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By Jorge Casuso
June 26 -- Moved twice and saved twice from demolition,
Santa Monica’s last remaining shotgun house could reach
the end of the road Tuesday, when the City Council votes on
whether to give the 100-year-old structure a permanent home.
The council is expected to decide whether to back staff’s
proposal to move the house from the old Fisher Lumber site,
where it is currently being stored, to a surface lot across
from the Ocean Park Library, not far from its longtime home.
“We need a permanent site,” said Sherrill Kushner,
who chairs the Santa Monica Conservancy’s Shotgun House
Committee. “It has as much relevance as a gorgeous Victorian.
It’s how our city began after the tents.
“It has as much right and importance as the buildings
we’ve saved,” Kushner said. “Just because
it’s small” doesn’t mean it doesn’t
deserve to be preserved.
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| Shotgun house at original
site at 2712 Second Street (Photos courtesy of the Santa
Monica Conservancy) |
If the council approves the move, it will also authorize
the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP) to select a
non-profit organization to relocate, rehabilitate and lease
the house from the City for a “public benefit purpose.”
The conservancy plans to respond to the RFP and raise the
$250,000 the City estimates it will take to fulfill the requirements
to save the last of some 200 small cottages that lined the
coastal zone 100 years ago.
If successful, the house -- which is little more than 400
square feet -- could be used as a “possible resource
center and mini-museum where people could see how Santa Monicans
lived here in the 1890s,” Kushner said.
But the conservancy could be facing an uphill climb.
Council member Bob Holbrook, who is a history buff and staunch
supporter of the City’s Historical Society, is skeptical
about the effort.
When the City saved the house, he told Kushner at a fundraiser
for the society’s new museum Sunday, “You promised
you’d take care of it, that you wouldn’t be coming
back to us.”
Kushner pleaded the conservancy’s case, but it remains
unclear where Holbrook, and some of his council colleagues,
stand on the issue.
Tuesday’s anticipated vote comes nearly ten years after
the structure was designated a City Landmark in 1998.
“If the Council does not approve the recommended site
for the House as proposed,” staff wrote to the council,
“it may wish to consider selling the building to a private
entity for personal use.”
If the City fails to find a buyer, it could end a decade-long
saga that began when the Ocean Park Community Organization
(OPCO), a once-influential neighborhood group that was fighting
for survival, made saving the dilapidated structure its central
crusade.
The structure was moved to an airport hangar in July 2002,
where it sat while OPCO tried to raise the money needed to
purchase and relocate the house to a permanent site, but the
group fell apart amidst allegations its leader had mishandled
funds.
In November 2005, the house was evicted from the hanger to
make way for the construction of Airport Park. But a proposed
move to the Community Gardens in Ocean Park was blocked after
some 50 gardeners converged on a meeting of the City’s
Recreation and Parks Commission.
The gardeners successfully blocked the relocation of the
house, which would have been used as a storage room or restroom
facility, and the structure was moved to its current site.
The proposed permanent site on Norman Place and Second Street
across from the library was one of 17 potential locations
conservancy leaders visited with City officials.
“Of the sites we looked at, this is the best,”
said Kushner. “It would retain its authenticity, facing
the direction it faced originally.”
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