The San Diego Planning Commission unanimously approved Thursday a proposal to accelerate homebuilding in the city by softening historic preservation rules.
Developers praised the new proposal as a sensible policy change that would make it harder for opponents of projects to use historic preservation rules as a weapon to block or delay construction.
Opponents, including historic preservation advocates, said the new policy is an overreach that could politicize the process and make it harder for the fate of potentially historic properties to get proper consideration.
One key change: The new policy gives the City Council authority to overrule the city’s Historic Resources Board when the board designates a property historic.
Another element that’s drawn fierce criticism is allowing developers to use the city’s controversial Complete Communities incentive in Ocean Beach as long as a property isn’t the site of a historic cottage.
The 7-0 vote by the Planning Commission sends the proposal to a Dec. 11 hearing before the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee.
If approved there, the proposal would go to the full council for final approval in late January or early February.
The proposal is the first half of a wide-ranging package of reforms city officials are proposing in an effort to streamline rules protecting historic homes and buildings. The effort is called “Preservation and Progress.”
The second half of the package, which city officials describe as more complex and robust, may include limiting property tax breaks for historic homes and eliminating automatic historical review for buildings when they reach 45 years old.
The centerpiece of the package’s first half is shrinking the power of the city’s Historical Resources Board by allowing the City Council to reverse its decisions.
Under the current system, the council’s discretion to overturn such decisions is limited to when there has been a procedural error — not disagreements about historic value.
“Historic designation has a demonstrable chilling effect,” Planning Commissioner Daniel Reeves said. “We’re looking at creating a better process, not a more difficult process.”
Commissioner Matthew Boomhower said the change could also help the preservation community if the Historical Resources Board becomes too pro-development.
“I think it cuts both ways,” Boomhower said.
Bruce Coons, executive director of a preservation group called the Save Our Heritage Organisation, said the new policy would complicate and politicize the process and could lead to more litigation.
He stressed that under the existing policy the City Council already gets final say in what happens to a historic structure.
“Designation doesn’t dictate what a property can be used for, or whether it’s being modified or removed or demolished,” said Coons, explaining that’s already a council land-use decision. “Designation simply ensures that its fate is fairly considered in deciding the tradeoffs of a new project.”
That perspective was shared by many other preservation advocates and community leaders.
The Community Planners Committee, an umbrella organization for neighborhood groups across the city, voted 23-0 against the proposal primarily because of the changes to the Historical Resources Board.
But the local development and business communities praised the new policy.
“The delays and uncertainty from threats of inappropriate designations are well-documented and do nothing to serve our community,” Stephanie Benvenuto of the Building Industry Association.
Ben Nicholls of the Hillcrest Business Association said the few buildings in Hillcrest with historical value have already been preserved in last year’s update to the area’s growth blueprint.
“It strikes the right balance between protecting the character that makes Hillcrest unique while allowing thoughtful growth that keeps our community thriving,” Nicholls said.
The policy change affecting Ocean Beach was characterized by city officials as amending the municipal code to simply clarify what was already allowed.
Ocean Beach has the only “emerging historical district” in the city, and there was apparently some lack of clarity whether the Complete Communities incentive, which does not apply in traditional historic districts, would apply there.
Kelly Stanco, a city planning official spearheading the preservation reforms, said the 72 beach cottages designated historic in Ocean Beach’s district aren’t eligible for that incentive, which lets developers build many more units than the zoning of a property would otherwise allow.
But she said the roughly 3,000 other properties in the neighborhood are eligible.
“This is not changing the rules, this is just clarifying what the rules have always been,” Reeves said.
Boomhower said the city shouldn’t be limiting development on sites that don’t have contributing resources just because some historic cottages might be nearby.
“I don’t think that I should be stymied because of scattered historical properties,” he said.
The second half of the city’s proposed package of preservation reforms is expected to be announced next year.