Amid the heartbreak of the Eaton fire’s catastrophic toll — his own home included — Hans Allhoff, chair of the group Altadena Heritage, sees an opportunity.

He and members of the group, which was formed in the early 1980s amid the local demolition of beloved old homes and mansions, see the aftermath of the mammoth blaze as a chance to reset a vision for the town, and to lay down a robust guide for rebuilding.

While they embrace the town’s uniqueness, they see a future that is not about rebuilding a carbon copy of Altadena. Instead, they want to use the tragedy as the catalyst for what they see as improving the beloved town.

But this vision will require something some may not want to hear: more time.

“A top line concern is that we miss an opportunity, in this race to rebuild and get back on our feet, that we miss an opportunity to tackle some bigger picture questions about our civic architecture and our civic structure and civic planning,” Allhoff said.

The race to rebuild has already begun with the state and county slashing bureaucratic barriers to the building process with the goal of getting people to a place to start rebuilding as soon as possible.

Environmental review requirements have been waived and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews have begun the estimated year-long process of clearing destroyed properties of debris.

From local politicians to the president of the United States, the mantra of quickly building back has echoed from Lake Avenue in Altadena to Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades, where residents are also picking up the pieces from its own devastating, monster fire.

Allhoff and others in his group want that rebuild to happen, but their vision comes with a plan that deals with bigger questions. To name a few, they include what commercial corridors will look like, how segments of the community that had been divided geographically can be united and how more beautiful commercial-urban cores can be created.

“You need planners who can look at all of that and get some ideas to look at where the opportunities are,” author and historian Michele Zack said. “Without a plan, we can see an opportunity and we’ll see it maybe built back just the way it was.”

Zack, also a member of the group, said suggestions at recent community meetings have included more restaurants, small businesses and places to shop instead of needing to go to Pasadena. In addition, the group is suggesting more walkability and connectivity between neighborhoods.

“Why couldn’t we have a running trail or something that went around Altadena that could be wide enough and flat enough to run?” Zack said. “Why couldn’t we have a little tram or something that would circle around to help to move people within Altadena in a way that doesn’t always require an individual car?”

Zack suggested Lake Avenue, on Altadena’s western side, as an example of a business district that could be bolstered to make room for more mixed-use to create a vibrant place to shop and gather.

Such ideas are gaining traction in the fire-weary community.

Liz Moule runs a Pasadena-based architectural and urban planning firm. The firm worked in Mississippi post-Hurricane Katrina to help with urban planning.

Moule also cited Lake Avenue as a possibility for revamping. Specifically, Lake’s wide street makes it unfriendly to patrons on foot. In L.A. County’s city of Lancaster, Moule’s firm developed a pedestrian and multi-use promenade in the middle of a major street inspired by Barcelona’s La Rambla.

However, Moule emphasized that a development idea is nothing without the community matching up.

People have to want a certain type of new development like the Lancaster example, and it has to match up with what people see as the character/identity of their town, she said.

“What we always do is we think first about what the nature of the place, the community is and what would be a solution that best fits it, rather than using templates of things that have been built before,” Moule said.

Getting the community on board is not always an easy task. And then there’s getting government to support that community’s vision.

One of the groups advocating for a seat at the rebuilding table is The Altadena Coalition, created in the wake of the fire by Freddy Sayegh, a local attorney whose family lost multiple structures in the fire.

Sayegh said the best way for Altadena to flex its political and financial muscle is by banding together and dictating to the government and building material manufacturers how the community wants to rebuild and critically how much it will cost.

“We should dictate to people how much we’re willing to pay, we should set the standards, and that is going to be the only way that we can build a million-dollar house for $500,000,” Sayegh said.

A town not planned like a city

In a way, it’s Altadena’s lack of cohesive planning over the last 100 years, driven by commercial, sociological and historic forces, that for many has given it its charm and unique character.

Altadena’s diverse and eclectic character dates back decades. According to Altadena Heritage, the subdivision began in 1887 and the area attracted the wealthy as well as artists, writers and blue-collar workers. A post-World War II building boom developed much of Altadena’s land, but it’s diversity in people came in the 1960s and 70s, due to a combination of red lining in Pasadena and white flight.

