Historic Preservation Commission - Regular Meeting

Time is 06:00, and we are going to go ahead and start the Monday, 08/25/2025, Historic Preservation Commission meeting, and we'll call to order and do roll call, please.

Commissioner Eddings?

Commissioner Johnston? Present. Commissioner Laval?

Present.

Commissioner Federico? Present.

Commissioner Hillajian?

Present.

Vice Chair Hatwick? Present. Chair Sponsler?

Present. Okay. Now we'll move on to item two, which is procedures. For each matter considered by the commission, there will be first a staff presentation followed by presentation from the project applicant. The commissioners will then have the opportunity to ask questions of staff and applicant before opening to the public.

Testimony from supporters of the project will be taken, followed by testimony from those in opposition. Staff may provide a summation, if necessary. The applicant will have the right to a final rebuttal presentation prior to closing the public hearing, followed by consideration of the item and action, if any, by the commission. In accordance with Section 13 of Article II of the Historic Preservation Commission, bylaws governing length of the public debate, all public testimony from those support and in opposition to the project will be limited to three minutes per person. All public testimony will be presented to the commission at the podium.

Any testimony that references race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, national origin or any other classification protected under state or federal law in a derogatory manner shall be deemed irrelevant and will not be considered by the commission in making its determinations. If you challenge these matters in court, you may be limited to raising only those issues you or someone else raised in oral or written testimony or before the close of the hearing. With that, we'll move on to Item three, which is approving of the 07/28/2025 meeting minutes. Any comments on the minutes? Okay. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

All right. I have a motion by Vice Chair Hatwig and a second by Commissioner Laval. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? Okay. Passes six-zero. We'll go ahead and move on to Item four, which is approving tonight's agenda. Is there any changes to the agenda?

None at this time.

All right. I'll entertain a motion to approve. So moved. All right. And a second? I second. All right. Motion by Commissioner Laval, second by Commissioner Federico. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes six-zero. Since we do not have any items on the consent calendar or continued matters, we will go ahead and move on to commission items, which is Item seven. Starting with Item 7A, file ID 20Five-eight68, which is an update on the High Sea Rail project relating to the 1889 Southern Pacific Railroad Depot.

I would like to ask that our presenter who's Ben Lichte from high speed rail authority, Ben is the principal transportation planner and has been working with the city of Fresno on a number of items downtown, and with High Speed Rail Station, and he's gonna kick off the presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. My name is Ben Lichte. I'm here on behalf of the California High Speed Rail Authority. We are sharing an update today. I'm here with our consultant, Melissa Goudreaux from the Page and Turnbull team, who has been working on the historic architecture of the Southern Pacific Depot. You can see on the screen an old photograph of of the historic depot. We'll go through a few updates, and Melissa will come forward in a moment to discuss some of the details, and I will advance the slides if this works.

Okay.

Should I point it at your computer? I was pushing this up arrow. Which one? This one? There we go.

Okay. In 2023, the High Speed Rail Authority was the recipient of a federal raise grant through, the Federal Railroad Administration, and, the authority received $20,000,000 to, in part, renovate the historic Southern Pacific depot. In addition, there's scope to provide parking and landscaping as well as electrical vehicle charging, photovoltaic solar panels and bus charging. Part of the project includes a Chinatown mobility hub, which is intended to bring transportation modes together at the high speed rail future station location where the platforms will be located, which is on the Chinatown side near Street. The project comprises of two sides of the tracks, from the Historic Depot to, the Chinatown side.

The three components I mentioned, let me see, are the the renovation of the Historic Depot, which is a retrofit of the old building as well as the the downtown plaza and Chinatown Mobility Hub. Our design is in plan check right now, and and we hope to have, design and comments resolved by October for an advertisement and award by the end of the year, with a goal to begin construction in early twenty twenty six. I have a few images. This is an aerial rendering. Obviously, the ballpark is a big landmark that you can see in this image.

Across sort of catty corner is the historic depot and the downtown plaza and and the new parking lot, which, is part of the site where, the the Greyhound facility used to be, will be improved and and will have electrical electric vehicle charging, together with the new landscaped area in the downtown plaza. On the G Street side, where you can see there's some renderings of cranes and other construction activity that's shown in this rendering where the future high speed rail station will be. Just to the south of that, south of Tulare Street and between Kern and Inyo is where the improvements on the Chinatown Mobility Hub exist. So there's four bus bays between Tulare and Kern that will have electrical, bus charging. This is intended to accommodate regional buses like the Fresno County Rural Transit service as well as other future buses that may come here from Clovis or Kings County or or even the YARTS buses that connect to Yosemite.

The mobility hub in the middle is where you might find bike parking, electric bike and electric scooter charging facilities. I know there's not a lot of bike share and scooter share in Fresno today, but we imagine that in the future that, that will be an integral part of transportation and the transportation network as people come and go to the Fresno Station, high speed rail station that they'll be able to connect not only to buses, but also to bikes and to scooters. And and part of this project includes this parking lot in Chinatown that will have electrical vehicle charging and photovoltaics. This is a look at the plaza in the downtown. In front of the historic depot, you can see, about half of the site will be landscaped with trees and and other native plants as well as, some paved surfaces for parking and for, community gathering.

This is a rendering of that space, that you could imagine standing somewhere near Mariposa and H Street looking towards the the Tillery Street side of the historic depot and and trees and and public space as well as some parking on that side. These are some of the components of the project. The activation is expected to include these enhancements for space adjacent to the historic depot, that landscaping and shade and features that have been depicted in the renderings. We hope to restore and reinforce community connectivity with the transportation aspect of the project as well as many other improvements that may not be part of this project, but the High Speed Rail Authority has been working on street improvements, including Tulare Street, which was recently opened at the July, connecting downtown and Chinatown. We also have shade structures, tree canopies, storm water management, and that electrical vehicle parking that I mentioned.

I'll invite Melissa to come up and join me now to talk through some of the Historic Depot renovations and what her team has been working on to design and consider the next steps for the historic building.

Thanks, Ben. Perfect. Good evening, commissioners. Melissa Goodreau, Page and Turnbull, working on behalf of a very large team of consultants and advisors, and pleased to be here this evening. We our goals for the historic depot renovation are primarily seismic retrofit to bring it up to code for full occupancy.

That includes also providing accessibility upgrades so that we are fully compliant and can reoccupy the historic depot. We are readying the building, and I'll describe exactly what's going in to the work. But we are removing some nonhistoric interior fabric, cleaning up the space and making sure that we highlight the historic character and the historic fabric. So, a lot of the nonhistoric work is going to come out. We are going to do a pretty comprehensive rehabilitation of what was the main waiting room where a lot of the fabric still exists.

We're providing some new public restrooms right off of that former waiting room. Of course, life safety, new fire suppression system for the building. And then, we're also doing outside of the area of the main waiting room, more of a warm shell, just readying the building for future use. On the exterior envelope, we're doing full repairs, new roofing, new structural sheathing at the roof, insulation under the roof. And we are tracking lead gold for the work.

So, both the plaza and the building are seeking LEED certification. In more detail, I'll go through what we're doing in the waiting room, but really repairing historic fabric, including mosaic flooring. We have a little bit of Toronto flooring. We've got some wood trim, Tennessee rose marble at the base, some plaster ceiling work, a lot of great detail in that main waiting room. In an adjacent space, what we're calling the lobby space, we have a new stair and elevator to the 2nd Floor.

Public restrooms also right off the main waiting room, both men's and women's with a corridor and some drinking fountains. In the freight depot, we're providing a security office, which is a need that high speed rail has right from day one when this building opens. And in the freight depot, we're also providing accessibility and an elevator to a 2nd Floor space. So, here on this diagram, we're just showing the three main parts of what we consider the historic depot. That's the passenger depot and the dark red area shows the former waiting room where a lot of the work will be providing restoration of finishes that I described, but also full MEP systems.

So fully occupiable space as soon as the rehab is done. The light pink zones are where we are having we're returning the building to a warm shell condition. So a lot of the high end mechanical units will be provided, but not hooked up. The space will be ready for future tenant improvement projects to finish out the space. And then, the blue area is the pulp and shed, which is an open air structure.

That will remain an open air structure. We're just providing the seismic upgrade there. So, the finished conditioned space will be about 4,500 square feet. The warm shell, about 22,000 square feet. And the Pullman Shed is about 12,500 square feet.

A little more about the exterior. No major physical changes. We're really doing a lot of reroofing and repair here, all intended to meet the Secretary of the Interior standards. So plaster repair where needed, we've analyzed the plaster so we can go back with a very compatible mix, a lot of wood structural repair, repair of the windows and the doors. And the chimneys, in fact, very poor condition, and in fact, have been abandoned for quite some time.

In fact, you can even from the interior side, you don't see any remnants of what was the chimney at any point in time. Those will be essentially reconstructed to make them seismically stable, and recreate the full appearance of the two chimneys. And another reason why I wanted to just put the construction chronology diagram here, the period of significance for the building is when it was originally constructed, 1889 to 1932, when the last addition was really added to what we see now as the historic depot. But it's it was an interesting process, really understanding all of the phases of construction here. And I think that, essentially, the exterior look, and a lot of the finishes from that exist in the former waiting room date to 1916.

So, that was a pretty major renovation that sort of tweaked the Queen Anne style and created more of a sort of a Southern Mediterranean revival feel to the building. So, we're going to since those are the features that exist now, we're trying to be very cautious in repair to match that period. So as I mentioned, cement plaster repairs, reroofing in asphalt shingle that is reflective and will help achieve the lead rating. We are salvaging clay tile from the roof and replacing it, putting it back at all the ridges, and the cap pieces will also be salvaged and replaced. Window and doors rehabilitated as well.

