Historical Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

We're ready to upstart the meeting.

Yeah, I think we're ready. It's seven, right? Okay.

All right, we'll start with roll call. Board member Bevin. Here. Board member Burrito.

Present.

Chair Hernandez.

Present.

We have a quorum and board member Crody is not here.

Let's start off with non agenda public comments. Are there any online or in person non agenda comments?

Not seeing anybody online.

No one here?

Yeah, no non agenda public comments.

Okay, great. Item three minutes. Looks like we have two sets of meeting minutes to approve. The first one is from September 4 and the second one was from October 2. Let's take the September 4 meeting minutes which were continued from last meeting.

Right, so the September 4 minutes, the three of you were at that meeting and so you can vote to approve those minutes. The October 2 meeting looks like we don't have the same members here that were at that meeting. Right. So we can

Assuming you as a board member watched those video recordings, then in theory we could

Correct.

Also

So that would be board member Burrito if

Adopt a.

Had a chance to look at the videos. If not, that's fine. We'll carry it over.

I'm ashamed to say I did not watch it.

That's quite alright.

I apologize. Okay. So let's look at item 3A, our meeting minutes from September 4. Are there any comments on those meeting minutes? They looked good to me. Yeah,

look good to me.

Motion to approve minutes. This

is from September. For the September 4 meeting. I move to approve the minutes from the September 4 And

a second.

I'll second.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

And we've approved those.

Assuming you're also voting aye?

Yes, I voted aye.

Okay, great.

So the 3B item will just continue until next time.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. And that brings us to the regular agenda. So this one is the 1319 Clinton Avenue.

Yes. And Henry Dong will be giving the staff presentation, and I believe the applicant is also represented.

Super. Take it away, Henry.

Good evening Chair Hernandez, members of the board. I'm Henry Dong with the Planning, Building and Transportation Department. Tonight I'm joined by the applicant and their design team and then we're expecting the historic preservation consultant to join us as well.

Super.

So I'm gonna give a brief overview of the project and then the applicant would like to address the board and then we could open up for discussion and questions after that.

Great, thank you.

Let's see here.

Okay.

The request of the board tonight is a certificate of approval to demolish a pre-nineteen 42 structure as required by the Alameda Municipal Municipal Code. This is a single family home located at 1319 Clinton Avenue. If the board approves the certificate of approval tonight then staff will move forward with a separate process to review the design review application at a later date. But so the action tonight for the board is focused on this certificate of approval. So as mentioned the project's located at 1319 Clinton Avenue.

The site is zoned R1 residential district. All the surrounding neighborhood is also R1 residential and surrounding properties include single family homes and a fourplex located to the west of the site. The property is not listed on any local, state or national historic registry and the property is not listed on the city's historic building study list. This is the site plan for the project site. The site is roughly 9,000 square feet and approximately 150 feet deep.

It contains the single family home and a detached garage to the rear of the site. This is a image of the front elevation. As you can see the house has a deep front yard, stucco siding, an arched entryway and it has a roof that's in the process of being replaced. And the windows on the front elevation are have been switched out to vinyl windows. This is a close-up of the uncovered porch on the front elevation.

And then you can see there's also some brick skirting along the bottom of the building. This is an image of the side of the building and there's an alternate entrance into the kitchen. This is the image of the rear of the building. You can see there's the back porch and there are some older windows with kind of a arch configuration to them. And then here we have the image of the detached garage.

So the building was built in 1924 by Arthur E. Forderer. He was also the owner of the building. And let's see here. And the architect for the design of the building is unknown.

And as you can see the building was modified over the years and had an addition in 1926. The detached garage was replaced in 1981. There was a reroofing in 2002. And then in 2022 the building suffered a fire which damaged the roof of the home. So the applicant hired Garibaglia Architecture to perform a historic evaluation of the site.

Their evaluation determined that the property does not qualify to be included on any local, state, or national historic register or on the City Of Alameda historic building study list due to the following findings. The owner or tenants of the building are not eligible to be considered historically significant persons. The building does not represent the work of a master builder or architect nor does it embody distinctive characteristics of a particular type, period or method of construction. The style and design of the building is not architecturally significant and there are many other better examples of 1920 architecture within the city. And then there's no historical events that occurred at the site and the home is not a source of important historical information.

