L.A. Shuts the Door on McMansions
In a long-overdue move, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to halt the proliferation of oversized homes that preservationists say are ruining the city’s character. From the L.A. Times story:
Mark Lipis of Westwood brought council members poster-size photos of his neighbor’s house, which he described as a 6,500-square-foot behemoth with a roof deck and an elevator. The law would effect more than 304,000 lots in the flatlands of Los Angeles, most of the city’s single-family homes.
Better late than never, but also too little, too late. It’s sickening to see neighborhoods where beautiful turn-of-the-century homes and apartment buildings share the street with characterless stucco monstrosities.
A friend who lives on the eastern border of Windsor Square says that in her neighborhood in the 1980s, developers ripped down 100-year-old homes and built hideous, boxy apartment complexes. Residents successfully petitioned the city to restore R-1 zoning, which allows only single-family residences, but the damage had already been done. Other lovely older neighborhoods have been similarly ravaged.
Interestingly, Tuesday’s L.A. Times Business section included a story about the building boom in Hollywood that some fear is compromising the neighborhood’s history and charm.
More than a dozen multimillion-dollar projects have been announced, launched or just completed that promise new shopping and restaurants, thousands of new apartments and condominiums and towers of glass and steel. Glitzy clubs dot once-sketchy street corners. Residents swim atop the former Broadway department store at Hollywood and Vine. Construction projects cuddle up to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and are popping up in the shadow of the landmark Capitol Records tower.
And in the Local section was this story about attempts to make over Westwood Village:
Given Westwood Village’s location amid the “platinum triangle”
of Bel-Air, Holmby Hills and Brentwood — not to mention UCLA’s 43,000 students and faculty members — it’s a wonder that the place has ever been anything but a dazzling success. Village devotees say the lack of a singular vision and the area’s notoriously difficult parking are squelching any hope for a robust comeback. But a burst of construction activity promises to spur momentum.
The right kind of development can make L.A. or break it. We can’t undo the damage that’s already been done, but with the proper cooperation between developers and preservationists, perhaps we can set things right from this point forward.
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