Chair, staff is ready when you are.

Welcome to the October 16th, 2024 Preservation Commission meeting.

The meeting is now called to order.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioners, if you can please unmute.

Commissioner Merker?

Here.

Commissioner Ombucker?

Here.

Commissioner Burns?

Here.

Commissioner Rika?

Here.

Vice Chair Near?

Here.

And Chair McSloffkin?

Here.

Thank you.

We have quorum.

Thanks for my members and 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 have two minutes to speak once you are called on.

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

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

Please rise for the opening acknowledgments and 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, Patlin-Wintu peoples,

and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who come before us today, 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.

And 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.

We'll move on and begin with our agenda.

The first item of business is the consent calendar and the approval of the minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair. I have no speakers for the consent.

Thank you. Are there any commissioners who would like to speak or make a motion?

A motion to approve the meeting minutes of September 18, 2024.

Great. Thank you, Vice Chair and I are. Makes a motion to approve the minutes. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Mercker. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Thank you, Chair. Commissioners, please unmute.

Commissioner Mercker?

Yes.

Commissioner Onbucker?

Yes.

Commissioner Burns?

Yes.

Commissioner Rika?

Yes.

Vice Chair Nair?

Yes.

And Chair McSloffkin?

Yes.

Thank you. The motion passes.

Thank you.

We'll move on now to item two on the agenda in public hearings.

Our Street Historic District Ordnance Amendment and our Street Historic District Plan Amendment.

Do we have a staff presentation?

Yes. Thank you, Chair.

Sean DeCorecy, Preservation Director with the Community Development Department.

If I could get the presentation, please, thank you.

So the R Street Historic District dates back to July 30, 1985, when City Council adopted ordinance 85-076.

This added the R Street Historic District to the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources.

On December 10, 2019, the City Council, excuse me,

the City Council adopted ordinance 2019-0052, which amended the district to include contributing

and non-contributing parcels within the district.

But no changes were made to the district boundary at that time.

In mid-2024, the owners of High Line Electric Company inquired about redeveloping the 1100 block

of our street, which is partially located within the district boundaries.

The response to the staff inquiry, staff reviewed the historic status of the buildings on the site,

and noticed an error in the district boundaries that did not align with the evaluation recommendations

that have been made over the years for the district.

Staff currently proposes to expand the district boundaries to include 1117R Street as a contributing resource

and changes the status of 173012 Street, making it a non-contributing resource.

In addition to the 1100 block, staff proposes to expand the district to include 1200R Street as a contributing resource.

Similarly, earlier this year, the property owner contacted staff inquiring about listing this building

as part of the district, and staff determined that 1200R Street was potentially eligible for inclusion.

In order to ensure consistency, staff has also prepared a minor amendment to the historic district plan,

which would update the map shown here, or figure 293, so that it is consistent with the Sacramento Registered Listed District.

This concludes my presentation, and I'm available to answer any questions on this item.

Thank you, Director DeCorci. Clerk, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Thank you, Chair, I have no speakers for this item.

Thank you. Any commissioners with questions for Director DeCorci or comments?

Yeah, Director, or Commissioner Rica, excuse me.

I just had a question, and it's probably a stupid one, but the Highline Electric Building,

is that already in the district, or is it not in the district? I'm just a little confused.

Yes, Highline Electric, and actually it may be easier for me to toggle back here to the district map.

So Highline Electric, as you see here, is actually two buildings on a single parcel,

and it's the one right in the middle of that 1100 block.

I can actually, I can point here, so this building 1119, that's Highline Electric and the adjacent building.

And the building proposed to be added to the district is this building directly adjacent to Highline,

and the building proposed to be reclassified as a non-contributing resource, is this building here.

Thank you. Vice Chair and I are, go ahead.

I just want to say I support updating the boundaries and the contributing and non-contributing resources.

I just wanted to make a comment regarding the figures that are in the staff report that show the non-contributors opposite of what they actually are.

That's the best way to say it.

But yeah, super-support it.

Thank you. Yes, we noticed that earlier today, and we've actually updated them on this graphic in the presentation,

but it's these two graphics where the key color coding was switched.

So we'll make sure to update that should the commission support the proposed amendments.

Any further commissioner questions or comments or a motion?

Commissioner Margaret, go ahead.

A quick question about the proposed district boundary. Does it follow the parcel lines, or include right away, or what's the definition of the boundary?

Yes, the district boundary runs along parcel lines. It also runs along the center line of the streets where they exist.

And then it also includes the railroad right of way as part of the district boundaries.

So that's sort of that space behind the buildings.

One right of way is a contributing resource because it retains its character and integrity.

Well, the other one is actually a modern RT spur and is considered a non-contributing parcel.