On the interior, some ADA improvements with access both into the building and through the space. We've got the new stair and elevator in what we call the lobby area, the main waiting room cleared of nonhistoric fabric and then new restrooms just off the waiting room. In the freight depot, it's primarily just access new compliant ramps to get up to the raised level within the freight depot and then a new elevator and stair to the 2nd Floor space that's fully compliant. We also have on the left, you'll see the security office and some electrical rooms that are going in. But other than that, the space will be open and warm shell condition.

Here's just some slides of some of the finishes in the former waiting room. And we have found that we are we're able to replicate the mosaic tile. We found a source that can come very, very close to both the color, and configuration of all of the mosaic tiles. So, lots of patching and repair, but that will be restored. Wood trim, we'll do some infill where some of the wood trim is missing and repair, trim, repair the finish.

And then the Tennessee marble also sourced and restored in areas where it's missing. This slide shows in pink the area of a Wayne Scott that's missing that we're going to put back, so the room is really symmetrical, and the finishes are intact. There's a very interesting drawing from the 1916 remodel that shows some of the intricate woodwork in the room that is currently missing. We're hoping to restore a couple of the cartouches that are above the doorways. But otherwise, just cleaning and restoring finishes, hardware on the doors for compliant egress.

Ceilings, we are going to hopefully be able to keep the surround intact while we remove the middle portion of the plaster ceiling that's been modified over time in order to get some steel strengthening members for the floor above in there. But at the very least, if we do have to remove the detail, we are going to go back and salvage all this carved wood and restore it to its original condition. And then, new public restrooms. This is an area of the building where the 1916 mosaic tile has is not currently does not exist. There's a modern tile in this space.

So, we are going to go back with a different tile, but something that's compatible with the historic and compliant fixtures. And this area will have access to the covered walk to the south. And then, you know, if there is an event going on either in the former waiting room or the plaza, there will be some restrooms available to use at the building. Just some images of the new elevators, a new custom steel stair going in at the lobby area. And that's pretty much it for the historic rehabilitation.

Do you know?

I don't know if we have our environmental team on the phone, but if we do, we can have them cover some of the coordination work that we've done in the last year or so with the state historic preservation office and the documentation to support, this project and and the concurrence from SHPO, the state historic preservation office. Yeah. Amy McKinnon is state staff with the High Speed Rail Authority. Amy, if if you wanna speak to, our coordination work let me see if I can advance. It's not letting me advance the slide, but I think we have one or two slides that discuss the state historic preservation coordination.

Yes. I don't know if you can you hear me okay?

Yeah. We can hear you.

Great. Great. Yeah. So we did receive concurrence on on the proposed design from SHPO's office, both on the finding of effect under section one zero six five zero two four report that described the work that's proposed. And there we go. Yeah. As you can see on the slide. So our SHPO coordination was actually pretty straightforward. And they reviewed the plans and didn't have any comments on those. So it was it went well.

All right. Thanks, Amy. That concludes our presentation. Hopefully, the commissioners are familiar with this building and we are excited to bring it back to life. We hope to award a contract by the end of the year, this is about a two year project that we expect to renovate the building.

The finished condition will include about 4,000 square feet of finished public space. That's the lobby and waiting room with the restrooms. The additional 20,000 plus square feet we expect to be high speed rail use in the near term. As you know, speed rail is a transportation project, but it's also been a big jobs project for the Central Valley and for the State Of California, and we expect more jobs to be located at this facility. As we build Fresno High Speed Rail Station and as construction advances, we think this will be a place that not only state staff, but consultant staff and contractors can work out of this space, for the next several years.

There will come a time when when high speed rail is done and operational and and the use of this space could transition, And we are trying to be flexible on how this could change over time. But the next five to ten years, we anticipate this, building to be office space for high speed rail. Certainly, we'll be open to other uses that that may be available, but that would require going through a public process and and procurement for any other uses or finished spaces. Like, there's been a lot of hope and desire for a coffee shop or a restaurant or something like that to to be located at this building in the future, and and we we wanna remain open to those kinds of possibilities while also putting the building to use as soon as possible as we have construction activity and and jobs that need places to be located. And this is right, in the heart of Fresno and and right where the station will be built, and and we find, this project to be, a benefit to the community and a benefit to high speed rail and to State of California.

That concludes our presentation. Is there any other information that you guys would like or questions?

Yes. Thank you. We'll bring it back to the commission here. Questions from the commission?

Did

I understand that there is the waiting room is about 2,400 square feet, there is 4,500 square feet of finished shell, I understood and maybe 2,200 square feet of cold shell or warm shell. Is that?

22,000 square feet.

22,000. All right. That explains it.

So that's the second story and that's majority of the 1st Floor.

High speed rail is going to occupy the 22,000 square feet. Is that right?

Yes. We expect to use that as office space.

What happens to the waiting room?

So that 4,000 or so square feet with public restrooms and a waiting area and a lobby, We expect that to be a public space. If you've ever been to the High Speed Rail office, which is sort of right next door to the building, we have a smaller lobby and a public sort of like a boardroom that we use. And that lobby space would be a similar use where high speed rail meetings or public space, it will also support the plaza that it's in front. So if someone is enjoying a day or a lunch at at the plaza, they could come in, get a drink of water at the drinking fountain, you know, sit in air conditioned space or, you know, use a restroom. It's not planned to be a really large space, but it would accommodate public uses like that.

Who actually owns the building?

State of California, I High Speed Rail

just wanted to confirm that all of that 22,000 square feet will be utilized in the near term, meaning you said five years, four years by high speed rail and that no other use by other organizations or such would be available until after high speed rail relocates or is finished?

I don't know that I can confirm that. I think that is the plan and the objective. Each step along the way requires dedicated funding. We do have certain amounts of our funding that is currently at risk due to federal clawbacks. So the next steps for the building will depend on available funding.

But I anticipate, you know, in in the future, we will have a better view of the time line and what each step is on high speed rail use and how how many years it will take to build that out. I don't know if it's you know, the plan is in the next two years to have, the warm shell and that public lobby space completed to complete the the improvements for the office space and and fill that with staff and and offices. I I don't have a a time line that I can commit to today. I could come back or our organization could come back and and share an update in a year or two when we have a better idea of funding and and when everything will come into play. But, we're sort of taking it one step at a time.

We're still making significant progress in in the Central Valley on the high speed rail project, and and we're optimistic on, what that means for getting trains running and and having the service available to the public. But as far as getting the building fit out, I don't have a date that we can commit to at this time.

I just have a little follow-up. That 22,000 ish square feet.

Yeah.

What's public access like? Is it does it have doors that are separate? Or how do people how would in the future, for example, people access that space?

Yeah. Doors just like a, you know, like a badge kind of a thing. Just like you come into any public building, there would be a door that to get into the office space, would badge in or badge out, and the the lobby area would be open to the public and to get beyond that. We do have a security office. Our existing office at the old Pension Building in Fresno, we have a twenty four hour security guard who's there. So I would anticipate the same level of when High Speed Rail staff are there, we would likely have a security guard and sort of the key fob where you just badge in and badge out to the nonpublic areas that are open to the public.

And there's sufficient parking spaces anticipated for that use now and in the future?

Yes. So the High Speed Rail Authority, as part of this project, we'll build approximately 40 spaces in front of the historic depot. We will we will maintain the existing parking that's there now, which is I I don't have account on the parking, but there's sufficient. The High Speed Rail Authority also owns the merchant slot, which is across the street and there's several 100 parking spots there as well. So we have a lot of parking for the near term use.

Thank you.

I'm going to follow-up on a couple of things, unless there's any other questions currently?

Yeah.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, have a question and a comment. And actually I wanted to take a look again at that at your elevations for the depot, and I wanted to have you guys show me which is Warm Shell and which is the actual station.

Yeah, there's a legend with the color coding and I think

Sorry, can't read it from

Yeah. I thought you could

point it out for me.

There we go.

Well, I mean On the elevations? The elevations.

Okay. Which I

think it's called Freaky power or something.

It's not letting me click it. I'm going forward. It's not letting me do it. Okay.

Couple more. Yep. Got the actual north elevation and south elevation. There it is.

Yep.

So what is warm Shell and what is original station? I'm just trying to get a sense of the scope.

Right, I wish I had a, maybe there is a pointer. Yes. On the Yes. The tallest Gable Peak sort of highlights the area of the oldest part of the station, and that is indeed where the entry those two double doors under above 1C is the entry into the former waiting room. And that, on the Ground Floor, will be fully finished, fully serviced space.

2nd Floor, only warm shell.

2nd Floor is warm shell throughout.

Throughout, correct.

And can you explain warm shell?

Essentially, we'll do the seismic improvements throughout the building. We'll do the basic accessibility path of travel throughout the building. But the space will be raw. There will be VRV conditioning units on-site that will serve those spaces eventually, but they are not actually fed into the space at this time.

And this is part of where the 22,000 square feet of office building will be?

Right, right. So it's primed for future use, but it's not fully fitted out. The interior finishes won't be 100% complete. There won't be insulation in the walls. We are just providing insulation under the roof as we do the roofing work right now. But it will be relatively straightforward to do future improvements there.

Will the exiting be in place?

I'm sorry?

Will the exiting be in place for the future build out of 22,000 square foot?

