Thank you.

Your staff is ready when you are.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the September 18th, 2024 Preservation Commission meeting.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, commissioners. If you can please unmute.

Commissioner Merker.

Commissioner Onbacher.

Commissioner Burns.

Commissioner Rika.

Vice Chair Nair is currently absent.

And Chair McSloftkin.

Thank you. We have Quorum.

Great. Thank you.

I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins.

You will have two minutes to speak when called on.

After the first speaker, we will no longer accept new speaker slips.

We will now proceed with today's agenda starting with the land acknowledgement.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgments in honor of Sacramento's Indigenous people and tribal lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nisanan people, the southern Maidu Valley and Plains Mewak, Patwin Wintu peoples and the people of the Wilton Rancharia, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's Indigenous people's history, contributions and lives.

Thank you.

Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Our first business today is the consent calendar and approval of the minutes from our last meeting.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, Chair. Sorry, one moment.

We have no speakers for this item.

Great. Thank you.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak or make a motion on this item?

Any motions from anyone?

I'll go ahead and move to approve the minutes from our last meeting. Is there a second?

Second from Vice-Chairn A.R. Also, hi. Good evening. Welcome.

Will the clerk please call the roll or call the vote. Excuse me.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair. Commissioners, please unmute.

Commissioner Merkirk?

Yes.

Commissioner Ombacher?

Yes.

Commissioner Burns?

I abstain.

Commissioner Rika?

Yes.

Vice-Chairn A.R.

Yes.

And Chair McSlovakim?

Yes.

Thank you, the motion passes.

Thank you.

The next item posted on our agenda is this public hearing for the R-Suite Historic District Ordnance Amendment,

and that is continued to our next meeting, which is October 16th.

So we look forward to discussing that then.

We'll move on to the discussion calendar and item number three.

San Francisco Boulevard Historic District.

Do we have a staff presentation?

Yes. Good evening, Chair.

Sean DeCorsi, Preservation Director, and I'll be giving a staff presentation on this item.

I have some slides up that I'll show as we go through the presentation.

So I'm pleased to present this item.

Just as a reminder, at the request of the Commission Chair in June,

we have examined the historical evaluation for San Francisco Boulevard Historic Landscape District,

which represents a unique and cohesive example of early 20th century urban planning.

Unlike most of our nominations where the Commission is being asked to make a recommendation to City Council,

this is an early review and comment for both the Preservation Commission but also members of the public.

You're being asked to provide feedback for city staff to consider when deciding whether or not to nominate the district to the Sacramento Register.

San Francisco Boulevard stands as an important representation of the Garden City movement,

which played a key role in shaping urban planning and suburban development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

With its distinctive double median strips originally planted with Phoenix Canaris palms,

the Boulevard design reflects the broader new city planning movement,

as seen in other Sacramento subdivisions like Boulevard Park and Land Park.

The Boulevard retains significant integrity in terms of its location, design, and setting,

while some of the original palms have been replaced following the rehabilitation guidelines,

this does not detract from the overall historical aesthetic value of the street scape.

The replacements maintain their linear planning patterns that was central to its original character

preserving the cultural landscape in line with the Secretary of Interior standards.

Under both Criterion 1 and Criterion 3 for the California Register of Historical Resources and the equivalent Criterion the Sacramento Register,

San Francisco Boulevard appears eligible for listing.

Not only does the Boulevard exemplify important early 20th century development patterns,

but it also showcases distinctive characteristics of the city street and Boulevard design from that era.

Given the integrity of the district and its alignment with the goals of the preservation office and the city's general plan,

staff recommends a preservation commission, provides staff direction on initiating the nomination process for San Francisco Boulevard,

for listing on the Sacramento Register.

As part of my presentation tonight, if Casey Schaft is in the audience, he lives in the neighborhood,

and I've asked him to, or her, to address the commission.

Good evening. My name is Casey Schaft.

I'm a long time resident of Sacramento and Colonial Heights.

And I'm one of the people who started this process of making our street a landmark.

