Summer 2002

At its July 8 meeting, the Glendale Planning Commission refused to recommend approval of a special setback ordinance requested by 14 of the 15 residents in the 1600 block of Allen Avenue.

Utilizing a procedure provided under city codes, the Allen Avenue residents petitioned the City to adopt a 35-foot setback on the block, which would conform the legal setback to the building line of existing homes. Under the R1R zoning currently applicable to the block, the legal setback is only 15 feet. Existing homes are set back 35 to 41 feet.

The proposed construction of a garage in the front yard of a home on the block within the existing building line prompted the action by the residents. The owner of this garage was the only owner who did not sign the petition.

Voting to recommend adoption of the ordinance were commission members Bob Lemke and new member Richard Ramirez. Voting to reject the ordinance were members Efrain Olivares and Aspet Davidian. Commissioner Nancy Burke was absent. The 2-2 split means the ordinance goes to Council without a recommendation.

The ordinance now goes to Council. Council has stated that it hoped to have the new ordinance become effective prior to expiration of a temporary stay on the issuance of building permits on the block adopted by Council last month.

The NWGHA and affected residents spoke in favor of the ordinance at the commission meeting. The applicant for the new garage in question spoke against the change.

Council has adopted the code changes described in last quarter’s Guardian giving Design Review Boards greater latitude to require a development project to be compatible with its neighborhood. The NWGHA has vigorously supported these changes and spoke in favor of their adoption.

With these changes, DRBs can now clearly impose conditions more stringent than the code otherwise permits in order to ensure compatibility. Previously, this was unclear.

Exemptions Create Problems
During Council’s earlier deliberations, the Association pointed out other DRB prob-lems caused by exemptions on certain projects such as decks and detached garages. These exempted projects do not require DRB review unless city staff determines they are not compatible with the surrounding area. We have recommended these exemp-tions be removed from the Code or severely restricted.

As an example of these DRB exemptions, staff allowed construction of a new detached garage on the 1600 block of Allen that would significantly change the character of the neighborhood. The new garage would be within the existing building line of the existing homes on the block (see adjacent story).

In that case, city staff did not recog-nize that the placement of this garage should have DRB review. Only because of intervention by the neighbors is the project now before DRB.

At the urging of Council, planning staff is now considering how to limit DRB exemptions. In fact, when questioned recently, most DRB members said they favored reducing the number of exemptions or eliminating them entirely.

It’s anticipated that staff will soon have specific proposals ready for review by the DRBs, Planning Com-mission, and Council.

Preserving Historical Neighborhoods; Moving Forward on Setbacks; Density Bonuses

As featured in the last issue of The Guardian, members of the Historic District Committee (HDC), a subcommittee of the Glendale Historic Society, have been diligently working to form the Cumberland Heights Historic District. The district would be bordered by Highland, Grandview, Kenneth and Mountain, with homes on both sides of the perimeter streets being included in the district.

Judging from the number of signatures the HDC obtained on a petition to lower the voting requirement to enact such a district and the number of homeowners who have attended HDC’s recent meetings, there is a good deal of interest in forming such a district.

A number of NWGHA board members, including myself, favor such a district. A few of our board members are more skeptical. But all of us feel that much more work needs to be done before the NWGHA can support a Cumberland Heights Historical District to our members. The devil is in the details.

As I testified before the historical and planning commissions on this matter, the ordinance underlying such a district needs more study and review (see story on adjacent page).

For instance, Glendale could model its historic ordinance on those of Los Angeles or Pasadena. Los Angeles does not otherwise have any design review and Pasadena’s design commission has only limited jurisdiction. Their ordinances require design review by a historical or cultural commission for projects within their historical districts.

However, Glendale already has citywide DRB review. So, rather than substituting Historical Commission review for DRB review, or adding Historical Commission review to DRB review, maybe it would be logical to have historical guidelines be administered by the existing DRBs for projects within a historical district. Perhaps a member of the Historical Commission could sit with a DRB when it reviews such projects.

We hope to work with and help the HDC in this process. We will also disseminate information to our members regarding the district and express our views at hearings and forums.

Mayor Raffi Manoukian and Councilman Bob Yousefian attended the June NWGHA Board meeting to discuss current issues.

Bob Yousefian, one of the founding members of the NWGHA, repeated his comments from a May Council meeting that he is anxious to correct R1R and R1 zoning anomalies in NW Glendale and to establish overlay zones in Northwest Glendale to conform legal setbacks to the actual building setbacks on streets where they exceed those required in R1R and R1 zones.

Such overlay zones could be enacted by Council after appropriate public hearings without the necessity of residents on each affected block having to petition the city to do so, as the residents did on Allen Avenue. This is a natural extension of the Allen Avenue setback issue discussed on the front page of The Guardian.

Mayor Manoukian also expressed interest in working with the NWGHA on these and other issues of importance to homeowners.

In closing, we should applaud the current city council, which is the most pro-homeowner council in recent memory. We are optimistic that many of the issues that have festered over the years can now be resolved.

Of equal importance, this Council seems determined to correct many matters that have escaped notice over the years.

For instance, density bonuses, an arcane feature of zoning codes, allows developers to build more units on a site when parcels are combined than could have been built on the same parcels if developed separately, on the theory that fewer side setbacks are needed.

