Joliet Historic Preservation Commission - Regular Meeting

It is 604 We're gonna call to order the City of Gilead Historic Preservation Commission meeting for Wednesday, November 19.

Can I have a

roll call?

Kamalski? Here. Hessler is absent. Gloria? Here. Heinemann? Here. Johnson? Here. Lowry? Here. Merwin? Here. Makotis? Spiegel's absent. Stovall? Here.

Right. Here.

Alright. We have quorum. Before we go further, we have a new member who was who was appointed right, I guess, right before we were supposed to meet in May, and then we haven't met since then. So I don't if you wanna introduce introduce yourself, and maybe everyone can go around the room and say your full names.

Yeah. So Felipe Gloria, founder at Polo Studios. I'm an architect here in Joliet. So, yeah, just you have any questions? Let me know.

We finally have another architect. So Aaron is also an architect. He's a he's not a voting member. Assume you'll be our voting member architect, so we're very excited to have you. And then well, we'll I'll go some Jane. I met you before. And the planning director now. I don't think I was the planning director when I met you. I can't remember. Not yet.

And then also introducing, we have Francisco Jimenez. He is our newest city planner on staff, so he kinda filled my position. I'm still going, at this point in time, be the staff liaison to the preservation commission, but I think Francisco, you know, off and on, will also be here as a sidekick. He said he was interested in preservation. So I don't know if you want to introduce yourself, tell you tell him where you last came from. Okay. Here we go.

Yeah. So Francisco Jimenez came from the village of Wakanda up way up by the Wisconsin border. I was there for about a year. Before that, I, you know, had various different planning jobs. I was in Riverside and Matson down the street. And now I just, you know, do what Jane tells me. I follow her around and learn from new directors. So I'm excited to be here. And, you know, whenever she's not here, kinda take the take the role and hopefully do a good job. Thanks. What? I think you're doing great. You wanna just introduce all of us? No?

No. I don't.

Quinn Adamowski. I've been on commission

Is your

mic on?

Oh, Now it is. Okay. Hi. Quinn Adamowski. I've been on the commission since twenty fourteen ish, somewhere in there. Live here in Joliet, and I just happen to work for a preservation organization the same way. So this is sort of, like, you

know, home for me.

Nice to meet you. Steven Wright. I'm the curator at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, and as well as the other sites we run, I think

I'm

Sarah Sobaugh. I've been here also since 2016. Candice and I are the co presidents of our neighborhood association at Bicentennial Bluffs. So we do care about the neighborhood. Technical writer, and I yeah.

I've been

doing this for a while, I guess. Yeah. That's it. I'm Kevin Heidman, and I don't know what year I started. But He's been here about fifteen years. At least. Yeah. And I'm vice president of the St. Pat's Neighborhood Association. And love it. Alright.

Thanks, everyone, for introducing yourselves. And it is really great to see everyone. I I believe yeah. It's my birthday, but I just you know, we haven't met in a long time, and I felt like we had a good reason to meet tonight. And I'll talk a little bit more about, you know, later on about things we we are doing and why we haven't been meeting as well. But, anyway, thank you. So let's move on.

Okay. So next would be the approval of the meeting minutes from the regular meeting from January or no. Not January. Which is from 04/23/2025. Did anybody have any changes or alterations that needs to be made or recommendations for meeting minutes? That was a long time ago. If not, I need a motion to approve them.

Motion.

Stop. Steven, you cannot second. Oh, I'm not going anymore.

No. That's right.

It's it's been so long. You

forgot. You

forgot. Yeah.

We need another second, please.

I'll take it. Yeah. Kaylee? Okay. So we have a motion and a second for the April meeting minutes. Do Raul Obowski? Aye. Gloria? Aye. Aye. Hyman? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Lowry? Aye. Merwin? Aye. Stowell? Aye. Alright. They are approved.

Is the speaker on agenda items. Seeing no citizens in the audience. Going next would be committee reports, which we have none. Old business, none, and then new business. There's a survey of the.