So thank you all for hearing our request today to begin this effort of making San Francisco Boulevard a historical landmark.

Colonial Heights first began to be developed in 1910 and was touted as the newest and greatest suburban development,

much like Oak Park.

Lots were being sold for a whopping $600, a little bit different these days.

I first moved to this neighborhood in 2003, and San Francisco Boulevard was one of the main attractions to live here.

San Francisco Boulevard has a rich history as noted in Melissa Marcus' report in 2013 when our neighborhood advocated to have the original

canary palms that were diseased to be replaced with fan palms.

In this fully researched and detailed report of Melissa's, it was recommended to make the street a landmark due to its unique design and architecture,

and this never happened.

Our neighborhood is a small but loud and proud community.

We fight for our neighborhood to be represented and taken care of by our city officials, as you can see by our representation here tonight.

So when Smud came through and chopped down six of the palm trees earlier this year, I was appalled,

although I understood the reason, of course, with our big storms that are happening and trees falling.

I met with Urban Forestry shortly after, and they were less than enthusiastic to do anything about it replacing them.

So I decided that this would be the perfect time to protect the integrity of the street, the design, the architecture,

and it's the pride and joy of our neighborhood.

It's a beautiful street, it's unique, and also, of course, the cover of this book.

So you've seen all the reports and know the rich history of the neighborhood, so we enthusiastically request the commission to assist us in this endeavor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Casey. That concludes our staff presentation.

Great, thank you, Casey, and thank you, Director DeCorsi.

Clerk, do we have any members of the public who is to speak? It looks like we do.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, we have four speakers. Our first speaker is William, followed by Ian.

Good evening, William Berg with Preservation Sacramento, representing the Preservation Sacramento Board of Directors.

We are in full support of hopefully that you will move forward a nomination for this property.

We held our quarterly preservation roundtable at Onstock and Boulevard meeting with members of the community.

The main concern that was expressed was that this, essentially, what was being nominated?

We specified, hopefully, it will be clarified by the city, that what is being nominated here are the two rows of palm trees, not the most strips on either side that would result in inclusion of private property in the nomination.

So with the caveat that we want to see the public right away, and this public feature listed, I mean, sure, someday there's a historic district nomination that is a separate issue, but for now, the issue is really starting with the Boulevard and moving forward to listing this landmark.

Also, a member of our board, Melissa Marcus, who is the author of the report is in the audience tonight and is available to ask questions about it if any are required of the commission.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Ian, followed by Casey.

Hello. Thank you for holding me up, hearing on this. My name's Ian Thompson. I live on San Francisco Boulevard, maybe even in the picture there.

I moved there about three years ago, and one of the things that drew me was initially just driving by, just looking for places to sort of find a home in Sacramento, and the street drew us right in.

It's pretty iconic, as people have said. I work in landscape architecture, I've been doing it for like 15 years, and related to what he's talking about with this era, which he was talking about, the city beautiful movement.

These sorts of forms in the landscape and in cities are hard to find, right? So it's important to me, I think, not just as a resident, but as a resident of San Francisco Sacramento.

It's something that's this sort of iconic and anchoring to the neighborhood is kind of preserved.

What I want to say. One of the other things that's great about it is we have a neighborhood full of different types of people.

We've got the childless cat people, we've got the family, we've got all kinds of people, but this is a thing that univises. It's something that brings us all together.

Literally, figuratively, people come out, they spend a lot of time there. These quiet streets are a place of playgrounds, and these trees just sort of create this framework and this beautiful structure for the area.

I recently joined with some other neighbors who me formed the Colonial Heights Bike Club, and we had this iconic photo from the book, and we were able to restage that here in this place.

So it's very clear that not just the people here, but the other neighbors in the neighborhood really believe this is an important feature, and it gives us an identity as a neighbor.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Kasey.

I just put her in, she was running late, I didn't want to hurt her in this lot, but she has to.

Oh, it was, okay, perfect. Then our last speaker will be Shirley.

Originally I wasn't going to speak, but I just wanted to let you guys know that how passionate we are, you can see that.

