Historical & Landmarks Commission - Regular Meeting

Let's go is 6. So 4pm on September 3 2026 and now call to order of historical and landmarks Commission will start a roll call. Commissioner stocks your mission Romano. Commissioner version a year. Commissioners surrender and. Commissioner which run off which run off and apologies, and then I got an email from Commissioner and CRT that she will not be here tonight, do I have a motion to excuse Commission and CRT.

move to excuse Commissioner and CRT do I have a second second.

All in favor say aye aye. Opposed, abstain, unanimous when absence. Commissioner Nciarte is excused. We will go to next items, continuous exceptions. This part of the meeting allows for applicants, member of the public or other interested parties to request an item to be continued without hearing, withdrawn or taken out of order. Are there any requests from applicants of public or the commission for continuous or exception or for any of the items on tonight's agenda?

There are no requests for this evening's agenda. Thank you.

We'll move on to the consent calendar. The procedure for consent calendar is as follows. The consent calendar items may be enacted, approved, or adopted by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. If any member of the Historical and Landmarks Commission staff, the applicant, or a member of the public wishes to comment on a consent calendar item, or would like the item to be heard on a regular agenda, please make those requests now. item listed on the consent calendar associate file numbers constitute a public hearing item are there any requests to pull any items we have two items tonight it is one a is the minutes and one b that is actually a recommendation for major significant property alteration uh chair long i'd like to request one b get pulled and put on the agenda okay perfect thank you i we will pull one b and put it in front of the public hearing. Okay. Thank you. Or the remainder of the items. Do I have a motion? Only thing we have on there is the minutes.

I moved to approve the remaining of the consent calendar.

Thank you. Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you, those who are in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose, abstain, unanimous one absence, consent calendar passes. Next item is public presentations. This is a section where we are open to questions and comments from the public or anyone on items that are not under agenda tonight. So we do ask that you state who you are and give us like a brief presentation that we can not enact on any of the items that are brought up during this section. So are there any public presentations tonight? Seeing none, we'll go to our regular agenda into a public hearing. So before we get to item two, we did have a request to pull 1B. So Commissioner Stocks.

Certainly. Thank you, Chair. So I was looking at the documentation for this and In the PDF, we have an existing home roof replacement described, and it shows the flat portion roof at the back of the home, as well as the tiled roof at the main body of the home at the front. I spent some time looking at this is a mills act property I spent some time looking at both the mills act and the turnbull page report from 2025 here. Both of which feature heavily the roof, the roof construction, the roof style as being one of the character defining features of the historic home. When the party came to us for the 2025 report. The roof was discussed there and the point we left it was the homeowner loved the roof. They had spare tiles to repair the roof and they would not be replacing the historic roof. That has now changed in the report. So I wanted to pull this one, bring it up because I do believe that this is a significant change to what was previously discussed. What would be our next steps here?

So that's exactly why it's before you this evening, because that feature was described as character defining our code requires it to receive a significant major significant property alteration permit. And that's why it's before you.

What, what do we need?

Gareth J. With with a major would we not want to redo the SIS report, because this is character defining part of the property and so would we not expect to refresher that document to talk about this particular change.

So they do have a historic analysis attached to the report that says that they're using a like for like material, and they will be replacing the tiles. Or sorry, reusing the tiles as much as feasible, but they do expect the roofer does expect some breakage.

Sure, you bring up the applicant, I do see their hand up to and talk through what the changes were between like what we, when we saw it last and what this application was. You're you can unmute yourself.

This is Becca. I'm the homeowner. So this is actually a separate issue. We've been chasing leaks on our house for about, two years trying to patch different areas. And so it has led to actually leaking into the main property, the, the house, like in our room and has contributed to, we believe like potentially long-term damage if we don't replace the roof, because we've tried patching it a couple of times. So we've consulted with several roofing companies who specialize in, you know, these tiles specific and all of them say that U.S. tile is the way to go because it's the clay tile with the double barrel, exactly what we have. And that a lot of them say we won't be able to necessarily save all the tiles because they're cemented in. We did get the report from the Secretary of Interior report. We had to pay for another one on this. And they basically said this is the closest thing like for like. The color is still going to be a little bit darker than the addition, which was recommended by the first report. So this is basically a way to save our house because it's been leaking. So yeah, we feel like if we postpone this anymore, try to patch. it's going to be detrimental to the character and the establishment of the house. So this is kind of like a separate issue that came up before we even started the edition. So that's why it's here before you.

Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about like the characteristics, like how is it like for like, or is that going to be like any discernible difference from what it is today?

No, so it's not, we're not doing the S tile, which is actually standardly used right now is the S tile. If you look around, a lot of people are using S tile because that's the honestly better option, but we are actually doing this, um, I believe it's called like a double barrel option. So it will be those individual tiles instead. Like an S tile is kind of like two tiles that interlocked. You can see it like all over our neighborhood. But this is going to be that like, it's like a single barrel and they're stacked on top of each other. It's going to be exactly like what we have now with the flat staying flat. So it's literally like, And to be honest, it was a little frustrating that we had to do a major revision because it's literally replacing exactly what the tile for tile, a clay tile for a clay tile in the same style, trying to get the same color, even though it's hard to say what the original color was after 100 years. And the life of the roof is about what it has been. So it's pretty bizarre. practical for it to be replaced about this time based on the life of clay tile. But mostly it's because we're having leaks, and we've had a tarp on our roof for a while, and we don't want to go through another season of doing that. So we'd like to get it done before all the rain comes. So yeah, hopefully that helps.

Hey, Becca. The reports in the Mills Act talk about things like overhangs and the way the tile ends at the end of the house. And I really didn't see that in any of the plans. Did you get that detail figured out? And where can we see that?

Yeah, I mean, it's just going to be replaced exactly like it is. So I... you know, it doesn't need an architectural drawing or anything like that. So that's where we're using drawings of what it is now and what it's going to be. I guess the only thing that's going to be different is now because of fire code, you have to put in like a bird block, which is basically like a filler in that space where that, where that hole is from the barrel, like the half circle, but that's actually fire code now. So there's no way around that. Like that's to protect the house as well. But otherwise, like, you know, The overhang, the little weeping holes won't be touched. That's architectural and won't be touched. Basically, it's all going to be the same, but it's just going to be new tiles. And basically, we need to get underneath it to seal it because it's not sealed.

Did you ask about how many you would lose as they removed it? Or because you mentioned cemented in, did they give you an estimate about how many you could save?

Yeah, most roofers say we probably can't save any because of how cemented it is. Like every tile has, is like gobbed in cement around it. And it's only, the problem is, is like they were like, well, maybe we could save like half of those and put them on the backside of your house, but your backside of your house is flat. So we can't do that because that's where we would put like the unesthetically pleasing ones. But because all of it is the front facade, that's like how our, it needs to be new ones in order for it to actually look good and authentic because each tile would probably be like half broken. There actually are some tiles that have been replaced since that are on our roof right now. But, you know, those are like minimally done and kind of patchworked in from before we moved in. So, you know, it seems like doing it all the same makes sense, but those even are cemented in. So I'm not sure how that could be saved. We've talked to like three or four roofers in the area who specialize in this and they're all like, oh, I don't think we can save it because it's all cemented in.

I mean, I definitely have concerns with water getting into any old home, right? You can't ignore that. And I know how much Becca loves her tiles with the names on them. It's part of our home tour, docenting. It's good to hear the overhangs will be preserved. It's good to hear they've worked on the color match. You know, I think that that extra clarity has helped me understand how this project has made these changes. And so I'm okay right now.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, it resonates with me because if you're looking at page 31 of our packet and actually page 7 of their packet, there's a really close-up picture up top. You can see actually all the cement that's actually glued in basically into the tiles. So it would be hard for us to try to save any of them if we do have to go under it to get a new barrier in and stuff like that.

yeah basically everyone was like oh let me take a look and then once they saw it they're like oh no we can't save these tiles you know so everybody gave us hope and then i was like yeah this would be really hard like impossible and who knows how brittle those are now too like the actual clay so thank you

Any any more questions any anybody else have any questions about this.

No, I don't have any question I read the documents and totally and it looks like it is, it has to be replaced if there is no other option and that's the best.

He speaks straight into the MIC. Oh and turn it on. there's a button.

I had a question about the color. It looks like the tiles are slightly darker than the original. Isn't it better to go lighter?

A lot of the coloring with tiles like this, it changes over time depending on weathering. So it's pretty much impossible to match the color exactly. I think like this may be like the closest they can get to.

Yeah, we picked this blend because it kind of gives that weathered look without it being like a bright red. Like probably when it was originally put on, it was that bright red. But that's actually what our addition is because that's what they asked us to do was something lighter than the original. And so we're trying to kind of preserve the... the thought that like the addition should look different. So we can kind of distinguish it. It has an S tile and it has a lighter color. So then this would kind of give that more edge look. And you can see this around the neighborhood. Some places choose like the red or the Mallorca and then some kind of, we thought about the fire flash, which is like a darker, but kind of more consistent. But we thought this one would kind of, when we were looking at, I can't tell you how many AI pictures we've taken of all these different tiles on our tile. This seemed to be like the best option that looks a little bit aged, but also kind of stays with the character and it's called El Camino. So I thought that was kind of nice too, but it's not the Santa Clara blend. So hopefully that helps answer some questions.

didn't realize like the blend is an option because that actually looks a little more natural than like the majorca which is like what would be i guess like a lot of places would be standard exactly yeah ours is probably closer to like you know it's hard again like we were up there looking and like okay what what is the closest you know

that kind of keeps it looking weathered or older not like completely new but again is obviously new so um yeah and keeping with that spanish revival because some of the ones that you're seeing are darker or really light, but that doesn't really kind of, that isn't always what the Spanish revival is. So again, trying to keep in mind that as well. So there's a, there was a lot of consideration in to the blend and the specific tile that was used or that we hope to use, I guess.

Chair, I have a question. Going back to Commissioner's comment that if this is the only option, is this the only option? Were there any other options looked into from reinforcing the membrane from inside the attic? The only option to rip everything off?

No, actually, we have a vaulted ceiling. So that area, there actually is no attic for the front facing of the front room. So there's literally no way, unless we want to rip out our ceiling to get to it, which seems a little bit more detrimental. So yeah, unfortunately, it's a vaulted ceiling. So this sits right on to the ceiling. There's no attic space where this is. Well, where some of it is. Other places. Actually, I don't know, cause it's the front facade. There actually might not be any attic space to access this part.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the staff recommendation and move this project forward.

Do I have a second?

A second.

Thank you. Those who are in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, abstain. UNM is one absence. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you for your explanation, Becca.

Yeah, thank you guys for your time and your service.

Bye. Let's move on to regular agenda. I have a few today. Item two, RTC 26855, recommendation on major significant property alteration permits on PLN 2600281 for proposed addition of right side dormer on second story, two new double hung windows and extension of the rear roof to the existing ridge line of existing two story residents listed on the HRI located on 580 Lincoln.

Okay, and I'll turn this over to staff. Thank you, Chair. This item will be presented by Assistant Planner Summer Foss. Welcome, Summer.

