Last Sunday, the Santa Monica Conservancy held its 2026 Preservation Awards at the Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club on Fourth Street, and its Special Tribute Award went to Fred Fisher & Partners. If you don’t know the name, you know the work: Bergamot Station, the Annenberg Community Beach House, and City Hall East. Two of those began with something that already existed, a former rail stop and industrial site turned gallery complex and a surviving piece of the old Marion Davies beach estate, and the third was designed to sit respectfully beside a historic City Hall. Different buildings, one shared instinct: make what’s there work harder before you reach for the bulldozer.
Why a builder pays attention. I came up through construction before real estate, and the lesson that sticks is that bones are the hardest thing to buy back. Foundations, framing, ceiling heights, the way a house sits on its lot and catches the afternoon light: those cost the most to change, and they’re exactly what good preservation-minded design protects. Finishes are the cheap part, even when they don’t feel cheap.
What this means for older Westside homes. A lot of the Westside’s housing stock is mid-century or older: Spanish revivals north of Montana, post-war ranches in Brentwood, bungalows and courtyard buildings in Venice and Ocean Park. When buyers walk one, the reflex is to price the teardown. Sometimes that’s the right call. But the better question is what the house does well that a new build would struggle to copy: mature trees, generous setbacks that may predate today’s rules, plaster walls, old-growth lumber, proportions nobody value-engineered. A smart renovation keeps those and fixes what actually wears out, which is electrical, plumbing, seismic, roofing, insulation and windows.
The homework before you fall in love. Older homes come with questions that belong early in the process, not late in escrow. Is the property on a local historic resources inventory or inside a historic district? Has it been altered in ways that need permits cleaned up? What will a sewer lateral, panel upgrade or foundation bolting realistically cost? Each city on the Westside handles historic review its own way, so those are questions for the planning department, a preservation consultant or a land use attorney, not something to assume. I’d rather a client hear the hard answer during the inspection period than after closing.
The Penguin, and why it matters to the rest of us. The Conservancy also used the event to point people toward a December 14 hearing on the old Penguin coffee shop at 1670 Lincoln Boulevard, the late-1950s Googie building that now houses a Mel’s Drive-In. Whatever happens there, it’s a reminder that the character people pay to live near on the Westside, the diners, courtyards, beach houses and odd little commercial buildings, is a finite resource. Buyers notice it, even when they can’t put a name to it.
The bottom line. Not every old house deserves to be saved, and not every new one is soulless. But the best renovations I’ve seen on the Westside start with respect for what’s already there. Look past the dated kitchen and study the bones. Construction background. Market data. No sugarcoating.
Thinking about buying or selling on the Westside? Let’s talk.