Feature Stories
Mansionization Issue Goes to Council
by Cindy Frye
At its public hearing scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 18, the Long Beach City Council may be changing the course of residential living in a number of areas in this city of nearly one-half million people if the nine members approve zoning amendments that, as one local realtor predicts, “could be the blow that knocks out Long Beach.”
After Planning and Building Department staff met for a number of weeks with homeowners living in areas where over-built remodels are popping up and causing concern in Belmont Heights, Belmont Shore/Naples, Los Cerritos and Rancho Estates, city officials soon learned that homeowners in these older and more established parts of the city fear that the character of their neighborhoods were losing their charm and that older homes were being demolished to make way for “bigger and better” versions of their former selves.
Representatives from established neighborhood groups such as the Belmont Heights Community Association have told the city that the character of their homes are “irreplaceable” and want the growing trend of “mansionization” to be halted in their neighborhood. Mansionization is when new structures or additions are larger in size and out of character with the existing houses in a neighborhood.
Homeowners in the East Long Beach neighborhood of the Rancho Estates are concerned that two-story remodels are diminishing the Cliff May-designed homes that have distinctive low rooflines and open-to-the-outside features that are unique to the Long Beach fabric.
What the City Council will be deciding next week is if recommendations by the council’s three-member Housing and Neighborhoods Committees will help alleviate the concern that outsized remodels will destroy the charm and character of the city’s older established neighborhoods.
The short-term solutions being proposed are interim ordinances that deal with limitations on rebuilds. In general, these include a short-term measure that would stop “out of character” remodels such as in the Belmont Heights community, additional review or prohibition of demolition permits for single-family homes 45 years or older, reducing current development rights and standards, increasing required setbacks and step backs, reducing Floor Area Ratios (FAR) and the increasing of lot coverage requirements.
Committee members Bonnie Lowenthal, 1st District and committee chair, Rae Gabelich, 8th District and Val Lerch, 9th District, also are recommending that city staff continue to meet with community associations in impacted neighborhoods to determine the best way to address the mansionization issue.
The Planning and Building Department already has conducted a number of meetings to get preliminary input from neighborhood groups and has accommodated additional input by providing a survey through its website.
In the Rancho Estates neighborhood, additional recommendations made by the council committee include an immediate limit or prohibition of second-story additions and the development of guidelines to preserve the character of the May designed mid-century homes.
But what real estate industry professionals are concerned about is how these limitations will affect those new homeowners wishing to upgrade or build additional living space to “functionally obsolete” older homes.
John McNaughton, a 30-year real estate veteran in Long Beach, decries the city’s efforts to limit or halt remodels.
“This could be a knock-out punch to the failing market looming over the industry,” McNaughton told the Beachcomber. He said that for instance, when a 600 square-foot home with one garage is not allowed a remodel, that could hamper any future sales. In addition, he said, the moratoriums could be detrimental to contractors, retailers, plumbers and developers who make their living from the building industry.
“We already have a good planning department and have a good system in place,” he said. “To come up with more restrictions is totally out of control,” he added.
A number of Southern California cities like Redondo Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes, Seal Beach and others have put mansionization ordinances into place that protect the integrity of their established neighborhoods. Even Los Angeles has enacted a Baseline Mansionization Ordinance that lowers the overall FAR and has lowered the maximum height for second stories and has established a one-story height district.
A recent online survey conducted by the Beachcomber suggests that a majority of respondents would like to see Long Beach follow L.A.’s lead and restrict home size to 25-50 percent of the lot size. The results of this survey as of Sept. 9 reveal that 66.1 percent would like to see the restrictions, 30.4 percent said they would not and 3.6 percent were undecided.
“This isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation,” said Suzanne Frick, Director of the Long Beach Planning and Building Department.
Frick told the Beachcomber that recommendations will be for specific neighborhoods and guided by the property owners. She said the city “will not dictate” what happens in the neighborhoods. She also said only two residential communities – Belmont Heights and Rancho Estates – have expressed a real concern about the remodel and mansionization issues and may be the only two areas to experience any changes.
|