Yes, we did do a calc of what might be office use up at that floor. No assembly use really is going to be possible because of the extra loading for structural reasons. It just would have required so much impact to framing. So but an office use, and we did do a calc, and we do have proper egress for that.

I just wanted to say congratulations on your section 106 concurrence without comment. That really shows your comprehensive and I think sensitive effort to rehabilitate this

and Thank expand this you.

All right. Anybody else? Okay. I do have a quick question to follow-up on that, the parking comment. You said you're going to install stalls near the front of the depot, is that correct?

Yeah. Do you want

to bring up the Yeah. So is there going to be a break between the plaza that you're proposing and the depot that's going be blocked by essentially the plaza, then parking lot, then depot?

Yeah. I can show you the

Okay.

Alright. Let me go back.

Yep. I got it.

We have a slide that shows it. This one. So you can see the historic depot has this promenade sidewalk with the purple and lavender trees. I think it's about 20 to 30 feet buffer between the building and the parking lot.

I see. So they're going to be running side by side?

So yes, from the historic depot to H Street, there's that's about a two acre site, and it's about an acre of landscaping and hardscaping on the downtown plaza. And then it's approximately an acre, a little less than an acre of parking lot at the corner of Tulare And H Street. So you can see there's parking stalls. I don't know that I can zoom in on this, but

No. I see what you're talking about.

There's about 40 parking stalls there that does also accommodate fire truck access to the site.

Go ahead. And the reason I was asking was because I saw the diagram and I was just confirming that that's what was happening because it initially sounded to me when you were answering Commissioner Laval that it was actually going to be Plaza, then an entire parking lot running at the full length of the front of the depot and then the depot itself. So this is 90 degrees of that. And I just wanted to confirm that part.

Yes. And if you're familiar with the space now, where those purple trees, purple and pink trees, all the parking is actually along that space, which is gonna transform into more of a promenade pedestrian space, not a driveway. Okay. And this does include a new driveway into the site where, you know, currently, you would access the building through Mariposa Street. In the future, when the high speed rail station is is open, that's where the pedestrian bridge will land, and Mariposa Street will be closed to cars. So the access to the site will be at that new curb cut and driveway approach that you can see sort of in the middle of the block, mid block between Mariposa and Tulare.

Got it. Okay. So I noted in some of the pictures that and as part of just the interior restoration efforts that you guys are talking about, are you going to restore the interior plaster that's been removed where the bare brick is now exposed?

We're Bare brick. We're

going to leave the brick masonry. It probably definitely had plaster originally,

but we

are going to leave the brick exposed.

The brick looks nice. We want to keep it, if we can.

What's the scope of what you're looking at for the seismic retrofit? So how are you going to retrofit and stabilize the building? And I ask this because we had a similar building that we had with the old Administration building at Fresno City College. They did some work that actually involved archways and things like that in order to maintain the archways and the actual visual of them with the retrofit. So I'm kind of curious as to how your retrofit is going to look.

Just the coring of the brick and pouring cement, mean, the whole roof comes off.

Right. Ruth Root and Chukine are our structural engineer. They have a lot of experience with historic. And essentially, yes, there's diaphragm at the roof, enhanced framing to bring the loads down to the floor level. At the floor level, combination of, again, diaphragm and some steel framing.

We needed some steel, especially in the area above the main waiting room, just to capture the loads and make sure we get the strengthening within the height that we had available to us. And then, steel perimeter member is going to be used to tie masonry walls to the floor diaphragm. We have

what we

call steel strong backs that are going to go on the interior side of the brick masonry wall to hold the masonry. And those will receive new spot spread footings. In some locations, we are going to do some core drilling and reinforcing of the brick masonry where we have thick enough thickness to do that. But in some areas, we just don't have the thickness of the brick masonry to do that to hide the steel. Some of the steel will be exposed on the interior.

Okay. And you said the roof is going to come off?

Well, we are taking the roof down to the existing skip sheathing. That's going to remain, be repaired, new structural half inch diaphragm roofing on top of that.

Got it. Okay. And then shingles all come off,

Yes.

Yes, yes. I was just making sure that we weren't just taking the whole thing off to try to retrofit then put the roof back on. And you noted that there was a chance of clawback, correct? What's the you said that I know that we recently had some dollars clawed back from the project as a whole. Is the raise dollars that you have for this under that threat?

No. The the raise grant is not in jeopardy at this time. So we've packaged this project as the Fresno Station early works. And approximately 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 is specifically to rehabilitate the building and make some of these improvements. The federal state partnership grant, which was a larger federal grant of, more than 1,000,000,000, had over $170,000,000 allocated to the Fresno Station.

And there were pieces of that grant that we had intended to apply to this for utility work and some of the site work that would be part of the future station. Those were the early works. So those funds, we are working on backfilling or identifying ways to accommodate those features while still delivering the full Fresno Station early works project. But the RAISE grant itself is not in jeopardy at this time, and we intend to meet all the commitments. We have a schedule and a budget that is on track, and we hope to deliver that scope of work in partnership with the federal government.

Okay. Good. Because what my concern was because we sometimes we've seen this with other projects and not saying your guys' project, but other projects where people have come and said, we're going to do this and we're going to retrofit a building and then they lose the money. And then now we've got a half deconstructed historic property. And we know that that can be an inviting scene for people to come into and possibly contribute more damage to that building. So I think our concern was to make sure that if the project is committed, we've got it. We're going to make sure it gets to that point that it's completed with the early works. And so that's good to know.

And this is our Central Valley office location. So we have a building there that has a strong presence of state staff and consultant staff, and it is a very active site with all the other construction that's happening in Downtown Fresno and Chinatown. This is sort of a central point for that, and this building is viewed as an asset to the state and to the high speed rail authority, and we hope to deliver this project.

Great. Then think Paul

had one more question. I don't know if Paul was raising his Go

ahead and finish that one.

I got a couple more. So then I'll let you go. There been any nature of the what's the nature of the discussions you may have had with Union Pacific with regards to any type of diagrams or information regarding the property? Or any potential artifacts that have come along the way as you've built along the former SP right of ways? I know that previously we had a conversation about the Union Pacific wanted both of the drum heads back from the Belmont Underpass. And we were like, hey, why don't we keep one here rather than send both back to Wichita, I believe Wichita it is, where their museum is. But so what's the conversations you

guys have had

with Union Pacific about this building?

Well, I would say they are an active stakeholder. They are reviewing our plans. We're in plan check right now and we have several different agencies, including Union Pacific, that are reviewing the drawings and providing comments. We haven't received formalized comments yet from Union Pacific, but we have had several phone calls with them and are in active coordination. So they are an interested stakeholder in this. They own the property right next to the building, and we are coordinating closely with them.

Perfect. And then one last one that I have, and then I'll let Paul talk here. With the project, you're talking about building the Chinatown Mobility Hub and things like that. And so what's going to how does that partnership look with trying to encourage other nearby communities, working with fax or other organizations to really activate that multimodal hub?

Well, I would say we've been coordinating with several stakeholders about this space for a long time. And the location and the amenities that are going to be available on that property is a result of you know, the coordination and meetings that we've had with the community and with the stakeholders. I would say specifically, Fresno County Rural Transit has been a key stakeholder as part of this grant is to deliver electric charging. And Fresno County Rural Transit is one of the agencies that's using electric buses and and would have the opportunity to charge their buses at this location and use it as a bus stop. Even before high speed rail service is available, it would provide new stops and connectivity to Chinatown and be a connection to this mobility hub.

And Fresno County Rural Transit has their own Chinatown project that they're working on to to deliver not only the transit side, but also shared mobility with CarShare. And they're looking at a number of different sites in Chinatown and downtown to grow their fleet and grow the service that they provide. So that's one stakeholder that we've been in close coordination with. I know Jan is here tonight from Chinatown Foundation, and we've been working with the foundation for many years and sharing information and getting ideas. The the five fifty nine Night Market has been one of the leading reasons that the the amenities are located where they are and how they are to to support that event and to support the future of Chinatown as it connects with sort of Kern Street at the middle of of Chinatown where Central Fish is there.

And and if you come, you know, from the rail corridor to F Street, you sort of land in the middle of of Chinatown, and and that location for the mobility hub, for the parking stalls, for the buses is is centrally located around, those features to to provide these new amenities that would support the community and support transit and, transportation modes that may not exist today in Chinatown. So that location was very intentional and was a result of a lot of feedback from community members, from city staff, and other stakeholders who helped us locate it there. There there were several other sites that were considered, and and that's where we ended up. And and when high speed rail is operational, it it will be a a very short walk from the buses and and the transit opportunities and and the bike parking and the mobility hub is just a few 100 feet to the high speed rail platforms from that location.

I get to go before Paul, he said.

Paul said you need to go before Yes,

because it's a follow-up

That's to so nice for Paul. I

just have a question that's funding related. Who is responsible for upkeep of these charging stations And are there funds for continuing maintenance? Or how does that going to work at least at this point?

Yes, that's a great question. I don't have a perfect answer other than the state of California is expecting to be the owner of those facilities, but we will, in the next several months and years look for partnerships to there's a lot of larger networks that operate, car charging and other infrastructure like this. So we'll be exploring options and opportunities for partnership with both public and private sector to deliver and to maintain and operate those facilities for the foreseeable future. And I think for for many years, high speed rail and the construction effort will be a major user of those, but they will be available to the the public. But I think the long term handoff is is probably unclear at this time as we look at Yeah.

