Landmarks Commission Should Look to the Future, Too

June 21, 2011

Dear Editor,

With respect to Commissioner Fresco's Letter to the Editor ("Don't Erase Our Past," June 14, 2011), I wholeheartedly agree with my former Planning Commission colleague, Frank Gruber, in his balanced critique of the wayward portfolio of the Landmarks Commission.

To Commissioner Fresco, I ask her to define the "little bits of all the kinds of places" to which she refers and is so willing to do battle over. It seems those bits get smaller and smaller to the point of absurdity.

One could characterize Santa Monica as consistently having "High Hopes" (if anyone remembers the Frank Sinatra song) ending in middle-brow mediocrity. The Commissions interference seems now to have enforced this notion on the Civic Plaza, depriving the community of at least the chance to excel in the evolution of its urban environment. Is this consistent outcome worth preserving?

The Commission needs to have the kind of historical perspective that looks forward occasionally as well as backward and recognize that Santa Monica is still a young city in a young state in a (still) young nation with more of a future ahead than a past behind--at least let's hope.

They also need to bear in mind that there is an inexorable evolution of the built form implied by the parallel evolution of the social, economic, political and cultural aspects of our polity to which this built form must respond. Any urban environment over 300 years old is a testament to this. The past must inform but not to the degree that it thwarts, stultifies and otherwise diminishes the future.