A 'Landmark' Backlash
San Francisco's historic preservation rules go too far, owners of historic homes say
Susan Beckstead stepped out of her sky-blue, three-story classical revival Victorian on Pierce Street — the one with bay windows, dentil and egg-and-dart molding, a modillion cornice and balustrade-lined flat roof — to show a visitor around her 120-year-old neighborhood bordering Duboce Park in central San Francisco.
Across the street her neighbor was finishing a $1 million remodeling of his 1898 taupe-colored, three-and-a-half-story Queen Anne Victorian, a process that so far has taken a year because of delays in getting permits. At the opposite end of Beckstead’s block, workers toiled on the roof of a pink, 1905 Queen Anne triplex, where restoration is still under way a year after the initial permit application, owing in part to a dispute with neighbors over the appropriateness of a proposed street-facing dormer window.
Beckstead said she has her own plans to replace her windows and fix up her garage, but she is loath to start, in part because of the difficulty her neighbors have had getting permits. Her biggest fear, she said, is that the city will make it even harder to obtain permits by declaring her neighborhood a historical landmark district, which would empower Planning Department officials to reject any changes that they decide might violate a building’s historical integrity.
Garage add-ons that extend beyond the front of a house are a potential no-no. Windows that are inconsistent with a building’s original materials and architecture are another.
Beckstead said there are enough rules in place already. “Every house on this street has been redone,” she said, “and we’ve seen the difficulty each homeowner experienced.”
After more than a decade in which San Francisco politics was partly defined by antidevelopment and historic preservation forces, a backlash has begun. Many are surprised, however, that Beckstead’s neighborhood of 90 Victorian homes, whose owners share a passion for preserving old houses, has become the rebel stronghold against the city’s ambitious plans to preserve large swathes of San Francisco in a patchwork of historic preservation zones.
San Francisco’s planning and permitting process has long been notoriously laborious. Then, in 2008, voters passed a ballot initiative that transformed the city’s Historical Preservation Commission from an advisory body to one with enforcement powers over land use decisions. The measure, backed by Aaron Peskin, the outgoing Board of Supervisors president, was seen as a coup de grâce by the antidevelopment members of the board who had risen in power during the 2000s.
Meanwhile, the Planning Department was evaluating more areas to see if they should be added to the 11 existing districts. As more buildings were included in potential landmark districts, and thus subject to additional review by planning officials, more architects and homeowners worried that city staff members were overextending their reach.
In 2009 the Board of Supervisors considered legislation, also backed by Peskin, who by then was Democratic County Central Committee president, that opponents feared would have allowed any citizens’ group with the term “historical preservation” in its bylaws to block construction projects for 180 days. The city’s building trades unions were so concerned about the proposal that they picketed a Central Committee meeting.
That legislation was delayed, but the issue of how historical preservation will be put into effect here has been creeping back into San Francisco politics.
Historical preservationists have identified potential new targets in far-less obvious places than Duboce Park. Proposed landmark areas, some already under Planning Department consideration, include car dealerships along Van Ness Avenue, described by preservationists as “automobile support structures.” They include industrial neighborhoods in the South of Market and Mission districts, and in Showplace Square.
For some historic building buffs, however, the Duboce Park backlash raises the question: If city preservationists cannot obtain support for preserving a pristine cluster of Victorian houses, will they be able to proceed with seemingly more controversial plans to keep development out of dormant industrial zones?
“It’s disappointing we’re running into the kind of opposition that we are in a neighborhood that should be just a slam dunk,” said David Troup, treasurer of the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, which contains the four blocks surrounding Beckstead’s house and has for years been pushing for the landmark designation.
Nick P
W H I T E P R O B L E M S
Is the Citizen turning into NYT? See also: http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-most-emailed-new-york-times-article-ever
U Ragazzu
Is this what keeps the millionaires from losing sleep? Must be nice!
M L
The problem is that perfectly sound ideas (like keeping owners of Victorians from doing unto them what they did in the 1960's) around preservation get shoved into the land of imbecilic dementia otherwise known as SF Governmental regulation and its enforcers.
The results are outright wild to see in action. To own a home in this city is to learn to absolutely despise its regulators.
They are nuts. In my 13 years of ownership I have witnessed the heavy handed, clueless zealotry of:
the water police (they hate Hetch Hetchy)
the tree police (they freak out when you trim ANY tree)
the historic house police (this article)
the parking police (100's of new meters in residential neighborhoods!)
the zoning police (sheer insanity and empty buildings)
the street shaping police (new curbs and pavement every year to suit their fancy)
the permit police (this article)
the traffic calming police (re-timed stop lights that cause congestion)
the land use police (not to be confused with the zoning police)
the noise police (they like noise, so good luck with that)
the fireplace police (seriously)
...and so on.
Slack Dammit
“And there needs to be more care in the design of alterations and additions, to make sure they’re compatible.”
What's needed, I spect, is a crew of architects to assist the owners in the design of alterations. Free of charge, naturally. Good architects are notorious seducers. They talk owners in-to and out-of all kinds of stuff.