Any further comments? No? Okay.

Well, if there are no other questions, I'll go ahead and move to adopt staff recommendation and move this along to council amending the district plan and ordinance amendment.

The ordinance and the district plan. Is there a second?

A second.

Thank you, Vice Chair Mayer, our seconds. Will the clerk please call the roll.

Yes, thank you chair. Commissioner's please unmute. Commissioner Merker.

Yes. Commissioner Ombucker.

Yes. Commissioner Burns.

Yes. Commissioner Rika. Yes. Vice Chair Near.

Yes. And Chair Mixlothkin. Yes.

Thank you, the motion passes.

Thank you. Next on our agenda is item three ordinance listing 1146th Street and 1341 45th Street as landmarks on the Sacramento Registrar of Historic and Cultural Resources.

And welcome to our new presenter, Travis, I think Sean said it. Yeah?

Correct. Welcome. Okay. Good to have you here.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Travis Carr. I'm the preservation intern for the city of Sacramento and I'll be presenting the landmark nominations for 1146th Street and 1341 45th Street under file M24-009.

The property owners of 1146th Street and 1341 45th Street retain the services of the historic environment consultants who prepared the historic evaluation for these properties.

The historic evaluation attached to your staff report concludes that the property at 1146th Street appears eligible for listing on the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources.

Under criteria three, pursuant to Sacramento Code Section 17.604.210.

For its embodiment of distinctive two-to-revival characteristics, these characteristics, as you can see on the slide, include a brick veneer, hip and steep gabled roofs, and a recessed arch entry amongst others.

The historic evaluation attached to your staff report also concludes that the property at 1341 45th Street appears eligible for listing on the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources under criteria two for its association with George Pollock, who is significant as the builder of the Tower Bridge, Shasta Dam and various projects for the U.S. Navy, and Ronald Reagan, who is significant as the governor of the

California and president of the United States, 40th President. 1341 45th Street also appears eligible under criteria three for its embodiments of distinctive two-to-revival characteristics.

These characteristics include a symmetrical composition featuring a pair of steeply pitched gabled roofs, a pair of large chimneys, and a recessed arch entry amongst others.

These criterions are pursuant to Sacramento City Code Section 17.604.210.

Staff recommends the Preservation Commission make a recommendation to the City Council to determine listing the properties on the Register, as exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and adopt an ordinance listing the nominated properties as landmarks on the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources.

A notice of the public hearing describing the proposed landmark listing was sent to the property owners at 1146 Street and 1341 45th Street. East Sac Give Back, East Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, East Sacramento Preservation, and Preservation Sacramento have been notified of the landmark proceeding. No objections to listing have been received by staff. This concludes my remarks and I'll now accept any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Clerk, do we have any members of the public with comments on this?

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers for this item.

Thank you. Any commissioners with comments or questions?

I have one small comment, let me just pull it up, that on page 14 here, and this is just like a language, nitpick kind of thing, but fresh after reading the LGBTQ plus context statement, talking about the significance of the House of 1146 Street.

And it says, let me just find it so I have a right. And the early 20th century, people with skills could get good paying jobs that would able them to build a home.

And it felt like not fully accurate based on the rest of the histories and also just kind of like fluff that wasn't really necessary. And I wonder if we could take it out.

That was my comment.

James Faire.

Were you about to say something?

Yes, I was just going to mention that we can request that of the consultant to strike that.

Any other commissioner comments or questions or motions?

Vice Chair and I are.

Go ahead.

I noticed that for one of the buildings 1100, it has a period of significance of.

I'm not sure if it needs an evaluation of exceptional significance with an end date of 2024.

Is that shall that something that you can speak to?

We can take a look at that period of significance. That seems like a pretty expansive period of significance.

If indeed it has events that have.

That have caused it to gain significance within the past 50 years. Yes, it would need a justification for exceptional significance.

I think we should look to revise that period of significance.

All right, well with those comments in mind, I'll go ahead and make a motion to.

Recommend to council passage of ordinance listing 1146 street and 1341 45th street as landmarks on the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources.

Is there a second?

I can second.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Thank you chair.

Commissioner's please unmute.

Commissioner Merker.

Yes.

Commissioner Onbacher.

Yes.

Commissioner Burns.

Yes.

Commissioner Rika.

Yes.

Vice Chair Near.

Yes.

And Chair McSloftkin.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move on now to the discussion calendar and item number four on the agenda.

Preservation Commission draft 2024 annual report.

Thank you chair.

I've shown the course of the preservation director and I just have a or report for this item.

No, no slides.

So yeah, you could take that down.

So this item the draft the 2024 draft preservation commission annual report is being driven by the City Council rules of procedure that state that an annual report is required for all legislative bodies including the preservation commission.