You know, how the city and the parcels around the high speed rail station change over time and likely to have new partnerships available around transit and around the city and parks and maintenance. Currently, the location, we have an existing contractor that does the security and that does the landscape maintenance for the High Speed Rail Authority. So I envision that same situation would exist in the beginning, but would transform over time as the site grows and the amenities grow and the partnerships are really tied to the services that are available. So as you have car charging in buses and if there is scooter share or a bike share that comes to Fresno, you know, the High Speed Rail Authority would certainly be interested in all those kinds of partnerships to to be more efficient and to be more productive with with those investments and with the infrastructure.

I think we just don't want to see a situation where all the new electric hub is put in and scooters and then technology changes. And ten years down the line, although no one can read the tea leaves at this point, that it becomes obsolete insecure. And you are building, frankly, in an area that's not known for high security at this point. So there will be remnants of that to deal with. And I just was curious who's going to

take I would recommend consult with the city regarding lockers. They've had to put some around some of their charging stations to prevent vandalism. Exactly. So look at something like that.

And we do plan for the fast chargers for the cars. So not you don't have to leave your car there for four to eight hours. It's like a twenty minute charge.

Yes. What we're talking about is actually the units themselves having the cords essentially cut off.

No. I know. We've had those conversations with the city and other stakeholders who have experienced vandalism and

Okay, Paul. Okay. On to my much anticipated question. You may not have the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway. Has there been any economic modeling done that would suggest the economic benefit to the downtown area in Chinatown as a result of having high speed rail office there for the next ten years or so?

I don't know that there's a specific study related to the high speed rail office, but I know our organization does economic modeling every year. We have a report that goes to our Board that reports on jobs. It reports on the impact that high speed rail has on the economy. And it is very specific to counties. So like it has specific numbers of jobs and dollars that have been spent in Fresno County and and what that means.

I don't know that it's to the level of granularity of, you know, having a high speed rail office in Fresno and and the jobs associated specifically to that. But the the construction jobs are not only the boots on the ground building it, but it's also the administration and those jobs that exist in the office. Can follow-up. We do have a team that does that.

Your opinion, is this going to be a catalyst? Maybe that's my ultimate question. Is this a catalyst for something that could really ignite activity down in that area?

I hope so. I think there's a lot of really positive things happening in Chinatown, in downtown economically, where there's a lot of investment. There's state investment from high speed rail, from the governor's office with a commitment to enter to infrastructure and and a number of different grants that the city has been a recipient, both state and federal, over the last four or five years that a lot of that investment in infrastructure is going to pay dividends in the downtown and in Chinatown in the next ten years. So I don't know that I have a specific economic model that shows what it is in this location, but there is a lot of work that has been done by the mayor's office here, by the high speed rail authority's office in Sacramento. So there's a lot of data available, and and I'm happy to send you a link to whatever I can find.

I know Jennifer probably knows better than anyone what, the city of Fresno has done as far as infrastructure improvements in the downtown and Chinatown, with the new water and sewer and and, you know, rezoning of of the space to allow for development to happen. And I think a lot of that is intended to work together with, not just one grant or not just high speed rail, but a number of different, initiatives that the city and the county and the state have been investing in this space for over a decade. And I think in the next decade, you'll really see that payoff. And and whatever economic modeling is forecasted, I I think you'll really, you know, see it happening more than, you know, believe what's in a report. You you start to see the change and to see the projects come to life.

And I I don't know, Jennifer, if you have any thoughts on that, but I know the city has done a lot to sort of unlock that potential in Fresno.

Thank you, Ben. So the city has, as as Ben said, tried to lay the table, right, to encourage private investment to occur, because we know that that's really the long term catalyst that will make the changes that we desire to see. Right? So we started with a general plan and a zoning code that have made it very easy for private development to invest in downtown, making uses easier, housing, permitted by right, etcetera. And then went on to invest in infrastructure through our transformative climate communities grant through, two very large, investments by the state of California to go through and put in not only all new water and and sewer lines, but to add, in some cases, recycled water through downtown and try to to really upgrade those infrastructure pieces, which would reduce the cost for that private company to come in and that private development to invest in our downtown.

So hopefully, we've laid the table, and now we just want to see those private dollars come to Fresno.

Okay. I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going have Commissioner Johnson, you got your last question and then we're going

move Okay, it's a quick one. It's I think our last time that we had a presentation about high speed rail, it's a while back. We talked about the potential at the station site for interpretation of historic Chinatown, at least some space or a way of bringing that important ethnic and cultural history forward and link it to the station. So I just wanted to put that back into the record. We talked about that, and it just seems like a wonderful opportunity for enhancing and bringing attention to the important position and location of the station in relation to Chinatown.

You can just walk across the street and get to Central Fish and that's kind of the gateway to Chinatown. That's one of the things we talked about before, and I was hoping that there would be some opportunity for interpretation at the station.

Yeah, I don't know if that's a question, but I absolutely agree with you, and the question or the answer is there are countless partnerships or opportunities that exist at the high speed rail station and adjacent properties. So as each year goes by, I think we get closer and closer to having the high speed rail service, and each one of those opportunities maybe gets a little better and closer. I think a lot over the last ten years or so that I've been working at the authority, a lot of the hesitancy has been it's so far off. And I think as we get closer and closer to having high speed rail service, those opportunities for partnership with Chinatown and with Fresno Downtown and other stakeholders, I think there's a little bit of waiting to see, you know, what happens next. But there's space available.

There's interest, you know, from the High Speed Rail Authority to partner with local stakeholders and and certainly with with Chinatown and and the Downtown Foundation. I think, you know, we've had great working relationships with those organizations over the last several years, and, you know, I I hope for the best. I I don't know that we have, like, a specific space or agreement that's ready to go, but, you know, we'll continue meeting and coordinating. And as these spaces get built out, we'll be closer to having, you know, whether it's an information location or information booth or a partnership, there's lots of opportunities for that, and we welcome it and invite it. In fact, in our most recent publications on our website and a lot of the information that our CEO shares is focused on public private partnerships and and requests for expressions of interest.

And, you know, when there is a real project or entity that that wants to partner with the authority, there's there's a format and a way to do that. It's it's laid out on our website, and, you know, those are considered by staff and the High Speed Rail Authority Board of of Directors. So if there is, you know, anyone on the commission or in the public that is interested in that, I would invite you to look at that process of request for expressions of interest.

All right. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you, commission.

Thanks. All right. We're going to move on to item 7B, which is file ID 20Five-five57. It's a workshop regarding Chinatown Fresno Foundation. And as I will note, there will be public comment later regarding these items since they are typically updates and workshops. We don't take public comment during those times. All right.

Well, first, hello, commissioners, and happy birthday, Commissioner Hatwig. My name is Cami Sapula, and I thank you for allowing Chanton Fresno Foundation to speak with you quickly this evening. I am the chair for the board, and with me is our executive director, Jan, who we have a very limited amount of time to speak, and Jan has done a great presentation. So I'm going to hand it over to her.

Thanks, Cami. Good evening, everybody. It's time to talk about Chinatown as if we haven't already been talking about Chinatown, right? So, Fresno's diversity starts in Chinatown. It always has.

As Cami said, I'm Jamminami with the Chinatown Fresno Foundation, and we're going to talk about the history, and then how our organization is involved in Chinatown at this time. There were 11 original cultures who were gently or not so gently segregated across the railroad tracks over the years. And these are those. You can look at that. We have not quite that much diversity in Chinatown right now, but we have other cultures who more recent cultures into the Fresno area who are involved in Chinatown right now.

From 1850 to 1900, when Fresno located along the new railroad line at Fresno Station in the 1860s, the original settlers were Chinese. They were expert brick builders, and they were expert builders, and they essentially built the city. But they were hustled off to live on the West Side of the tracks, and they created a very vibrant neighborhood there. There was a firm hierarchy of political and social power at that time. A select group of white men controlled city hall, business, police.

Their wives controlled home and church. The Chinatown underground was developed at this time to avoid the searing heat, but it also housed brothels, opium dens, and gambling parlors. Sam Wing Chee was a wealthy merchant in Chinatown, running a general store, a two story opera house, and a Joss House, which was a temple, in which the altar and idols alone now this is in the 1880s cost $4,000 in $18.80 dollars So you can imagine how much was invested at the time. The majority of the Chinatown population were primarily men, and they worked they were single, and they worked in the field. China had had the most unbalanced I mean, Fresno had the most unbalanced gender ratio of any city in California, with men outnumbering women fairly significantly.

And you can see this people in China Alley, and they look like, mostly men. Mr. Chi was powerful within this community and a significant landowner. The impact of the decision by the Anglo businessmen in Fresno Station, and this was before Fresno actually became a city, was had lesser impact on him because he had money, and they respected that. But people of color had already been relegated west of the railroad tracks.

But there were some encroachments which the people in power on the in the downtown were not very happy. The town council held a meeting where they agreed not to sell, rent, or lease any land east of the railroad tracks to Chinese. The Central Pacific Railroad, which opened which owned most of the land, agreed to cooperate. So, there were no opportunities for Chinese people or any other culture to purchase property west of east of the tracks. So, Chinatown became established in 1872.

The Fresno Republic, in its first edition in 1876, which later merged with the Fresno Bee, wrote an editorial called The Chinese Question, where they warned, the constant influx of Mongolians is the greatest drawback to the prosperity of our country. In 1884, Fresno became a city, but the racism was already entrenched. Federal law codified it with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which restricted immigration of Chinese laborers and prohibited naturalization for ten years. The Geary Act of 1892 extended the exclusion act for ten more years and placed the burden of proving their right to be in The United States on Chinese immigrants. Also, ensuring that wives of Chinese laborers would be forbidden entrance.

