Pictured: composite picture of hillsides looking north from Loma Alta debris basin. Photo courtesy altadenahills.org
by Michele Zack, Altadena Heritage
Special to Altadenablog
This morning, July 27, 2010, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve the Altadena Hillside Management Ordinance as an amendment to our Community Standards District (CSD).
Members of Altadena's HIllside Working Group, including Chair Patty Mulligen, Mark Goldschmidt, Bernice Brunswick, and Michele Zack
spoke in favor of the new plan, as did Gino Sund, chairman of
Altadena's Town Council. A few other residents, not so sure about this
particular ordinance, also spoke in favor of protecting the hillsides.
This is great news (although it will take another 30 or so days before it becomes law), and comes at the end of a more than five-year-long process that began with Altadena Heritage's "Future of our Hillsides" Community Round Table held at the library in October 2004. We started with the idea of an ordinance that would prevent development
such as occurred on Devonwood Drive — where a few houses were plopped on
top of an existing trail and stuck out of the ridgeline like sore
thumbs. These have since caused erosion and destruction of the hillside
below, as well as loss of privacy for some nearby homes. A look at
existing code in 2004 found that no laws had been broken. The group
collectively felt this was wrong, and that an amendment to our Community
Standards ordinance was in order.
The Hillside Working group met one Saturday a month from 2005-2009 to craft an ordinance that provides for greater scrutiny of hillside grading and development, and balances this with the rights of property owners who wish to remodel, build a garage, or rebuild after a natural disaster. It was a long and collaborative process that was amazingly successful in building consensus.
Homeowners, large property owners, and representatives from Altadena Town Council, Altadena Crest Trail Restoration Working Group, Altadena Heritage, Altadena Foothills Conservancy (now Arroyo and Foothills Conservancy), all worked together and with the LA County Regional Planning Dept. to come up with something everyone could agree on. A large community meeting last year drew over 100 people, most of whom supported protecting our hillsides, ridgelines, and trails from bad development, while allowing property owners some leeway in making improvements or building responsibly.
To view the new hillside plan, go to http://planning.lacounty.gov/view/altadena_community_standards_district_amendment_hillside_management/
You can also go to http://www.altadenahills.org/ to read more about our purpose, see maps and the ridgelines that are now protected.
Thanks to all who made this happen, including famed, recently deceased photographer Julius Shulman, who originally chided Altadena Heritage into doing something to protect our wonderful hillsides. He commented that heritage organizations too often focus just on saving old houses. But, he said, sweeping his arms towards our mountains at an Altadena Heritage event at Desdy Kellogg's craftsman studio, "Those mountains are your real heritage! I drove through Glendale today to get here from the West Side. Do you want your hillsides to look like that? You have a real treasure here in Altadena. You've got to protect your mountains!"