The draft report on this agenda is a review and comment item in order to allow the preservation commission a chance to look back at the past year as well as consider the commission work plan.

As a review and comment item this is your chance to request any changes to the report that you see fit or amend the amend the work plan or perhaps point out any items that may have been missed from the from the look back at the past year.

So I want to note some highlights that by my count the preservation commission reviewed 11 historic district or landmark nominations and updates in 2024 and the commission played a significant role is the public review body for staff's work on the LGBTQ plus historic experience project reviewing that project on several occasions including the next item on your agenda.

So I think that concludes my remarks and I look forward to your comments and questions.

Thank you, director de Corsi. Clerk did we have any comments on this item.

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers for this item.

Thank you. Any commissioner comments or questions for director de Corsi?

Thank you very much for the report. We will move on now to item five on our agenda.

Sacramento LGBTQ plus historic experience project second draft historic context statement.

And I believe we have a report from the consultant team who put it on. Please introduce yourself. Welcome.

Chair if I may if I may make a few few remarks to get us started.

So I'd like to begin by mentioning that this is a chance for the preservation commission to provide a review and comment on both the historic context statement as well as the historic district survey and individual property evaluations prepared as part of the project.

In terms of background as a reminder of this project has been going on since late 2023 and the preservation commission has acted as a review body at several important project milestones including tonight.

Staff intends to return to your next meeting with a final drafts for commissions recommendation to city council.

And for your presentation tonight I'd like to introduce Claire Flynn the city's historic consultant with page internaval who provide an overview of the products main deliverables.

All right.

So I got as he said my name is Claire Flynn and I am a historian and cultural resources planner with page internaval and we were hired as the consultant to work on this really fabulous project.

This is a presentation we've given two different public meetings over the last two weeks so bear with me we're going to summarize our main findings from the last several months.

So there are may or four main components of this project the first is a historic context statement which it sounds like you've read.

The second is a survey and evaluation of lavender heights as a potential historic district.

The third is nominating five different individual landmarks and the fourth are series of oral histories and we at page internaval have primarily been focusing on the first three of these so that's that's what's what I'm going to present today.

So the historic context statement you're probably familiar with the out with what this is but it's a narrative history usually around a specific theme or topic and of course in this case it's Sacramento's LGBTQ plus community history.

It's not comprehensive it's intended to provide what it says context on the specific topic primarily with the goal of trying to help designate and celebrate and recognize places in our city that are related to that history but it can of course be used as a foundation or starting point for so many other different projects and grant funding and various things.

So the way that we went about went about researching this we initially started with sort of the low hanging fruit the written sources that we could easily get our hands on books and dissertations and journal articles.

We tried to focus on ones that were about Sacramento's community as much as we possibly could and then we dove into the archival sources and we had a lot of help from community members on this to through the stipend program that was set up with preservation Sacramento and the lavender library.

And so there's a picture here of three different stipend recipients at the lavender library here.

So we went to the lavender library we looked at collections at the Center for Sacramento history as well as Sac State.

It's one of the members went to LA and went to the one archives there.

He also visited the GLBT Historical Society Archives in San Francisco.

Some of the other important sources we used were newspapers.

We again tried to focus on local LGBTQ plus publications.

We also used Sacramento B and some national LGBTQ publications as well including the advocate.

We used a few different sort of like city guide type things to identify addresses and dates when we were to find locations and places and when they were located there.

So the dameron guides which are kind of city by city guides that started in the 60s and listed places that were welcoming to members of the LGBT community in various cities throughout the United States.

And then of course city directories to help us confirm locations.

And then last but not least but really the most important element of our research was going out to the community and gathering their stories from them because you know what we learned pretty early on is there's not a lot of this history written down.

A lot of this history still is really in the minds and memories of the community itself.

So the city has done a lot of public outreach, various meetings, small group sessions.

We did one-on-one meetings with specific individuals to dig deeper into specific topics.

We did phone calls and emails and collected comments and the city went to lots of different events and handed out flyers.

So that was really essential to the project.

This slide is showing a summary of what the historic context statement contains.

So the first several sections are really you know the background introductory information about the project schools.

Our research methodology, the public outreach that was done, there's a glossary of key terms.

And then the real meat of it is the five sections in the middle that are highlighted in different colors.

The way we went about this is it's sort of broadly chronologically organized.

The first two chapters are really based on specific time periods in Sacramento.

And then the last three dive more specifically into specific themes in the more recent historic period.

And I'm going to summarize what's in those five chapters next.

So chapter five is about early gender transgressive expression in Sacramento before 1940.

And this is the earliest period of the community's history.

It's a pretty difficult time to research this section because as I said, not a lot written about it.