Yes. So very exciting. We are going to talk about doing an inventory of hitching posts and stepping stones in the city of Joliet. Let me hold on. Let me pull up something.

Okay. I did make you wanna help me pass this up? I did prepare. So okay. I'm gonna start here.

So a couple years ago, this is one of our landmark houses. It's 601 North Center Street, and the property owner called me. I think I believe she called Candice and Sarah. She's very frantic that our public utilities department was going to either remove and not and or damage even if they when they were removed and if they were trying to be put back. Did you did we run out?

Did you get one? I got an Oh, you got an extra? Okay. We're good then. So so the it didn't happen that they were damaged or removed, but it got us thinking about we should be inventorying the remaining hitching posts and stepping stones that are in the city of Joliet.

And the thought would be we would do an inventory with using information I'd like to talk through on this sheet. Then in the end, we would geolocate these things. And so when our public utilities and public works divisions move forward with any type of, you know, street street work or utilities work, that this information would be apparent in their geographic information system database too that these are historic resources that should be thought of. I don't I don't wanna go as far as say protect because these aren't protected. I mean, that's another question for another meeting is is, you know, what do we do with this information?

But I think baseline is would be to just get a handle on how many of these still exist in the city of Joliet. Moving back, like, I just took these are three screenshots that I did today. I mean, I wanna know why. Why is this here? Mhmm. So this is a stepping stone. It's clearly in front of a house that wouldn't have needed this. So Is is it, like, pushing

your read? Is that, like, a bot,

like Yeah. This is on Western, yeah, between Williams and Reed.

Maybe that was, like, a farmhouse or something. Or it was at, like, a double lot, and they, like, split it later.

You know what? So that that is what we are going to figure out with this inventory. So why don't you take a look at your sheet quickly? So this is a draft. The thought would be there this is the apparatus information. So what neighborhood or place in the city of Joliet is this? Is it a hitching post? Is it a stepping stone, or is it something else? What would be the estimated date of construction or installation? Was it moved here? So I'm gonna jump to this one. There's a hitching post. This is at Mace no. This is at Douglas And Reed. No. Sorry. Douglas And Glenwood, I believe. No.

I'm I'm

still stressed. Douglas And Midland. Was this moved here because someone thought it was cool? Was there originally an old farmhouse here that had the hitching post, and the farmhouse was torn down, and subdivision went up here instead. So the goal will be to do that research and identify the information on this inventory sheet. And if it was moved, that's fine. We just would wanna indicate if we think there was it was moved here, there's no reasonable evidence to suggest that there was a house or or other types of buildings here. So moved. Yes or no? What type of material?

I mean, my guess is that a lot of these are gonna be limestone or some kind of stone. It could be granite. What's the type of stone? What are the dimensions? So what's the height, the length, the width of these apparatuses?

What condition is it in? Taking multiple photographs, which you could put on as an attachment using locating them. So this locus map was done using our just our public GIS viewer, which everyone has access to. You take a screenshot and then just, you know, use a shapes tool and just indicate where on this you would find this apparatus. Inventory best practices always would would say you would wanna show two streets.

You would want a cross street to be represented on this on a map, so we wouldn't just show just one street. You wanted to kinda give an indication of where this would be with the cross street. The attorney in the backside was some information about the property or building in front that's in front of or associated with this apparatus. So what is that address? What's the building type? What would what do we think is the estimated date of construction? I should have had I should have sourced there, but I forgot to leave that off. What would what's the original historic use of that building? So this this building here was probably constructed as a single family house. What will be the current use?

Do we know what kind of architectural style? Sorry. It says two to revival. That's not true. Those this is just this is just a template. What condition is the house in? I didn't wanna get into integrity because this this form is not about the house. It's about the it's about the apparatus. But I do think condition is important because I was thinking about if the property is in really poor condition, is is it susceptible to change in the future? Like, is the whole is it would it be reasonable to think the whole thing's gonna come down and then we lose that hitching post?

