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LOS ANGELES CONSERVANCY Pre ser vation Report Card | 2008

METHODOLOGY

To prepare the 2008 Los Angeles County Preservation Report Card, Los
Angeles Conservancy staff conducted phone interviews with represen-
tatives from each of the local governments in
Los Angeles County, from May through Octo-
ber 2008.

For each jurisdiction, we spoke with city repre-
sentatives who are directly involved with the
specific community’s planning review process,
as well as staff members responsible for over-
seeing historic preservation programs in cities
that have them. For ongoing reference, we also
compiled contact information for other people
in the community involved in historic preserva-
tion or compliance with the California Environ-
mental Quality Act (CEQA), an important
preservation tool in California.

We asked each interviewee about the following topics (described in more
depth in the next section):

• Current historic preservation issues in their respective cities
• What ordinances the city had in place to designate historic landmarks
or districts
• How long such ordinances had been in place
• How many resources had been designated as historic
• Whether the city had implemented the Mills Act Historic Property
Contracts Program, a valuable preservation incentive (see page 8)
• Whether the city had conducted surveys of historic and/or
architectural resources
Top: County of Los Angeles Hospital,
Old Administration Building (1909), Lincoln Heights
In addition to conducting interviews, Conservancy staff reviewed the ex-
(courtesy Fields Devereaux)
isting preservation ordinances of cities that have them. In most cases, a
Bottom: Historic resources are not limited to buildings.
city’s historic preservation ordinance is accessible through the official
La Laguna de San Gabriel Park (1965, San Gabriel)
is significant for its association with sculpture artist website of the city, within the municipal code.When possible, we also ob-
Benjamin Dominguez, whose whimsical concrete tained and reviewed city surveys of historic resources.We also checked
forms were designed as children’s play spaces.
with the National Park Service to identify which jurisdictions participate
Photo by Dean Cheng.
in the Certified Local Government Program, which indicates a strong
commitment to preservation (see page 10).

Conservancy staff evaluated the results using a ranking system based
on whether an individual jurisdiction had enacted certain identification or
protection programs or policies for historic resources. The rank then

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