And you know for a lot of this time period it was not very well understood.

And there weren't terms to describe this and people were just not out and about talking about it.

So what we did for this chapter was start with kind of a broad overview of what was going on in the United States and in California.

And then wherever possible to insert examples from Sacramento.

So we talk about two periods in our local Native American societies here including the Nissan on Mewak and Patwyn.

Kind of the unique situation that was in the American West during the Gold Rush which brought a huge influx of people to Sacramento.

Many of which were men so that created this gender imbalance that kind of created a unique situation for breaking traditional gender norms in that time period in our region.

The development of the term homosexual which started in Europe and then spread into the United States and into California and of course our area.

And the point of all this was to provide a sense of what life might have been like for people that you know were you know had different gender expressions than what was traditionally accepted by society at the time.

And some of the examples that we uncovered locally from this time period included Charlie Parkhurst who was a one-eyed staged coach driver during the Gold Rush and he transported gold throughout the region.

And it was only discovered after he had died that he had been born with female anatomy.

As I mentioned there's not a lot of written records about this community during this time period so unfortunately a lot of what we have are records of arrests.

So two examples are the young men on the bottom there they were both arrested in the 1880s here in Sacramento for what was then called Sodomy in which was illegal at the time.

The woman on the far right her name was Francis Orlando and she spent many years of her life in the 20s and 30s living continuously as a man.

She used men's names in public and she dressed as a man and she would kind of go around to different cities and start relationships with women and get arrested.

And that's how we have records of her so one of those instances was here in Sacramento with a woman from the floor in area.

And then maybe on a more positive note it was very common during this time period in the late 1800s and early 1900s for actors on stage in Vodville and minstrel shows to portray members of the opposite sex and they were called in ads, male and female impersonators and that was sort of their role in those shows.

So we highlighted some of the local theaters where those types of performances occurred.

Chapter two is kind of continuing in this theme of focusing on a specific time period so we're moving forward to World War Two in the post-World War era.

Again we've done a similar kind of organizational strategy here where we talk about what's broadly going on in the US in California and then include examples from Sacramento.

So this is a very different time period, very conservative, it was a time of intense paranoia and so there were widespread crackdowns on sort of any type of expression or thought that was different from whatever this societal and cultural norms were for the time period.

So a local example that we highlighted was that of a man named Earl Barnett who was a very prominent local architect.

He designed the Memorial Editorium and the Sutter Club and some other buildings that we will all know of and he was caught up in a sting because his house was used as a popular place for a game and of that time to meet and have connections with each other.

So this is also the time period when the first homophile groups emerge and homophile is a term that emerged in the 1950s and 60s that sort of used for the early gay rights groups.

And the first one in Sacramento was started by a man named Rick Stokes who actually ran against Harvey Milk later in the 1970s in San Francisco.

But here he founded a group called the Americans for responsible citizenship and that group had a protest at the State Fair in 1966.

They had applied for a booth at the Fair and I think at the last minute the application was rescinded and so instead they went to the entrance of the Fair and handed out pamphlet everyone who came in.

And there's an image of that pamphlet here. It was called every 10th person is a homosexual and interestingly they ended up having a much bigger impact by doing this protest than if they had been granted their booth as they originally planned.

They also had a forum at the first Methodist Church on 21st Street in 1967 and that's one of the earliest known sort of gay activists, gay rights events in within the Boundaries of the City of Sacramento that we were able to find.

The 40s, 50s and 60s this is also the time period when we have the first record of cruising and gay bar spaces actual sort of gay spaces in our region.

What we heard repeatedly from conversations with the community is that the first of these places were really primarily in West Sacramento and not within the City of Sacramento's Boundaries.

And there were a lot of reasons for that but primarily it was really heavily policed in Sacramento to be gay.

So instead of doing that here and having risk of being arrested it moved over to West Sacramento which was of course in a different county, was unincorporated.

The county seat is in Woodland which is not that close to West Sacramento so police there sort of turned to blind eye and West Sacramento became sort of a space of opportunity where these early safe spaces could be.

So there's two images here that represent that the log cabin was one of the early ones in West Sacramento and there were a few places in Sacramento itself.

The top was one.

Chapter three is the longest chapter.

This is about the development of a true visible LGBTQ plus community in Sacramento starting in the late 60s and going up until about the year 2000.

This is the time period when real visible communities start to emerge across the United States in large part because of the Stonewall uprisings in New York City in 1969.

And a really important event for our region for Sacramento specifically is the repeal of California's anti-satami laws in 1975.

And so you really start to see a greater proliferation of LGBTQ plus spaces in the boundaries of Sacramento after 1975.

There's a great map here that was from mom guess what which was a really important LGBT plus newspaper here that starts to show some of these early places in Sacramento.

