San Diego softened its historic preservation rules Tuesday in order to accelerate homebuilding, despite objections from leading local historians and many Ocean Beach residents worried about community character.
The City Council voted 5-1 to approve a package of rule changes that include allowing the City Council to overrule the city’s Historical Resources Board when the board designates a property historic.
The updates also allow developers to take advantage of the city’s controversial Complete Communities incentive in Ocean Beach as long as a property isn’t the site of a historic cottage.
Developers and city officials praised the changes as modest and sensible reforms that will boost the impact of dozens of pro-housing updates and policies the council has approved in recent years.
Stefanie Benvenuto of the Building Industry Association said the changes will help avoid projects getting delayed or abandoned because of confusion about how city policies work.
“What our industry looks for is certainty, predictability and clarity,” Benvenuto said. “This is a very modest but very important step forward in that process and will help enhance all of the pro housing work this council and administration have already done.”
Bruce Coons, leader of the Save Our Heritage Organisation preservation group, said the updates threaten to politicize the historic preservation process by getting elected officials involved instead of just historic experts.
Coons also stressed that under the existing policy the City Council already gets final say in what happens to a historic structure even if it gets designated historic, they just have to consider tradeoffs.
He said only about 1% of housing units in the city are historic and that appeals of designations are rare, making the policy changes unnecessary.
“This is just not worth all the time and energy and money that the city is spending,” Coons said.
Councilmember Joe LaCava, who cast the lone no vote, agreed that the changes to the appeals process are unlikely to make a big difference.
“I don’t see any evidence that it’s actually an important tool,” he said. “But clearly in the public’s eyes, the fear of what it could be is disruptive.”
LaCava said the change seems like another city policy that angers many residents without major impact.
“I’m just exhausted from pissing people off for no apparent value,” he said.
But Councilmember Stephen Whitburn said the changes are a smart way to balance solving San Diego’s housing crisis with continuing to preserve truly historic structures.
“Every San Diegan who supports both historic preservation and housing affordability knows that we can achieve both,” he said.
Whitburn said he respects the expertise of the members of the Historic Resources Board and understands arguments in favor of the council deferring to them.
But he stressed that the city’s planning staff are also experts and noted the council is often asked to sort out the opinions of experts and come to crucial decisions.
Whitburn was joined in support by Vivian Moreno, Kent Lee, Henry Foster and Jennifer Campbell. Absent from the vote were Raul Campillo, Sean Elo-Rivera and Marni von Wilpert.
The proposal is the first half of a wide-ranging package of policy changes city officials are proposing in an effort to streamline rules protecting historic homes and buildings. The effort is called “Preservation and Progress.”
The second half of the package, which city officials describe as more complex and robust, may include limiting property tax breaks for historic homes and eliminating automatic historical review for buildings when they reach 45 years old.
The rest is expected to be announced later this year and possibly approved by the council before the end of 2026.
City officials say they will be the first comprehensive changes to the city’s historic preservation rules in 25 years.
The changes approved Tuesday include a declaration that a historic district featuring just over 70 cottages scattered across Ocean Beach does not make the entire neighborhood ineligible for the Complete Communities incentive.
The incentive does not apply to full-blown historic districts where historic properties are far more concentrated, city officials said. But the Ocean Beach cottages are too scattered for that to apply, they said.
Dozens of neighborhood residents spoke against the change, expressing concerns that the high-density housing commonly built under Complete Communities could ruin the small-scale, beachy feel of their neighborhood.
“Generations of community members have recognized that these small cottages and the surrounding neighborhood fabric define our historic coastal identity,” said neighborhood leader Mandy Havlik.
Lynne Miller of Coastal Caretakers said the policy change is a major threat to something special.
“OB is the last SoCal beach town to maintain its authentic scale and feel,” she said.
The changes approved Tuesday were unanimously opposed by the Community Planners Committee, an umbrella group of neighborhood planning groups.
For details on the second package of changes, visit sandiego.gov/preservationandprogress.