Good evening. This is item number two, 580 Lincoln Street. My name is Summer Foss, Assistant Planner. This is the major significant property alteration permit for the proposed addition of a right side dormer on the second story to new double hung windows and an extension of the rear roof to the existing ridgeline of these thing to story residents listed on the historic resource inventory. The existing site highlighted here in red is a 7,500 square foot lot. The surrounding uses are R3 medium density residential. This property is also zoned R3 medium density residential, which is consistent with the general plan designation of medium density residential. This was constructed post-1910, and the architectural style is Greek Revival. Here is an elevation of the site. We can see the addition where they're extending the ridge line towards the rear here and the side dormer. This little portion here is also being added, this little square that's not highlighted in red. And then the windows. So here's the floor plan. On the left is the existing, right is the proposed. As you can see, the kitchen here is, there's the sink and the counter here and the stove. This portion is pretty low, which is why they're adding the dormer so they can get more kitchen space here. This portion is also pretty low. As you can see, the toilet and the sink is in this portion of the house and the bathtub is over here in the other side. So they are doing that addition here so they can add more height and have a full bathroom here. Here we can see the area of addition again, highlighted in red, the new window. Again, this small portion down here is also being added. This back portion of the house, I did request a DPR form, staff requested a DPR form. This rear portion was added on some point later after the construction of the home and is not historic. So they are proposing horizontal siding to match back here. It is not historic. However, on this side, they are proposing a 10-inch cedar shingle where the historic portion is 8-inch. Again, highlighted in red, here's the new window and the dormer. This portion is being added as well. Here's the roof plan, just to make it a little bit clearer. You can see the extended ridgeline here, this portion, and the new dormer. An analysis of the proposed project consistency with the Secretary of Interior Standards was prepared by Forget-Me-Not History. The analysis finds that the project complies with the SOIS and that no conjugal features, architectural elements are proposed that could create a false sense of historical development. The historic cedar shingle fish scale siding will be preserved. Existing shingles are eight inch while the proposed dormer shingles are 10 inch. The rear roof extension will use matching materials and paint colors and is located on a non-original portion of the residence, minimizing impacts to the historic fabric. The action being considered is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act per CEQA Guideline Exemption 15331, Historic Resource Restoration and Rehabilitation, and that the project involves an addition and renovations of a historic single family, not a single family residence, it's a duplex, but... The staff recommends that the historic landmark Commission find that the proposed project located at 580 Lincoln street. will not destroy or have a significant adverse effect on the integrity of the historic resource inventory property. And the proposed construction is compatible with the resource and recommend approval of the major significant property alteration permit to the Community development director. staff has not received any comments on this project. The applicant is here in the audience and also has a presentation.

Thank you. Before we get to that, are there any quick questions for staff on this project before I invite the applicant up?

I have a quick question, just more of an administrative. The DPR is from 2013 and then the report is current. Does that report fill in the place of the DPR going forward or how does that work?

Yeah, I think some are misspoke a little bit. So what we required for this project was the historic analysis of these changes, we didn't require a new DPR.

Questions? Before we go to applicant? None at the moment, I'll invite the applicant up. If you'd like to address the commission.

Were you able to join on Zoom?

No, I wasn't. I was having some issues.

Yeah, I can share my screen. Thank you so much, Summer. I really appreciate that.

Hi, my name is David Kesting, and I'm the principal architect at The Draftsmen. And we are in charge of this particular project. The team consists of Lee Gainshaw, the property owner, and Erica Schultz from historical analysis. And this particular project is for 580 Lincoln Street. It's currently used as a duplex. It's been used as a duplex for quite some time. And the process for doing this project came to me asking about legalizing the status for the upstairs unit and how we would go about doing that. So we set up a set of plans to do that. Then, when we presented to the city, they requested a building permit for redoing the entire upstairs unit, and this is part of the process, we go to the next slide. As I said it's at 580 Lincoln street and it's an exterior alteration with an interior remodel to an existing historical residence. proposed project consists of a limited exterior roof modifications and interior improvements to the existing two stories for presidents. The purpose of the project is to improve the usability and functionality of the existing upper floor living space while maintaining the historic character and overall form and structure. The project does not propose an expansion of the building footprint and maintains the existing primary roof, bridge line, height. The proposed work focuses on a modest roof adjustment and interior improvements within the existing building. Actually, it's really close to here.

Go to the next.

We can see the street side and the rear side of the home design concept is to prioritize preservation. Interior livability. Those roof modifications are intentionally limited to scale and the design to remain subordinate to the primary reform new dormer and rear roof adjustments are located on secondary elevations. and are intended to provide adequate head height to the existing upper floor living space without altering the primary street facing character of the structure. The roof pitch, the material, and architectural detailing will match the existing roof to maintain visual continuity, but will not be the exact same. So it'll be similar to the historic building, but still differentiated. Here we can see the side dormer. New dormer is proposed on the side elevation of the house to provide additional head height . will match the design . At the rear of the home, we can see the existing roof plane will be .

the upstairs unit.

Modification does not increase the overall building height, remains consistent with the existing form. In exchange, they're located primarily in secondary elevations. Rear patio roof extension at the rear of the home, extended out three feet along the same roofline height. Provide weather protection for the existing walkout basement, So the modification remains visually consistent with the existing structure. The work occurs at the rear of the property and is limited in scale in order to maintain.

Here we can see the interior improvements on the home.

The left-hand side is the existing and on the right-hand side. Work's being done to improve the functionality of the upstairs. The kitchen right now is not really useful.

It has this, we'll see a photograph of it in a second.

The head height is almost like nominal. You'd have to be like down here cooking, trying to find the space to work in. And by adding the dorm, they'll get, Lee will get enough space in there so he can actually like move around inside his kitchen. So by moving this around, we have additional head height for the proposed dormer. uh the remodel will improve the functionality of the kitchen wall you know making the existing fixtures having more countertops you know adding some nice finishes the bathroom becomes a bit more functional from being just like bathroom closet with a split bathroom in the back uh you'll have a single a single uh single bathroom that we can use uh continuing the to get a walk-in closet. If we can go to the next slide, please. Here's some photographs of the old kitchen. We can look at the appliances, and we can see that those were put in circa 1940. The wallpaper is like circa 1950. and i mean it's just it's not useful and by putting in the dormer we can maximize have an upstairs apartment that a is legalizing city size right though it's been used for the last 100 years and actually the part where uh and there's no site alterations property we're not increasing the residential density we're not expanding the unit we're working with

Go to the next slide, please.

Oh, so for the standards analysis, I'll introduce you to Erica Schultz. Erica.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Erica Schultz. I'm a principal and founder of Forget Me Not History, a preservation consulting firm based in San Francisco. And I have about 20 years of experience completing historic resource evaluations and assessing project impacts with historic resources. As David mentioned, I prepared the analysis to determine if the project conforms with the Secretary of Interior standards. And you've already heard kind of a summary of that and as well as a detailed project discussion from David. So I'm just here to follow up with a kind of an overview of the history and significance of the residence and then a summary of my findings. So the residence at 580 Lincoln Street, it does have a recorded construction date of 1910. I was recommending maybe a little earlier of 1820. It's based on the overall form and it is recorded as Greek Revival, but I was thinking it might be a better example of a vernacular closed gabled cottage or residence. And that's really in that two story form with the gable roof that is the original portion of the house. And you can see the trim that encloses the gable and you have the transition from the wood shingles down to the wood siding that wraps around the house. We're not sure when that one story addition was added to the residence, but we do know that it was rebuilt in I think late 1990s in kind of in a compatible manner, it kind of replicates but doesn't duplicate the details of the original building. And then the only other really visible alterations the building that's been mentioned is at the rear. It looks like it was kind of popped out and then it has like a like a like funky wall plane and then that shed roof and that parts from the gable gable roof of the main building. And then the only other alteration is the addition of the rear at you in 2003, the back of the back of the property. But it overall it retains integrity and it is in the city's historic inventory. Fine. And so I did complete an analysis of the project conforms with the secretary of the interior standards. I wasn't necessarily going to walk through all 10 standards, but I'm happy to go into any more if there are any questions. But overall, I found that the work is limited. It's just at those two specific locations on the building. It's secondary, especially the gabled wall dormer. It is pulled away from the main facade. And so it's not altering any of the primary design features of the front facing facade. And the rear addition won't be visible from the street. It is compatible yet differentiated, especially the gabled wall dormer. It replicates that gabled roof form. And it has a compatible wood material with the wood shingles, but they are slightly different size. So you will be able to tell that it's a newer addition. And it is reversible. So in the future, if that gabled wall dormer were to be removed, you could just fill in that slip of the roof and return it back to its condition prior to the project. And then on the rear, you really are altering a non-original portion of building, but it would be possible to return it to that condition. In conclusion, I found that the proposed project conforms with the Secretary of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation, and I'm available for any questions.

That concludes the presentation. I want to say thank you for your time today. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you for that presentation. Any questions and comments for the applicant?

Just had one. I think it got answered along the way. I appreciate the presentation. I appreciate the new roof being subordinate to the original home roof. You had a choice when it came to the shingles and you had some of the window, some of the dormers have different shingle arrangements and you chose one. How did you choose the one that you chose?

It was mostly trying to find something that was going to be similar but different so that we can differentiate it. And the fact that it was a little bit, a slightly different size, the contractor who happens to be the owner wanted to go with that size because it'd be easier for him to install. Like ultimately it was like, you know, I can move, I can work with this type kind of shingle. I can make this type of shingle install correctly without too much of a difficult issue. And I want to go with that one. And, you know, I, default to him you know i think lee's a really good man you know he's been running that apartment for a while now he's used it to house his family and i think this is a really excellent opportunity to increase housing density and make a home that's actually going to be usable and recognized by the city and i think you know decreasing decreasing decreasing the resistance to that and making it a faster path towards housing is ultimately what we want to do. And the fact that it's in a historic home as close to downtown, that's a win, right? And the fact that we can keep it subordinate to the existing ridgeline and on the secondary faces of the home, I think that's a win too. So ultimately it was about constructability and while still having a historic nature to it, while being able to differentiate the addition versus what was original.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

Any other questions?

I'm going to take that as a sign that the presentation was great.

I mean, my comment to your presentation is you hit every word on my bingo card. So, you know that if we go back to like the last slide I think last last one, the one before. Thank you, this one actually. The next one on nine please. Thank you. Retain historical character, no false sense of history using a differentiation, but compatible and reversible. Those are my bingo card words. I know some of us are thinking the same. So no, those are the characteristics I was looking for. And like, so thank you. That's why I don't have any questions.

It really helps when we have staff to work with who are able to clearly point out what it is that's being asked of us. And when we have team working on on the project together with the the goal in mind of working with the city uh to provide more housing and an owner who's willing to to work with us on the process so i would say having clear standards that were supposed to hit metrics that we could easily see having professionals on board who can help us guide to that goal and having ownership tied into, yeah, I want to make this work. I want to work with the city on it. Those things make the project overall successful.

Thank you.

I was going to say, I agree. It didn't touch on all the points. And even one of my first thoughts was I like that the dormer is subordinate to the main structure, but it also doesn't try to perfectly match the dormers on the other side and be fooling history, right? There is a little bit of difference. And yeah, you hit all the main points. And taking the time to go through that, I appreciate that, working with staff. And it looks great. Thank you.

Um, before we go into full discussion, I would like to open this up to public comments. So if there are any members of the public here or online that would like to comment on this project, please raise your hand if you're on zoom. Everybody's going to come up. Um, can I have a motion to close public comments, please?

Motion to close.

Thank you. Do I have a second? I second. Thank you. Those who are in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Public comment closes. Thank you. Okay. Discussion. I think we already started going into discussion. Yeah.

