Eastmoreland finds a way out

While United Neighborhoods for Reform continues to gather support for the demolition/development resolution, and prepares for its presentation to City Council on Dec. 17, others have creatively worked to combat the trash-and-build style of development practiced citywide. Eastmoreland, in particular, seems to have aced it.

This building isn't in Eastmoreland, but it's a winner, too.
The owners of the site at Northeast Alameda and Fremont
turned the wilting Wilshire Market into a restaurant in a
nice case of building reuse and rejuvenation
that we don't see often enough.

The leafy Southeast neighborhood has managed to propose rezoning itself R7 from R5, which makes lot-splitting and shoehorning of new homes into the established neighborhood a real difficulty, maybe even an impossibility, for developers. After some high-profile cases (one in which neighbors paid a developer's ransom to save a house from demolition), neighborhood leaders there found a solution that protects hundreds of properties from speculative razing and dividing.

Perhaps this "Eastmoreland advantage" can be applied elsewhere? It sure would be a lot easier to apply a blanket protection to an entire neighborhood than to play Whac-A-Mole at the ground level.