west and east.

Not all those buildings will be torn down. Some developers will be thwarted when they come up against the city’s landmark review process. But other structures will go because they are deemed unworthy of landmark status, and with their demolition, some argue, a slice of California history will be lost.

While the razing of small homes to make way for lot-swallowing McMansions north of Montana has generated a lot of ire in Santa Monica in recent years, it’s the less-celebrated neighborhood to the south that is now the main arena for those committed to saving threatened architecture in that city.

The tension in Santa Monica between preservationists and property owners who want to rebuild and maximize profits from their investments is not so different from development debates taking place in other Southern California communities. But there is a sense of urgency about the issue in Santa Monica, where preservationists say skyrocketing land values have led to an unprecedented assault on the city’s traditional architecture.

In a neighborhood where a 50-foot-by-150-foot lot recently sold for just under $2 million, the economics of buying and preserving a 1,500-square-foot 1920s Craftsman bungalow don’t make a lot of sense. Especially when zoning laws allow for the construction of multiunit complexes with condominiums that can fetch more than $500,000 each.

“There are unprecedented pressures on the venerable Craftsman bungalow right now,” said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy. “But also an unprecedented level of grass-roots activism to preserve the best examples.”

Among design buffs in Santa Monica, there’s a keen appreciation for the smattering of single-family Craftsmans remaining from the first three decades of the 20th century, and the small Spanish Revival apartment houses that came a bit later. But those involved in the preservation fight say they’re just as concerned about protecting a disappearing way of life in the once-sleepy seaside town.

Decorative moldings, built-in cabinetry and original tile are one thing, but the loss of structures built to take advantage of an outdoor lifestyle -- emphasizing communal spaces and neighborly interaction -- is at the heart of grass-roots preservation activity in Santa Monica.

“Tear-downs are getting so rampant that it’s annihilating what this city was built on. It’s changing the whole character of the town,” said writer Wendy Abrams, a longtime renter of a vintage Spanish-style bungalow on Idaho Avenue.

The building next door to Abrams’ on 19th Street is another with a demolition notice in front. It was built in 1926 by the same architect who designed Abrams’ building. For decades, until a landlord planted a hedge at the property line, the two structures shared a common yard. Abrams’ building has a different owner and is not threatened, but she fears what’s to come if the city allows the structure next door to be torn down and another is built.

The property owner listed on the demolition notice did not return phone calls, nor did several others who are applying for demolition permits in the neighborhood. It’s unknown what the owners’ plans are for the lots.

“These new buildings take up the entire property, and they have subterranean parking where people take an elevator right up to their apartment,” Abrams said. “There’s no reason to talk to your neighbors.”

Sordini, who works for a hotel, and Neeley, an actor, spoke of communal yard sales, barbecues, baby-sitting and casual schmoozing. They said they value sharing their lives and living space with other residents of their eight-unit complex on the corner of Idaho and 14th street.

“You sit in our courtyard and it feels like you’re back in 1938,” Sordini said. “Santa Monica always had a funky, laid-back attitude. It began to change a while ago, but there is still a little holdover. Right now, it’s a city in transition.”

That change is spurring more calls for action among preservationists.

In the city of Los Angeles, such grass-roots activism has led to the establishment of 20 Historic Preservation Overlay Zones -- neighborhoods where historically representative architecture must be preserved in most cases. Bernstein said such zones are the best tool preservationists have for keeping historical neighborhoods intact.

Residents in Pasadena also have acted to protect bungalows in several of that city’s neighborhoods. Homeowners in these areas can apply for income-tax credits to make improvements to their property under the state’s Mills Law, which was passed in 1973 to encourage preservation of buildings with historical or cultural value. To be eligible, landmark status from the governing municipality is required.

Santa Monica has just one historical preservation zone. As in Los Angeles and Pasadena, creating such zones requires the approval of a majority of homeowners. But while historical zones in other cities have been most easily established in neighborhoods of single-family homes of the same style, the area south of Montana has had a hodgepodge of styles and sizes for decades.