The chapter highlights some of the early group gay and lesbian group residences that started to pop up.

Many of them were in the central city in the midtown area.

Early LGBTQ plus businesses which collectively helped to form lavender heights.

Of course this chapter talks about cruising in gay bar locations that emerged in the city of Sacramento.

We've got a variety of different ads and photos here representing just some of the spaces that we talked about in the context.

But of course we know that community is much much more than gay bars.

And so the chapter goes into detail about all these different types of spaces and organizations and clubs and businesses and groups that were really essential to supporting actual community life.

So community centers and services like the Lambda Community Center which is now the LGBTQ community center.

And the Sacramento Women Center was part of this as well.

LGBTQ plus newspapers and media.

There's a picture here of Linda Berner who started mom guess what in 1978.

There were several other newspapers that we talk about there as well.

Arts and entertainment.

There's of course many different facets to that.

So there's film theater, television, fine art.

There's a picture here of the Sacramento gay men's course to represent some of that.

Sports and athletics we heard from many community members was a really important social outlet and a way for people to connect.

Softball and baseball links were really popular.

There was a rodeo association bowling leagues, etc.

Professional clubs and organizations were formed specifically to support people from particular professions as well as groups to help support the broader LGBTQ plus business community.

So Rosemary and Retrayler here founded Sackwin.

There's also the River City Business Association and of course now the Rainbow Chamber.

Religious and spiritual expression of course is important too.

So we highlighted important churches and other spiritual groups that provided spiritual sustenance to the community.

Social clubs and charitable organizations.

It's also of course important for people to have places to recreate.

Meet other people like them, form connections, form romantic relationships, and also give back to their community.

A popular one that we heard from our white gay and lesbian community was pillars or pillars of the community.

But it was also really important in this chapter to highlight all of the other social clubs and organizations that formed for other parts of the LGBTQ plus community that felt ostracized and unwelcomed from the white gay and lesbian part of the community.

So the chapter talks about groups that formed for the drag community like CG and IE or the Imperial Court of Sacramento.

And groups for the BIPOC community and groups for the leather community as well.

The last part of this chapter described some of the early gay pride parades in Sacramento starting with the first one in 1979 that started at the Ways Station which was a drop in center downtown and went to the Capitol.

And then describing a little bit more of the early Lambda Freedom Faires at McKinley Park which later became the Freedom Fair at Southside Park in the 1990s.

Chapter 4 is about AIDS and the Sacramento LGBTQ plus community's response to that going from around the early 80s up to 1996.

This chapter highlights the important work of local organizations that formed to provide essential support and treatment and care and all sorts of vital things to the community to time when they really were not getting any attention from anyone else.

And they really needed to pull together to help their loved ones get through this.

So we highlight that as well as the work of individuals, people from the medical community who did essential work in this field.

People on the legislative side who tried to get policies passed and laws passed to try to get more funding for AIDS research, funding for clinics and treatments.

And then there are various things as well as important local events where the community came together collectively to try to raise awareness around AIDS.

So events like the 1985 Mayor's Task Force, Dianne's at the Capitol and then ending in 1996 with the introduction of the first drugs that transformed AIDS from something that was at the time considered a sure death sentence into something that you could hopefully survive and live a relatively normal life with.

And that end period, you know, we of course know that AIDS continues. It's not something that has ended.

But it came from a comment we had in one of our early public meetings where somebody suggested that as an important turning point in the fight since the treatment and kind of approached to it really changed drastically after those first drugs were introduced.

Chapter five is about political activism in the fight for LGBTQ plus rights here in Sacramento, which is of course the state capital.

And so because of that, our community here has had an outsized role in affecting change through the legislative process and at the state level.

So it starts with a discussion of the early gay right gay liberation movement in Sacramento, much of which was centered at Sac State.

There were lots of students and faculty members there that formed some of the early gay rights groups in our city including the Society for Homosexual Freedom, which later became the gay liberation front.

And the early women studies and gay studies programs there, which became some of the first of those types of programs in the United States.

It also talks about important policies and legislation that were relevant to the community both go down bad.

So things like the Briggs Initiative and how the community came together to oppose that and how important that was.

Steps toward banning employment discrimination, the 1992 Sacramento Domestic Partnership Ordnance.

The work of local political advocacy groups that formed to try to affect change through legislation and policy groups like Cat Pack and the Capitol Network and various democratic clubs like the River City Democratic Club and the Stonewall Democratic Club.

Gay rights marches, there's a photo here of one of the early ones, the 1980 March on Sacramento for lesbian and gay rights.

As well as important responses to continuing discrimination, much of which came from individuals who were experiencing this discrimination and filed lawsuits or they were fighting to get benefits that they were being denied.