The only comment I had, and I think you answered it, was the height is lower. Because in the section, in the side view, it looks like it's too much. But I think the height being lower helps.

Yes, ma'am. The height of the dormer that's being added is slightly lower than the existing bridge line. But at the back of the home, we extend the roof up to meet the existing bridge line so that the path at the back, you actually have space at the back. It works. And the fact that that's at the back of the home, it's not seen from the street, it felt as though it was consistent with the historic nature of the Thank you for noticing.

And a quick point of clarification. So it's basically functionally as it's been used as a duplex, it's just needs to get legalized as two units.

Yes. And I mean, and that's a great question. It's been used as two units for how long? I mean, it's gotta be at least 60 years, 80 years. Sure. I mean, since 19, the appliance was installed in 1940, right? The wallpaper was installed in 1960, right? So we're talking about know 60 to 80 years uh documented um and when we went to the city it was like hey so i've got this place and we're trying to get you know its own meter for it and what's the address and like hey we don't have an address for that what are you talking about you can't have another address let's go through the process of getting uh your address well in order to get the address we have to pull We have to show that there's an apartment there. Oh, there's an apartment there. We don't have any records of that. Let's pull a permit for that. Oh, you want to get a permit for a historic home? Talk to the Historic Commission. Go hire an architect. I mean, I get it. It makes sense, right? But it's also trying to decrease the barriers for housing, right? Ultimately, this county of Santa Clara and the city of Santa Clara and the state of California, we want to increase our housing. We want to have more affordable housing. So how do we go about doing that? One of the ways we can do that is by increasing density without actually adding more cars. Also legalizing existing units, flats that we have that we know about.

yeah so yes ma'am long story short you know it's it's all about writing house got it thank you yeah and you know our purview over here is not about use but like it was just basically like how it does come up in the first place and personally i really appreciate the the homeowner the applicant that comes through and actually go through the process properly to get this in place points of discussion on the design I like I really do appreciate that, like a lot of the addition is more towards the back of the property that's what we usually like asked for like from the kind of from the front edge like coming from the front like it's the visual impact is very small to to add to it, and you know, having the dormer subservient to reach line is very important to. To the form that we usually asked for so that was that's very much appreciated. Speaking of.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I don't think anyone could actually utilize that kitchen very well. The idea of being able to comfortably move around in that space is pretty difficult. The sink is pushed all the way to that corner. Your head height is maybe 6'6", at the edge of that wallpaper, right where the sink is. Finding a way to make a functional home, that's a priority. Rich or poor, you deserve to live inside a well-designed home. This is an opportunity to do that. Appreciate your comments.

I'd like to echo Chair Leung's comments on the minimal impact this property would have from the side of the road where you would be able to see it and that most of the work is to the back of the home. I'd like to make a motion to approve staff's recommendation on this project that the proposed project does not destroy or have a significant adverse effect on the integrity of the HRI property.

Thank you. Do I have a second? Second, thank you. Those who are in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? I missed one absence. Thank you. You guys set a really high bar on how to do a design and do a presentation.

Thank you so much. I really do appreciate working with you and working with the city. It's been fantastic working this summer. The staff has been amazing. It's been a lot.

I hope my fridge lasts another 60 years because those appliances need their own historic protection.

I'm sure there will be neighbors that would be interested in those appliances if you do rip them up.

Awesome.

Thank you. Have a good evening. Move on to the next item item 325 1550 the public hearing for recommendation architecture review appeal and 2500274 for 209 square foot first floor expansion and 513 square foot second floor expansion to existing two story residents resulting in 2336 square foot residents located in 1640 Market Street within 200 feet of historic resource inventory property. Turn this over staff.

Thank you, Chair. So I just want to make a couple corrections before I start the presentation. There were some errors in the staff report. I took this project over from a planner that's no longer employed with the city. And so upon further review, there were some technical errors, the first being that this project is actually zoned R3. which is a multifamily designation. Although it is a single family home, it is zone R3 and therefore it does not have an upper story step back requirement and therefore will not require a variance. So after HLC, it will be going to the development review hearing just for a straightforward architectural review. So a variance is not required. But I think that was the big correction, just the correct zoning and the process. So, as I said, this is an architectural review for a 209 square foot first floor expansion and a 513 square foot second floor expansion to the existing residence. It would result in a 2336 square foot residence, and this is before you, it itself is not historic, but it's within 200 feet of several historic properties. So the existing site, again, is a single family residence surrounded by other single family and multifamily residential properties. Zonings are three medium density residential as well as the general plan. So I just wanted to show you the slides so you can get the context of all of the other historic properties in the vicinity. So that would be any of the properties that are yellow or red on this map. So it's eight total. Yellow or red kind of faded, but you see it, okay. So this would be an entirely The addition is entirely on the rear of the house. It'd actually not be visible from the front facade at all, just because of how the design is. So proposed, you'll see they are extending these two bedrooms here. And then on the second floor, they're getting more square footage as well. But you can see because of this existing roof line, this is the front side. Can you see my mouse? Yes, no. Really? Okay. The right side of my screen is the front of the house. So you can see based on the existing ridge line and the roof slope, the addition wouldn't be visible from the street at all. This is a helpful image. These are the cross sections. You can see the existing master bedroom kind of had this vaulted ceiling with this attic space on the side. And so they're really trying to just get some more livable square footage here in the rear of the house. And this is actual rear elevation. So if you're standing in the backyard, what you would see from that perspective. So although this is zone multifamily, we still evaluate it for consistency with the single family residential design guidelines because it is functioning as a single family house. So while the second story does not incorporate the second floor step backs that are typically recommended, the design maintains the home's existing gable roof. and allows for retention of the two story wall heights in those select locations, consistent with the architectural style of the residence. The appearance of the second story from the street, it would not be visible and would not add bulk to the house. And it will enable it to retain its original styling and the character of the neighborhood. This project was found to be categorically exempt from CEQA because it is a small addition to the existing single family residence. So based on that staff is recommending that the historical and landmark commission find that the proposed project at 1640 Market Street will not destroy or have a significant adverse effect on the integrity of the HRI listed properties that are within 200 feet and that the proposed construction is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and therefore recommend approval to the development review hearing officer.

And I believe the architect is online. Thank you for the presentation. Any questions for staff before I invite the applicant to address? Random observation, this is directly behind the other property, we just looked at.

I was thinking, that's not a question that I can't really ask Rebecca, it's exactly the same house.

Yeah, it's right behind, like around the corner.

Oh, so it's on this map then.

One question for Rebecca, the new height, the new roof. I don't know if my PDF is a little blurry. Does it show on yours what the new height of the home is?

It is, actually, I don't think they're gaining any height because, no, you're right, they are.

The new height is 23 feet 3 inches, where existing is 20 feet 1 inch. So they're kind of increasing this here and then going down from there.

And that's the back, right?

Correct. You can see my mouse better now. This is the, no, you can't. The right side is the front of the house.

Right side of the front of the house to increase is going to be on the back of the house. It's going to be.

Yeah. So from the front, here's the front. You wouldn't be able to see it because of the roof ridge line.

Michelle, you had a question?

yeah so the only thing you would be able to see from the front is that the ridge line is up three feet higher and you wouldn't be able to see anything else right yeah yeah i just be extended up three feet

I don't know that maybe if you were standing across the street, because this is the primary frontage and it's all the way, you can't see, well, let's see, can you see this point from the street?

I think so.

Yeah.

Because that's the horizontal. That would be three feet higher. Seeing out back. Yeah.

You should invite the applicant.

This time I'll invite the applicant to speak on this project, if you like.

Hello, everyone. Hello, my name is Jun. I'm the primary designer of this project. Thank you everyone to review our projects tonight. Just try to give you guys a brief introduction of our intents of this project. We just try to create additional functional space at the edit toward the rear and while maintaining the existing characteristics. As you can see, we are using the same roofing material and also finishes. And the project will not be, the addition will not be so visible from the across the street like you mentioned before, because there's a street tree that is softened out the ridge line. Although it's only three feet additions, it will be a minimum impact to the overall styles and characteristics from the front elevations. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Any questions for the applicant?

At this moment, thank you.

Can you turn point to the HRI properties around it?

So there's one directly to the west. However, the driveway is on this side of the property. So there's a kind of a larger setback to the building. And then the one you had just mentioned right here at 580 Lincoln.

Can I follow up and ask, do you happen to have the height of the neighboring property that runs parallel, the Victorian?

No, but let me pull up Google Street View. Maybe that'll help.

The HRI next door is the Victorian, the West. Got a higher pitched roof. I'm looking at Google Maps.

The property on the left side is actually one storey single family residence. And the one on the right side actually has a higher roof pitch compared to our proposed new reach line in terms of elevations.

yeah i misspoke you're right it's the hri is to the right or the west and has the higher pitch got it thank you this is a good shot yeah we can compare the the trees the homeowner mentioned to the left and the single story victorian set high to the right this is a good image thank you

Victoria is quite a bit higher. What we're looking for on the height is we want to see if you're increasing the height of the building that it continues to be subservient to the historic property to the right. That's what we're looking for. That's why we're looking for the height for that building as well.

case you're wondering thank you understood um at one point we do actually um try to bring the um ceiling high with um for the our proposed weird roof um the reasons why you you choose to um 12 And for slope, it was because we do not want to increase so much of the existing height of the building. That's why we stop at a good, comfortable height compared to the next door. Then we bring it back with a more steep slope to gain the interior head clearance.

And then the other HRI that faces Lincoln is the one we just discussed on the previous, so that would have its back to the new construction of this project, okay. Just making sure I understand.

Yeah, they're like perpendicular. Yes. Yeah, okay.

Right, so that one is backed up against the property line of this project.

And this is just increasing height and there's a little bit extension too. So it does change the setback. That's what I was kind of looking at, but it's a deep line. No, I'm just see if there's, we haven't got that in public yet. So are there any other questions for the architect before I moved to public?

All right.

Good call. Thank you. If there are no more questions or applicant for a moment, are there any members of public that would like to speak to this project either in here or online? Seeing none, do I have a motion to close out public comment?

So made.

Thank you. Do I have a second? Thank you. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose? Abstain? Unanimous when absent. We have Close public comments, let's go into discussion.

Commissioner Romano, you have the ADU between the historic resource here and the proposed property.

Do I have a view?

Well, we have an ADU between the historic home and the proposed property here with the little balloon on it. And I think that that also helps to diffuse the impact from the historic resource property on the

It's hard to tell, but I would say from the Lincoln Street historic property, because you have the ADU in between it, I don't think it's gonna make a huge impact to the Lincoln Street property. I'm thinking of a line of sight, any impact to what it looks like in the neighborhood. It's hard to tell from this bird's eye view, but I don't think it does. Because I would be looking for how it impacts the property from line of sight and everything around it. For example, the giant apartment next to it impacts the value of that one. But from that backyard, would you be able to say it impacts the one on Lincoln? I don't see that from this view. I don't know. Anybody else feels about it?

Yeah. Commissioner Romano, the bathroom window kind of faces this direction of the project we just saw. There's a property in the way with large trees.

There's a whole bank of trees, that's one. And there's also a whole ADU in between. I visually impact from the curb. You see it and it's taller. It's not towering over 180, which is the more immediate property that we would worry about.

Agreed. I'd be more concerned about the next door property. I think Lincoln is farther away enough and visually farther enough away. It wouldn't impact its historic value. Yeah.