Density bonuses permitted the large apartment building now under construction at Stocker and Central- and this project still has fewer units than the code actually allowed!

Your Association’s annual meeting was held on Saturday, April 10, 2002 at Brand Library. Guest speaker was Fred deLange, General Manager of the Glendale Humane Society.

Board members up for reelection, Dean Briggs, Randy Carter, Kathleen Giachino and Mary Roe Grim, were reelected to two-year terms.

Current NWGHA officers were reelected to their current positions at the July 10 meeting of the Board.

Efforts to revise Glendale’s historic preservation ordinance to facilitate the establishment of the Cumberland Heights Historic District took several twists and turns this month.

The Historic Districting Committee (HDC), headed by Helen Sipsas, has been focusing its efforts on amending the existing ordinance to reduce the voting requirement to enact such a district.

The present ordinance requires the approval of 100% of the property owners in a proposed district before it can be enacted. The HDC is seeking to lower the requirement to 51%, which is the percentage required to create a historical district in Los Angeles (which currently has 15 such historical districts with another 12 pending).

The committee focused on the voting requirement first because it felt that unless the Council demonstrated a willingness to lower the voting requirement, it would be impossible to approve a historical district, and efforts to amend the existing ordinance would, therefore, be a wasted effort. The HDC has circulated a petition among neighbors towards this end.

At its July 1 meeting, the Glendale Historical Commission considered proposed amendments to the current ordinance drafted by the Planning Division that would have reduced the voting requirement to 66-2/3% and incorporated a number of other modest changes in an effort to make the existing ordinance, designed for single structures, work for an entire district.

Peter Fuad, NWGHA president spoke at the Commission hearing and stated that, before the NWGHA could take a position on a historic district, including what the appropriate voting percentage should be, the ordinance underlying such a district needed a thorough study and review, similar to that done in connection with adoption of the fence ordinance.

This would include looking at historic ordinances in other cities and speaking with residents and commission members from those cities to ascertain how their ordinances were working and what Glendale could learn from their experiences. He stated that the ordinance before the commission was wholly inadequate for a historical district.

At the hearing, the HDC presented a substantially revised ordinance which they had drafted incorporating provisions from the Pasadena historical ordinance.

In view of the testimony and conflicting views expressed at the hearing, Jim Glaser, assistant city planning director, recommend continuing the matter until there was more public input and study, the position advocated by the NWGHA.

Nonetheless, the Historical Commission voted to recommend to the Planning Commission that the existing ordinance be amended, but only to change the voting requirement to 51%. The other changes were rejected.

At the July 8 Planning Commission meeting, Peter Fuad, Helen Sipsas and Arlene Vidor, president of the Glendale Historical Society, recommended continuing the matter, and the Planning Commission agreed.

The HDC and the NWGHA now hope to work with Planning Staff and Council to develop a suitable historical ordinance for Glendale to present to Council.

HDC members hope that Glendale, with its rich inventory of historic homes and residential districts, can now catch up with other cities in protecting and preserving them.

Neighbors See Red on Big Blue KABC7 Freeway Sign

Although not strictly in Northwest Glendale, the NWGHA has taken an interest in efforts by members of the Rancho Homeowners Association who are trying to ameliorate the impacts of the big blue KABC7 at the interchange of the 134 and Golden State Freeways.

In a meeting held June 10 at KABC, Rancho residents and NWGHA officers described the negative impacts of the sign, which looms over the Rancho neighborhood. Comments focused on the intensity of the lighting, the height of the sign and the way in which the sign was approved by the city. Residents and city officials asked KABC to take steps to reduce those effects. Those mitigation measures might include dimming the sign, eliminating or minimizing the read-a-board, limiting the hours that the sign is lighted and lowering the sign. Channel 7 has promised to respond to the group shortly.

Attending the meeting were KABC station manager Arnie Kliner, Vice President, Predevelopment of Disney Imagineering Ed Chuchla, NWGHA president Peter Fuad and vice president Lawrence Kalfayan, Homeowner Coordinating Council president Carole Sussman, Rancho homeowners president Joanne Hedge, other Rancho residents, Glendale City Manager Jim Starbird and Director of Planning Elaine Wilkerson.

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Teresa’s Boutique opened in 1969 at the location that was later occupied by Art’s Video. After 2 years Teresa moved the dressmaker shop to its current location and where it remains a fixture in the Kenneth Road Village.

Teresa moved from Iran in 1957 to Oklahoma as an exchange student with her husband. She earned a degree in Business from Oklahoma State University. Five years later she moved with her husband to California.

As early as 4 years old, Teresa sewed with her grandmother who was a designer. She opened the boutique and hired a Paris designer and five dressmakers for her shop. The designer moved on after 5 years to work for Bob Macke and Teresa took over. Although the business changed and Teresa, now semi-retired, does mainly repairs and alterations, custom designed clothing in the fabric of your choice is still an option as well as some fine lines of off the rack clothing. Her customers are like family to her and some have been frequenting the boutique for four generations.

Teresa’s Boutique, located at 1412 West Kenneth Road in the Kenneth Road Village is the place to go for anything from off the rack, custom designed and finely crafted clothing to repairs and alterations. Telephone 818-247-1441 to make an appointment or drop in to see Teresa in person.