It also talks about individuals who had an important, who were personally impacted by Don't Ask Don't Tell and how their actions helped repeal that policy.

As well as local steps toward gaining marriage equality.

So that's a summary of what's in the historic context statement in a very small nutshell.

Moving on to the next part of the project.

We did a historic resource survey to identify places that are important to LGBTQ plus history locally.

Sean's already mentioned but there are two parts of this so there's the survey of Lavender Heights as a historic district and then there's the sort of five individual and mark nominations as well.

How we went about identifying these places, we used all the sort of months of research that we conducted for the historic context statement as our primary starting point.

And every time we came across a place or a person or an organization, we would try to identify and address associated with that.

And so we ended up tracking them all in a big spreadsheet and through that process we came up with over 120 properties.

And then we went and mapped all of those addresses in Google Maps.

So there's a snippet here of that map. The actual map is larger of course to encompass all of the city boundary.

But I wanted to zoom in here so that you can see a little bit more of the detail.

The green markers here are showing addresses that we discovered from before 1968 and before.

And as you can see most of those are located in West Sacramento and there are not that many of them.

So that reflects kind of that early history that I described earlier.

And then the purple markers are the addresses that we found for 1969 on.

And you can see there's a really noticeable shift geographically from West Sacramento into Sacramento with the largest concentration being in the central city.

And then of course there's a proliferation of markers that you can see the real growth of places after 1969.

So we started there just mapping and tracking addresses.

For lavender heights we then zoomed in on that map into the intersection around 20th and K streets because that's you know what everyone sort of thinks of as the up center.

So we had to ask ourselves do we see an actual concentration of places that are important to this history in that area.

And sure enough we did.

So the second question was which ones survive because unfortunately some of the places we had identified don't exist anymore.

And then we developed this boundary around them and we worked with city staff to keep it pretty tight in narrow and try to remove parcels from our blocks from the district that.

And we don't have any contributors on them.

And this is what we ended up with.

So the dark purple parcels are the ones that are contributing properties and the light purple ones are the non contributing resources.

And the result of this is that we identified 12 contributors to the lavender heights historic district.

And I think the really interesting cool thing about it is that these properties reflect a real variety of different spaces and uses for the community.

Far from maybe the expectation that many people have it's not just gay bars.

It's really all of those things that I presented earlier about community life.

So while there are a few gay bars of course faces in the Merck and the Depot there's also two locations of the Lambda Community Center, two locations of the women's Sacramento Women Center, one of which was also the first location of the gifted gardener, which was a popular gay own business, two locations of the AIDS foundation,

the offices of Dr. Harvey Thompson and Dr. Sandy Pomerance, who are really key prominent figures in the local fight against AIDS.

And their offices later became the open book, which was also gay and lesbian bookstore.

The first United Methodist Church, which as I mentioned, hosted that early forum in 1967 by the Americans for Responsible Citizenship and has a longstanding reputation for being welcoming to the community.

And last but not least, the new hellvisha roaster, which was something we heard in some oral histories was a popular place for members of the community to meet and form connections outside of the bar scene.

So the district we identified a period of significance of 1967 to 2000.

1967 is the start of that first forum at the first Methodist Church that I mentioned earlier.

2000 was really something that came out of many different conversations with people, sort of unprompted, lots of different people mentioned that there was an important shift in the community around the year 2000,

whereas before from the late 60s until then the community was really very tight knit and had a strong sense of camaraderie and it was sort of all about supporting each other and pulling everyone up by their boots traps

and getting the community to survive in a time when they weren't fully accepted.

They all noted that there was a shift around 2000 when it started to become much more integrated into the mainstream society and public.

And I think that's kind of what we a lot of us see and experience when we go to Lavender Heights today.

When you go to a lot of the businesses and bars down there now, they're kind of spaces for everyone.

They don't feel primarily like they're gay spaces anymore.

I'm sure we'll have questions about that because that's obviously a much a very late period of significance, but that was our justification for that.

And then moving on to our individual historic landmark nominations, you probably all know that the point of this, it was of course to try to protect and highlight these places.

And so we of course started out with that and trying to think about what places to nominate.

The grant really only allowed us to nominate five places.

So this is just a starting point.

We hope that other places will be nominated and recognized in the future.

But that's what we were able to do for this little moment in time.

So again, we started out with that big map and that giant list of addresses.

And we started trying to figure out how we could select just five out of 120 plus.

So we started out by of course eliminating any properties that were already landmarked or locally listed.

And then we already had our lavender heights district set up.

So we took off any properties that are already in that district.

And then we also wanted to represent a variety of uses in different places within Sacramento.