I know I should have asked this earlier, but I can ask Rebecca, did the neighbors submit any documents on the notice on this one now?

No, we did not receive any comments on this application.

I'm trying to think about it and it's hard to tell from the street view how much taller 1680 is in 1640. It's not, it's a three foot increase on the ridge line and just changes it from looking more like of a cottage to kind of a more of a 70s roof line, but that doesn't really matter. It's not a historic property itself. Does it impact the next one over, and is its massing large enough to make any impact to the historical value? It seems minimal. I wish I knew the height of the Victorian next door. It's been around forever. Yeah, and the ridgeline is set very far back on the property, even if the front of 1640 is even with 1680 it's ridgeline that they're increasing is very far back. The only way you might notice it is if you're walking from the west towards the east and you're passing by that driveway which opens up the space and makes it visible, but I don't know that it's going to have a huge impact on the Victorian next door.

Is there a way to reduce the height?

Is there a way to reduce the height and just change the pitch of the roof? Or is it more important to keep the pitch of the roof the same and increase the height?

I mean, generally, what we look for, because this particular property itself is not the historic. We want to see how it impacts the property to the right, which is the historic property. Yeah, I think about how a change of the height of the ridgeline by three feet is going to impact the property to the right. Are we going to notice it? Is it going to be towering over it?

which it doesn't look like. Right, would it make enough difference that the property on the right would suddenly not be historical because it's being overwhelmed by?

Like, if we're thinking about, you know, somebody making a proposal to say, like, I want to add, like, two stories on top of it, then, like, obviously that would have a big impact, you know?

The height across the building, across the street are actually quite comparable.

And it's not just the height, you know, Commissioner Amano's comment about massing, you know, if they had a large box and it was clearly out of context in the neighborhood, it's not just height, you can Rupert Clayton, Talk about the impact in many ways and volume and height and and being overlooked and and I don't see any of those concerns for either of these two historic properties, I don't know if any of the other Commissioners feel differently.

I'd like to make a proposal and I move that we accept the recommendation to approve this project, showing that there is no impact to the historical properties around it.

Second, second, those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Abstain? Do not miss one absence. Motion passes. Thank you for bringing this project. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Something different. Something different. That was a good one. Thank you. Okay, let's move to item four. 26807 public hearing for recommendation on the architectural review of PLN 2500567 for the construction of two new single family residents, including the demolition of existing single family dwelling and detached garage to construct two story 1462 square foot and one story 778 square foot residents consistent two bedrooms and two bathrooms located at 575 Franklin Street within 200 feet of historic resource inventory property. Turn this over to Steph.

There we go. Thank you, chair. So as you stated, this request is for the architecture review for two new single family residences. This will include the demo of the existing single family residence that's onsite as well as the detached garage. And again, this is within 200 feet of a historic resource inventory property, which is why it's before you. So the first house on the property is proposed to be two stories. That's the one that's closer to Franklin Street. 1462 square feet, three bedrooms, two baths. And then the second residence would be further back on the property and that's proposed at 778 square feet and has two beds and two baths. And so the rounding surrounding uses education use uses associated with se you as well as residential. zoning again on this property is our three medium density residential, as well as the general plan and it's located within 200 feet of the third Santa Clara mission site. So that site is listed on our HRI under the Santa Clara University listing of 500 El Camino. However, this specifically is located here within 200 feet. So the existing site is not currently listed on the HRI, but it is identified as potentially historic in our city database. And for that reason, a historic resource evaluation report was prepared for the project by Albion in June of this year. And that was to assess whether the residents would qualify for listing on the city's HRI. The report concluded that the residents would not meet local listing criteria or eligibility. So here's the site plan. On the bottom of my screen is that is closest to Franklin Street with the two-story, 1,400-square-foot house. And then on the top of the screen is the one-story, 778-square-foot house. Here's a 3D rendering. The subject site is here in the middle. Another single-family house and then multifamily on this side. You can see it's a fairly deep lot. two-story up front, and then the one-story toward the back. They are providing a 20-foot front setback, five-foot sides, 14-foot rear, and the two-story house is 23 feet, six inches. There is no parking required for this project due to its proximity to the station, but they are providing two onsite spaces. And so I'm focusing on the elevations of the front house, because that is what faces Franklin and what would be closest to the resource property. So again, they have a 20 foot front setback, and then the east, which is the driveway side. So with their, their, their for be more visible is shown here on the right side of my screen. So again, because, although this is multifamily they are proposing to single family houses, and so this was evaluated for consistency with our single family design guidelines. We found that the architectural features are true to the style and appropriate for the neighborhood materials which includes stucco comp shingle roof and wood siding are found throughout the neighborhood. The roof forms the roof as proposed avoids excessive rich lines heights hips and valleys. So what you saw was a simple gable reform, which is one of the two primary types of roofs on that street and the project also includes a front porch with a similar gable reform as the primary house. And it is consistent with the R3 development standards found in our zoning code. So this project was also found to be exempt from CEQA 15303, which is new construction or conversion of small structures as they are proposing demo of a current single family home and construction of two new single family homes. And so, based on the analysis staff is recommending that the HLC find the proposed project will not destroy or have a significant adverse effect on the integrity of the HRI property that is within 200 feet. And that the proposed construction is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and therefore recommend approval of the architecture review to the development review hearing officer, thank you.

Thank you for that um. Any questions of staff before I go to applicant.

A bit of clarification on the historic properties you mentioned university. there's obviously several buildings there is there a specific building or.

So what the red line is pointing to is listed on the HR I while there's nothing visually there, it was the third site of mission Santa Clara. So it is a historic site, and there's a plaque over here. I'm not sure, actually. I think it's on the Palm Drive side.

There's a couple. There's one actually right around where your cursor is, and there's one right on Palm Drive, like the bottom right. I walk there all the time.

It's like Gates and so on as well. So it's specifically this site. There's only just one point. Second question, it was like this property was marked as maybe historic. Is that something the homeowner investigated or the city had flagged it themselves?

So in our permitting database under particular addresses, we have some that are flagged and those are the ones per our ordinance that we invest or require investigation of further before demolition.

Hmm.

To clarify on the ones that are eligible, what's the difference, and I kind of alluded to this before on the other one, but what's the difference between requiring a DPR versus a report, an analysis report?

So a DPR would be required if you're trying to determine, or no, sorry. A DPR would be required if you know something is probably eligible and you want to You know, confirm that and record it as a moment in time, in this case, although it was identified as potentially historic based on the condition. We didn't really think it likely was and also aesthetically i'm just the style of it, and so, therefore, we just allow the analysis.

invite the applicant to speak on this project you like.

So what we've proposed for this is obviously the two new units. We thought about making obviously designed to be aesthetically matching the neighborhood and the resident. So by presenting it with the but I just kind of call it kind of a traditional California bungalow style, where you have the front porch, the single story that matches the neighboring lot, then the two stories instead. So that gives it like a proportionality to the front of the street, and then like the single story unit on the rear of the lot, adding two units to the, what was it? So, you know, you're adding more density to residential neighborhoods.

I have a question for the, to your point of the front unit fitting the neighborhood and being comparable. I also wanna make sure that we're not fooling history and that it doesn't look too original. Are there any features on it that would be obviously to someone walking by that is newer construction, Maybe the windows are different, maybe the sightings different because we don't want it to seem like it's always been there, considering we're tearing down a building that's clearly been there since 1900 or 1890 yeah.

Since it is a new build them in the you know the windows will be you know more contemporary they're going to be made with like a fabric, but it has like. original, I mean, so like the lights, you know, we'll have like some like detail features that are indicative of the previous decade, but then the way that the, we do have the front porch and then like the two story setback, but I mean, there are temporary features and more with the interior than exterior, but we want to be sensitive and sensible to what's going on in the neighborhood.

Questions for the applicant. I have a question on the paving. There's no requirement for parking, but I think it's more than 50% is paid. There's a lot of paving on site.

Yeah, that's based off the requests from, you know, the clients, you know, a feature that they want. The way we design it, you know, we set it in between the two units. So it, you know, it's not a structing, you know, this piece. And then the only way to fit- Can you try again?

That's also impervious. It says stamped on this question.

It hasn't been totally confirmed on what exactly. It's also, and the way it's designed is and broken up. You have like nice green space. There's a private green space for the rear of the client. Then I seen the image right here, the three dimensional.

How we utilize.

More privacy for the rear unit. Backyard.

Are those trees at the back, the four just represent the life.

That's also represented there. Sounds like landscape.

Is there any requirement for screening?

At the front, it's low level screening.

I didn't hear that.

And so, like. So the back.

The proposed setbacks 14 feet required is 10 feet, since this is multifamily.

More questions for the applicant?

browsing through the historic evaluation it's quite expensive it is i was trying to read through it most of it but i was trying to find when this third location site of the mission the dates of those i believe this home was built after it was moved to the fourth location correct

It has to be a long time. Yeah, by a long time for the mission site. Looking at the chain of the site itself, this house is older than my house by two years.

But it didn't find, there wasn't, I don't recall anything in the report of any significant owner looking through the chain, correct?

So like vernacular worker housing. Any of the elements from that original house as salvageable? So I'm kind of looking at it. It's definitely as humble.

Yeah, from my side, I didn't really.

Mm hmm.

Thank you if there's no other questions for the applicant at the moment, I would like to open this up to public there's members of public like to speak on it or. Any members and. Online, though, like to speak to it, please raise your hand. Seeing none to have a motion to close public.

move to close public.

Thank you. Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Unanimous. One absence. Public closed. Let's go into discussion. Thank you. We may have more questions for you, so, you know.

As a phrase old versus architecturally significant that that I heard early on what's worth saving is it just because it's old is it worth saving or is there no architectural significance and that's what the report is there to discuss right whether or not there is something there that is. worth preserving or it's. So all that it should not be preserved and. I'm not seeing that it's saying that there is an old property there that we should put on our HRI and make special arrangements for to see differently.

Well, I think along those lines, my question would be, were there any details in the databases why it was eligible? Just that at some point it was distinguished as that.

Yeah, from my understanding, someone did a windshield survey, maybe like 30 years ago, and then decided that some of these properties may be eligible and just wanted to flag it for future reference. Now we have that stipulation in the ordinance.

Yeah, I would say that, I mean, I'd hate to tear down an old building. Just because it's old doesn't mean it meets the Secretary of Interior standards. We didn't have any feedback from our historian on if it represented any of the sprawl of the city and our growth and that sort of thing. So I know that's something that we look into how the city grows over time. Nothing from Lori. And it looks like it's been altered quite a bit.

And this was also sewn R3, you're saying?

Correct, yes. I'm sorry, what was that last bit you said?

Sewn R3.

Oh, sewn R3, okay.

Yeah. I mean, that aside, let's say we're OK with the tear down. What do we think about the design of the property going in relative to the HRI property, which is University and the third mission site, which is the big lawn in front of the main gate?

Well, to my point, I appreciate that you're trying to make it fit within the area and that it's not some big giant modern monolith in the middle of all these little one-story houses. I do appreciate that. And then it does harken back to the era, um, Again, I'd probably want some stipulations in there that it doesn't fool history too much and that there are modern features that are visible from the front that clearly people know it's new construction, but maybe someone did new siding or whatever it is, but we don't want it to be, you know, perfect windows and that sort of thing, right?

Yeah. Like the playful nature of using a buckle-based horizontal siding.

On the lower half there, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't notice that. Yeah, I think that would be the biggest thing. The back unit, it's in the back. You're not going to see it from the street. Doesn't make a huge impact.