The racially segregated residential enclaves which were were in Fresno were common in the nineteenth century around California. In the 1880s, more than one third of Fresno residents were building their homes and businesses on, quote unquote, the other side of the tracks. In the 1890s am I moving this forward? No, I'm still good. Okay.

I'm not very good at remembering to do this. The 1890s was described as a bustling commercial center. This is Fresno. Bustling commercial centers surrounded by agricultural lands where enormous potential was just beginning to be realized. It was notorious for its saloons, brothels, gambling operations all run wide open without even gestures of control by local authorities.

Chinatown, at this time, was the center of the red light district. In the top left photo is of Chinatown Streets. Buildings were built with the bricks that Chinese workers made, and buildings that the Chinese workers had actually built. The top right photo is Guangxun Lo Co General Store, around 1880. The bottom right photo is a stick shack built by this Mexican family in the Chinatown area.

And Chinatown then, as in now, was the commercial center of the area. And the residential populations lived some in town, but also surrounded the town. At the turn of the century, the Chinese population dwindled. An influx of Japanese merchants produced changes to the Asian community in Chinatown. They built strong buildings and brought their families to Chinatown.

Hidakimo Iwata built two buildings, now called Nippon 1 and Nippon 2, built between 1908 and 1912. Now, these buildings still exist. The one in the lower left is Nippon I, and it has two stories there, but the second story no longer exists. In 1912, Nippon 2, which is across the street from it at Kern And F Streets, cost $24,500 to build and included an opera house to feature kabuki theaters and movies. And then, okay, the Buddhist temple is in the upper left, and it does it looks like, but it is not built like the current monastery, the Buddhist temple, because it was originally built of wood.

There was a fire in 1918, and it was rebuilt with stone. The top right photo depicts Sanichi Maruko. He had a bicycle shop, And note on the top, those are wooden bicycle rims, even though metal rims were available at that time. Sonichi's son took over the family business and later started selling Honda motorcycles, and eventually moved to Belmont Avenue, and still exists. By '19 okay, these are all buildings.

By 1915, commerce in the water buildings were booming, completely full, with a variety of businesses. And then the bottom right is the Kawakami Hotel, which we know now as Komodo's department store, which no longer has the department store. At the turn of the century, California State Commission report titled Fresno's Immigration Problem said that nearly all of the city's foreign born lived in the, quote, foreign quarter on the West Side. Fresno's first general plan plan in 1918 codified residential segregation by reserving the south quadrants of the city for polluting, foul smelling industrial businesses and affordable housing. We are still dealing with the aftermath of Fresno's most vulnerable residents being consigned to the same neighborhoods as the city's dirtiest factories.

Diversity of Chinatown's many cultures contributes significantly to the current Fresno region. While most are still struggling for economic and social justice, they continue to make Fresno culturally rich, with potential for becoming inclusive. In these photos, in the top right, Chinatown continued to be vibrant with strong Japanese influence, especially along Kern Street. The top left photo is Kogetsudo after it moved around the corner to its current location on F Street. The business and property call well, we'll talk about that later because it is a locally recognized historic.

The business and property are still owned and operated by the Ikeda family, selling mochi and other Japanese specialties. So they started the business in 1915. They bought this property in 1920, and they're still there. On the right is Alma's beauty shop. She operated her beauty shop both before and after incarceration, which was uncommon that businesses would come back into Chinatown.

On the left, that's a grand level of celebration in China Alley in the 1920s. Shown are a man named Yik Fun and Officer Cliff Sayers. The bottom right is a Mexican fiesta, one of many held in Chinatown, often sponsored by the owner of the Azteca Hotel. The forties brought upheaval for Chinatown when Japanese Americans were incarcerated. There were 59 Japanese owned businesses in 1940.

Most are now gone. The few were able to return because they located a caretaker on very short notice, or they started over. In the 50s, change that would isolate Chinatown from its residential population and be the start of the decline of Chinatown as a commercial neighborhood. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized 41,000 miles of highway construction, including California State Route 99. This created a physical barrier between the West Side and the rest of Fresno, destroying more than 20 blocks of existing housing and black owned businesses, Chinatown's residential neighbors.

I assume you all know about redlining. Does anybody not know what redlining is? Okay. This is Fresno's residential security map, also known as redlining map. It was created by the homeowners loan corporation in 1936.

The map creator, a man named Helming, said Fresno's West Side was labeled undesirable, the almost exclusive concentration of colored races. In the more affluent neighborhoods, resident lots were sold under careful deed restrictions as to race. While there is great effort to get rid of those restrictions, and they're not commonly applied now, but they still exist on a number of properties in Fresno. Oh, and this map, Chinatown is outlined in black. Red Landing was used by the US government to segregate African Americans from the white suburbs.

The Federal Housing Authority made decisions based on no evidence. They did not do studies. They did not ask anybody. They just decided that African Americans would lower loan valuations. But on the contrary, African Americans had to pay more for properties than white.

Their housing supply was so restricted, and they had so many fewer choices. So there was no evidence, and their assumption was wrong. A good reference on this topic is the book, The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein. So take a close look at these maps. The one on the top is from the 1950s.

And the one on the bottom is in 2012, I think it was taken. There's a big difference in the number of active buildings. And this is because the California Community Redevelopment Act was created in 1945. It gave local redevelopment agencies tools to address urban problems, blight, degraded buildings, lack of affordable housing. The Chinatown impact began around 1960, and it created the bottom map out of the top map.

Redevelopment agencies were supposed to build affordable housing when they destroyed buildings, like they did in Chinatown, but no affordable housing was built in Chinatown. So coming from the 1960s, Dick's Menswear, the sign is still there, was a destination place for boots and work clothes. It's still called the Dick's Building, and currently houses our new Cultural Heritage Center. The Azteca Theater on the right was going strong, until and recently, that is. Bottom left is the dedication of the current building of Central Fish.

Central Fish is actually the newest building in Chinatown, and it's forty five years old. The bottom right, the 1980s and '90s, showed the resilience of many Chinatown businesses. They built their own customer bases, and their customers remained loyal. Barber shops prospered, restaurants stayed strong, but while they shared a neighborhood, their customers were their customers. So people and they still do this to a great extent.

People come to a Chinatown business, and then they leave. So they come and get their hair cut. They come for lunch or breakfast, and then they leave. They don't share customers, and that's something we're really working on. So we have challenges now.

There's construction. There is some homelessness. It hasn't really changed over the years, the quantity. The only difference is there occasionally are criminals as opposed to homeless. And homeless criminals are more dangerous than people who just don't have a home, or people who don't mind sleeping on the streets.

So there is a little bit more crime related to homelessness, but really not a whole lot. So, you've been talking about construction projects. Look at this map and see how many lines there are across each street or alley in Chinatown. Each one of those things is an uncoordinated construction project. So the infrastructure people absolutely need the infrastructure.

There's no question about that. But they don't coordinate with high speed rail. They don't coordinate with the East Street resurfacing. They don't coordinate with high speed rail, transformative climate communities. All the projects are done separately. So when they close a street, then the next day somebody else closes that street, and then the next day somebody else closes that street. It can get really frustrating to drive into and around Chinatown. But we still are very excited with working with high speed rail. Tulare Street is open. You can drive into Chinatown in the underpass in Tulare Street.

It's marvelous. So things will get better. So this is another map of Chinatown, and there are five stars there. And they all indicate former ways to drive or walk into Chinatown. So what's going to happen is that the one in the middle, Tulare, is open.

The one number four is open, but it's hard to get there. And then number one is also open, which so it's on the side. We now have a middle one, Yea, and Mono Street. So Mono Street is going to close forever, shortly. Cesar Chavez Ventura, number five, is going to open in 2026, again, an underpass.

And then Fresno Street is going to close because there's some accommodations that need to be made with G Street in the construction process. So we'll be back to two again. I am talking to High Speed Rail about a couple of things. One is that there be a walk through in the station open 20 fourseven so that there is walkability, because the underpasses aren't conducive to walking, unfortunately. We're looking at some other ideas about that.

The other thing I want to encourage high speed rail with you can see between three and well, just to the right of three is where the Chinatown Mobility Center is. And I would just love to have a little creek in that place, a recycling creek. Wouldn't that be nice? Nice park, recharge your car, dabble your feet in the water.

I think that's a

good use of that space. So the Chinatown Fresno Foundation came about because of transformative climate communities. Community stakeholders met in order to have projects within transformative climate communities. There was no organization in Chinatown at the time. So they met for that.

They talked about construction and construction mitigation, and they decided to form the Chinatown President Foundation. So the foundation was formed to create a united voice in Chinatown in 2018. But it's this: unite, honor, strengthen and build. We unite our community. We honor our heritage, we strengthen our business and property assets, and we build vibrancy in the neighborhood.

We do that through three initiatives. One is cultural heritage. We have a number of projects, including presentations like this that give you Chinatown history. We have just opened a cultural heritage center, which will launch regular hours in September. We have self guided mural tours, historic building tours we give, a number of things related to heritage and cultural heritage.

Economic empowerment, we have pop up place, which is initial funding for entrepreneurs. We have Chinatown Open for Business, which is ongoing regular support of all Chinatown businesses. We manage the data of our property and our business owners. We have workshops. And then I think you got this in your packet.

We have really good restaurants, probably the best neighborhood for well, that's my opinion. My opinion is that we have the most interesting diverse restaurants of any neighborhood in Fresno. So if you haven't been to Fresno lately for breakfast or lunch, please try. And then neighborhood development, housing advocacy, transportation advocacy. It's part of our work with high speed rail.