Then of course we asked do they survive because we have a lot of places on our list that don't exist anymore.

And then of course do they have integrity?

Which is of course a little bit of a tricky question when it comes to cultural and social history.

Because it's not so much about the way it looked but you know what it was used for.

But in most of those cases we just asked ourselves would they still be recognizable today to somebody who had visited in the 70s or 60s.

So that's kind of how we went about that.

So the first of the properties that we are nominating or we'll hope to nominate is the alternative coffee shop at 2215 P Street.

This was a coffee shop that was started by students at Sac State in 1971.

It was intended as a place for young people to go and socialize and connect because they were too young to go to the gay bars.

So they needed a space of their own.

The coffee shop was in the apartment of a man named Edgar Carpenter who was a founding member of the Society for Homosexual Freedom.

And one of the founding members of the gay studies program at Sac State.

He also wrote for Gay Boys Sacramento which is one of the ways we found out about this.

And because of that this was a site of early society for homosexual freedom meetings as well as gay potluck dinners.

And I think they solicited donations of furniture and artwork and things in Gay Boys Sacramento.

So that's the first.

The second is Bojangles at 7042 Folsom Boulevard.

This was the first gay bar that was opened by Terry Scythe in Sacramento in 1976.

And that year is really important because that's just one year after California repealed its anti-sodomy laws.

So that is a really early gay bar for Sacramento because before that there were really not that many that were openly LGBTQ plus friendly in Sacramento.

And again, from many conversations with different community members, lots of people told us that this was a really important space to them because

it was the first place that people, some many people came out or were publicly out.

It was the first place where people met and experienced other people who were like them.

It was a place where people formed their first relationships.

So anyway, it seems to have had a really big impact on people.

Three is the incredible edible place at 1401 Alhamber Boulevard.

This was a restaurant opened by Paul Fitzgerald in 1977.

So again, during this really early period when you start to get the first openly LGBTQ plus places in the city of Sacramento.

Paul Fitzgerald also owned the upstairs downstairs bar downtown.

He's also credited with naming the faces bar.

And we read some interviews with him where it became fairly clear that he wanted to use his businesses as incubators,

as places to help found and establish a true LGBTQ plus community in Sacramento.

And so because of that, he purposefully kept this restaurant open late at night so that people had a place to have a meal,

have a coffee, chat, if they didn't want to go to a gay bar.

And so it was important to have spaces like that for the community.

And because of that, this was the site of some early meetings of LGBT plus groups, including the advocates for gay state employees and the

university democratic club. And it also notably had a mix of gay and straight employees and patrons.

Four is one of the locations of Mom Guess What's offices in Sacramento at 1725 L Street.

Mom Guess What was an extremely important LGBTQ plus newspaper in Sacramento.

It was founded by Linda Berner in 1978, originally in response to the Briggs initiative.

She was trying to drum up opposition and bring the community together to fight legislation like that that was discriminatory.

So the newspaper covered legislation and policy, but it also covered local news, arts, it had a social calendar, sports, all sorts of things.

It was important during the AIDS epidemic as well.

And so it became really essential to the community as a way for people to learn about things that were important to them and find activities and people and form relationships.

And what we learned is that the newspaper initially started at Linda Berner's house and it had an office for a short period of maybe a year to somewhere else in Midtown on 21st Street.

But this seems to have been the longest running location of the newspaper.

We know that it was here from at least 1988 until around 2003.

It may have been there a little bit earlier, but there was a little bit of a gap in the city directories.

But either way, 15 years was a really long time for the newspaper, so that's why we landed on this address for the newspaper.

And last but not least, the blue moon at 25, 65, Franklin Boulevard.

And this also came out of conversations with community members.

Several people told us that this was a really important place to them, specifically the women's community.

It was a bar from 1985 to 1990.

It was owned and operated by a woman named Shannon Morgan, who was a local artist and a member of several of the different women sports leagues.

And because of that connection, it was a popular place for many of the women sports teams to go after practices and after games and have a good time, meet people, have a meal, socialize.

It was also the site of the first Miss Leather Sacramento Contest in Sacramento from 1987 to 1990.

So it has a few different layers of history.

I believe that's the end of my presentation.

I will take questions, unless Shawn wants to say anything more.

Okay.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

And for your work on this whole project and everything you've done.

Clerk, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Thank you, Terry. Have no speakers for this item.

Great. Thank you.

I've got a few comments. I'll kick us off in questions to first off, I guess. Great job. This is so thorough.

And I particularly like all the imagery. The mug shots are really powerful.

Yeah.

And some of the, like the bar posters are just fun. And it's really helps round it out.

One question, and I feel like the answer is probably no, but it feels like a shame that we can't landmark buildings in West Sacramento on their behalf.