Yeah, I don't think that one would be visible too much in the street.

No, it is a two-story compared to all the rest are one-story. It's got a setback. But the R3, we don't have to fit anything for that.

whilst it's not necessarily a historic property, there's clearly a Victorian two doors down to the right. I'm just thinking about the height of the Victorian versus the height of the proposed property. I believe it would be taller based on Google Maps. So whilst it's not an HRI, it still would be impacted, I think. by that. Rebecca, would you be able to bring up Google Maps so that folks can see what I'm talking about here? And go to the historic property. Turn the camera around to see the homes.

We have some closer to Acamino.

Okay i'm sorry which house you're referring to that is Victorian i'm missing it two doors down to the right, although one of these multi family on the El Camino. If I be 553 in that image.

I see. Is that what that one's not historic though correct.

Correct, it is not the you're just talking about ebb and flow of the street line so behind the cameras the historic. To the sorry we see this one, and it would see the new. I believe the new proposal is taller than the Victorian. have the two apartment buildings in between which would be more than 200 feet just by eye because there's two lots so it's maybe 100 feet in that victorian but that is not a historic home so 200 only applies to the historic resource behind the camera i don't think that the victorian should qualify in the decision but i do believe they would be impacted here by

And then to the left of it would be, that looks like a craftsman. I can't, maybe a one-story Victorian is behind bushes. How far back is the second story from the front of the house? Let me go back to the design here. That's 15 feet. Okay. So front porch and then 15 feet and then second story.

Got it. So you have a 20 foot front, so probably about 35 feet. Approximately. Thank you. Thank you.

What will happen to the tree which is in front of the house currently? Is it going to be removed or?

Thank you.

That's to be seen on the health of the tree.

But I do see a tree in the plans.

It does have to be removed. And it's not a heritage tree.

There's actually some pretty good digital renders in the packet. Could we maybe look at page four? The neighboring properties and they show renders of the home, shows the porch and the gables. That's quite an interesting view. Thank you yeah the black and white vendors here show the neighboring property to the left to the right, and it shows the setback and it shows the porch I think this is. Rupert Clayton, The discussion that Commissioner Romano was making about the windows, the porch and the. Rupert Clayton, siding shown here, and this is a useful view, thank you forever put this in the deck because it helps to visualize the massing of the opportunity to the multi story multifamily to the right and also to the smaller home to the left. I wonder if the commission has any thoughts on this view now that it's on screen.

The only thing with this view is being from top down, it's not a good rendering of what that second story looks like next to the older home to the left. I have 81. So if I'm looking at Google Streets, that could be pretty significant when you're looking at the driveway between them. There's nothing blocking it. It's going to be... a good size massing next to it. And all the houses to the left are also one story. It depends on how is that set back far enough to not overwhelm the other, the ebb and flow of the street.

Commissioner Romano, is that the middle image at the bottom of the three that you see the property immediately to the left? Or are you considering the one second to the left shown?

I'm sorry, I didn't catch the beginning of your statement.

What did you say? Are you mentioning the house second to the left that's not shown in the images here? I'm looking at Google Streets. Immediately to the left.

Immediately to the left and the one to the left of that. That would be West, right? They're both single-story craftsmen, maybe a Victorian single-story one.

So I understand the ebb and flow of the street is important. But what the code is asking you to review is this project's impact on the historic resource only have the marker at this point, then? Yes. So the grassy lot across the street.

Yeah, this gets back to the letter that I wanted to have on the agenda because it puts us in a hard place. There's a loophole here when these homes could be historic, they may be eligible, but there hasn't been a significant amount of research. We don't have input from the historian. So we're making decisions on does tearing down an 1890s house and putting in a two story next to clearly a one street or one side, one story sided street of older homes, that also could be eligible at some point. We're stuck because we don't have a context for that to go through that. We haven't been able to finish our work plan where we wanted to go out and do those type of surveys and be able to have information about all the properties surrounding it. And all we can base it on is that there's a plaque across the street. This is where I get really frustrated. And because we don't have a good ordinance, we're stuck.

It's not where we are today. I think we do need to make a decision.

So are you waiting on a motion? I'm not making one on this.

Okay.

HRI under consideration is the third mission, which is under the Santa Clara Union.

You read that?

What we are trying to evaluate today is that the historical building is part of the Santa Clara mission. It's in the house within the Santa Clara Union.

So it's the third mission site, which is a grassy field with a marker on it across the street. So it's not, it's not the existing mission. It's the former site.

Yeah. Similar buildings. What is being proposed within the vicinity?

Similar in style, but there's not many other two stories.

So the impact which we are being asked to assist today is the historic space, which is within the 200 feet radius.

Exactly. So while the other houses may have historic merit on their own, they are not currently listed on our historic resources inventory and therefore are not under consideration this evening. does that mean that it has to be differentiated but compatible to the historic resource which is within 200 feet or well there's no differentiation from the resource because the resource is just grass but but i think of the neighborhood yes we want to make sure that it's compatible with the surrounding houses but as commissioner romano said not um What was your term? Fooling history, like creating a false sense of history.

It's not the entire Santa Clara University campus. It's just that site.

Yeah, so there's several sites sprinkled within the campus, but this one in particular is within 200 feet.

I'll pull up the overhead on the Google Maps. That will show you pretty clearly where it is. Where she's circling, that's the historic property. If you see like the two long buildings, those are the multifamily to the right as we're looking at the plans. So we're looking at that property where she's pointing out right now.

So the other resources on the campus are actual structures. There's some gates and then several of the actual buildings are identified as historic.

And I asked Rebecca that the historic property is it it's not public property belongs to university is that correct the owner is and anybody on it is not necessarily is on it there. They don't own it's not the city land is what i'm saying it's not a park practice pirate property. So the enjoyment of the piece of land is for the owner and not necessarily for the public is my thought here like the public doesn't get a chance to say I don't like the looking. Look, the view the the vista from my park because it's not a public park it's private that it's so the home, the property owner of the historic property gets to choose whether they're in agreement with the view. And so we didn't receive any complaint letters from that person or persons or entity, which I think is important.

The university also is the applicant of this project. Yeah.

So the applicant is the university or student housing or? We don't discuss use.

Faculty housing.

It's not really an inhabitable house at present. So if there's a concern about the neighborhood, having something that can be occupied and that cleans up that lot, I would think would be advantageous to the area. And this has full support from the Board of Trustees of the University, which I'm representing.

So if it was historically eligible and it's not livable now, was it not maintained or is it dereliction, demolition by dereliction?

Can I speak a little? Sorry, I'm an architect with the university. So we did our first analysis was to see if we could salvage the building. It's significantly deteriorated. The siding is three, four, five layers deep. Like the trim is even gone from the exterior because there's been so much. There's four or five layers of roof. Time has deteriorated it. Additionally, there is no real significant foundation to hold it. It's rubble. So... We tried desperately to want to save it, honestly, because that's our nature. So in evaluating its replacement, which was a long time coming, I've been here 10 years and we've been talking about it for about 10 years. We also talked about the heights. So that building on the corner is kind of a, a queen anne style a loose queen anne which is beautiful but it's up on a podium so it's about 21 feet tall and the two next to it on either side are a little bit lower but then as you go to the next ones over they're also up on cripple walls podiums so we tried to pick a fabric like you said we didn't want a full history either it wasn't really possible but um It does fit the character and the fabric of most of the homes around there in terms of height and scale. Additionally, I can tell you that the house to the left isn't really impacted by the height of it. Those are rooms that aren't living spaces per se. The bedrooms and the living spaces are front to back and also on the other side. So it's not negatively impacted by the mass of the house.

If that helps you. No, you're not going to make a motion.

So somebody make a motion, please.

I want to hear my motion.

I know.

And I will say that I won't make a motion just because I feel like there's, I understand you did your research, you dug in, you tried to see if it was salvageable. I totally understand. It's just very disappointing that this property has been here and has not been maintained for how many decades? And it's just been run into the ground, which is really disappointing. And the only reason it could possibly be of interest to the city is if we had more information from our historian or from the librarian. I mean, the review was fantastic on the history of the valley. And it goes through all the wonderful things that we see a lot on DPRs, right? Fantastic, the Native Americans and so on. It goes through the whole history and everything. But the portion on the house was very, very small. And then looking at the title, there didn't seem to be any one of importance, so that rules it out. So the only thing we don't know is if it had any value to the city representing that neighborhood at the time. I loved the picture of 1901 and seeing the farms and where it fit in and the roofline. That was great. It's unfortunate. Maybe it has no value. I just feel stuck. I know I've said that before. I don't try to save every single house, trust me.

I echo Commissioner Romano's comments. I can't believe we have a photograph of a house from well over 100 years and it's a beautiful clear photograph and somehow we can't find a justification to consider that historic. I still am reeling from that and so I'm also struggling to understand how it's the right thing to do here. I like the design of the new property, I like the setbacks, I like the reuse and the thoughtful parking and many other problems that are solved. I'm still stuck on 575 Franklin, surrounded by farmland, not being considered a historic home.

But is there anything that makes it historically significant? that's not in the DPR right a Portuguese connection uh you know I hear you and since the historical property is just a marker at this point with the outline of the former mission What would impact that? Something completely different or not?

Maybe other commissioners have a thought.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear Laskan.

Sorry, I don't have an answer to the rhetorical. Maybe the other commissioners have some thought. I'm curious what you guys are thinking.

I think this is a big change, like a building which we are demolishing is quite a small and updated construction is quite huge, especially the front building is two storey, which is not exactly, it will be a huge change if you look from the HRI perspective.

My concern is that it's overly built up, the site, and the paving and the house itself needs to be compensated by a little bit more screening or landscaping. It feels like the built-up space is suddenly... Have you kind of drifted into talking about urban planning?

when we're really trying to talk about the historic aspect.

The historically, like how is it compatible with the old quad? When you look even at the site next to it, it's mostly permeable, whereas the site's most permeable. For me, that's a concern. It's not compatible.

From my perspective, is that when we talk about the neighborhood of the historic sites, at least the surrounding should not have a huge change. In this case, there is a huge change is happening in the, I think the currently the building is for, a building is very low density, it looks like. And, but it is supposed to be now two story, and I think it's the highest height in the neighborhood. I don't see any building going higher than that. From my perspective, the historic area is going to be completely, landscape is going to completely change. If it is as a single family, single flow, perhaps we could consider it, yeah.

But are you saying that because it's the tallest building, it impacts the historical site? Because to Rebecca's point, the rest of the ebb and flow of the street is not under discussion here.

I know you know this, but the property to the right is an 18-room six-plex, which has no historical relevance. And there's a taller apartment behind us as well in the area.

I would say just, it's a difficult one because if you're thinking only in terms of, okay, I will throw out that our ordinance doesn't cover the rest of the homes and it has nothing to do with those. And we're only looking at the historical property across the street, which is gone. It's just a landmark at this point. There is no building, the property's there, but there is no structure to compare it against. How do you define anything built there takes away from that historical property, unless it's somehow in, you know, taking away the line that you have, the demarcation of where the mission was and so on.

It's a difficult one.

Would a one story or a two story really make a difference on the fact that there used to be the mission there?