Based on the conclusion of the evaluation staff determined that board is able to make the findings for a certificate of approval and so those findings have been outlined in detail in our draft resolution. This is image of the new design of the replacement building. As mentioned, if the board approves the certificate of approval tonight staff will move forward with a separate review of the design review application. Preliminarily we feel that the project is compliant with the general plan, the zoning ordinance and our city's design review manual. We feel the mission revival design is similar to the neighboring building to the west of the site.

And the project provides decorative features and elements that are compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. With that our recommendation to the board tonight is to hold a public hearing and adopt the draft resolution approving the certificate of approval. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Henry.

Thank you. Thanks, Henry. Good evening, Chairman and Board Member. My name is Denny Bootyman. I'm one of the designer for the house for the project.

So just to add to what Henry said, started off this project as a remodeling project. But after a while, we quickly realized that it's probably better to just demolish the existing house knowing that the house was having a fire incident. And then a contractor pick up the work to repair, but never finished the job. And at some point, it was left open. They open up the roof, the 2nd Floor and went through like I believe it's 24 winter season with the rain and everything and then they just put the plywood seating and a tarp like what you see there is a blue tarp on top.

And when we designing the house as remodel, the client wanted to have the house move forward to be aligned with the neighbors on the eastern side. So knowing the condition of the existing house, we're not very confident that we can maintain the structural integrity of the house, the framing and everything. So we thought this will probably better serve as a new house that we can start it off as a clean slate and design the house that we believe will improve the value and also make the neighborhood looks nicer with the new house as a redesign. So that is basically the background while we request to demolish the existing structure and the garage. Right now, it's just basically an eyesore to the neighborhood.

It's just unfinished, faken and just not overall a good thing to see. So, that's basically it.

Great. Thank thank you for the additional insights. Thank you. Appreciate it. Are there any other presentations as part of the?

No, that's it.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure there was no one else from their team. Okay, great. Are there any public comments from online that, I know we got one letter but

I'm not seeing any public commenters.

Okay, great.

All right, as you mentioned, we didn't receive one letter from a neighbor in support. Got it.

Discussion, questions for staff or?

I don't have any questions. Can save comments for general discussion.

No questions, yeah, just a couple of comments.

Okay, yeah, if you guys want to start with comments then or?

Sure. And I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. You'd mentioned trying to get the house to fit in better with the neighborhood. When I drove by, yeah, it does kind of jump out at you. It not really fitting in. And I didn't know if it was not just the scale of it. It seems quite smaller than a lot of the homes around there. Do we know if it was called originally or in there it said that the previous owner had taken down the second story. Was it ever

So the second story was just an attic. Oh, an attic. Okay. Yeah. With dormers on both sides. Okay. And the contractor that was in effort to put together because of the damage there. Fire damage. They took off those dormers and the second story. So so right now is what's left is just an

attic. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. And and stylistically, it it I I just reviewing the plans, looked like they were bringing it more towards a emission style as opposed to the existing which was a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Correct, yes.

I Because it has been through several modifications to the house. Yeah. And the last one they actually replaced the wood frame window to final. Okay. Which is out of the character, yeah.

Yeah, okay. All right, thank you.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, yeah, thank you for your presentation. I just have a couple comments on the historical evaluation. I will say that I like the level of research that went into this, very thorough. And for the most part, I think the findings are sound.

My only real concern is with the discussion under criterion one, which involves events, and how that's set up in the evaluation. As it's currently written, criterion one primarily discusses the past owners and their potential significance, which is usually reserved for criterion two, dealing with persons. What I feel is missing from criterion one is actually explaining not just singular historic events, but patterns of history that were occurring in this part of Alameda, I. E. This residential area that this property is or is not significantly associated with.

And when we take a look at the background that was included here from the historic preservation element, it's a very broad, paints a very broad picture of Alameda's history talking about different landmarks that were built, different types of industry and commerce. And I think that's really, it's nice to have but it actually, it ends right where this building is started and doesn't really talk about what was going on when this building existed. It also doesn't analyze what was this property's role in this neighborhood or in terms of residential development in Alameda. Was it part of an ongoing trend? Did it start a trend?

Or was it infill, you could call it, kind of built into a neighborhood that was already for the most part developed? So maybe it didn't play an important role. And I think in this evaluation there are bits and pieces that we could look at and say okay, it kind of gets us there but I think to kind of round out the discussion, this needs to put that on paper and explain it accurately under criterion one. That way whatever the final record is here, that kind of soundly navigates

all of that.