But maybe we could somehow. Maybe we could invite them to join us in this project or suggest a few they could landmark.

I thought that bit about the culture kind of starting off there and the sheriffs and what, that all was so interesting.

It feels just like a bummer to leave it all out of, yeah, what's ultimately being landmarked.

One small question, but it just stood out to me on page 38, at least that's what I wrote here.

It says between 1876 and 1916, 10 people were arrested for satamy, which feels like really not that much.

And it made me think like was.

Was it really just like they didn't really care and like the police really weren't enforcing anything or.

Because there are these other stories in there of individuals where the police like followed them and laid traps and on and on and on.

So I guess that just left me like curious.

Was also curious.

There are a few comments on kind of like outside of the white gay community.

A few comments about how difficult it is to get sources and then later on it talks about some of there was the experience segregation from the white gay community and other cultural things going on.

It also raised for me the question though of like the West End and did they have spaces and we just tore them all down.

And is there a way to even know if that happened?

It's hard to believe that there weren't gay spaces in that area and that that.

Right.

It just made me wonder about all that.

Lastly, and I guess this is really just for.

For later and more for us and for staff, I'm really excited about the possibility of plaques for some of the bars especially.

I know you said it's not all about the gay bars and it's not.

But places like faces or the murk get so many.

So many people involved in them in a way that like a really nice house with a plaque in front generally don't.

And it feels like an extra cool opportunity to help tell the story to a lot more people.

And I hope we can make that happen when the time comes.

And that was it for me.

Other commissioner comments, questions.

Yeah, commissioner Ambacher, go ahead.

And this is an excellent report.

It was really great to read and thoroughly research and considering again your limitations.

I think you guys did a great job.

I just have one question on the historic district.

I mean, I understand why you've selected.

You explained what the contributors are.

But there's no explanation really like why there's what made the non contributors.

Did they have any association or was it strictly they had no association or they did and they don't have any integrity anymore.

So I suggest maybe adding a sentence or two just to explain what this decision was.

Because when somebody picks this up later on, you know, if a project comes along as we all know as consultants,

that's you kind of want all that information.

Right.

Right.

But otherwise I thought it was very well done.

Thank you.

You're right.

Yeah, mostly the non contributors were there because we didn't identify any historic connection with them.

But potentially someone will come forward in the future and say that there was some business or something there.

So far in our research, we didn't identify a connection.

I think there was maybe one or two instances of a business or there was one bar that I can think of that has been totally subsumed in an apartment building.

And there's no door even for it anymore.

So that was a loss of integrity situation.

Other commissioners?

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

We will continue.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, Bruce.

I just wanted to note that West Sacramento doesn't have a preservation program.

There's a couple of landmark buildings over there, but there's no program there.

And I've always thought that there was a great opportunity to expand this very small little historic district that they have,

and they're planning commission and planning staff is set up.

It's not there.

However, I think it would be a nice and reasonable gesture given the significance of West Sacramento within this overall report that we make it available to them, maybe to the, to the planning department and say, you know, you're not necessarily.

The URL participant by this history in this particular thing we'd like to share it with you and use it as you wish if you want to participate with us.

I think it'd be a reasonable thing without saying you got to do this.

It may lead them to a better understanding of, especially in the Washington district, the significance of the history there from the 1800s through till now.

It was, that was a very important place directly across the river that's often overlooked in that particular community.

So I think it'd be a good offer.

Thanks, please.

Just to add to that, it could also facilitate national register nominations or students from local universities to work on exploring that history further.

So there's that potential as well.

Sort of outside the local government realm.

A lot of times these reports will spur spin off projects or thesis projects like that.

Well, thank you, everyone.

We will move on with our agenda to the director's report back to you, director.

All right. Thank you, chair.

So I do have a couple items for the director's report. It'll be brief this evening.

Last week's city council approved nine new mills at contracts, including some for a very significant building such as the pink shop and the Sacramento

district, the property tax, the property tax, the property honors taxes.

I want to note we had two new interns join our department since your last meeting.

One you met tonight, Travis Carr, who did a wonderful job on tonight's presentation.

Thank you very much, Travis.

I'm a graduate student at Sacramento State in the public history program.

And then the other is Melissa James, who's could not make it tonight because she is actually a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying historic preservation.

And she's fully remote, so.

But obviously she can make the commute for a nice meeting.

But that concludes my director's report and I'm available for any questions.

Any commissioners with questions for director de Coursie?

All right. Thank you very much.

Next up is commissioner comments, ideas and questions.

Anything not on the agenda? Anybody wants to share?

All right, public comments matters not on the agenda. Clerk, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak?

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers.

All right. Well, with that, we'll adjourn the meeting. Thanks so much, everyone.