After an extensive effort by residents of Santa Monica Canyon, the Los Angeles City Council recently approved Cultural Monument Status for the historic Canyon Gas station, according to George Wolfberg, chair of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association.
The designation means that the station building cannot be arbitrarily torn down or moved, and sets certain standards for restoration/rehabilitation of the building.
Chris Hoffman, the neighbor who bought the 17,000 square foot site that was owned by the Marquez family has agreed to sell the portion of the lot occupied by the station building to the neighbor to the north, Scott Prentice.
Hoffman will remove the underground fuel tanks and verify soil safety, as part of the process. Hoffman and Prentice met with the association board last week, and it expressed its support of Prentice’s proposal, which is scheduled to be reviewed by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board today.
Prentice described his proposal in a letter to his Canyon neighbors: “I currently live and work next door to the historic Marquez Filling Station. I have a small, 10-year-old architecture practice specializing in residential, retail/restaurant and post production projects. We are a small office of three people.“Using our firm’s extensive experience with adaptive reuse of historic structures, and in collaboration with City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage staff, we have come up with a plan that would restore this historic treasure as closely as possible to its original 1924 state. (See p. 133, A Walk Through the Canyon by Randy Young.).As part of our work we also plan to utilize the US Green Building Council’s LEED Standards creating an environmentally sensitive new home for Scott Prentice Architects.”