So I landed on keeping that condition as a checkbox indicating whether or not it's our that property is a local historic landmark. Is it in a local historic district? And is it in a national register or historic district? And then we would ask to input some what are the character defining features of these different types of apparatuses? So I just did a quick,

you know,

search on the Internet. I mean, there's some of these like, this one, for example, could have the name of the house or the property owner stamped on it. I mean, that's something that you would find. So just kinda detailing that information in this section. And then historical narrative would be the chance to really explain the history of the property and the building. You know, why is there you get why is there a hitching post here? Was there was there a farm over here? Was it nearby? I don't know. Going into that kind of detail. And then notes, bibliography, and references.

There there have been some. I had to go look, but they were on Eastern Avenue,

like, 200 block, and I don't know

some of the other streets.

And I

know stuff that's been there forever. Because I know when they ripped up oh god. It's, like, twenty years ago or something. When they ripped up Eastern, that was a concern. It it was when Zach was still here. That's that's what I remember. Because he had mentioned it was still there.

Well, so first of all, how does the commission feel about you as commission members taking ownership of this kind of an inventory? Is this something you'd be interested in doing? Meaning, you as commissioners would fill out these forms. Is there interest?

Yes.

Yeah. Interest? Okay. So the interest is yes. Two, I was contemplating putting out the idea of doing this to the public to get people excited that do you know where there's a hitching post or a stepping stone in the city? You know, please email us the address. You know? Just let us know. They can email historicpreservation@Gelaya.gov. We would take that information, and it's probably stuff you guys already know.

But just, again, to create awareness, then we would then task you guys with with doing an inventory form. Now who the you guys, that's something that I haven't thought through how, you know, work would be divvied up or someone really wanna do all of them. That's great too. Francisco's, you know, more tech savvy than me, I I think, at this point. So but, I mean, I'm sure, you know, a lot of you use Google shared drive.

Like, there's there's a way I'm sure we can indicate, you know, who's working on what, what's inputting, where this property is that has the niching poster stepping stone, and someone identifying, yes. I wanna do the inventory form. The location screenshot. Upload it? To like, to wherever drive or whatever. Yeah. We can, yeah, we can think about that. Yeah. Putting us up in a folder. Okay. What do you think about putting this out to the public too to get them engaged?

I think anyway to get

them involved Okay. Is a great idea.

Even if they just find these things.

Yeah. Just to identify them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I about slammed the you know, my you know, looking and driving down the street and saw this one. Wow. Where did that thing come from? So I'm hoping people get excited about this. Okay. There's no deadline. I mean, maybe it'd be really great if we could have something for preservation month, which is May. That'd be pretty cool.

Yeah. Would we be able to also if ask them if they know the history of this or this episode, include it in the email?

Yeah. So, Jean Yeah.

Can't people just use the app? What do we call it? The app?

CitizenView? Yes. Well, that's a good question. So let me I'll find out.

Just take the picture, send it off, pitch and post, the address.

Good idea. Because that

that would be easy. I just don't think anybody's filling out forms.

No. No. I don't want I wasn't, I guess, anticipating sending emails. Okay. Just not talking to that. I don't I wasn't anticipating the members of the public would be filling out the form. I I would just ask them to send us an email with the address or picture. And yeah. But I think that's a good point about is there a way to fold in the CitizenVUE. Do you guys all know about CitizenVUE and have you used it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The time.

Yeah. Because you can even hopefully put in, like, a drop down box for you for this. You know

I Yeah.

Like, IT could. Be good.

I don't see how wide it shouldn't be.

Isn't there isn't there, like,

a description box

in citizen view?

Choose two different categories before you

can Oh, right. Do both. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point. Well, I can find out we can find out to it might hold in CitizenView. Okay?

I mean, and then you could just give them the option and go, you know, report it in CitizenView and report it under, you know, neighborhood services or planning or you what I mean?

Like Oh, yeah. Maybe planning.

Because we have to choose, like, original option.

We'll we'll look at those. But, yeah, we'll we'll think that through. Alright?

That'd be nice.