And San Francisco Boulevard really is a defining feature in our neighborhood, and from what I saw reviewing the Sacramento Register, there are a scarce amount of landmarks in the South Sacramento, South Sacramento area.

So I would be really honored as ours was one of the first or the next one at any rate after Oak Park, and I can't remember the other one.

Also, what I wanted to say was we did get in touch with Eric Garrow, who is our City Council representative, and we had a great conversation.

He's totally on board with this. Of course, no barring anything on first scene, but as William said, we're only asking for the street and the street scape, not the sidewalks and anything that's in front of the people's properties.

We're not asking for a historic designation of homes, anything like that, just up to the curb and the, the medians and the palms.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Cherry, I have no more speakers.

Can I add one, we kind of came in late, and since I was on there, can I give my time to Ron?

Sure.

Hello.

Ron deal here. My history goes back to 1947, and what I call Colonial Park.

It's the West end of Colonial Heights. Buffers with a cyclone blowvard, which was Highway 99 in my time.

And that colonate, I call it the Pomenade, is important to me as a landmark and part of my memories.

I think it looks good. So I think it's a plus for the city and our neighborhood.

And the movement to make it a historical site or on that, in the books that way, I'm, I would applaud it and I would thank you if you did too.

It's our city and it helps its appearance. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Cherry, I have no more speakers.

Thank you, Clerk. Are there any commissioners with comments or questions on this?

Yeah, Commissioner Mercker, go ahead.

There we go. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I'd like to thank the members of the community who've come out to speak today.

I think it's always good to see the community involvement in these efforts.

I would also like to note that I am a former resident of Colonial Heights.

I was a first time home buyer in that neighborhood.

And what drew me to that neighborhood was the walkability to the library, the park and the market and the diversity of the neighborhood.

I fondly recall one of my neighbors was a member of the Royal Chicano Air Force and had walked with Cesar Chavez and had some stories to tell that we'd talk about on our front porches,

having a coffee or tea or a beer, depending on the time of day.

So I know firsthand the character of San Francisco Boulevard and how it works.

I used it to commute to downtown on my bicycle.

And also from my architectural background, I understand that a street like that has some inherent qualities that you may not even understand.

You may not even realize. One of my favorite textbooks was Great Streets by Alan Jacobs.

It illustrates various scales and types of roadways and how they naturally calm traffic are inducing to walking, strolling and are naturally safe.

And I think the city should take note of that. A street profile like San Francisco Boulevard accomplishes those things without plastic or green traffic coating or all of the other measures that are being taken across the city to make our streets safer.

And the streetscape as a whole has a value and I encourage either the neighborhood or the city to go forward with larger designation in the future.

Thank you, Commissioner. Yeah, Vice Chair and I are. Go ahead.

So just a quick question. We are reviewing and commenting with the next step.

Let me answer Dr. Ducorci. Sure. So you're being asked to provide direction to staff to consider in initiating a landmark or historic district nomination.

This is a historic landscape district. So you've heard the terminology between landscape and district back and forth.

But the direction from the commission will be considered by staff and then a, and then if you're supportive, then a nomination may come before you in the future.

So then just two thoughts. I fully support it. I will echo Ian in that it would be great to look at a larger district within the neighborhood itself, including the neighborhood.

I think it was mentioned in the house report that there could be a larger district, including the residences. And so I encourage looking at that.

And then with the landmark nomination having a clear figure depicting the boundaries of the resource.

Because I wasn't clear reading through the documentation that it didn't include the sidewalks and that it was only the road scape.

Thanks.

Thank you commissioner. I'm back. Go ahead.

Yeah, I agree with commissioner Nierra that to have a specific boundary. And I think the documentation is good. And I would support moving it forward.

But I would also like to see a little bit more discussion on the integrity since there has been some of the trees that have been removed.

And I think that there was a lot of some current pictures, but I don't in my read of this, this doesn't, this would not need a lot of work.

It's, it clearly tells us why it meets the criteria. So I would support moving it forward.

Great. Thank you.

I had two comments and not so much specific to this issue, but one was.