Right now, I feel like it kind of leaves a hole under criterion one. So that's really my only kind of technical comment. I think there's an opportunity to go back through the report, catch a couple typos. For example, there's two figure nines, minor things like that that really they don't affect the the merit of the evaluation. They they're just kind of little errors that you could

Typos.

Correct. Exactly. So yeah, I think that's all I Thank

you, thank you. My comments I would say based on recent other evaluations that we've looked at, it seems like this is more robust you know or they're trending in the right robustness direction. And I guess it's very helpful that it's actually the same entity that's done previous evaluations that have come before this board. So I guess that we're all learning the ropes around the evaluations. So we very much appreciate the effort that goes into it and the cost obviously that goes into creating a document or a set of documents like these.

To Josh's point about criterion one, I think it's a valid point. And I would say given our experience with previous memos being in the 95% draft state, I feel pretty comfortable about where we're, what we're looking at as far as a complete set of documentation that would make me feel comfortable with the decision. And we can always pass along to staff, you know, direction to as the final version gets ready to be submitted, you know, when this goes from 95 to that 100%, maybe some of those typos can be, you know, figure nines can be figured out and or other, you know, bits of specificity might be able to be inserted at that point. And staff can obviously, you know, confirm all that for us. But yeah, I mean in general I would say this is a it's a solid evaluation.

I agree fundamentally with all the conclusions about, yeah, it's time for this building to be something else. And you know, thank you for you as a member of the design team and to the owners as well to go through the process and the cost to make an improvement like this which will obviously benefit Alameda generally speaking in this street and neighborhood specifically.

Yeah and I'll add I think one thing I learned from this evaluation that I think it helps showcase the value of this work that gets done is if you look at the Sanborn maps that were included going back to actually 1897, the property to the immediate northwest of this, what's that, 1415, I think, was the address. By 1948 that was either replaced or carved up into apartments. So we've had multifamily housing in an otherwise or heavily single family area for three quarters of a century. Yeah. Which I think isn't, it's a nice find to have.

Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting bits that we can learn from these.

Yeah, and to take back to the design team and the owners, part of the point of the process of creating this historical record is as these buildings are demolished that we're leaving a very careful historical trail for future generations. A hundred years down the line they're gonna be like what's this house and how did this get here? What was here before? So it's part of our legacy for the communities that we really appreciate it. I don't have any further questions for the design team.

I just have one. Given that the vinyl windows were put in I guess fairly recently, Is there an opportunity to potentially, if not reuse them, to donate them or something like that? Is there any potential for that Yes, versus just

there's

an opportunity for that. Usually when we demolish, we have to salvage some percentage of the material. So definitely the windows can be salvaged and reused for some of the projects in another place.

Yeah. And I can speak to that, Josh. There are specific deconstruction contractors that work in our area and you can actually have the building taken apart versus demolished. Any construction project in Alameda will go through a green halo system where the waste management, you know, stream is looked at for certain levels of recycling. But to really get to reuse, you have to deconstruct, you know?

Yeah. You know, like this window has to be uninstalled and transported somewhere. Oftentimes interior doors can be very valuable, you know, because they're constructed, you know, not of hollow board, you know, big box store. It's like wow, that's a real door, know. It can be stripped and repurposed. And to the degree that you and the owners care to partake in that, there's definitely great local resources for deconstruction contractors.

Yeah, think that's one of the requirement when you do the demolition that you have to fill up all this green green halo requirement to meet the green halo requirement. Yeah. And part of it is that.

It's actually a separate process.

Correct. Yes.

That you could you could go through to deconstruct the building so that more of the material could be reused. Correct, yes. So. Alright. Good suggestion.

New windows gone to waste. Any other discussion, questions? So we have a draft resolution I guess then in front of us. Any thoughts on the wording of this? And Steven, just a question for you.

Just process wise on the 95% complete, you know, ness of the evaluation for things like those mislabeled, you know, number nines, etcetera. That's something we could ask staff to confirm is corrected before it actually gets filed. Sure. Yeah,

I think I'm aware there's a couple of typos, couple of mislabeled things, maybe a sentence that's a little errant. I will just point out the resolution is based on our local ordinance, which has these four findings. They're very similar to what was in the evaluation, but they're actually a little different. And I think the content might be more to your liking in terms of how it's structured. It talks about people in one place, events in another, architecture in another. So I think this resolution as your action is good and then we'll just clean up the yeah, evaluation

okay. Thank you. And

what's the preferred language for having the revision go to the board secretary? Is it just that? Yeah. For final approval?