Anything else that you could think of? Okay. I would also say this is a work in progress. So if you think if you see things on this sheet that you're like, we should probably ask this. Just add it. Let's do it. They did submit a survey.

Okay. Next on the agenda is that report.

Alright. So we have not met in a very long time. I do know that. But, you know, I have been keeping you all updated. At least I hope you feel that way about what's been going on, and there has been no shortage of work that's been done with preservation initiatives.

The first one I wanna highlight, and maybe pass these out too. This is a is a detailed outline of where the project, the delayed area African American historic context study is at. So I'll wait till this goes around. So this outline is what would be the outline of the final report, final study, as of which is a physical document. I'm not gonna go through this in in detail.

They they, being our consultants, are still working on populating this, but I would just would ask if you wanna if you wanna take a look at this, take this home. There's things that you don't see represented here. Just let us know, and we will ask them to input this in the appropriate header or subheader in this document. I don't another I think I maybe mentioned this in an email, but we got notice a couple months ago that that we we did get the second CLG grant. I think I'm hopefully, I saw this to the commission in in an email.

So there has been funding to do oral histories as part of this project. And I I bring that up for two reasons. A, because we got funding from the state to do that. And then second, it it has resulted in a delay of finishing the context study because the consultant team is now undertaking the oral histories that relate to populating information in the context study. And so then related to this is we did receive a extension from the state historic preservation office.

So now the context study project's deadline is, for me, my deadline to the state is August '26. So the consultants now have until, know, I think, June to finish up the report. They hope to have a draft for the steering committee's review in, I think, for their March meeting. So that's the timeline we're working on for that.

This is a lot. I mean, this is,

I mean,

a good lot. I mean, it's quite comprehensive. I'm like, wow.

I think I think they're at around 20 World History interviews at this point, and the interviewees aren't just one person. Some of the interviews are they're interviews, and some of them have, like, eight people on them. So yeah. Our consultants are also working with another city project, which is the IUD Des Plaines River Ridge Community Plan, and they are doing oral history work for people who have lived experiences through that neighborhood. They don't necessarily have to be Black or African American.

So, for example, are I think they have or they are interviewing the Milano family or the family who's not the Milano family. The family who has Milano bakery. So, again, that's part of the IE. Des Plaines River Ridge Community Plant and Target area. So another sort of preservation related project that the city staff is managing.

Another outcome with the IED project is that same consultant is preparing, in the end, the actual narratives that are going to be produced, that will be put up on a shared use path that will be going through the neighborhood. So there'll be some historic interpretive signage that will be there. So it's another preservation related project the staff's been working on with our consultants for that area. Any questions about the context study of the IED, the Splansburg Bridge Community Plan project? K.

Alright. Then next is the comprehensive plan. So so he hasn't done a comprehensive plan in over sixty years. We've done smaller sub area plans or target tier targeted plans, but we haven't done one in over sixty years. So heritage, historic preservation, culture, arts is is a component of this project.

So the reason why we haven't met as well is because staff's been going all in to and I hope you have been going all in to promote that project, attend the workshops that we've had, and community survey. And I know a lot of you have been doing that, so thank you. So where we're at in the process and the ask of the preservation commission is that there is a workshop that is scheduled. I'm gonna pass this out. If you don't want one, you can get it back to me.

Workshop on January 21 will be the arts, heritage, and culture workshop. It'll be here at City Hall, this room. It'll be a somewhat informal conversation about goals and objectives and how the actual recommended action steps to implement these goals and objectives for the comprehensive plan around arts, heritage, and culture. We are working with our advisory committee members to help co lead that session. And I really do hope that historic preservation commission members can attend that and continue to drive input on what will be the next steps of moving the city forward with these goals and objectives related to arts, heritage, and culture.

Okay if we go to more than

one? Oh, yeah. Yes.

Look at the housing and

Yeah. So good question. It's it's okay if you go to more than one. We are hoping that you preregister, you know, for the ones that you wanna go to just so we can help understand how we're gonna manage the room if we have a lot of people who show up. So, yes. So they're open to the public. We also are targeting, you know, specific organizations or people. Commission. So you're being targeted to come to the Arts, Heritage, and Culture workshop. Another reminder, if you don't know this, that we have an active web page for this project, juliet.gov/comprehensiveplan.

