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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-02-13 Historic Resources Board Summary Minutes City of Palo Alto Page 1 HISTORIC RESOURCES BOARD MEETING MINUTES: February 13, 2025 Council Chambers & Zoom 8:30 AM Call to Order / Roll Call The Historic Resources Board (HRB) of the City of Palo Alto met on February 13, 2025 in Council Chambers and virtual teleconference at 8:32 a.m. Present: Chair Alisa Eagleston-Cieslewicz, Vice Chair Samantha Rohman, Boardmember Christian Pease, Boardmember Geddes Ulinskas, and Boardmember Caroline Willis Absent: None. Public Comment No requests to speak. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions No changes reported. City Official Reports 1. Historic Resources Board Schedule of Meetings and Assignments Steven Switzer, Historic Preservation Planner, provided a slide presentation with a schedule of all planned meetings for the year with a request to direct planned absences to his or Veronica’s attention. He announced new Council liaison, Councilmember Lu. He mentioned city staff’s attendance at a community meeting with local historical organizational groups. He announced that the 2025 Preservation Conference would be in Sacramento May 6 through May 10. Councilmember Lu introduced himself and offered his support to the HRB. Vice Chair Rohman inquired if the City training budget would be able to support the HRB’s participation in the Preservation Conference. Mr. Switzer agreed to look into that and see what available budget they had. Study Session City of Palo Alto Page 2 2. Historic Resources Board Discussion and Review of Certified Local Government (CLG) Annual Report Covering the 2023-2024 Reporting Period Mr. Switzer gave a slide presentation of the CLG Annual Report discussing the background and details. PUBLIC COMMENT None. Vice Chair Rohman reported that she and Boardmember Willis met with Gogo Heinrich and David Bauer a couple of weeks prior. David Bauer iterated the importance of being the CLG. Not every community in California is a certified local government and other communities look to the Historic Resources Board as an exemplar of historic preservation within the state. She stated it reaffirmed the trickle down of state standards for historic preservations. Boardmember Ulinskas queried if a training program was being scheduled for the Board members. He wanted to know if Board members needed to submit documentation of their trainings. Mr. Switzer replied that would be at the discretion of the state to determine the eligibility of required program training. Board members had historically conducted their training on their own. Staff has some capacity and budget to provide some assistance with trainings that come at a cost and those would be reported back and detailed in the report. He clarified that as Boardmember Ulinskas was a new member and not serving in the reporting period, it was listed on the trainings that there had been no training for him. He indicated typically there was email correspondence directed to staff for certification of training. Jennifer Armer, Assistant Director, added they would share when they were aware of conferences or other trainings. She indicated there were also online trainings and a variety of options that could be done at minimal or no cost. Boardmember Willis thought it was critical that they adopt the guidelines as mentioned on packet page 13. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz asked for information about the guidelines. Mr. Switzer remarked the section in question detailed whether the Board as well as staff were involved in the reviews of any alterations to structures or historic resources. In the current municipal code, it would be three review bodies: the ARB for commercial and multifamily which can direct their review to the Historic Resources Board, the Historic Resources Board would capture any reviews for single family residences and staff level review would be capturing any minor alteration that would be determined by the director. They had yet to create any design objective standards. He offered to add further clarifying language to that report to have it pursuant to the municipal code to clarify confusion about the objective design guidelines. City of Palo Alto Page 3 Vice Chair Rohman mentioned a specific property that had not come to the HRB for review and asked about the requirements in the code and if they were based on location and category. Mr. Switzer answered the review of the Board would capture either the downtown area, category one or two resources. Category three and four resources or contributor structures were not captured under the review of the Board or subject to HRB review. Historic district structure were subject to review of the Board and that captures all structures within those districts. There are instances going back to that section of the review bodies where if it was a re-roof or like-for-like material, that would not be brought before the Board but would be administered at the staff level. 3. Study Session to Discuss the HRB Awards and HRB Workplan Implementation Mr. Switzer provided a slide presentation about the HRB awards and 24/25 workplan implementation including workplan preparation details, workplan goals numbers 1 – 5, HRB Awards items, public participation, frequency of the awards, selection criteria in which he noted there needed to be direction to staff as to how far back they should consider the first award cycle, timing and HRB by-laws. PUBLIC COMMENT None. Vice Chair Rohman proposed designating each Board member responsible for each one of the five goals. Boardmember Willis wondered if the survey could be done with volunteers. She thought there was a lot they could do before they needed support from staff or Council. Ms. Armer added another example of work that could be done in advance would be the municipal code changes. That effort would likely be folded into the comprehensive update to the zoning code and their sections of the municipal code. If there were members of this body who wanted to go through and take a look at the relevant sections and put together a list of changes, issues or concerns, that could feed into the subsequent staff and consultant process as a way of moving forward without requiring staff time or allocation of additional resources from Council. Vice Chair Rohman invited Board members to express which goal they would be interested in owning. Boardmember Ulinskas expressed interest in goal number 4. He queried if exploring incentives would have to be a dialogue with the Planning Department who would have input on what sort of incentives could be offered. Mr. Switzer replied it would be looking at incentives or outreach to the community that they may have or desire to see on their property. City of Palo Alto Page 4 Ms. Armer added it would include outreach to other communities to see what kinds of incentives they had considered or implemented and what options or grants were available. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz was interested in goal 1. Vice Chair Rohman remarked Boardmember Pease had interest in goal 2. Male [inaudible 40:47]. Vice Chair Rohman commented she would be happy to own project 3 and reach out to local groups who could potentially help with that. Boardmember Willis stated she would be number 5. Boardmember Pease wanted to participate in the additional preservation incentives. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz stated they had ad hoc committees for 4 and 5 and 1 through 3 had point people. Vice Chair Rohman discussed a slide presentation including the HRB Preservation Awards proposal, discussion items for the Board, 2025 proposal: Preservation Achievement Award, a timeline and examples of Historic Preservation Award plaques. Boardmember Willis preferred having the awards every five years and as a standalone effort. She stated they were negotiating venues and it would be nice to have a budget. They hoped to negotiate with the history museum to do it there. She indicated they were working closely with PAST. They questioned doing joint awards every 5 or 2 years but she thought it was better to have City awards separate from the PAST awards. She thought they needed to see where the program was going. They saw the first year honoring the people whose shoulders they were building on. She invited input. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz preferred to not batch the awards with the ARB. She did not care if it was in the same year but different months but wanted them separated in terms of events and content. She was not enthusiastic about recognizing individuals. Boardmember Willis pointed out the contributions made by the individuals that were proposed and thought honoring their forebearers was a good way to start the awards. She thought they would do themselves an injustice if they only saw the projects they had seen. Boardmember Pease suggested naming the award after the mother of preservation in Palo Alto. He also agreed it should not be constrained to projects that went there. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz agreed if they wanted to acknowledge residential projects, they may have to look beyond what came in front of them. She stated that going forward most of their awards would be focused on the architecture and she thought it would be strange to kick it off with an award that did not mesh with the intended recipients of the program going forward. Boardmember Ulinskas asked if it would be a preservation award that would be given to all sorts of different projects or have different categories. City of Palo Alto Page 5 Vice Chair Rohman replied the initial proposal was people, projects and properties with the discretion every two or five years to create categories ad hoc. It was her understanding that the ARB creates categories for their awards each year based on the projects they see. Mr. Switzer added that they were in discussion with the ARB with determining which projects would be award winning. That had gone through four separate hearings. There was a list of close to 100 projects and subsequent hearings dwindled that down. They hoped to have the final iteration of that discussion and selecting those award winning projects the following week. There was discussion for this award Board to have five awards established and awarded out to projects. Going through those hearings took a considerable amount of work and time so there would be quite a bit of staff as well as time from Board members to do the research behind those items and dwindle down from that list. There was discussion about some honorable mentions or some other types of awards beyond the scope of the Board’s duties or reviewing these projects. It would be at the discretion of the Board to figure out what the award program would look like for the City. He thought keeping in mind with the scope of the Board’s duties would be prudent and having at least the majority of projects that had come before the Board or were subject to the Historic Preservation Ordinance would be good parameters. He thought the suggestion of potentially naming the awards after individuals rather than awarding them was favorable. Boardmember Pease wanted to hear thoughts on the split between residential and commercial in this regard. He thought there were big financial incentives for commercial and they were much more visible. He would tend to look at the residential more. He did not know how to balance those two things. Boardmember Ulinskas agreed commercial was more visible and incentivized to have their properties profiled. He thought having categories to show residential was welcome was good. He thought part of the awards was community outreach to let the public know they were interested in acknowledging good preservation. He described an award program his firm went for that had different categories. They had a category called the Reader's Choice Award that people could go online and vote for projects. Everyone nominated for that category would do an email blast to everyone they know to raise awareness. Boardmember Willis loved that idea. She thought it was all about engaging with the community and raising awareness about preservation. Vice Chair Rohman thought the reality was that if they did not feel confident about the proposed awardees this year, the HRB would not give awards this year. They could look to 2026 or look out to 2030 if they were going on the 5-year cycle. With the two-year cycle would be quick. She was not sure they could hold to it but there would be continuity of board members if with a two-year cycle. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz was comfortable saying they want to do a five-year cycle on the five-year but to go off cycle in 2026 for the initial one. She thought going back beyond 10 years was too long. Boardmember Pease asked if the idea that there would be different categories for each award cycle that would be determined in the context of that cycle. He liked the idea of having a people’s choice but wondered about having too many categories making them not special and about adding a multifamily. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz answered the idea was if they saw a project they thought was outstanding they would be able to recognize them. City of Palo Alto Page 6 Vice Chair Rohman indicated when they consulted PAST about their award categories, they had one for people, commercial, residential and Stanford. Boardmember Willis thought the first step would be reviewing and bringing back the possibilities from the last 10 years and also a list of projects that they could make a more educated judgement on if they did extend it to preservation projects that the HRB had not reviewed. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz assumed that would likely be homes that had engaged in projects they did not review that were subject to the Historic Preservation Ordinance and were on the local register. Mr. Switzer agreed to look into those items. He summarized his understanding to be that the next steps would be to come before the HRB with some amended language for the bylaws and getting that solidified for the next hearing as well as having a running list of either projects they could pull from a report from Accela. He was hearing a 10-year cycle and they could look back at either building permits for categories 1 – 4 to make the list. Vice Chair Rohman wanted to add adaptive reuse. She was also hearing there was not support for pushing the awards through this May based on what they had proposed. Boardmember Willis did not know if pulling out 10 years of projects and reviewing and picking them was a 1-year project. She wanted to see them start the program at the beginning with the people that got them there. She thought in looking at the projects they had reviewed, they would learn more about different kinds of awards. She suggesting compiling some information and looking at it as a body of work so they could see what the possibilities would be going ahead. She advised delayed putting the language in the ordinance or drafting the language until they had a clear idea of what the raw materials were. Boardmember Pease thought if they went ahead this year they should not have categories and just concentrate on one. Boardmember Willis commented not everyone could relate to a building or two but everyone could relate to other humans so she thought people was a good category to start with. Boardmember Ulinskas opined there was a finite number of founders of preservation in Palo Alto and recognizing them in the first round would kick off the awards then it would go into a more regular look back on projects. He thought that was a good way to do it. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz wanted to look at logistics such as having a plaque, what would need to happen on the City administrative end and if having a venue involved was realistic. Boardmember Pease felt those were good points. Vice Chair Rohman stated she was awaiting further conversations with the museum pending the discussion with the Board. It had been indicated they would get that space in kind. There was a concern about their certificate of insurance, which would be required for events. She recalled in 2022 it was indicated on a meeting minutes report that the ARB was interested in having a ceremony which indicated to her that potentially there was budget from the City. She suggested asking for in-kind donations of beverages, food and venue rental. City of Palo Alto Page 7 Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz was not sure they would be allowed to accept those donations. Mr. Switzer thought this was realistically a large ask. It was a short timeline to get everything gathered together and awarded. He explained why he believed 2026 was a more realistic timeline. Vice Chair Rohman was not worried about the logistics of said award ceremony or event as she was well-versed in putting things together quickly. She thought the contingencies on City budget, bylaws and guidelines was a real timeline they needed to be aware of. She summarized the two issues on the docket being support of the proposed first year awards being awarded to the people of preservation or preservation leaders in Palo Alto and when to start the awards. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz’s preference was to do it really well in 2026 and then move to a 5-year cadence. Boardmember Willis’ perspective was that even if they wait it would still be practice and their first attempt. She pointed out that a short timeframe would be a good excuse if it was not perfect. She did not think it needed to be fancy and that they could get some minor donations. The one thing they would like the City to do was put their seal on the awards. Boardmember Pease opined waiting a year was reasonable. Mr. Switzer suggested doing a straw poll of the interests of these items. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz mentioned her thoughts against awarding to people without the opportunity for community input in the way they hoped to engage. Vice Chair Rohman also had that thought as the community choice award was mentioned and the names they had come up with had been in concert with PAST but perhaps not with PAHA, Stanford and a general consensus of Palo Alto more broadly. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz asked if these folks had been recipients of past awards. Boardmember Willis did not believe they had been recipients of past awards. Vice Chair Rohman understood there was not a consensus from this Board on who or what they should be awarding and that it should be done this May. She thought the Board appreciated the bias for action but also thought it was important to have the full support of the HRB when doing these awards. She did not feel comfortable moving forward without the consensus of the HRB. Boardmember Willis offered to send resumes for the people that were being proposed for awards. She felt that was a solid place for them to start and since it would not be their traditional format, they would not be setting a precedent. She remarked that barging ahead was the best course. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz agreed there was not a consensus and wondered if it should be re-agendized. Vice Chair Rohman was in support of re-agendizing the item. The actions she recorded were proposed some amended language of the bylaws, recalculate for possibly starting in 2026 and examining resources with the City planners to see what resources are available. She believed they could re-propose City of Palo Alto Page 8 the people of preservation in addition to projects. She thought that was an ongoing discussion so they did not have the consensus to do this in 2025. Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz was interested in recognizing small projects as a category. Approval of Minutes 4. Approval of Historic Resources Board Draft Minutes of November 14, 2024 MOTION: Chair Eagleston-Cieslewicz moved to approve the minutes from the November 14, 2024, meeting. This was seconded by Boardmember Willis. VOTE: The motion carried 5-0 by voice vote. Announcements Vice Chair Rohman announced Boardmember Willis and she toured the museum in early December. The museum governing body had taken ownership of it. The opening was TBD pending an executive director who could curate exhibits. She also announced that the Menlo Forward Group would be having a joint Palo Alto-Menlo Park community meeting on February 22 about the project at 80 Willow Road. She would send the flyer to Mr. Switzer to be distributed. Boardmember Willis mentioned a book written by Bo Crane with different walking tours through Palo Alto, pictures and historic ads. Adjournment Adjourned at 9:58 a.m.