Many major cities in Southern California already have historic district ordinances, including Los Angeles, Pasadena and Long Beach. Bungalow Heaven in Pasadena and Angeleno Heights in Los Angeles are two historic districts that have received particular acclaim from preservationists and have improved property values in those areas.
The city of Glendale is long overdue for its own historic district ordinance, said Jane Brown, a member of the Adams Hill Historic Districting Committee, which was organized to lobby for a historical designation for the venerable neighborhood in the southeast of the city.
"It is a community's basic right to have some sort of guidelines, some sort of procedure if they want to apply for historic districting status," Brown told the Historic Preservation Commission during its meeting on Monday. "If a neighborhood wants to throw a block party or an event, there are procedures and city guidelines that must be adhered to. Likewise, if a block of homeowners, or if several blocks of homeowners want to come together and establish their neighborhood as a historic district, they have both the right to do so, and the right to follow a fair and democratic procedure in establishing that district."
The guidelines were reached after several months and four community outreach meetings held by the city since January. They were crafted by a 19-member citizen's advisory board made up of real estate agents, architects, residents and representatives from several city homeowners associations under the direction of city staff members and consultants from Architectural Resources Group of Pasadena.
