In Whittier: A Policy Model for OC Cities?

While those who appreciate history never want to needlessly lose a historic structure to a new development, those who are trying to develop a property want to avoid being delayed from making their project a reality when there is no significant structure on the site.

About five years ago, I was a project manager for a local homebuilder who wanted to develop an underutilized, low-intensity, industrial site in the City of Whittier with 55 new homes. 

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires an assessment of whether a proposed development project will have an impact on a historical resource and the level of that impact. The structures on the site were built just over 50 years ago and the State Office of Historic Preservation recommends the preparation of a historical assessment report for structures over 45 years to determine their historic significance. 

Even before the CEQA process gets underway, in order to prevent the loss of historic resources, the City of Whittier requires an applicant to obtain a Certificate of Appropriateness from the city’s Historic Resource Commission prior to being granted a demolition permit to demolish a structure that is at least 50 years old. Specifically, a professional historic resource evaluation must be prepared and presented to the city’s Historic Resources Commission for their review and action. 

The homebuilder that I worked with went through this process. Before proceeding with an application for approval of the project with the City, the homebuilder hired a historic resources consultant who met the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s professional qualifications in history and/or architectural history. The consultant determined that the project site did not have historic value under CEQA or according to criteria set by any local, state or federal preservation program.  

At the hearing that followed with the Historic Resources Commission, the homebuilder/applicant received approval of a Certificate of Appropriateness.  The hearing added no time to their overall entitlement timeline and was completed before the project went to the Planning Commission for its decision.

Stakeholders in Whittier benefit from the City’s policy of requiring a Certificate of Appropriateness prior to demolishing an unevaluated resource that is at least 50 years old. The property’s historic value is assessed and the impact of its contemplated loss under CEQA is determined, in an open, public process, before too much investment is made by any party.

Project proponents benefit from this requirement as well because although it doesn’t necessarily mean the historical assessment won’t be challenged later on in the process, it offers a line of defense for the project if it is challenged later through CEQA. In this case, the assessment allowed the homebuilder to proceed with confidence that a Certificate of Appropriateness should be approved and that later claims of the property being a historic resource were unlikely.

Paying attention early on to the preservation aspects of a property can have long-term benefits for the community and for those developing projects who want certainty that historic preservation will not be the cause for delay of a project that may itself one day be historically significant.

By Phil Bacerra, former member of the City of Santa Ana Planning Commission

If your OC city has this process in place or a similar policy, Preserve Orange County would like to know about it. Please send us an email at preserveoc@gmail.com.