We hold community meetings, construction mitigation, an assortment of things. And here's some Chinatown people. We have really great business owners and great people who work in Chinatown. Some of the buildings Ho Ho Cafe is on F Street. The building there is Nippon two.

It's at the corner of F And Kern Street. The bottom building is Nippon one and also at Kern And F Street. And you can see in the back on the bottom is the Komodo department store. And then we have newer businesses like Yoshi Now, Mr. G's, The Tire Shop, La Nueva Reina. And if you're ever around Chinatown on weekends, they barbecue really amazing chicken. Here's a list of the historic buildings. You can look at it if you want. It gives you the dates. You can go back and look at it.

But I set this up so that we've identified the buildings that are designated locally. Locally. And one is the fire station. It was the first fire station ever in Fresno. It's called number three, The Rock.

They no longer use that tower for fire training. They use it for up and down training, how they get from floor to floor and all of that in a dangerous fire. But the smoke was so bad when they did fire training there that they've moved that facility away from people. The Basque Hotel is on Mariposa And F Street, has a new owner, and we hope to have some good things in there, a coffee shop perhaps. The lower left is Mexican Baptist Church.

It was the first one in Fresno, and there's still a small active congregation there. And then the one on the right is the former Buddhist temple, the Marakudharma Center. And then industrial bank, Bank of Italy, in the top left. The Lake Moon Company building, that's the one in the mill, and that's one owned by the Akeda family with Kogetsudo in that building. The one on the right is Bingkong Association Building.

It's one of the original Tang buildings, which could be a whole other, you know, long conversation on how the Tang associations impacted early Chinatown. And then the Azteca Theater, and the Azteca well, Komodo's department store, and then Azteca Theater. And the Azteca Theater is actually on the national register, and it's the only building in Chinatown that is. Thank you. Questions?

All right. Thank you, Jan. Questions from the commission? We'll start with Commissioner Federico.

When you were talking about the Japanese businesses that were stopped basically in 1940 for the war, how many were replaced after the war? How many came back?

We don't have a good count of that. We actually have pretty good history all along until about the '20s or '30s. We have some great maps. We just got the originals of maps that listed all the businesses in Chinatown hand drawn. It's absolutely beautiful. We had a copy, but now we have the originals have been donated. So we're very excited about that. We can tell you up to 1940, but not after that. We'll get there. We'll get there.

Others?

Commissioner Lodgen,

we're

just going go down the line here.

Are there buildings that are ideal for adaptive reuse to convert into housing? Yes. Which buildings would you recommend?

Well, there are 13 buildings in Chinatown that have second floor residential. So they used to be hotels or boarding houses, and they are quite easy to adapt into housing. In addition, there are buildings that have ground floor adaptability for housing as well. But we're hoping to keep the core, like maybe from Inyo to Tulare along F Street, to keep that commercial. And if there's housing built in there, that it's 2nd Floor rather than Ground Floor.

Lobby, I think, code allows a 25 square foot tiny little lobby. But yes, we'd like to keep the Ground Floor commercial for those two blocks.

Commissioner LeBall?

Hi, John. It's nice to see you. Thank you for the presentation. So one of the reasons that I think this was an important thing to bring to the commission is that from time to time we're asked by the city or other agencies to approve perhaps a change in use or deconstruction or whatever it might be demolition. And I felt personally even though I know a lot about that side of the tracks having done most of my work there with the historical society.

Right.

I feel like we too are not getting a full picture of how all these different parts are working together. So that when someone from an organization like the city brings us something that sounds good, is it helping you? So can you just give me sort of an over give us all a little bit of an overview to put things into a contextual situation so that we have more information when we're asked to make decisions?

I think probably what's most important and we've done a number of put the maps on the table and figure out that. And our

our

board board very represents diverse, and it represents the business and property owners in Chinatown. So, we have a pretty good perspective when our board puts their thoughts into something. Plus, we do surveys with community members and have community meetings as well. But I think what I said about the two blocks of commercial, I think, is important. And while some of the buildings are old, I don't think that means that they need to come down.

I think there's a lot of adaptive reuse that can happen in buildings. Part of the problem is funding. And I know that I mean, funding is difficult at any time. It's particularly difficult right now. So I don't know how quickly those things will happen.

But I'm also looking longer term to do some housing middle housing. Do you know what that is? Middle scale, it's like from two to 12 units, which would be really appropriate in Chinatown because it would be it would reflect the scale in Chinatown, and it wouldn't be like some big apartment tower or something like that. It would fit with the idea that Chinatown is a commercial center that welcomes residential. Am I answering your question?

I have just a quick follow-up. Yes. So in that two blocks that you're referring to, what's the status at this time? Is it threatened? Are the buildings threatened? Are they inhabitable? Are they not? And the second part of that is who's working with the city to ensure that Chinatown's adaptive reuse and other projects are, when they come to us, that everybody's on the same page?

I can't answer that. I would like to say that we have strong partners with the city in development, and we do have people who are interested. I know the mayor's office is interested. We don't have strong connections with other city departments like I wish we did. But that is something we're working on.

But it's there's a lot of moving pieces, because there are a lot of different property owners, and they don't always have the same vision that we do. So we're setting right now, we're setting up a meeting to try to get the F Street property owners together. One building just recently sold, and another one is on the market. So we want to be sure that what happens in that two block potentially commercial stays that way, and we welcome housing on the 2nd Floor. And if you have any questions, contact me.

I'm happy to come back just for three questions some night if you have that. Love to talk about Chinatown.

For me, it's just emphasizing workshops like this are great. They're educational to us. They let us know that people are out there in the community that have things to say and I encourage that. If there's another month or two down the road, shifts, something changes. We'd love to do another workshop to see what the pulse is, so we can kind of be on top of those topics and be kind of helpful to you all.

Thank you.

Commissioner Johnson?

I'll try to be succinct, but I got a huge lots of notes here. First of all, I've got this document here. Have

I have a digital one of those.

Right, the Chinatown Historic Resource Survey of 2,006, and in it they identify over 25 properties within a proposed local historic district, the Chinatown Local Historic District, and this was identified in 2006 Right. As being worthy of designation as a historic district. Mhmm. And it has several national properties that were found eligible to the to the national register, the state register, and the local register.

Mhmm. So I'm just gonna preface commissioner Johnston, you know, the presentation's about the foundation tonight.

No. I understand that. That. I on

the thing.

Sorry. Notes. No worries. Be succinct. Give me a chance here. Mhmm. Okay. So we had and then once again in 2016, we had another document that identified it as an important ethnic and historic neighborhood.

So

what I'm wondering about is do you what's really important, you know, planning, one of the things important for us to plan and understand is what's your map? What are your boundaries for your district?

Since everybody The district is not the discussion tonight. The discussion is about the foundation.

Only about the foundation.

Yes. Kind of their role in it and how we can better contact with them and assist them their goals rather than defining a district or defining a boundary or something

like Yeah,

because that would just be something that they would obviously want to be, you know, have input into. And design guidelines as

well, yes.

May I ask a question? The twenty sixteen document, I don't know if I'm familiar with that. Is that something we could get access to?

I believe it's on the city website, but we can probably get a copy of it.

Is it just one of their planning documents

from It's that historic resources district plan is what it is. Historic resources survey.

It's part of the downtown neighborhoods community plan. There's two parts of

it, is what you're looking at.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We have those documents on our website then.

But no, I appreciate your presentation.

Thank you.

And I'm really excited to see what happens.

Me too.

You're involved. Thank you.

Question or readings? I don't have any questions, but thank you for coming. It was very informative for me. I guess I'll ask one question if I don't want to be the only one who didn't ask a question. I'm a lawyer and I used to appear many years ago before Judge Ikeda. Is he related to the family?

What was that?

I used to appear before Judge Ikeda. Is that the same family? Do you know?

Yeah. Well, no.

Okay. That was my question.

Yeah. No. I know him. And no, I don't know if they're actually relatives way long ago. They may be. But they're not direct relatives as far as I know.

Okay. Thank you. So I have a couple of questions. Sure. The first is, how does the foundation plan to kind of balance the whole preservation of some of these historic properties that you identified with the need for the new development? Because obviously there's lots of area that it looks like that we're looking to develop in both. Both are you guys wanting to see an encouragement of growth and rebirth of Chinatown for sure, but also other interested stakeholders. So how do we balance that?

Very carefully. We work with the property owners, and there are property owners who understand the importance of historic preservation. Many of them do. We always make sure that they're properly educated in historic preservation before they make decisions. But with high speed rail still there and not here, it still doesn't actually exist.

A lot of property owners are not willing to do anything until they get a stronger sign from High Speed Rail. And whether that means they think they're going to get big bucks to sell the property, or whether they want to develop themselves. And they're not real open about that, whether they actually have plans or don't. So we do our best to understand where they're coming from and how they intend to use their property. But they're not always that job is not easy.

And I know this is not something that we have here locally, but it seems like something that may be good for your guys' economic empowerment and things like that. But I know in other cities they have kind of a legacy businesses program. Is that something that would be something you might be looking at or interested in to especially because you have a lot of long term family owned businesses that are

in the area? We have and I don't have it right off the top of my head, but we did an assessment and we have like over half our businesses are 25 years old or older. So they've been around for a long time. I mean, the newcomers are like Chef Paul, and he's been there fifteen years. So we do track that. We are aware of how long the businesses have been in existence. And we do recognize that through our social media. Okay.

All right. Since this was just a workshop, we'll keep public comments to later. But did you have something, Kim?

