Waging History
A proposed historic preservation district has Hancock Park residents and developers at war over big
In the 20 years she's lived in Hancock Park, Rachel Smedra says she's never seen anything fracture the neighborhood's spirit quite like this. "It breaks my heart," she says. "The atmosphere now is so icky."
To the naked eye, the atmosphere in Hancock Park is absolutely lovely. An impeccably landscaped enclave of elegant, early 20th century mansions south of Melrose and east of Highland, it's an anachronism as much as it's a community. "Norman Rockwell could set up his canvas right off of Third Street and still capture the same thing he saw in the 1930s," says Councilmember Tom LaBonge, who represents the area.
But a new community zoning ordinance in the works now has Hancock Park residents so divided they can't even agree on how divided they are. "This has brought a huge number of neighbors together," says Hancock Park Homeowner Association board member Cindy Chvatal-Keane. "In this country, you can hardly get anyone to vote for the president or mayor, but in this neighborhood, when people started to realize what was in danger, hundreds came together."
The danger, if you're on one side of the debate, lies in the creation of an Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, or HPOZ, a city ordinance that would help preserve the 1,100 or so historically significant single-family homes lining these quiet, leafy streets.
And as anger has risen, there have been hurled accusations of racism, bullying - even communism. One group of residents sees it as a culture war being fought by proxy. Another group sees ... the need to preserve historically significant single-family homes.
Since 2002, real estate development has been ramping up all across the city, and Hancock Park sits on some of L.A.'s priciest dirt. "We're feeling the pressure," Chvatal-Keane says. According to her, it was the late-'90s demolition of three homes designed by noted Southern California architect Paul Williams that provoked residents to begin lobbying the city for the historic designation. The community then jumped through a number of bureaucratic hoops, but thus far, the neighborhood's only protections have come from an Interim Control Ordinance, or ICO, which puts weak, temporary restrictions in place.
"Demolitions were happening anyway, because developers can argue a hardship and get an exemption," says Chvatal-Keane. Meanwhile, their interim ordinance expires in October, and "we've heard from our planner that people are already inquiring as to what they can do when the ICO goes away," she continues. "Some developers are just biding their time."
Other developers are hard at work. Rachel Smedra walks to the end of her driveway and points to the massive skeleton rising up next door on the site of a home once almost half its size. Smedra abhors this behemoth, but she's not going to argue against it. "My freedom is more important to me than one house," she says. "This house is an anomaly. This is unique, and because of this I'm not willing to give up my rights as an American." The sign on her lawn says it more succinctly - Property Rights=yes, HPOZ=no. "It's pure communism, what's dead in the Soviet Union is alive right here in Hancock Park."
Property rights are a sacred institution in America, a country founded by landed gentry on the lam from an imperial monarchy. HPOZ's can provoke uneasiness because they confer historical status on each significant structure in a neighborhood, then impose restrictions that are tailored for the neighborhood from a set of guidelines drawn up by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Only portions of a home's exterior fall under an HPOZ's purview, but a five-person board has to sign off on any pertinent reconstruction, which to some raises the specter of community taste police. "Imagine if someone in the neighborhood didn't like you," says Michael Rosenberg, who founded an organization to opposed the HPOZ. "This pits neighbor against neighbor."
Not exactly, according to city planner Megan Hunter. "Two of the board members are appointed by the Cultural Heritage Department, one by the council district, one by the mayor, and the other four elect the fifth, based on input from the neighborhood council," she says.
"There are people who are concerned about how the HPOZ impacts their rights, and those are real, rational questions," Chvatal-Keane says. "People want to know: Will I be able to remodel or paint my house? Will I be able to landscape my yard?" But "there are certain people who are very, very active in providing information to the community and their information is not factually correct," she continues. The fact that some of these people - such as Rosenberg and Smedra's husband Ira - either are or have ties to real estate developers has provoked uneasiness on the pro-preservation side.
Rosenberg, who does not develop within the city, characterizes his stand as purely principled. He also worries this ordinance could provide a venue for covert anti-Semitism. "A lot of people have said [the pro-preservation group] is using the HPOZ to hold back a growing Orthodox community, and I tend to agree. Those pushing for this HPOZ have not been candid about their motives," he says. Tensions between some Orthodox Jews and members of the wider community flared in recent months, stoked in part by the expansion of a synagogue at the corner of Third and Highland. Rosenberg brings up Hancock Park's own checkered past - until the 1960s, real estate clauses officially prevented blacks or Jews from moving into the neighborhood, and when Nat King Cole bought a house in the area around 1948, neighbors welcomed him with a burning cross.
Greg Glasser, who chairs the Hancock Park Homeowner Association Historic Preservation Steering Committee, also happens to be Jewish. He hasn't made the same connection. "It's unfortunate when people use buzzwords to achieve certain goals," says Glasser, who insists he moved into Hancock Park to be a part of a community. "The real story here is the people who've maintained these homes, the people who see this as a neighborhood," he says.
But anti-Semitism and communism aside, Rosenberg and his group don't much appreciate how the HPOZ was introduced to the community. "It was presented as a fait accompli," he says, "by people who are highly connected to LaBonge."
For his part, LaBonge maintains that his involvement is a question of values, not politics.
"People have values. Historic preservation is one of my values," he says. Still, opponents argue proper outreach was not done, and note that neither was a community election promised years ago ever held.
"There was some discussion of holding an election," LaBonge says. "But if we held an election for everything we'd never get anything done. In this democracy of ours, we have one president, one governor, one mayor, and one councilmember for each district. And that councilmember has to weigh out what he believes is the right thing to do."
LaBonge points out that there's little chance everyone in the neighborhood is not informed about the issues, noting numerous articles in the local paper, the Larchmont Chronicle. "About one a month for years," he says. Plus, the HPOZ has generated meetings, mailings, and the more than 600 lawn signs dotting the neighborhood.
Later this month, City Council has penciled in a hearing to determine whether this HPOZ will get its final seal of approval, and the city has already begun a series of meetings bringing both sides together to iron out the ordinances specifics. But once the question of the historical designation is settled, community members will still have to ponder the question of community relations.
Chvatal-Keane remains optimistic. "Any time people get together and get talking, that's a good thing," she says.
On the other hand, an anti-HPOZ faction recently distributed a press release claiming the Hancock Park Homeowners Association is in violation of state regulations and has lost the right to exist. They have appropriated the name for themselves.
Published: 07/20/2006
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
