HISTORIC
STRUCTURE PRESERVATION
Summary
The City of South Pasadena, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and other preservation organizations continue to portray the 710 Freeway Gap Closure as "destroying" hundreds of historic structures in the City of South Pasadena and Pasadena. Years ago, when the freeway route was first proposed, the impact on historic structures was significant enough for a court to order a new Environmental Impact Statement. That was then.
Today, as a result of extraordinary concessions to the City of South Pasadena and other communities, the number of historic properties that must be demolished has been reduced to just five, and only one of these properties is in the City of South Pasadena. In an extraordinary effort to save the historic structures in the freeway path and reduce the impact on adjoining properties, the Federal Government and Caltrans have committed to depress the freeway for most of the entire length of the project and to build six cut and cover "tunnels." Once the cut and cover segments are constructed, soil will be replaced on top and historic homes physically moved and stored off the right of way, will be returned to a reconstructed set of streets on top of the cut and cover segment. The affected communities will be protected to an extraordinary level.
The Details
Project Opponents’
Strategy: Stop the Freeway by Nominating for Historic Status
If any issue generates sympathy for the 710 opponents, it is the issue
of historic structure preservation. And as might be expected, those who
seek to kill the 710 Gap Closure Project play this issue to the hilt.
Preserving our history and architectural heritage is a core value of the
Federal Government, preservation organizations such as the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, and many individuals. A sincere and extraordinary
effort to preserve historical resources is now in place, but 710 Project
opponents have cynically used the historic property issue to try to kill
the project.
One of the strategies of the 710 Project opponents to continually delay completion of the environmental studies of the project was the endless nomination of more houses and districts for the National Register for Historic Places. When one round of assessment of properties was complete, new properties would be nominated to public officials. As a result, four supplemental historic architectural survey reports were completed for the affected communities over several decades. This is not to suggest that the completion of a thorough survey of historic resources should not have occurred, just that the strategy of South Pasadena and others to drag out the assessment process as long as possible was a strategy with the ulterior motive of trying to kill the project. This viewpoint is supported by the fact that South Pasadena’s litigation attorney, Antonio Rossman, personally wrote letters to federal officials trying to nominate other neighborhoods in the 710 Freeway path as "historic."
For more details on the Historic Preservation issue for the 710 Freeway, please continue to read our more detailed sections listed below.