Yeah. Just wanted to add something. When you ask about what you guys can do to help the foundation, And I know Jan touched on it, but a big part of it is just making sure that we're not redlining again. And that is a fear for us. It's a fear for our property owners. It's a fear for our businesses. It's a fear for our residents. There are vacant lots down in Chinatown, and the conversation of having a lot of those lots turned into low income housing would literally do the same exact thing that has happened historically through Chinatown. So that was part of the reason why we wanted to come here and talk to you and do this workshop, so you know what we're trying to do to kind of just share with you that we don't we don't want that. And we just sometimes we might need a little bit of help.

I'm sorry. I didn't catch that. Can you say that again? What was your point about our story about affordable housing?

It's

it's having a lot of our vacant buildings or vacant properties going towards nothing but low income housing would just redline Chinatown again. We really need mixed use in our neighborhoods, especially in Chinatown with that short footprint that we have. And having that combination of work, live, play environment is perfect for Chinatown. But if we have nothing but low income housing, we're just going to redline again. And I'm not talking just racially, I'm talking economically as well.

So you're kind of saying that putting a lot of low income housing in one location is kind of backdoor redlining? Absolutely. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense that North Fresno can vote out having low income housing in North Fresno, but yet it's all just going be shoved down into one neighborhood, whether that's downtown, Chinatown, Tower District, the Westside, you know, whatever, can find better ways and better places. So

is the key mixed use development or market rate housing, are they mutually exclusive? Maybe that's my question.

They're not. Absolutely they're not. But what we're where there's a problem is where there is a concentration of low income housing, and there are some proposals floating around to do just that. And while everyone needs a place to live, it doesn't have to be concentrated in the middle of a developing commercial neighborhood. It can be way on the outs I mean, on the ends of Chinatown or it can be in a different neighborhood. It doesn't have to all be in Chinatown.

So I'm going to go ahead and move us on because we're kind of getting into more of a planning commission situation here.

Well, key commissioners.

Yes, yes. But thank you so much for the presentation. We appreciated it and really learning that edification of where Chinatown is significant for us.

Well, thank you very much for allowing us to present today. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to Item 7C, that's file ID 20Five-ten88. That's our monthly update on the brewer Adobe home.

Good evening, commissioners. Ashley Atkinson, Assistant Director for Planning and Development. I'm here to share your monthly update. We do not have new photos for you this month because the condition has not notably changed from the last time we shared photos, but did want to share that we had a scheduled meeting with the property owner last Thursday that was also to include our city attorney's office. We, unfortunately, were not able to have the meeting because the owner was not able to be there at the last minute, and so the discussion that we had intended to have about his plans did not take place.

We're going to follow-up in writing and send a letter probably sometime this week, and then we'll follow-up with another scheduled meeting that hopefully can take place after that. Our intent is to ask him to re tarp the building before October with the specified and appropriate materials this time that would actually have some effect in protecting it against the weather, and among other actions that we will be asking them to take, including formally submitting plans through the formal submittal process, which has not been done to date. So that is how we'll be following up, and all of the other actions that we've discussed previously are still on the table for the future. Any questions?

I do hope that you're able to have that meeting before our next meeting because I'd like to know what that entails. When they do tarp the building, we need to make sure that it is something that is going to withstand the weather. So there needs to be some sort of way of reinforcing it somehow to either the building or somehow so that it doesn't just get ripped right off when we have the winds come through as part of those storm systems.

Understood. And that blue tarp material is not the material that was requested. So we will be letting him know that that's not acceptable as a means of protecting the building for this season.

Okay. What from the commission do we need in order to I guess because obviously we know that where we are on the status of this building, but where we so we can prevent this for future buildings.

In terms of something like what you've asked in the past, like a demolition by neglect ordinance, The secretary and I have discussed that. It's something that we have not taken steps to initiate at this point, but it is something that we've discussed.

Okay. All

right. That's all I had. All right. We will move on to Item 7D. So just stay right there, Ashley. Any staff updates that we have?

Okay. Just sharing our usual report, which is for June and July, or if it's the July report through the end of last month, just sharing that we are still on track for completing reviews of planning entitlements and building permits, generally speaking, completing those as they come in with the staff that we have, which is myself supported by Janice and our architects and some others. So those are are proceeding with our kind of skeleton crew, and also 106 reviews are proceeding largely under the auspices of our Housing and Community Development division. We have not received or processed any Mills Act applications the last couple of months because the deadline was in May, but we are conducting Mills Act site visits. We have three, I believe, one already took well, three total, one already took place, two more actually scheduled for tomorrow.

I think some of you are participating, thank you to Sarah, I believe, who was on the site visit last week, am I right about that? And one Mitigation Program application completed last month as well. So that is all I have to share for our regular staff report. No new updates on proposed historic districts at this time.

Okay. We'll move on to architectural review.

We don't have anything to report.

All right.

Yes, we do have one thing to report. Belmont Lanterns underneath the yeah, everybody's kind of caught up on that topic. But yeah. Those are the things that were sort of discovered in Under the Bridge. So We haven't seen them in person. I think we had a little update on on that, where they were gonna be housed. Last month we talked about that a

little bit. I'm sorry. I don't know how I forgot about my favorite large unwieldy objects.

They're only four feet tall and there's only like 80 of

them. Right. So we have been asked to move them from the high speed rail facilities by the end of this month, which is this week. We are inventorying them, tagging them with little numbered tags tomorrow, so that we have a record of which one's which, and can make sure that we keep track of all 82 of them. They will be temporarily stored in a facility with our Department of Public Utilities, but that is temporary for a couple of months potentially, and we are still going to be in need of long term storage, which we will continue to work on.

And we have a couple of options. We just have a deadline to move them from where they're at now, so that will be taking place this week. And Commissioner Laval, do you have anything you'd like to share about what we think they were used for?

Well, just a little. We have by process of elimination, I had some very high res photos. I had thought perhaps the Japanese pagoda that used to be a roading park, but the lanterns are different. So we have eliminated that. And there is one line in one report that we found that they actually were hanging along the railings of the Belmont subway, which would make sense being that they were stored, but we can't figure out who took them out or if there were plugs in that facility being that it's no longer there.

So we have also offered our basement at Archive on Kern for a more long term storage solution for the lanterns, so that we can perhaps put several out and people would be able to see them in an open facility. Update to follow.

All right. Plaque subcommittee. Yes. So we did have a meeting with High Speed Rail regarding the roading park signage. We did note with regards to that signage itself was the way that had been originally noted was that it was Roading Park Historic District.

The roading park portion itself has been determined eligible, but is actually not a district itself. So we did note to have that noted as the history of Roading park on that signage itself. Otherwise, the information that was provided with it was still we left mostly intact from their proposal that they shared with us last month and the location, which will be adjacent to Lake Washington, which is in the Southwest Corner of Rohing Park. All right. From there, we'll move on to Item eight, and that's Chairperson's report.

What I'm going to report on is what you'll probably be seeing here as we get towards the end of the year is kind of a revamp and a redesign of how the actual agenda looks. So it's more in line with the other commissions and the way that the councils is. So some of these things such as a chairperson's report will actually be removed from the agenda in its entirety. So be stay tuned for those kind of adaptations to bring it more in line with what the current other agenda formats look like. So we are going to I'm going to transition over with the members of the commission with regards to many of us were present either in person or online for a number of trainings last Wednesday and Thursday put on by the National Association of Alliance.

National Alliance of Historic Preservation. Preservation Commission. Thank you. Good job. I was trying to remember it. We're now a member. The city's purchased a license for that, for us to be able to do these types of trainings. They were very informational. And so I kind of want to go down the line and get everybody's opinion as to what was their key, their big takeaway that they took from those trainings. So who would like to go first?

Crickets? Okay. Commissioner Laval.

Sure. I thought that particularly regarding the ordinances and other types of things, I thought they all complemented each other well. I was sitting in five of six. The presentations were well organized. I think that I appreciate having access to those, being able to do them for wherever I was, which was even better because of the length of time that we were all in sessions.

And I would like to just ask that we continue to be made aware of those types of things because they really did reflect. It was nice to get a number of viewpoints on several things. And in the final session, which was outreach with the community, I took special pride in hearing, sadly, how many communities do not have relationships with between their HPC's and their historical societies, which seems totally ridiculous to me. And I'm so glad that we don't have that situation.

Vice Chair Hatwick?

I enjoyed just kind of learning how other communities were getting funding or had tax incentives and things like that, different programs that we kind of learn from a little bit on where existing property owners can utilize those to continue to push for preservation in their city. So that was kind of one of the big takeaways.

Yeah, I have to say I was inspired by the ideas of how different cities and communities track their procedures and track their decisions. Because it's really important to be able to bring forward decisions from five years ago, ten years ago. Because historic properties are historic, they've been around for a long time and they're going to keep being around for a long time. So it's important to track all the different decisions that we make that might affect each property. And I found that the way different communities did that was really helpful.

Okay, Anybody else? Next. Okay. You said you have one follow-up.

Yes, I do. I think, Jennifer, it would be great if in the future we could potentially present or be on one of the panels. I think we have, especially after listening to the majority of the different cities that presented, I didn't feel like Central California was represented, which we always like to do. We are unique. It's agriculture, which will resonate with the Midwest, yet we are multiethnic, which is something that I found less than the majority of those groups were multi ethnic.

Several were several ethnicities together, but we have quite a unique story. And I think it would be interesting, especially in light of high speed rail going into Chinatown and our West Side that was so culturally rich and still is, that perhaps we could participate in a future. Yes, I'm volunteering to help.