This information is on that project web page. It should be right hit you in the face when you go to the main page for this project. And there's other things, the existing conditions reports on there too if you wanna take a look at that. That's a 140 page document that summarizes Joliet as it stands and and some past projects that have been undertaken. And I think that's all my updates on the comprehensive plan.

I spent a lot of my time with that project and bringing Francisco along too. And, again, I really appreciate the members, you know, you members pushing that project out to the community and then getting your input. Any questions on the comprehensive plan? Okay. That those are my two updates. I may have forgotten about stuff. But if, you know, if you think of things as you go through your member comments, I'd be happy

to answer. How's the church going?

What's church?

Saint Mary's. Saint

Mary's. Mary's project is still moving. I don't know. I haven't heard of an anticipated opening date, but I've seen the contractors out there as I'm sure you have. So, I mean, it's moving.

The next is commissioner comments.

Evan will talk to you. You have any comments?

No. Olivia? No. Sharon? I always Uh-huh.

I as I've been going through my tons of records, there's a document there. It's called your

house Oh, yeah.

History. I know it's from 2001, but some of the things on how you research things at the library, it's still the same because some of that stuff is not digitized, so you have to go, you know, going through the files. So the typically Yeah. Whoever wants one. Yeah.

Whoever wants one, is that a long one?

Or you get one on the

way out or whatever. Okay.

And then the other thing is

Well, you get

them on the way out.

Okay. One of our wasn't an original commissioner, but from the beginning, Carlson, he was our architect for he was on commission from, like, about 1995 to maybe twenty ten, twenty twelve. Cal passed away a couple weeks ago. So

yeah. Yeah.

So he did you know, in our boom years in Joliet, he did the you know, the fire station that's over by the ballpark where he hit a home run at the, go to the Yeah. He I know that was one of his projects, But he did some other things around town. So

I

mean, I do, but I'll I'll hold for another

night. That's sad. What if you don't get another night before the end of the year?

It's okay. It's not

time. That's it.

Okay. I don't think I haven't I don't think we've gotten really any traction on any Landmark's recently either. So if you know someone who wants to landmark a house or a building,

you know, just let me know.

Well, I kinda mentioned something. So I the owner of the Sterns Building, which is at Benton, I think, and Chicago Street. It's a I think it's an eight unit flat. He inquired it a couple years ago and re has been renovating it. He had asked me to come over on Monday to because he's interested in landmarking it.

So my staff determination is that it's not eligible because all the windows have been recently replaced with vinyl. It is a solid historic brick building. I said there's no reason he can't still celebrate the historic character and heritage of his building. He's in the National Register Historic District. He should promote that.

He could even put his own plaque up if he wants that says National Register Historic in the National Register Historic District. I told him I didn't get I get in the language. But the reason I'm bringing this up is that so I had that conversation because they were interested in landmarking. The inside is beautiful, and I would I said that I would like to have commission members come and take a look at it at some point. So they did a really, really nice job with retaining the original historic character on the inside of that four of the units that they've they've worked on so far. So the other units are rented, but they're they haven't done that those units to the level they did the other ones. So and, hopefully, they have been inside there? Have not. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Are they Yeah. They're right behind you your office.

Yeah. Are they, like, townhomes? Or it it are are the units just you know, are the units, like, a two story thing, or are they just a one floor?

So it's if you were to stand in front of it, it's three levels, but there's basement level units. And then you walk up to the first floor, then then there's a second level. Okay. Yeah. And it could could be a preservation award winner for the interior.

Vacant. Yeah. Problem for, like, a really long time before he's been over.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I just wanna so don't don't let me forget about that when it comes time for the awards.

Okay. If there's no other commissioner comments, if there's public comment in that, we're going to propose. So soon we need a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Second. We have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor of adjourning? Aye. Any opposed?