Panel to Weigh Streamlining Design Reviews : Preservation: Angelino Heights group wants to speed up projects.

In January, 1984, an innovative Los Angeles city law gave broad powers to a neighborhood board in Angelino Heights, allowing it to review everything from home demolitions to minor fix-up projects to preserve the community’s historic character.

Just six months later, the board decided the law itself needed fixing.

On Wednesday, seven years after the changes were first proposed, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission will finally conduct a public discussion on amending the law. The outcome will be monitored by community leaders in Highland Park and Eagle Rock, who are also seeking historic zoning.

The Angelino Heights Historic Preservation Assn. near Echo Park is asking for amendments that would help homeowners move their projects through the Los Angeles bureaucracy more quickly. The proposed changes would give even more power to the neighborhood’s design review board by allowing it to approve modest, non-controversial projects, such as a new window that blends with the original architecture.

Now the board only makes recommendations to city planners, who give final approval to proposed projects.

The panel’s recommendations will be forwarded to the Los Angeles Planning Commission as a first step toward revising the ordinance that grants special protection to Angelino Heights and three other historic neighborhoods.

“I almost lost heart,” said Thomas M. Morales, chairman of the Angelino Heights association and a longtime proponent of the changes. “I thought, ‘By the time they do this, I’ll be dead.’ ”

In September, 1983, the Los Angeles City Council designated Angelino Heights, just east of Echo Park, as the city’s first historic preservation overlay zone, or HPOZ. The zoning applies to about 300 structures, including many Victorian-, Craftsman- and Mission Revival-style houses, some more than a century old.

The law allows a neighborhood board to review all demolition, renovation and construction projects to make sure that they will not detract from the community’s character. The Angelino Heights board began meeting in January, 1984.

Since then, three other historic zones have been established: Melrose Hill in Hollywood, South Carthay southeast of Beverly Hills and North Miracle Mile near Hancock Park. Leaders of these boards said they also believe that the law needs to be revised.

Any changes to the law must ultimately be approved by the City Council. But the revisions must first overcome objections from city staff members who are reluctant to give more power to an unpaid five-member neighborhood board.

Morales said he simply wants to streamline the process for people who want to repair or embellish their aging houses. “We want to make it easier and more workable for the applicant and also minimize the expense,” he said.

Most homeowners now must pay $298 for a “certificate of appropriateness” from the city after a project is approved by the neighborhood board. Morales wants to eliminate the planners’ review--and the fee--for projects that have minimal impact on the neighborhood.

City staff members left the proposal in limbo for several years, then abandoned it after the city attorney’s office expressed objections, Morales said.

But Assistant City Atty. Mark L. Brown, who advises the Cultural Heritage Commission, said it was the neighborhood group that dropped the ball.

“The city’s response was that some of the changes were not acceptable,” Brown said. “The community that proposed the changes more or less dropped the idea of negotiating out the changes.”

He said his office was concerned about transferring important approval powers to the neighborhood board. “It’s a matter of the city retaining sufficient responsibility for the actions of HPOZ associations,” Brown said. “It’s a question of accountability more than liability.

“I think there are two issues: first, whether there is a need for greater local control and, if there is, in what manner can the city ensure that the city knows what kind of decisions are being made by the associations?”

Just north of Angelino Heights, community leaders are carefully observing the debate over how historic neighborhoods should be governed. Highland Park and Eagle Rock also have numerous historic houses, and some residents want the special-zoning protection.

City planners and neighborhood leaders have conducted extensive research on historic houses in Highland Park. The Cultural Heritage Commission is expected to consider boundaries for a new historic preservation overlay zone in that community within two months.

“As you have more of these, I think the law and the process need to be made a lot clearer,” said Heather Hoggan, who owns a historic house in Highland Park and favors the special zoning. “It’s incredibly confusing. I was helping somebody go through the ordinance. When you look at it closely, it doesn’t always make sense. There were some ambiguities in it. It does need to be looked at.”

Proponents of the Highland Park historic overlay zone have heard from Morales and the other associations about the fees and bureaucratic delays that can occur when home improvements are processed under the present law. They fear that such hurdles may erode support for protective zoning in Highland Park.

“One of the things that scares people about this is that construction is time-consuming, and this is just one more thing,” Hoggan said.

Architect Richard Barron, another proponent of historic zoning in Highland Park, said: “My gut feeling is that Morales is right, that it needs to be simplified. But the question is: At what point does the planning department need to get involved?”

Some city staff members and community leaders have suggested allowing the neighborhood board to approve only projects valued at less than $5,000 without a review by the planning department. Such limits are expected to be discussed before the Cultural Heritage Commission next week.

The zoning debate has citywide implications. At least half a dozen Los Angeles neighborhoods are looking into historic zoning protection, said Teresa Grimes, a preservation expert with the Los Angeles Conservancy, a 6,000-member nonprofit group that seeks to protect historic sites.

She and other history buffs believe that this may be a good time to scrutinize the entire historic zoning law.

“I’m not saying it’s not a good ordinance,” Grimes said. “But the ordinance is quite old, and I think now that it’s been implemented in four different neighborhoods, it might be time to look at revising it. When you write an ordinance, there are all kinds of things that you can’t anticipate happening.”

She said that because historic preservation projects rarely come before city planners, it is not surprising that confusion and processing delays occur.

“The fact of the matter is that the people who are serving on the neighborhood boards have more expertise in preservation issues than the people at City Hall,” Grimes said. “As far as accountability is concerned, although the people on the board are appointed, I think that because they’re from the neighborhood, they’re probably more accountable than some civil servants.”