The taxman should cut the owners of these public treasures some slack, lot'sa slack. Pimp your house; get a tax break.
These are not stunningly original ideas, and, most likely moves have been made in the direction suggested. As well,this is a subject that begs for, detailed, balanced reporting...hard to do, hard to read.
Winthrop, Buffalo, NY
Robert Montgomery
Slow down there buddy! You're applying logic to a situation in which there is none. Stop now before SF creates a new bureaucracy to control reasonable ideas.
Michael Hamman
The other commenters have it right, the concepts and goals of historic preservation have wide support in the town, it is the inept and obtuse bureaucracies of City Planning and Building Inspection that create the problems. They are designed from the top down with no input or concern for the people they regulate. Their main concern is the care and feeding of the organization. Like a cancer they have divided and sub-divided into a bewildering array of departments, divisions, and units, each struggling to preserve their turf and budget. A recent project to move a non-load bearing wall in a historical building required approval from eleven different stations, each subject to sick days, vacation, lunch, and just plain being too busy, thus, the process took over a month. This is completely unnecessary and has noting to do with historical preservation for each of the stations simply stamped the plans without comment. It is this PROCESS that makes people crazy. It should be possible to work with the agency to craft a solution to achieve BOTH the owners program and the preservation of the historical neighborhood charter's in a few days with a minimum of fees.
I realize the difficulty of completely transforming the nature of these bureaucracies overnight, but how is this for a New Years Resolution: To reform the process for a "historical" permit so that it only takes a few days. By years-end to make a "historical" permit the easiest and cheapest type of permit available. To schedule a series of public meetings starting in February to design a system to do just that. To continue with to current state of affairs will only invite rebellion.
Rich McCracken
One year permit delay? Mine took SEVEN YEARS to get through permitting. Historical Review and the Planning Departments are bad jokes. Very expensive and nightmarish jokes, that cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. The system is designed to make friendly neighbors fight one another, and turn good architects into bumbling messes. Only an an extremely patient and focused homeowner paired with an excellent builder at the top of his or her game can successfully run the entrenched gauntlet of ineptitude in San Francisco's Planning Departments.
Truth in Moderation
You're absolutely right that the system is designed to make friendly neighbors fight one another. We recently received a letter from the city instructing us on the myriad ways we can object to a neighbor's planned home renovation -- it all but encouraged us to object, and in San Francisco, our objection doesn't even need to have any legal basis.
Andrew Ferguson
Problem here is the subject which would have been wise to focus on Wiener; and the author. Matt Smith has foisted his bad-reporting style from the SFWeekly on to the Bay Times.
Anyone recall when he used to be a good reporter?
Wiener's proposed amendments to the Planning Code are bad. Period. And he came up with them at the last minute - after a lengthy process produced the city's proposed amendments which were first offered. Suddenly HPC and Planning Commission have to consider his proposals along with the the city's.
These proposals are typical Wiener: they go hand in hand with his recent ill-conceived ballot measures (E & F on the Nov '11 ballot). He identifies a "problem" and then proposes a "fix" for it that opens the door wide to developers.
Why is Smith toadying to him?
So if this had been a good article, the focus would have been on the inappropriateness of Wiener's proposals' timing and content, as well as exactly who will benefit from his legislation. As in his two ballot measures it is not the residents; it's big developers.
This is just one of oh! so many reasons why D8 voters are looking to recall Wiener.
R T
So essentially it is a bad article because it was not focused on what YOU think is important? Wow now that is self centered to the nth degree.
The proposals make sense to me. I think that the historic preservationists have taken too much power here in SF.
Greg Dewar
The problem in general is that city operates two ways: harsh "punishment" via regulations after the fact, but don't tell you in advance of a project how to comply and allowing the smallest, shrillest voice bring anything and everything to a halt, and have the full force of the City and its power to back them up.
There is no reason, no reflection, no sense of "how do we make things work so we don't f*ck up our city" and tell people how to do that. Instead they throw contradictory rules at you, then come after you afterwards.
And then of course there is our Board of Supervisors, who love to move the goalposts whenever someone is doing something they don't like. Just look at how "Supervisor" Campos last month moved the goalposts on AT&T who complied with the many rules, then he decided to change the rules on the fly and attack them in public. This time he lost, but think of all the times City .s and bureaucrats listened to the shrill few, and you can see why in the end NO ONE wins.
I don't think anyone wants to see a strip mall open up next to Duboce Park, but if someone owns a home over there and wants to make needed improvements so it can function in the second decade of the 21st century, they should be able to do so and there are ways to do so without adding glass towers to said structures. So long as the City and its residents operate on the punishment model and the 'endless contradictory rules" model and the "lets put everything on the ballot and get all emotional" model, no one is going to win.
Al -
But look, aren't these lovely?
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=pacific+heights&ll=37.789116,-122.449579&spn=0.006529,0.009291&client=opera&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest&hnear=Pacific+Heights,+San+Francisco,+California&gl=us&t=h&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=37.788747,-122.449701&panoid=FHgjDY8hFNIHHbdXUd8WTQ&cbp=12,354.14,,0,2.08