But as an unincorporated town that prized it’s independence from any localized “city hall” or administrative hub, it didn’t develop like a city.

To keep those elements valuable to Altadenans, Zack believes a plan is needed.

“If raw economic forces (i.e. land prices and the cost of construction) are allowed to prevail in the rebuilding, Altadena could become a rich, soulless enclave of huge houses where neighbors don’t know each other, and people who lost homes are pushed out,” Zack said in an email.

Marianne Cusato, a faculty member and director of the University of Notre Dame’s Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative, worked in communities devastated by manmade and natural disasters. Cusato said the key questions are the same, no matter what.

“The day before this disaster happened, were there things about your community that weren’t quite working? I don’t think there’s a single place in this country where the answer to that would be 100% ‘we love everything,’” Cusato said.

She cautioned residents against trying to find a perfect game plan and to have grace with each other through an effort that will take longer than expected, but that does have recovery at the end point.

“You just have to kind of muddle through it and it’s not organized, it’s uncomfortable, it’s political, it’s messy but it’s also the process,” Cusato said.

County on board?

For all the potential plans and visions for an improved Altadena coming out of disaster, Cusato, Allhoff and Zack acknowledged that the county has to be part of the process.

L.A. County Supervisor Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who has become a kind of de facto mayor of the town, which sits in her Fifth District, earlier this month announced the creation of the Altadena Recovery Commission, which will be made up of Altadena community members. The members of the commission have not been announced yet.

Zack and Allhoff hoped the county would consider drawing on the expertise of local urban planners to come up with possible improvement solutions.

In December, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a long-range planning document called the West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan, which will guide development in nine unincorporated communities, including Altadena.

The area plan, scheduled to be formally adopted by the supervisors on Tuesday, was part of the county’s process of updating its general plan. The West San Gabriel Valley was one of 11 areas included in the general plan that developed a plan and included updating the outdated 1986 Altadena Community Plan.

Connie Chung, deputy director with the advance planning division at the L.A. County Planning Department, said the plan covers general intended uses and intensity of those uses.

“There’s the plan itself, which kind of puts forth the vision, and then you could see zoning as an implementation of that vision,” Chung said.

While zoning describes the type of use with descriptions like “hardware store” or “mixed use,” it does not denote specific businesses that must be built in an area.

“What the zoning and land-use does not do is say ‘Starbucks here, Trader Joe’s there,’ which is a common question that we actually get,” Chung said. “It’s really just about the look and feel and the general types of uses that it will dictate.”

The plan’s goals are to support walkability, connectivity and community vibrancy.

Zack said the area plan, plus state mandated housing goals, can help increase density and the variety of available housing in Altadena. Further planning and design, she said, will be needed to maintain the town’s beautiful aesthetic.

Chung said the planning department would be open to working with community members who don’t see the existing standards matching their vision for the community.

According to L.A. County Planning’s website, anyone planning to build beyond a like-for-like replacement, such as one greater than a 10% increase, will be subject to current development standards and the project must be consistent with the area plan.

Altadena Wild contributed to the public review process of the plan and its president Michael Bicay said the plan will not be in conflict with the process of rebuilding Altadena.

Created in response to an attempt by Polytechnic School in Pasadena to build a sports complex in Altadena, the group focuses on advocating for the San Gabriel Mountains foothills.

“I think the area plan is entirely consistent with where Altadena wanted to go and the fire and the rebuilding is going to make it happen faster,” Bicay said.

Allhoff said that Altadena changing is inevitable. After all, his organization has been part of that change. He described the group as forward looking and socially active. They’ve stepped in when needed to preserve the town’s history while also advocating for its future.

In this new moment, he’s realistic about the forces that impact that change.

Some people will leave, people will like some of the structures built and others will not. His focus will be on the more “macro” goal of not losing the forest for the trees.

“We’ve got this amazing community with an amazing history and a really, really rich diversity that sort of has a singular vibe in Los Angeles County and let’s do this right,” Allhoff said.