Every year, the Santa Monica Conservancy issues a list of the best Santa Monica preservation projects and the most distinguished individuals working in this field. These awards are the equivalent for the preservation community of the Academy Awards since they honor exceptional achievement of firms and individuals. Specifically, these firms and individuals have improved the quality of our City by retaining or restoring, in new and creative ways, some part of its architectural or cultural heritage.
These are the owners, designers, builders, and consultant that literally do the “heavy lifting” of deciding and restructuring which parts of a building or project to preserve and which part to demolish or to adaptively reuse. This type of work is exceptionally labor-intensive, since it involves both maintaining the historically defining features of a building or object and also simultaneously upgrading it to current seismic, energy, maintenance, resilience, safety, and accessibility standards, while sometimes even changing its use. It’s often the architectural equivalent of putting a ship in a bottle. Consequently, this kind of historical work is both an art and a science done by teams of unusually skilled and dedicated individuals.
These awards cover a diverse range of projects from the largest to the smallest. They range from adding a 4-story 58-unit affordable apartment building to an existing 1957 meeting hall of Japanese residents, to restoring a beloved deco restaurant on Wilshire Blvd., to restoring a high school Viking sculpture, to a Public Library reading program package for adults covering topics like walking in LA and mental health. In addition, the awards also recognize the activities, often over a long time period of time, by individuals who have advanced the cause of Preservation in general.
Photo Caption: KFA and EAH Housing’s The Laurel with Nikkei hall
And the 2025 Preservation Award Winners are:
President’s Award – Jim Harris, Executive Director, Santa Monica Pier Corporation
Rehabilitation Residential Awards:
– 2501 2nd Street – Howard Lake Architects, Robert Chatte,l Historic Preservation Consultant.
– 518 Adelaide – Kerry and Jill Samovar, Owners.
– 4th Street Bungalows – Daniel and Berta Negari, XYZ, Owners
Rehabilitation Commercial Awards:
– 1460 3rd Street Promenade Keller Building – Google Store – The Festival Companies, Owners
– 1213 Wilshire Blvd – Diner Antonette – Bob Lynn, Owner
Stewardship Awards:
– 137 Hart – Levy House – Ashley Simonsen and Jamie Bora, Owners
– 1413 Michigan Avenue – The Laurel/Nikkei Hall – KFA Architects and EAH Housing
– Samohi Senior Bench and Viking Statue Restoration – SMMUSD and Silverlake Conservation
Community History Award
– Santa Monica Library Read, Engage, Discover Kits – Susan Lamb, Principal Librarian, Branch and Neighborhood Services
Mary Ann Hays Volunteer Service Award – Susan Healy Keene
Preservation Impact Award – Morgan Sykes Jaybush / Omgivning – House Relocation Project for Fire Recovery
SMart (Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow) congratulates all these winners, and hope that you too will appreciate their success. By preserving these buildings and objects, they anchor our personal and collective histories in time and space, so we all know
where we are and where we came from. We hope that you have enjoyed some of these projects in the past, and more importantly, will continue to enjoy them in the future.
These Preservation Awards will be presented to the winners on November 13, 2025 4:30 pm at the Landmarked Miles Play House (1130 Lincoln Blvd).
By Mario Fonda-Bonardi AIA
S.M.a.r.t. Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Mario Fonda-Bonardi, AIA, former Planning Commissioner, Robert H. Taylor, AIA, Architect, Dan Jansenson, former Building and Life Safety Commissioner, Samuel Tolkin, Architect, former Planning Commissioner, Michael Jolly, AIR-CRE, Jack Hillbrand, AIA, Landmarks Commission Architect, Phil Brock, former SM Mayor (Ret), Matt Hoefler, architect.
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