LA City comes of age - historically speaking

From Ken Berstein and the City Planning Office of Historic Preservation: the City is finally a “'Certified Local Government' (CLG) for historic preservation under the National Historic Preservation Act."

This shows you that with even being in place for less than a year, Ken Berstein is a great hire and asset to the future of our city - and our past. It's too bad it's take 15 years for this position to be filled when it was proposed in the last Cultural Masterplan of the City from 1992.

Here's the full press release (with the error of selling the City short by 6 square miles):

LOS ANGELES COMES OF AGE:
CITY ATTAINS “CERTIFIED LOCAL GOVERNMENT” STATUS
FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

LOS ANGELES – The State Office of Historic Preservation and the National Park Service have officially approved the City of Los Angeles’ application to become a “Certified Local Government” (CLG) for historic preservation under the National Historic Preservation Act. This action provides official recognition to the City of Los Angeles for its new comprehensive historic preservation program and makes the City eligible, for the first time ever, to obtain state and federal historic preservation grants.

“For too long, Los Angeles has been derided as indifferent to its architectural and cultural heritage, so the attainment of Certified Local Government status represents a ‘coming of age’ for our city,” said Ken Bernstein, Manager of the Department of City Planning’s new Office of Historic Resources. “This is a significant milestone for historic preservation in Los Angeles.”

“This announcement is an important validation by the state and federal governments that the City of Los Angeles finally has in place all of the elements of an effective, balanced historic preservation program,” said Gail Goldberg, the City’s Director of Planning.

Because Los Angeles was not a CLG, it was not previously eligible to receive Historic Preservation Fund grants, allocated by the National Park Service and distributed on a competitive basis by the State Office of Historic Preservation. While these grants are relatively modest, they can provide significant support for local historic preservation activities, such as preservation plans, historic resources surveys, and preservation education and outreach programs. CLGs also receive valuable technical assistance from the State Office of Historic Preservation and are given formal authority to review and comment on nominations of sites to the National Register of Historic Places.

Los Angeles historic preservation organizations have urged the City of Los Angeles to seek CLG status for nearly two decades. The City of Los Angeles was the only large municipality in California that had not become a CLG. Despite Los Angeles’ remarkable historic resources and vigorous grass-roots historic preservation activity, the City of Los Angeles had not previously been eligible for CLG status because it had never created a full-fledged historic preservation office, did not have specific professional qualifications for its Cultural Heritage Commissioners, and lacked a systematic program to survey and identify significant historic resources.

In 2006, the Department of City Planning created a new Office of Historic Resources (OHR) with a staff of six, which is a full-service historic preservation office within the Department. The OHR is spearheading the five-year, multi-million dollar Los Angeles Historic Resources Survey Project, in partnership with the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Getty Conservation Institute. The Survey Project is the most ambitious local survey initiative in the nation – a comprehensive program to identify potential historic resources throughout Los Angeles’ 466 square miles, which will provide valuable information to City officials, neighborhood associations and preservation groups, and much greater, up-front certainty for developers and property owners.

The OHR also staffs the City's five-member Cultural Heritage Commission, administers the Mills Act property tax incentive program for historic properties, reviews proposed changes to designated historic properties, and works with owners who want to rehabilitate their properties. The OHR oversees over 850 designated Historic-Cultural Monuments (local landmarks) and provides policy coordination for the city’s 21 Historic Preservation Overlay Zones (HPOZs, or historic districts). The Office is providing more seamless coordination of historic preservation activities with other City departments and other sections of the City Planning Department and is developing training and educational programs on preservation for City staff and the public.

“We are proud to have the City of Los Angeles become the nation’s largest Certified Local Government for historic preservation,” said Milford Wayne Donaldson, FAIA,
California’s State Historic Preservation Officer, whose office administers the CLG program. “The Office of Historic Preservation is honored to be in partnership once again with the City of Angels to promote the integration of preservation interests and concerns into local decision-making processes as the city moves into the 21st Century. L.A. is ‘The Place’ for historic preservation!”