One more thing, sorry. That house to the front is about, what, 1,400 square feet? About 1,400 square feet, which is a really modest house. It's very small. And in comparison to, again, the Queen Anne on the corner, the house to the left is about 1,320. The one next to that's about 1,780. Again, contextually, I think we might be lost a little bit on the fact that it's two stories, but it is not a large house.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Sometimes it's hard to tell from the drawings what the massing it is. That's why I always like to look at Google Maps because it's really hard to reference.

I think about the adjacent houses are single story, but like the one next to it, you know, it's, you know, larger in scale. And, you know, there is a ebb and flow and heights with the roof lines on that side. And then of course on the other side.

It is, it is. Yeah.

It's a hard spot to be in because we don't,

have any recourse over the other houses and how that fits in. I'm not saying it doesn't completely fit in. I'm just saying it's a change that we have to consider. Can't just look at me for emotion. Anybody else?

I'm not looking at you for emotion. You just made a noise, so I looked at you.

Really interesting points here so far. I mean, hasn't it been interesting?

By the way, I love how the demarcation is. Look at Mike.

gonna make a motion here to approve the property. We recommend, take staff's recommendation that the proposed project of 575 Franklin will not destroy or have a significant adverse effect on the integrity of the HRI property of 575 Franklin.

That was a motion. Thank you. Do I have a second? Thank you. I have a second. Those who are in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed?

I abstain. Aye.

Wait, you're opposed? Abstain. Abstain, okay. Four in favor, two abstain. Motion passes.

Thank you.

One absent. One absent. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion. Thank you. Very difficult one. Thank you for hanging with us on this one.

Thank you. Thank you.

We got two more things, two more things. We got boarding commissions and then we got your letter.

Let's see if I can get my power to, I don't know why it's not working.

We're at eight. Does anybody need like a bio break before we keep going? I'll push through. Okay, let's take five. Come back at 8.10.

Thank you.

So. Yeah, that's why I agreed to it. Yeah, and the University is mostly, you know, mostly there's this place, they just put the bare minimum to get away with it. You know, there's also like when builders in this case it's a university but they try to like and always and you can tell the difference like oh this one is a builder you know because they cut cost and it's the payment it's historically not Oh, you're not supposed to talk about that. Let's start again.

All right, and we're back, 11th. Item five, 26921, action on HLC-born committee assignment selection of new commissioner committee assignments. So up on the board is what we have for committees, discussion on who wants to fill a lot of the vacant spaces or, you know, move from like alternate to primary, like if you like. So pretty open. So we can start from top to bottom on it. And if there are any other ones that we should add or subtract from this, we can update that as well. And then at the end of it, we'll all agree to what we want to change this to. Then we'll just take a quick vote on it to confirm. Okay. Okay, so you want the BART high-speed rail, VTA, BRT, okay. And Rebecca, I just actually forwarded you a couple of emails so you can forward to Commissioner Bishwanathan for the BART VTA. So he will be the primary?

Yeah.

Okay.

Historic Preservation Society is the home tour.

Historic Preservation Society, yes, that is home tour.

What is it involved in? I know it hit me in the head.

Is it a bug?

Yeah, it hit me in the head and then it went towards Rebecca.

Yikes. I need a sapper here.

Okay, for the second one, move me as primary, if that's acceptable to chair.

Yeah, you're more involved in that than I am.

Yeah.

Unless anybody else want to work a home tour and Paris last as well. I'm happy to step back for the secondary on that one.

What does it involve?

It's just like, so for all of these, like these are all the kind of preservation and neighborhood like associated, like groups that has basically a stake in historic preservation around the city that we know of. So we like to keep in touch with them to see what their agenda is and stuff. We can report back like every month to say like, hey, these are the things that are happening around the city around preservation. Yep. Oh, yeah, we have board meetings. So I'm actually on the board. That's why I'm on that. So we do have a board meeting like every month, like on the Saturday morning. And then we do at least one or two general meetings a year. This year, there's we generally also run the a Easter egg hunt at the, at the farmer's market every year. And we're also doing a picnic in the park by, um, the mission branch library, let's say center park and on Halloween. So with, along with the university and the library. So that's like the big events that we throw every year. Um, and then when there's an election year, generally we try to run the election forum. So we are actually going to run a lot of those and we're working on logistics on that. Yep. want to be on that. Yeah, cool with being on the secondary on the on on the backup. Cool. Do you be a quad?

Story.

So development review is usually the next step after a project comes through here that goes to development review. So generally what Commissioner Romano has been doing is when the agenda comes out, she looks at if there's like properties on there that we've have looked at or properties that we think we should have looked at and then come through us and you would go and go for comments on those properties at those meetings. When is it usually?

Usually like the week after this, the week before. It's right around the same time. Week after? It's the third or fourth Wednesday. So this month it's on the 16th. 16th, okay, thank you.

It's in the middle of the day, right?

It's at four o'clock.

It's at four o'clock.

I don't even usually go. I go through the agenda, because there's a process to make sure that it has to come in from HLLC. And it's really just to see, did anything maybe should have come in front of us that didn't? There's only been one in all the years I've been here that I even had a question about. And so I reached out to our historian. We have a historian who is a advisor to our commission. If she had any information, she did, but she couldn't find it. So we kind of had to let that one go. Other than that, it's just kind of reviewing what's on the list and seeing if there's anything HLC should have been involved in. It's very simple. And I've only ever had to call in once. staff knows what they're doing. They don't need us.

Yes. It's a, it's a good one to know, like how the process, if you want to be more involved in like the process, like in general, not just this step, that's a good one to actually keep an eye on.

Yeah. Something.

Yeah, and then you see like some context of like how another property, like a different property that's not near like a historic property or historic property, like how that goes through a process as well. So it gives you some context of what the difference is on what we look for versus what they're looking for.

Yeah. And that one's easy because you could just go on the website and you find the development review and you can just ask to be included in the agendas and you get a copy because you can ask to be included on any copy of any public.

Would you like to sign up for that one?

Yeah, as long as it doesn't involve.

Yeah.

No, you would just call in, really. Yeah. If you do call in at all. So, yeah. And you'd be the backup, yeah, for reporting out anyway, for talking about the items here. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for volunteering. So, okay, so we did, did we do our arts and historic consortium?

No.

Okay.

I'll be honest, I've been the backup, but Ana's always taken care of it before, so I don't really even have a contact. I reached out to her. I don't even know what I should be doing for that one.

I don't know how much they're doing because I think they do tours and stuff like that.

Events, that's it, right?

Yeah, and I think they may do a newsletter in some way. I think we just need to get a hold of Anna to figure out how to get in touch with her because the parade is actually part of the consortium. She joined up with them. That's how she signed up.

I didn't know that.

I think Stephen's wife was the chair for the longest time. That's why it was on here in the first place.

yeah is there any since it's a city-owned property there's nothing we need to do or anything right we can remove it from the list if we don't think it's i don't recall her having a lot of updates nothing like on the historic site anyway i mean there are historic properties like around there like let me talk to her one more time see if she has anything and then if not i don't I've never done anything with that one. It's never come up.

I want to keep it on the list and you can be primary, but then like we don't have to report out on it if we don't have anything.

That's fine. It'll be like the cemetery. We used to have a commissioner that he was in charge of keeping track of the cemetery. And his report every month was, they're still there. They're still lying out there. That's all he'd say.

They're still lying out there. In Agnew, there's a cemetery museum. There was a whole committee to putting together that museum and all that stuff. So he was very involved in it. But I think that was on the list for like 15 years. So he just kept reporting out on it. Yeah, it was fun. Spike was fun. Okay, so that's settled. Do we need a secondary?

Not really.

We don't have anything, we don't have anything. Preservation Society, you got it. I have O quad, you have second. Still I own the review. We got that part of high SPR VRT. I'll just secondary. Cause I know other people on the committee. You can have primary. I have secondary. No, go for it. Like you, I think you'd be really, it's really interesting stuff. Like I think you should be involved in it. Like I, I just get secondhand things because I know other people on the committee. That's all. Um, that had precise plan. Um, There's no meetings right now. There's like other things going on. We're doing, there's, what is the thing that we're doing right now? There's RFP going, right? Yeah. It's a little quiet right now on that. There hasn't been any meetings for a while. Like a majority of plan is done and then there's a nexus study that still has to be done. And they're going through RFP for some of that stuff. And that's it. I mean, I can do primary because that's relating to station area as well. I can do both. I mean, I chair station area, so I don't mind being primary. Yeah, and keep it.

So we'll keep it. It'd be good to hear what they can do after.

Yeah, yeah, we should keep those on because down-come precise plans could be, it's still really important. And we still have our site on the, we want to get the post office listed and that completely fell off because we've been waiting for it on Lori to get us like a write-up and it's like really low on her priority list.

Is that part of this or?

It's part of the work plan, but it's also in the middle of the precise plan. Smack in the middle of it. Yeah. So it makes a difference. Cause I, I definitely gave a lot of opinion when I came to the post office, like in the downtown precise plan. I'm like,

Gareth J. yeah before a new members we've got a beautiful post office in Santa Clara and we're looking to get it prepared preserved and designated potentially it's a resource or or on the national register, but we need our historian lori she's going to do some work on that for us. you do next time, take a good look at the post office when you're in there, because even look past the structures that were put in in the 60s, it's an amazing building and it's got a basement. So I think it'd be really fun if we can refurbish it and put some money into it and turn it into something for the citizens to enjoy. As enjoyable as posting a letter is, more interesting as something else.

Is that the one on...

um is that franklin no it's yeah it's franklin square so franklin square like it's back in the middle of it it's the old post office in there it is a historic building um it's been saved by congress one time at least yeah and um It has artwork in there that goes back to a program that came out of the Great Depression. WPA. There's WPA artwork in there. There's carving and stuff like that in there. that were built during the WPA time. So it's actually historically significant that way. Our historian actually did, it's like part of her passion project. She actually did get a post office of like the same era, I think in Modesto listed. And while she was doing the research for that post office over at the Library of Congress archives, she actually pulled a bunch of stuff for this particular post office as well. She just never got around to finish. the research and like doing the write-up. And that's something that we had asked her to do.

Yeah.

And she was going to volunteer her time to do it. So, and a lot of the research was already done. So like, but she has other projects that are paid that are in front. So we don't know what her timeline is. So we'll, we'll ask again at some point, but it should be a listed property. Like formally, we want to do that at some point.

What does it take to get it listed?

Couple of different things. So as part of our work plan, we need to update our historic ordinance. So we will have a clear structure on how to get ourselves to designate property to be historically significant. There are different processes that are through state and federal. And I think this is actually like, We can get it nationally listed, I believe. But we don't have the precise steps, one, where the city can take it. So we need to get those defined. And that's actually part of our work plan to get those steps in place.

Down the road. Yeah. I don't know enough about historic preservation.

Yeah, I think that's part of the, you know, having all this and having a connection, it's helpful because we want to get the education out there to like get everybody to understand like how this actually works and how it interacts with different land use policies and housing policies that are coming through. a lot of the stuff is to try to preserve the historic context of what we have, but the steps to do it, it's all over the place. So how do we pull that together into a coherent process where we know precisely what we need to do to get a protection in place for you know, historically significant things.

I was gonna say you just missed the California Preservation Foundation conferences that the city covers the cost of us to go and learn. But you can sign up online for the CPF. They have free classes all the time that are just online, remote classes.

Those are really good webinars and a lot of really interesting topics.