The existence of rent control in Santa Monica has also given landlords with longtime tenants paying well below market rents an incentive to rebuild or sell. And although tenants displaced from rent-controlled buildings because of a sale are eligible for thousands of dollars in moving costs, that becomes a relatively incidental expense for a property owner cashing out.

With economic pressures favoring development and without recognized historical zones, preservation in Santa Monica has been taking place on a piecemeal basis.

The city adopted its guidelines for preserving historical structures in 1983. They state that a property owner cannot demolish any structure more than 40 years old without a public review.

For years, the review process served mostly to save some old commercial buildings and a few homes with undeniable architectural or historical significance. But it did little to preserve neighborhood uniformity -- and the city rarely acted to prevent individuals and commercial developers from buying and razing 80-year-old bungalows in the pricey neighborhood between Montana and San Vicente Boulevard and replacing them with structures three or four times larger.

Outrage over that trend led the city four years ago to tighten some zoning regulations regarding frontage and height and also led to the appointment of a more activist Landmarks Commission. But preservationists consider the neighborhood between Montana and San Vicente to be a lost cause.

“This is a community that’s been concerned about preservation for a long time,” said Elizabeth Bar-El, an associate planner with the city of Santa Monica. “But at this point, it’s probably not going to be concentrating on saving a single, Tudor-style house north of Montana.”

Instead, according to Bar-El, Spanish Revival and Craftsman buildings south of Montana have moved to the front of the preservation debate.

Ruthann Lehrer, a preservation planner who has served on Santa Monica’s seven-member Landmarks Commission for five years, said the panel is guided by a handful of criteria spelled out in city law.

Among the criteria used to designate a structure as a city landmark (thereby denying the owner a demolition permit) is that it was designed by a significant architect, that a notable person resided there, or that it’s a significant example of a recognized architectural style in close-to-pristine condition. More subjective criteria include whether the structure contributes to telling the cultural story of Santa Monica, and whether its removal would have a negative effect on the neighborhood.

By such standards, only a handful of homes or apartment houses are saved each year, Lehrer acknowledged.

“There are amenities in these older buildings -- beautiful woodwork and hardware -- that you just don’t find in modern buildings,” she said. “But not every building merits protection. One thing we cannot be, and I’m quoting a legal term here, is ‘arbitrary and selective.’ Otherwise it will be shot down in a court of law.”

A building cannot be preserved, for example, simply because it was built before 1965, it has an unusual design and a vocal group of residents is clamoring to save it.

For folks like Sordini and Neeley, that means they’ll probably be moving a few months after the review process on their building runs its course. Even so, they said they harbor no bitterness.

“I love these older buildings, but I can’t blame the landlord for making a business decision,” Sordini said. “The only anxiety-inducing element is waiting for the other shoe to drop.... There’s no way I could find as nice a unit as this in Santa Monica for the same price.”

Some of their neighbors, however, are not as understanding.

Longtime resident and apartment dweller Elizabeth Terry said the city has not been proactive enough in giving buildings landmark status.

“There’s a sense that people don’t care. At what point do you draw the line?” asked Terry, who lives in a more modern building that is not slated for demolition. “When there are 60 houses left? Sixteen? Six? If you want to tear down these beautiful Craftsmans, you ought to be required to put up something that is architecturally interesting and that fits in with the neighborhood.”

Abrams said that if recent history is a guide, architectural integrity isn’t a priority in Santa Monica.

“There’s a real sense that these monstrosities are coming in and we can’t stop it. People are living vertically,” she said. “What makes this neighborhood great is people outside, walking their dogs, making coffee together. That’s how you build community.”

Lehrer, whom both Abrams and Terry credit for her vigilance on the Landmarks Commission, sympathizes with that point of view. But until there is stronger political and community will for preservation, there is little that can be done.

“Land values are high and people want to build big,” Lehrer said. “That’s the free market. That’s capitalism.”

Darrell Satzman is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. He can be reached at satzman@earthlink.net.