The San Jose Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) held a regular meeting on June 6, 2025. The agenda included receiving final historic resource surveys for two urban villages, adding two properties to the city's Historic Resource Inventory (HRI), a demonstration of a public city landmarks map, and the election of new officers for the 2025-2026 term. Commissioners engaged in a significant debate over the designation of mid-century strip malls as historic resources and their implications for housing development.
5A: East Side Alum Rock and Saratoga Urban Villages Historic Resource Surveys
5B: Modifications to the San Jose Historic Resource Inventory
8B: Election of Chair and Vice Chair
8F: Good and Welfare
Welcome to the Historic Landmarks Commission meeting. Following roll call during our summary of hearing procedure. I will review how the public may provide comment during today's session. Roll call. Commissioner Cowen. Yes, sir. Here. Commissioner Camuso. Present. Commissioner Gallandari. Present. Commissioner Binewal. Commissioner Arnold. Vice Chair Royer. Present. And sure Bayman president. The procedure, we are in a quorum. The procedure for this hearing is as follows. After the staff report, applicants and opponents may make a five minute presentation. If you wish to speak on an item, complete a card. You want to show them the card or there is a card. Anyway, uh bring it to our historic preservation officer Peak Edwards, who's sitting on my right. And when I receive your speaker card, I'll call you forward. Each speaker will have up to two minutes to make public testimony. And speakers using a translator will be given up to four minutes. At the discretion of the chair, the time allotted to each speaker may be changed depending on the number of items on the agenda, the number of speakers, and other factors. Speaker speakers using a translator will have double the time allotted. After the public testimony, the applicant may make closing remarks for up to five minutes. May ask questions of the speakers. Response to commissioner questions will not reduce the speaker's time allowance. The public hearing will then be closed, and the historic landmarks commission will take action on the item. The commission may request staff to respond to public testimony, ask staff questions, and discuss the item. If a commissioner would like a topic to be addressed under one of the good welfare items, please contact planning staff in advance of the commission meeting. All public records relating to an open session item on the agenda, which are not exempt from disclosure pursuant to the public uh California Public Records Act that are distributed to a majority of the legislative body will be available for the public by emailing planning support staff at San Jose California.gov. At the same time that the public records are distributed or made available to the legislative body. Before we begin, I want to remind the historic landmarks commission members and members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This includes commenting on the specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speakers will not engage in conversation with commissioners or staff. All members of the Historic Landmarks Commission staff and the public are expected to refrain from abuse of language. Repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct, which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in removal from the move. The meeting of the historic landmarks committee will now come to order. And guess what? For number four planning referrals, we have no items. So that leaves us with item number five general business. The first item on that agenda is 5A, East Side Allen Rock and Saratoga Urban Villages Historic Resources Survey. And the recommendation is that we receive the East Side Alum Rock and Saratoga Urban Villages Historic Resource Survey Final Document and Presentation of Finding by the Architectural Resources Group. Sure, I'll just say uh just a real quick introduction. Um, so I'm thrilled that this item is finally coming to you all because um the process was started in January 2024, um, where we were requesting proposals from our pre qualified um consultant list. Um, and then we weren't able to execute the um service order until May 2024. So it's been a long time coming.