Homeowners Fight Landmark Status

When Douglas and Donna Sutcliffe tried to put new shingles on their Craftsman home in Sierra Madre two years ago, history shackled their progress.

The repair was delayed several weeks because their bungalow is listed on the city’s register of historic landmarks--a designation made under an old city law that did not require the Sutcliffes’ consent.

Now, the Sutcliffes and more than 20 other property owners are rebelling against such “landmark” designations, saying the system infringes on their property rights and has turned home improvements into a major bureaucratic hassle.

To the dismay of local homeowners, once a home is declared a landmark, work such as replacing windows or installing a new front door requires approval from the town’s Cultural Heritage Commission, which is supposed to ensure that the change does not ruin the historical integrity of the building.

“This is not really an issue between preservationists and non-preservationists,” said Donna Sutcliffe. “It’s between property owners and a Cultural Heritage Commission that doesn’t consult with anyone who would be affected by it.”

The conflict has reached such a pitch that the Sierra Madre City Council is going to let voters settle the issue with an April 14 ballot measure that will determine whether the 29 properties in question will keep their designation.

“The problem in Sierra Madre is that people went around and said anything 100 years old is historic,” said Councilman Bart Doyle. “[But] old is not the same thing as historic.”

Barbara Hester, chairwoman of the Cultural Heritage Commission, said, “The idea of preservation of properties is to keep them from being destroyed.” She fears that the old-style dwellings will be replaced by multiunit buildings if protections are not in place.

But in one case, a property owner is fighting to remove a plant from the register.

Nel Solt, who has lived in Sierra Madre for 25 years, wants her popular 104-year-old wisteria vine off the list. The sprawling vine, which is rooted in her yard and extends onto the property next door, is a local tourist attraction, bringing 5,000 people every spring to see the huge plant in bloom.

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“We don’t belong on the list, because we’re not a building,” she said. But because the vine is a landmark, Solt can’t even trim away dead or diseased sections of the sprawling wisteria without a nod from the Cultural Heritage Commission.

“We answer to Mother Nature,” Solt said. “We don’t have power like we do over a building.”

Members of the Sierra Madre commission and the Los Angeles Conservancy worry that if voters decide to drop the designations, Sierra Madre’s quaint, old-town character and rustic charm will be threatened.

Known as the “Village of the Foothills,” the city of 10,900 boasts of its lack of traffic signals and drive-through restaurants.

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Until last summer, a majority vote of the seven-member Cultural Heritage Commission could bestow a landmark designation on a structure if it met certain historical or architectural criteria.

But under an ordinance passed last year, landmark status is voluntary and granted if a property has been part of a historic event, was involved with a historic person, has unusual architecture or is the work of a well-known architect.

Ordinances on historical landmark designation vary throughout the state. In Los Angeles, for instance, a property owner’s consent is not required, but in Burbank it is, said Barbara Hoff Delvac, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Under state law, property can be removed from the official register only if an environmental study, which can cost up to $2,500, concludes that there would be little impact to the area if the building were altered or destroyed.

Because of the California Environmental Quality Act, preservationists are questioning whether the ballot measure is legal and conservancy lawyers are looking into challenging it, Hester said.

In promoting their cause, preservationists say that property owners of historic buildings can benefit from property tax reductions for rehabilitation of their homes, Delvac said.

But for homeowner Lee Hyde, a 30-year Sierra Madre resident, neither tax breaks nor small-town charm are more important than control over her property.

Hyde said her four-bedroom Federal-style house was arbitrarily determined to be a historic landmark in the mid-1980s, but the city never recognized her husband’s request to have it removed from the register.

Though original plans say it was built in 1930, the commission says it was built in 1911 and is therefore historic, Hyde said.

Besides the building’s age, “we have no idea why we are historic or unique,” Hyde said.

“It’s an odd situation that people are such zealots against the will of residents,” she said. “It seems to be an invasion of property rights.”