So California presentation they always need somebody really passionate to sit down and think I'm going to give my free time to look through all the documents and understand the process that has to be taken and it is going to be a first so you're going to hit the bumpers quite a few times along the way until we get it through and that's why having Laurie having done it before is going to really be helpful every city has to do it almost their own way it's it's it's torturous but in the end it's worth it. It opens up funding, it opens up protection, it opens up you know historic backs, it opens up interest in the neighborhood and we'd love to do it all and we can't and we think this is one of the things that is worth doing.

Okay so I think we're good on the assignments right? Are there any other adjustments, updates? Because I think, Rebecca, you got all of them. Okay. Do we need a motion or are we good? I'm not sure. Can we do it just in case?

Yeah.

I think it was just this update. Okay. We're good. I'm just going to thumbs up it. Thank you. Okay, last item. Item 6-26-941, draft letter to the city attorney's office requesting clarification regarding treatment of previously identified potential historic resource during development review and CEQA analysis. Commissioner Romano, I think this is yours. Yeah, thank you.

So this kind of goes back to one of my comments I made earlier on the last item on the agenda was we get stuck in a lot of the terminology in the ordinances and where a lot of the different what's the word impact of the I can't say the word ownership of each of them, but ownership is not the word I'm thinking of. So for example, we have our ordinance, which is for our city, and we have a lot of the ordinance refers to the historical resource inventory. It must be on the inventory. to be considered historical for Santa Clara. That's the Santa Clara ordinance and rules. And then there's steps that are happening in between, like they come to us first. We recommend that something is historic or not. If we recommend it and it stops in the middle of the process and it didn't finish through the rest of the process of getting sent to council and approved, what happens to that property? It's been recognized as historic. And, but it did not complete the local city ordinance rules to actually be historic. Then you add on top of that, we then have state CEQA rules, which then define the environmental impact. And there's actually a portion of that code that then talks about something could be substantially historical. And there are precedents already set that even if a local municipality doesn't recognize a property as historic, the state could say, we've seen enough evidence that we consider it historic. So you've got these different, why can't I think of the word, jurisdictions, we'll say. I couldn't think of it. So you've got the city, you've got the state, you could have the federal involved. We've had things come before us where local residents had said, we want to be federally recognized. We want to be a national registered item. We don't have anything in our ordinance to help them with that. We've had two districts that have asked for it. We could not help them because our ordinance is not significant or not significant, but fully flushed out enough to cover all the different scenarios that might come before the commission. And so one of those scenarios came up in the last council and it was that whole thing of a property that had been put in front of HLC many years ago. 2018 or 19, and the HLC recommended it be historic. It had a DPR registered against it. So it had information that recommended it be historic. So we now have administrative paperwork within the city that says this property should be historic. In that particular instance, the owner, since the owner has the right to ask to be historic or not, stopped the process. for whatever reason, they actually went through it twice and they stopped and they just never went to the final steps to get it finished. So what happens? What does that mean legally? And so I have a lot of questions and this has been going on for years to the point of what is eligible? What does eligible mean for us? What are the legal requirements if we now have paperwork that says something is historic? but we did not finish the process. What happens if the state could come back and say it's historic, but city council went ahead move forward thinking we only have to look at our city ordinance so where do we put ourselves at risk and where does all that fit together and so just with that last one i was like okay i really need to understand this so i asked if we could have on the agenda i wrote up a letter that goes through that particular instance and um it's up on there on the screen we could go through it Kind of going through, this is an example of the kinds of things that I would like the attorney, our city attorney and the clerk to be able to answer and give us guidelines and feedback on what are the risks and things that we need to take into consideration when things come before us, because there's a lot of ambiguity and maybe they won't be able to tell us because it is ambiguous and it could be per instance, but this was the one that kind of prompted me to write this. So I don't know if everybody's had a chance to read it because I put it on the agenda late and we had a very long agenda, but if you want, I can kind of go through it and talk about it. So what I'm asking, and so what I would ask is we go through this letter. Um, do we agree? We want to ask for guidelines from the city attorney and city clerk. If we do, is this the right format? Did I cover enough? Do we need to change it? So, um, Do we want to talk about first, whether we want guidance or not, or do you want to hear it first? I've never done this before. I just got all crazy and said, I want information.

Go ahead. Let's hear it. Like the way that I'm thinking about it, it's like four thing of letters, not enough. I think it has to be an ask on getting guidance. And maybe there's a, we need to have a study session with the city attorney.

Okay, yeah, that would be great. I mean, and that's actually what the letter says, we would like feedback, we would like to understand. So maybe that bug here again, maybe it is we asked for a working session with the city attorney, you know, and that sort of thing. I wouldn't mind that he's come before and done like a Brown Act and all those kinds of things.

Isn't the ordinance already say that it's up to the owner?

It's up to the owner to go through the process, right? We can't make something historic just because we look at it and say it's historic.

I think it's not restrictive that it must be the owner, but the mechanism today is the owner asking for it.

That is the mechanism, yes. on board with it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So then what does that mean then if that's our ordinance and that's the process and the precedent we've set that we follow from a local city, what happens if the state gets involved on a bigger project, which I'll go through why that came up and what if we've already gone partially through a process, made some documents that show that it could be historic, and then the owner decided, no, can the state override that? And do we put the city at risk by only going partially through a process and not completing because the owner didn't want to complete? Like, is there any risk to the city if someone comes back and says, you know, we could do a lawsuit with CEQA and say, no, you can't do this, right? So that's what I want to understand from the attorney. And that wasn't clear in the meeting, And I would like to get more clarification on what it means when we go through our process.

Yeah.

OK. Right. It'd be good to know. I don't know about other local cities, but when we went to the California Preservation Foundation, we got a fantastic. deep dive into how Sacramento does it very different. I think every city can, and actually the series was about what each city does and where they are in their process of historic preservation. Some cities didn't even have an inventory yet. So they were at the very beginning of building their inventory and some had very specific ordinances and very detailed plans that fit in to make sure they addressed what the state required. And so there was a gamut.

I would say like our ordinance was adopted like about 10 years ago, right when I first started.

Wasn't it 2009? 2017. Oh, 17. Why do I always think it's earlier?

Yeah. So it's only been 10 years. It's been 10 years. It's only like right around when I started, but like, I think the process probably started a lot earlier than that. Cause like by the time I got there, it was, we were at adoption. But like at the time when I was talking to our liaison about it, it's basically our position is we just need something in place. So they went ahead and put something in place. The intention has always been, we need to put more resource into it to flesh it out. but we haven't had a chance to do it until like really today where we're looking at RFP. So to get that updated. But in the meanwhile, we have this ordinance to work with, but we do need legal guidance on how do we actually use it properly, you know, until we get this updated. And like, that would give us a little bit more guidance as we're doing the update to ordinance itself. Like what is legally possible for us to put in place on there as well.

That's all. All right, so you want me to kind of read through what we're gonna ask and we can decide if I ask the right thing or if we wanna change it or whatever we wanna do. Rebecca, would you mind scrolling up my laptop? Where does it start? Okay, there, all right. So I just said that we respectfully request clarification of how the city considers evidence of historical significance during development and environmental reviews, when a property has previously been evaluated by city staff and hlc and then it's already been recommended for the hri but the process didn't finish that's the example i'm giving here i think there's other things we could add into this like what does eligible mean versus being on hri and that sort of thing because we talked about that today too. So I raised the question for the example I was giving here. This was city council last week. On the agenda, there was an architectural review for a multifamily property that was going to go in within 200 feet of a property that HLC and the DPR said was historic, but it didn't finish. Whatever reason, the property owner decided not to finish. So from a local ordinance, I totally get that it's not on our HRI, and so there's no impact. But from a CEQA standpoint, is there an impact? Because when I did some research, we found out that there were some, I don't know where it is. Following the public hearing, they voted, this is all about the public hearing for the property becoming HLC, a historic, on the HRI, excuse me. And these were the documents that were created from the meeting, from the HLC meeting. There was a DPR. There was a historical evaluation of the property. City staff recommended that the property qualified as a historic designation. and should be on the HRI. The staff finding the residents possessed significant integrity, and there was a unanimous vote that it should be on the HRI, but then the process fell apart after that. They decided they pulled it out. So that's a lot of documentation. And what does that mean for our legal standing? And will any of that be pulled up when it comes to a state review? And could there be state impacts or lawsuits from that? Because we've all administratively said this should be included. And that's where I get into that second bullet there, local historic designation versus the CEQA historic resource analysis, local versus state. And I said that we understand that the local preservation ordinance treatment, it's not historical, but what does that mean for CEQA? And the guidelines under 150645 establishes that they can say significant. They very vaguely call out what's historical, so it's not clear. And then I cited a couple cases where the state overrode the city. and told them there was enough evidence that they could not impact it. I'd like to call it, there's a little bit of a loophole here because, and I don't know how, and this would be interesting from the city attorney as well and the clerk, this would be of interest to the city if it was on the HRI, because the property's within 200 feet of this multifamily development. But from a state point of view, and we've said, no, it's not because it's never made the HRI. So there's no 200 feet that applies. From a state point of view, what happens when the multifamily building is going in but not touching or directly impacting something where there's documentation that it could be historical? Is there any precedence on if it's close by? Does it have to actually be destroying the property? That sort of thing. So I'd like to understand when there's a breakdown between the local and the state, how does that come together? And then just this goes on to talk about this property, this multifamily development that was going in 200 feet within the possible historic property had a lot of waivers on what rules it had to meet because it meets the AB 130, which is the law for a high, they want the state, wants all the municipalities to put in high density, right? So to promote high density, they let those developments, the local municipality has to waive a lot of requirements to make it happen. So how does that all fit in when you're looking at the scope of historical near it? Because one of the comments on the meeting and maybe I misunderstood, but the way I took it was the only reason that those waivers would not be allowed was if there was historical properties involved. I spoke and said there appears to be historical property involved because we've documented that it should be historical. But we got hung up on whether it was local historical versus state historical.

That's where my question comes from.

I have a bunch of things I'd asked if we could get clarification on. Can we get prior findings of evidence? What do our records mean? And what does it legally mean for the local municipality versus the state? And what is the designation between HRI versus HLC documents versus eligibility? I think I left eligibility off there. I think we should include that because I've never understood the difference of what that means. And then local designation versus CEQA status. Could you give us more information on which one takes precedence? And then independent CEQA evaluation, is the absence of the city's HRI sufficient? And then automatically it doesn't matter which one, it's kind of another precedence question. And what's the effect of withdrawal if the owner withdraws from the process, but we have documentation that shows it's historical, what does that mean? So it kind of just goes through all those points. What does it mean when, does AB 130 override all of that and it doesn't matter? What takes precedence? And then adjacent or nearby development, number six, that's where I'm asking when you're looking at the city versus the state, does it matter if it's adjacent or nearby or does it have to be the exact property? And then seven, administrative records. What does that mean for planning review? Do those have any legal value, you know, legal what's the word standing thank you for anything so and then in the future what does that um what would be what would the city clerk and attorney advise us as an hlc for formal procedures do we have the right procedures in place um do we need to um DO ANYTHING WHEN SOMEONE WITHDRAWS? DO WE HAVE TO MAKE ANY KIND OF LEGAL STATEMENT OR DOCUMENTATION OR ANYTHING? ARE WE DOING WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING? AND THEN HLC REFERRAL, WHAT'S NUMBER NINE? PRITERIA SHOULD BE PLANNING STAFF. OH, THIS ONE IS SO BASED ON NUMBER EIGHT, IF WE HAVE DOCUMENTATION ALREADY, BUT SOMEONE WITHDREW, IS THAT DOCUMENTATION VALUABLE TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION ON OTHER things that are adjacent to it, right? Do we pull up that old information and recognize it, or is it because it didn't fit through the full ordinance, then it is defunct and we don't use it? I'd like to know that. I know what we've been doing in practice. I don't know if we need to adjust our process. And then the final legal interpretation of CEQA versus public resources on the public resources code versus our code. And our objective is to understand how the findings work and fit into the broader development review process and in potential historical resource information developed through the HLC. Is it not inadvertently lost because it somehow falls off the full process? That's my whole background. Do we want to ask for something specific like a working session or do we just want a letter back on each point? I don't know if we need to think about this and come back to it.