Are there other nominations out there that already have reports already done that like fell through the cracks somehow and could come before us and we could move forward?

Because that seemed like a.

It seemed like a cool opportunity for us that this happened, but I wondered like are there others like it.

And the second, which is maybe for all the preservation minds in the room is this issue of trees keeps coming up.

And I know that the what happened with smud is already in the past, but there were these trees on free port cut down a few months ago that were related to this world war one memorial.

And when the city's tree master plan came before us, we talked about these trees of significance, but it was about the species or the size or stuff like that.

But it wasn't about individual trees in their historic significance.

So trees get old and need to come down or they'll come down in a storm and horrible things can happen.

But I wonder if we can like have some more holistic program.

I know the city of San Francisco, which we talked about has this like landmark trees program something like that for more opportunities like this.

So it's not as.

At hawk maybe.

And then lastly, thank you all for bringing this up and for coming this evening.

Any other comments, questions.

All right. Well, thank you very much.

This will be on a future agenda likely in the future. So stay tuned.

And with that, we'll move on to the next item in our agenda, which is the director's report from director to course.

All right. Thank you chair. I do have a few items for the director's report this evening.

First, I'd like to note that staff is preparing to release the second draft of the LGBTQ plus historic experience historic context statement in early October.

So we followed by a series of public meetings.

The preservation commission will have a chance to review that draft at their October meeting as well, where they'll hear a presentation from Claire Flynn, the historic consultant from page in trouble who prepared the report.

Next, I wanted to give you an update on 1950 Ardenway, despite the commission's recommendation to list the former home savings and loan building over the owner's objection, the city council at a public hearing declined to list the property citing economic concerns of the building's adaptive reuse.

Staff continues to coordinate with the California Preservation Foundation to plan the 2025 Preservation Conference in Sacramento.

And then we have, as you know, we process mills at contracts on an annual basis. And we are bringing nine contracts to the city council on October 8th.

That is the most contracts enacted in a single year since the program was reactivated in 2018.

And then lastly, I wanted to give you an update on the status of our interns. So our intern Derek Roberts, who presented to the commission at one point, continues to work with us on the objective standards for accessory dwelling units.

After taking a hiatus for the summer, he's back with us and working on that project.

And we have our three other interns that were formerly with us have moved on to other things. And we've brought on two new interns, Travis Carr from Sacramento State and Melissa James from the University of Southern California.

Both interns are graduate students studying historic preservation. And we're hoping that we can bring some of their work to you in the future.

That concludes my director's report and I can answer any questions from the commission.

Thank you very much. I have one question. You mentioned getting the most, the most number of mills at contracts since 2018. Do you have thoughts on why that is? Is there more interest or is that like a post-COVID rebound situation?

I think the uptick in properties are primarily from commercial property owners and developers.

Our previous applications from commercial property owners were really from one property owner. And it seems that that has caught on. And we've received a handful of applications along with our with applications from private property owners residential for the most part.

The uptick I think is attributed to commercial property owners realizing the tax benefits of the program.

Any other commissioner questions for director to quersey?

All right. Oh, yeah, Vice Chair Neyre.

What's going to happen to 1950, Erden?

I am not sure at this point we were anticipating that there will be a development application for the property, but nothing has been submitted to date.

Even though it is not listed on the Sacramento Registrar, is it still considered a historical resource for sequel purposes?

We have not made a determination on that front at this point.

All right. Thank you very much. Moving on to Commissioner comments, ideas and questions. Any commissioners have anything to share?

All right. Moving on to public comments. Matters not on the agenda. Clerk, do we have any speaker slips?

Thank you, Chair. Yes, we have one speaker. William.

Welcome back.

Welcome back. William Berg, preservation Sacramento's historic home tour happens this Sunday.

And speaking of boulevard is happening in the boulevard park historic district.

We have six homes ranging from large mansions to a 780 square foot shotgun house and two four plexes one built that way and one converted from a single family home.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Chair, I have no more speakers.

Great. Well, without we'll adjourn the meeting and see you all at our meeting next month.