So my two gold nuggets that I got from these trainings, the first one being the idea of the preservation districts versus a historic district. That the idea is that it's less restrictive than a historic district, but it kind of allows you to stabilize a district that may at one point become a historic district, but doesn't necessarily have to be. The concept is that it kind of allows us to put the pieces together to start that process, but it's kind of eventually becomes more of the district working towards it and also working to kind of stabilize it. We have some districts that I think would be more than eligible along those lines for us to really kind of look at a preservation district more than a historic district because that will allow us to give them time to start to work towards getting better suited for a historic district. And then the other one that I think Director Clark will also keyed in on was the permanent I don't remember exactly how to word it, but it was essentially the historic permanency where somebody could take a loss on the market value of the property for it to be completely preserved.

But as a result, they essentially can deduct the full amount of the real property value off towards future development preservation. That seemed to be something that was really a big game changer and eye opener with the idea that instead of it being something where it's one of our mitigation programs or it's one of our reimbursement systems, it's something where we can take a property and say, okay, the property is currently worth $300,000 $350,000 They can deduct that off their taxes and they can use it towards either improving the property or actually using it for other site development of that property. I will open it up also. What did you take away from this?

I really enjoy trainings because it get me really excited and then I realize how much work to do, all of the exciting things that I just learned about, and so a little overwhelming. So here were my big takeaways, and then I'll just roll into what I was going to say in unscheduled staff comments. But probably one of the best organized in terms of each session was very well structured. There wasn't a lot of wasted time with the panelists being all cute with each other, whatever. Right?

Like, they were focused. They were giving us content, and I was writing as fast as I could go. Right? And I I felt like I learned a lot. I think, one of the takeaways the immediate takeaways is we're gonna go revamp our, agenda, number one.

Number two, I'm probably gonna come back in our in at our next meeting and ask for a subcommittee to work with us on, going through the, the actual ordinance and updating our ordinance because, it is it is older. It's been updated once in in the last couple decades, but I feel like we really need a full overhaul of of that ordinance. It's gonna take time. We're all gonna have to work on it together. Obviously, the city council ultimately will have to approve it, but it will give us an opportunity to look at conservation easements, which is that last topic that you were talking about, to look at various ways that we can incentivize and encourage preservation within our community in a way that's non scary, right, to community members.

I think those are some of my biggest takeaways. Right? Procedurally, how do we manage the process, and how do we ensure that we're creating good decision points for you as a commission and bringing things to you where there is an opportunity to have that dialogue and that conversation with applicant. And so you were all had a full ticket to the online webinar. There were six total sessions, and you have full access individually to an on demand all the way until October or excuse me, November 23.

I think Jennifer Laird sent you a note about that earlier today. So if you missed a session or you want to go back and review a session again, you have that online access until November 23. You need to fill out, now that we've just finished, you need to fill out your training form for Janice to complete so that we can do our CLG report. So this week, your homework is to go fill out that form and send it to Janice on everything that you finished so far. And then I would encourage you to wait till October 1 to go to your review of the sessions that you didn't see, because guess what?

They'll count towards next year. So just just a thought. If you want, once you have completed the session and if you logged on individually, even if you're with us as a group, you can get a certificate. They will send you a certificate once you've logged on, and even for four seconds.

So

the chair sitting in our session, we realized at the very last minute, we were all together, but we were logged in under my name. And so for him to get credit, he had to log in. So four seconds before they closed it, he logged in, and he got his certificate.

Yes, I did watch the

whole thing.

He did.

He was there the whole time. But, anyway, so, again, CLG report. We will be our reporting period ends at the September, September 30. We need your trainings as soon as possible. We need you to review and update your resumes if they are not updated.

So please, please, please, if you don't do it by the end of this week, you will start seeing weekly emails from us, which will then result in daily emails, which will then result in phone calls. So the sooner that we get your information, the quicker we can complete our CLG report and get it back to you. And our goal would be at the NovemberDecember meeting to have that report to you. So that was it for my cobbled together unscheduled and training information.

Ashley, do you have anything to add with regards to training?

Just that I wish I could

have participated in more of Just

saying that I wish I could have participated in more of them. Did look like some good content and look forward to working with all of you on updating our documents.

You can watch them on repeat now.

What's that?

You can watch them on repeat now.

Right. And I may back and revisit them.

It's called on demand now, Jason, not repeat. All right. Now we'll go to unscheduled communications from members of the public. Anybody who'd like to speak on behalf of something, please step forward.

We're fighting over who gets to talk first. Sorry about that. My name is Renee Paredes. I spoke with you guys in June. I represent the MUC's Home Museum. I'm the curator, so we are your next door neighbors just down the way. And I'd just like to give you a little bit of a heads up about what's going on. You can always check our website for stuff that's happening at our little museum. But we do have, over the summer, we developed a partnership with Fresno Real Pride. So we hosted an event.

We showed up in in our yard, and then we gave a little quick run through, not really running, but like a little quick little tour of the downstairs part of our house for the people who attended. We had somewhere between twenty five and thirty people show up, and then we're going be hosting a director's dinner for the RealPride group in September. We also have two evening events coming up that you might be interested, you'll follow, if you follow information like, if you like the ghosties and the creepy creepy's, Fresno nine one one paranormal is actually doing a couple of investigations at the house. They did this last year, and they're doing it again because it was popular. They sold out.

And all their proceeds go to benefit the house, so everything is donated. So it's a really nice opportunity for us to get out there because people always ask the question when they take tours, is the house haunted? So we tell people, come back and find out. So it's been a great way to connect with younger people who are interested in those kinds of things. And then finally, also in October, we have our Bygone Bazaar.

So it's an upscale, I like to say it's an upscale yard sale, but we have a lot of older things that we'll be selling for donations for the all that for the museum as well. And then October and December are gonna be busy, busy, busy months for us with Halloween morning tour and Christmas tea. So check out our website, and we hope you'll come over and check us out as well. Take a regular tour Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright.

So, Linda Scambry representing Heritage Fresno. And I have more homework, sorry. We have two events that will be interesting. September 6 at the five zero nine Club, there's a car show, and I think there's some kind of food trucks or whatever. But at the five zero nine Club is the Fresno's Merci train, the gratitude boxcar, and the history is there on a plaque.

And it's very interesting. If you haven't visited that before, it's the train given to The United States. Each state got one from France in gratitude for what we did in World War II, and World War I for the French people, and also other parts of Europe as well. So, that's a great one to go to. And then, I think I gave you last month, everybody got a newsletter, and on here is there's an event at Skypark on September 11, a Saturday. It's all day, and it's a vintage airplane, so you get the airplanes and the cars. And they're very kind. They have a lovely breakfast and lunch for purchase, reasonably. And they have lots of activities for kids, if you have grandkids or kids that you can take to that. And it's a very nice event.

I've been there before, and they canceled last year because they were in construction. So it's homework for you if you have a chance. Pat Hunter will be there with books and with paintings for purchase. And then I wanted to address you about the lanterns in the underpass. I think I told you years ago that my dad said there were lamps in there, and there were, but they weren't what I thought they were city lamps that were discarded.

They're the nice Chinese looking lamps. But I think it would be great to do research on that. Who would you research that with? My dad was born in 1918, so his generation who knew about that are gone, and Roger Taylor was the other person who probably knew where they came from, but he's also gone. So, I was thinking I've asked Karana, and she doesn't know.

Bill Seacrest hasn't gotten back to me, and I was wondering about Paula Lloyd. I think I can track her down, and maybe she would help us with that as well. But it would be worth knowing what they're what they are, and before they get stored someplace, putting a plaque on them. Maybe a very small brass or bronze or whatever, cheap plaque so they won't try to seal it, so that each one is marked, so that they don't just get discarded. I think they'd be wonderful historical markers.

It'd be wonderful at the Hernie Mansion, at the archive, and perhaps we could even do sort of the mystery. Who knows what these are in Fresno B, or in the newsletter from the Historical Society, or Heritage Fresno newsletter, we would volunteer to do that as well. There must be somebody that still knows what they were used for and where they were, And maybe Poplar Ball has photos, who knows? Somewhere in that archive as well. So, where could we put them?

There are lots of windows. You have to guard them because they're going to get stolen or banged up or vandalized, but the library every library has a display window, and you could have a lovely plaque in there telling what it was, that lantern, where it came from, the provenance, and then it's another historical measure, and they would make wonderful markers for the underpass at Roading Park. You could have one of the lanterns there. Maybe that's where they originally started. I'd love to see that photo, if you have can find that one, or somebody has one of that.

Somebody surely took a picture of them. And that would be a good way to do the research. And I don't know how else you will do it because the main people we can ask run around, which we always regret, we didn't ask them those questions. So anyway, thank you, and thanks for what you're doing. I think this is great. It's what we're supposed to do is preserve our past. Thank you.

Thank you, Linda.

Oh, and has everybody seen the pictures of the lanterns? Have you all seen them? James sent them to me. I hope you all got them. And it would be really nice to sort of spread those around and say, Do you know where these came from? You know, that would be a great way to discover that. And then I'm sorry, you know, I was asked about, you know, how did I know they were there? Well, my dad said there were lamps there, I didn't think that's what it was. So and another connection I have, the Southern Pacific Depot, my grandfather worked there for probably forty years. And he came and he lived in West Fresno and probably walked there from West Fresno. So an interesting another history I should know more about.

Thank you. All right. With that, we will our next meeting is going to be September 22, and I'll take a motion for adjournment.

I so move.

All right. And a second? Second. Thank you. Meeting is adjourned at 08:16.