Would it be considered too much overreach to kind of force the owner to agree to making it complete the process or?

That's what our precedent is now, right? Staff, right? We always say that the city doesn't have the ability to force an owner to be recognized historically, right?

Yeah, that's correct. So the way the ordinance is written today, you have to have owner authorization to proceed with a designation.

And we've talked about that when we review the ordinance, what could we do to adjust like better definitions of homes? So if you have a district, could some homes be contributing because the owners want to be historic, they've been deemed historic, so they contribute to the district, other homes either The owner said yes, see if i'm historic and we came back no so they're not contributing or the owner says no, I don't want to participate at all your houses in the district, it just doesn't contribute. And, but what does that mean, then we would have to define what does that mean and all that kind of stuff but that's the future that's not.

yeah that's that's the future, those are some of the consideration, we have to do as we're updating the ordinance about. things to the specific property and things as a district is our ordinance around district is a completely, it's a big discussion as well.

Normal legal review and modification of all these. and there may be things which you don't know we don't know what you're you're taking great pain maybe there are i'm just making up maybe one or two things you don't know here or the council are taking decisions in good faith based on the data which is available and past precedences and some codified material so if any of these things you know because of the gap in the process or some unseen legal issues that expose the people to ramification either this group or the state or the city then we don't know the you know better to get a formal

Well, I mean, the whole thing is like, if there's any legal issue, it's going to go back to see your attorney. So that's the discussion you need to have with him.

Yeah, yeah. But the city is already protected by the ordinances.

But how does the state?

How would the state blame it on the city?

There were I found two where the state overrode the city. There were two cases where the city wanted to, in one case, they wanted to tear down a building that the state decided was historical. And the building had never even had any information that it was historical until someone brought it up and they did research and stopped the city from doing it. It was in Monterey.

I was at this meeting and I agree. And I think the homeowner was under the impression they had historic protection. So maybe a bullet to add, what are we telling the homeowners when they go partway through or through their process?

So that's why I wasn't clear when I was watching that meeting. It was like, so the homeowner believed they have protection and they wanted to use that? Or is that the other way around?

They were told when they were planning a project around their home that they were unable to do it the way they wanted originally because of the historic nature of their existing home and had the impression that they were protected historically.

So did the homeowner wanted, so the homeowner had the impression they were protected historically, but that was not the case.

And it came to the new project several maybe a decade later i'll check the dates, but yes, they were no longer protected at that point.

Based on the interpretation that night that that mean correct yeah because it was because the paperwork for never finished for the designation, because I do remember them coming through. previously on the different project.

And they seemed quite upset, right? They felt like they'd been told one thing when their project was requested and spent money at that stage. And then later on, they could no longer reply on that. So it felt like it perhaps was a communication issue.

The new project that was being proposed that night, that was unrelated to this homeowner as the completely, he was just a stakeholder because it was adjacent to this new project.

No disagree. Yeah. So the first time around, maybe 10 years ago, let's say they had wanted to put properties around there on their land.

He split the lot and added three town homes in there.

And he wanted bigger and they made them smaller.

Yeah.

That was his property project. And so he was now unrelated to the neighbors. garage knocked down and rebuilt, yeah.

The neighbor wanted to build, but they were able to go higher because, I mean, they were able to go bigger in scale because there's no... Got it.

Maybe this is a one-off case. It's very unusual. It is unusual. It kind of came to a head for me because I always have so many questions. I'm very confused about the different designations and how they all relate to

This is a new discussion, honestly, this is a discussion that we had when priya was still on this Commission oh wow yeah.

yeah there's even last week last month, it was that multifamily in it was a sequel project.

mm hmm.

So I was confused about whether sequel take small or like historic preservation is part of sequel review, but the the planning review happens before historic. Planning comes after. And it happens after yeah because the developer said they already went through planning. They misspoke planning comes after us yeah. So, because it's a sequel project there's a higher importance historic observation, I mean they'll comes back to like how legally defensible it is.

If if questions arise that's why it has to go back to see attorneys office to say like this is how it's all written, these are different things. What are our considerations. and presidents of the different cases around the state, then how would they interpret it? And then how are we supposed to adjudicate based on the interpretation of how defensible a decision is going to be?

I feel sometimes the property owner should have their rights.

They don't want to be.

You know, so at some point, like, would it be too, too much of an overreach for the city to say you have to make a story?

Not asking this letter. I mean, if we want to ask about that, we could include that in this letter. Um, I was asking, if the owner decides not to do it, what happens when the state overrides that and where could the state override that? I think my last comment is it'd be really good for the public to understand what happens when they start sees or they go through the pro what does it mean for them we have we've had people come before us and say my house is historic you need to protect me from whatever is on the agenda and then they're not on our registry so as far as our ordinance is concerned they are not right so it would be wonderful to have guidelines that we could that we would be clear on and that the public would

My position on this is the way we are trying to resolve this, not following the long letters here and back and forth, but having a meeting with city attorney with clear expectation and everyone can come with the pre-draft rate question. Because I, myself, have a lot of questions regarding the process. How a property is designated as historic, and is owner aware of it or not? Or if something is not historic yet, but we want to mark it as historic, then is it on owner's discretion? And what is the benefit owners are getting if they are marked as historic? All those things need to be known to us before we do the meaningful discussion in any case coming to us.

So these were my questions. If you guys have more questions, maybe we could add to it and then change the last line to say, instead of written response or presentation, we could say we would like to have a working session and do that and have the list of questions ahead of time so the attorney can drop it.

So once we all agree that this is a finite site, send it up front so that they can deliberate upon it, give some time for them to frame the response, and then hold a meeting wherein they would also share the findings and then talk through why this or why that, and things like that. Pretty good education for us.

Hold on, hold on. Isn't this message about when does jeopardy attach? If paperwork starts, what is the point where the city recognizes this property as historic when it comes to planning?

And when can someone else recognize it?

Correct. And you guys are asking about what's the process? This is, you know, what happens if nothing has started? This is more like once the ball has been kicked. when is there a legal requirement to attend to it and and i wonder if we can keep it focused to that because it's related to this one case here and maybe take the discussion about if nothing has started what does that mean to a different subject because that's more about what happens in our um ordinance and our context statement and our um historic districts so i think that's a different day's topics

Is there, Rebecca, do you have any other examples of project that is supposed to be designated? There's no other precedent for that.

Don't know, but like, since this happened, that is a case that we can point specifically to. I don't think we've ever considered, well, we have considered this before, where it's like something is potentially historic.

That is not- I think the precedent would be however things are in the database that says eligible, like what does that mean? You know, like you said, maybe there was a survey at some point and someone said it was eligible. What does that mean? What legally does that mean? Does it mean anything? Nothing.

Right.

I think that would be something that's, that's even part of the ball getting kicked and started because at some point somewhere in the city, it's written down that we need to look at that property. Right. So.

Yeah, because I think, um, From my professional work, one of my clients wanted to go against the city, saying that the city is overreaching his property rights. So sometimes you have to, especially in California, because there's so many regulations, they might feel that if we forcefully designate something as historic, then that would not work.

I think, yeah, that's a whole other conversation for the ordinance, because we don't do that now.

Right. We can't do that.

Right.

Not over saying, okay.

I want to make sure I don't say something wrong.

Some of this stuff goes back. You don't have a deadline. Is there any expectation of a response in a certain period? Is there?

Oh yeah, that's a good point.

So, so basically letter you have add that we would like to have like an in-person conversation, the city attorney's office. I can change that. And then. No, by next meeting.

Is that enough time? Well, I mean, have like some sort of the letter to send to net. Yeah, then. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

You can update it and just email it to me. Okay. Unless the group wants to review it again. Do you guys want to review it again?

If I update it?

And then I can provide an update on his review. I thought you were asking if that was enough time for him to read.

I was thinking the same. It's like more. when we're done with the letter to send it off when we're ready.

When should we expect to have some sort of response to figure out when to schedule and have actual response to the letter and stuff like that? I don't want it to just go into a void. That's what I'm thinking.

No.

Yeah, I can't really boss him much.

I mean, I can check in with him, but... Yeah. I don't think we can put a due date.

He's the city attorney.

There are other letters people I know have written to the city attorney before. We just nag him every month. And he'd be like, I got it. is checking in. Okay, but yeah, yeah, do that. I think like what you wrote is fine. It's good. It will start the conversations at the minimal. I'm not expecting like we will resolve everything with these conversations. I think we'll just have conversations that we've never had with them before that we really need to start doing because we were looking at the ordinance up

If you have any other things that you want to add, just send, you can't send them to me. You have to send an order back. All beans.

We done?

Can we just do a quick motion to say that the commission wants this forwarded to the attorney's office?

I move that we modify the letter as discussed so that we can have a working session with the attorney and any other questions will be sent to staff to be added in and that we do want to request that working session with the attorney based on this letter.

Forwarded to the city attorney's office. And forwarded to the city attorney's office. Friendly, friendly. Friendly request.

Oh, you want a friendly amendment. Sorry.

Thank you. I guess I can do a docent favor. Say aye. Aye. Oppose. Abstain. You know, Ms. One absence. Motion passes. We got to do the letter. Two things. What? Yes. Thank you for putting that together.

Staff report.

No.

I'm just at the RFP for the historic preservation ordinance is posted. It was posted yesterday. Deadline to respond is October 2. So either one of the next couple of meetings will be voting on having a couple of you join us on the review board.

I'm speaking of next meeting, I think we may cancel items.

Yeah. So I did put a pull out to the planners. There are no items tracking for the next meeting and we are already aware of two absences for the October meeting. So we may reconvene in November.

Okay. Commissioner reports. I I'm just going to go through the list real quick. Cause I don't think we have anything. Santa Clara arts and historic consortium or reset. There's nothing historic preservation society, Santa Clara, any,

Gareth J. i'm towards moving along current status is that we've been talking about the brochure tickets and. Gareth J. manners are are moving along, and so you should see something right over the Halloween weekend. Gareth J. And we've got some great houses some really great houses cheese on it. Come on out, you guys. Come see the Historic Home Tour, Meet the Neighbors. It's a great resource for the four of you online. Come on out.

Yeah. Oklahoma Residents Association elections coming up. I already talked about we're going to have an election forum. We'll figure it out at some point. We'll get that before the ballots are due. Development review hearing?

Nothing to report.

Fired high speed rail VTA brt nothing report at the moment. Oh, can we know we're taking that off because that's already done. Down to precise plan we already talked about there's nothing happening Santa Clara station area task force we haven't met in a couple months, so because we're still going through approval so nothing to report from there and we're done I haven't me to have a motion to adjourn.

I move we adjourn.

Thank you. Second? Second. Those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Unanimous. We are adjourned until the next meeting. Thanks, everybody.