Yeah, I think it's not really so much part of your resolution as much as just direction to staff as part of the final record.

Please confirm, yeah, before it gets filed that those Well, things are do we have a motion to accept the resolution or adopt the resolution?

Madison, are you okay with that? Yeah.

I motion that we adopt the resolution as laid out here, exhibit five four A to approve the certificate for approval

for demolition. Second. Second.

All in favor. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it.

Motion carries. Motion carries.

And further direct staff to please confirm those.

Some edits before the evaluation is finalized. Yeah, the hanging chads are.

Okay.

Great. Next item, business 4B, our calendar for next year. So just to confirm, we're officially adopting our next or next year's meeting calendar? Or is this more just informational? Like do we need to move to adopt the calendar?

It would be good to go ahead and adopt it as your meeting calendar. It's already established in your bylaws that you meet on the first Thursday of the month. This is just confirming that there are no unusual months where we have a holiday or something else that would disrupt that schedule.

Got it.

And that way we're all on the same page.

Beautiful. Any questions about the calendar gentlemen?

I think if I'm correct, maybe this past year we may have shifted the July meeting to the week after the July 4 holiday.

Something did happen in July. I just don't remember what happened.

Yeah, was something there. I would like to consider that just because it's a fairly popular holiday for vacations and there could be predictable Yeah,

I'll just say I considered that and this is the Thursday before, and I wasn't I mean, if you want to, that's fine. This is your opportunity because it's your time to set your regular calendar if you so choose.

So the actual holiday falls on a Saturday? Right. I'm just pulling up. I didn't know it. So Okay.

So if you're taking a long weekend, I don't know if you would leave on Thursday before your meeting or Thursday after your meeting or Friday.

Yeah. See,

I thought about it and

I Yeah. I like how there there is a Friday before the actual Yeah. Holiday. And I I think for the benefit of staff in this case, would be good to get it out of the way, so to speak, before the holiday and then have to come back and shuffle the deck before the following Thursday. Fourth of July. So I I guess if it's on the second or if it's on the sixteenth, think either of those would be reasonable. Yeah. Maybe.

I'm okay with it like it is. Okay. I

actually, we're just confirming. We actually don't know what our schedule is

Okay.

For the holiday because we get Friday off

Oh, okay.

As a as a rule. So we'll probably, we might get the July 4 on that Monday.

Who knows?

Yeah, who knows?

Okay. Maybe we can,

we'll figure it out when we get there.

Yeah, if there's opportunity to revisit and re notice.

Correct.

Yeah. Or just cancel the meeting.

Yes. Sometimes meetings don't happen. I think we've had this meeting not happen before just because there was nothing on the schedule. So that is always a possibility as well. So is there a motion to adopt the calendar?

Yeah, I will move to adopt the calendar as currently written. I'll second. 2026.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Thank you. The motion carries.

Next item, board communication. Is there any board communication?

Oh, you know what? I wanted to ask, do we anticipate having a December meeting this year or is this kind of the last 2025?

Yes, we do anticipate having a meeting.

Okay, okay. I would like to, at that meeting, try to recognize a couple adaptive reuse projects or something of that ilk. If other board members have examples to share, I think that would be nice to kind of round out the year and kind of highlight a few

Yeah, well, it's for sure part of our mandate or in our realm of responsibilities that we can highlight certain projects. In order to do that staff question would like let's say one of the board members drafted a list that we would consider or maybe a draft resolution that they could work with staff on. So is that something we could consider as a body when we meet?

Sure. I can agenda as a general item of recognition of local rehab. Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, just something like, I mean, I don't have a formal list in my head, but just from walking around town, see a new business opens up and they're continuing the use of a building. Maybe it was one that passed over this desk, but maybe it didn't.

Maybe

there are things from previous meetings that we've approved that have then come to fruition. I don't know that we ever get any real, you know, whatever happened to that one, you know, kind of information.

Sort of an annual look back.

Yeah. Kind of a retrospective

End of the year. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Reminiscence.

Yeah.

Well, I like the idea.

Yeah. Great.

Other board communication? I think not. So moving on, staff communications.

I don't think I have anything for you this month.

Very good. That brings us to number seven, adjournment. Adjourn. Shall we adjourn? We shall. Yeah. We shall. Thank you.