Taking Stock of Historic L.A. to Help City Preserve It

When the Ambassador Hotel was demolished late last year, Ken Bernstein grieved for the loss. But Bernstein, then the head of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, also knew that the group had put up a good fight in trying to retain at least parts of the main hotel building as a new school complex is built there.

Now, after eight years at the conservancy, Bernstein is switching camps. He recently became the city of Los Angeles’ first manager of the office of historic resources, a new part of the Planning Department that consolidates previously scattered responsibilities for preservation issues at a time of growing development and population pressures. Among his tasks will be to lead the city’s first full survey of historic and architecturally significant sites, a mammoth, five-year project partly funded by the Getty Foundation.

Bernstein, 41, grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where he still lives, and earned a bachelor’s in political science from Yale and a master’s in public policy and urban planning from Princeton. Before joining the conservancy, he was planning deputy for then-Councilwoman Laura Chick when her district was recovering from the 1994 Northridge quake.

Here are excerpts of an interview with Bernstein this week in his City Hall office.

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Question: What is the state of preservation in Los Angeles, and wasn’t the loss of the Ambassador a big setback?

Answer: Certainly the demolition of the Ambassador was a huge disappointment, but in many ways I think it galvanized the preservation community. Because it has been a long time since we suffered a major loss in the city of that significance, much in the way New York City’s preservation community was galvanized by the Penn Station demolition in the ‘60s ... I think historic preservation has been on the minds and lips of Angelenos in a way over the past several years that wasn’t necessarily true previously.

The remaining challenge and one of the reasons I was interested in coming over to the city is that in many ways the city’s own preservation program has lagged behind the private and grass-roots activity.

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Q: But Los Angeles’ landmark preservation law is much weaker than New York’s and other cities’. Ours only allows for a one-year delay in demolition and doesn’t forbid it. Will you work to change that?

A: Most large cities prohibit demolition of designated landmarks except in those rare cases of economic hardship.... One of the things we certainly will be looking at is our provisions for demolition delay versus the ways other cities handle it, although I think it is too soon to come up with a specific proposal.

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Q: There is so much development and residential loft conversions in downtown and Hollywood. Is that going well for historic buildings, or are they being threatened?

A: In downtown, by and large, the preservation activity has been very positive. The challenge in downtown is how to build on the residential boom in a way that contributes positively to the remaining historic resources that the boom hasn’t touched, like the historic theaters of Broadway. That seems to me Los Angeles’ great unfinished revitalization project: the opportunity to revive Broadway, not only in its positive role today as a very vibrant Latino-oriented shopping district by day, but also as the nighttime entertainment center it had been for decades....

Certainly, not all the theaters are going to be single-screen movie theaters or legitimate [stage] theaters. But they can offer a diversity of uses, with some theaters becoming nightclubs and perhaps more intimate musical venues.... It will take the city giving the kind of focused attention to Broadway that New York City government gave to 42nd Street or San Diego city government gave to the Gaslamp Quarter.

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Q: Do all those loft conversions really respect historic architecture?

A: We’ve had some spotty issues here and there with some developers who wanted to remove some significant historic interior elements. But what’s interesting is that loft developers have understood that the historic character of those buildings is an economic asset. The reason people are moving downtown is to live in these unique historic spaces.

What’s surprising to me is that seven or eight years ago I expected the majority who moved in would be working in downtown offices. But just the opposite is true. The majority work elsewhere and live downtown because they value the historic architecture and the lifestyle they can’t find elsewhere.

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Q: What about Hollywood?

A: In Hollywood, we are beginning now to see similar adaptive reuse. But the pressures for new development are strong in Hollywood and it is possible that some significant historic structures may become threatened.

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Q: What’s threatened?

A: Among those looking somewhat precarious is the former CBS Radio building that was the home of national broadcasts, such as the Jack Benny show. It is in an area of Sunset Boulevard that may become targeted for new development.

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Q: Do you think there will be more conflicts around the city as population and immigration rise?

A: I think there probably will be. That is all the more reason we need to survey our city in short order. We are going to have to plan for growth and find locations in the city where we can intelligently steer growth, and in doing so we need to identify and protect those sites that make Los Angeles Los Angeles.

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Q: How does a survey help that?

A: A citywide survey does not mean historic sites won’t be lost in the future. Preservation is inherently a contentious and politicized process, and it will remain so. But by creating a comprehensive survey, we’ll be able in certain situations to minimize the role of politics and the eleventh-hour preservation battles because we will have an outside, objective look at the significance of individual sites, usually long before they become threatened....

A city can protect its historic resources only if it knows what it has in the first place. One of our greatest challenges is only 15% of Los Angeles has ever been surveyed. So 85% of our city remains essentially a blank slate. We simply don’t know what we have.

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Q: Your role is different now. Won’t you have to be the “no” guy at times to preservation friends?

A: There will be times when my friends in the preservation community may not be happy with decisions of our office.

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Q: What are some of your personal favorite buildings in L.A.?

A: It really is hard to pick just a few.

Thinking about downtown, I love the Central Library. This historic building had been considered obsolete in the 1970s and has been given new life through a very sensitive addition. The Bradbury Building lobby certainly comes to mind as an awe-inspiring interior space.

There also are so many great historic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The reason it’s so hard to pick one is what makes Los Angeles special: its eclectic nature and the tremendous diversity of its neighborhoods.