HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-04-2017 Item 16, PappCOUNCIL MEETING: 4J -/J_ r""`J`'' . –V
ITEM NO.:---.,. APR 0 3 2017
SLO CITY CLERK„ --
From: James Papp <
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 4:50:22 PM
To: E-mail Council Website
Subject: Yet another letter on 71 Palomar
Dear Mayor Harmon, Vice -Mayor Rivoire, and Council Members Christianson, Gomez, and Pease,
Sorry to add yet another letter, but as a preservation professional and CHC commissioner, I believe it's crucial
that—as a community—we neither allow preservation arguments to be misapplied to what are properly
zoning battles nor punish the rare developer who works constructively within preservation guidelines. If we go
down the road of using preservation as a political bargaining tool, the result will be that all developers design
to the max, the city will be left chipping away with marginal mitigations, and good preservation practice will
be tainted and sidelined.
The CHC conducted hours of hearings on 71 Palomar and ultimately found
the proposed rehabilitative adaptive reuse and repositioning of the Master List Sandford House
Property ... consistent with the city's Historic Preservation Program Guidelines and Secretary of the
Interior [SOI] Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties [with the added conditions that] the
ARC should evaluate further reductions in scale and massing to ensure the new development does not
overwhelm the prominence of the historic Sandford House and give great consideration to the city
arborist's recommendations for protection of trees.
That recommendation speaks for itself, but writing as an individual commissioner—not on the committee's
behalf—I'd like to offer some clarifications on standards and process.
■ CHC professional standards As a certified local government under the National Park Service, San Luis
Obispo is required to have a preservation commission that includes preservation professionals. Currently the
CHC contains three such: Chair Hill, a city planner; Commissioner Brajkovich, a historic architect; and myself,
an architectural historian. Under CLG standards, all CHC members must undertake annual training in
preservation issues. Hence CHC conclusions are supposed to be not straw polls of community feeling but
rooted in local, state, and federal preservation law and practice.
• The importance of consistent precedent If developers and the community are to operate on an even field,
city commissions must follow not only law but precedent. That the CHC has evolved over the years to stricter
rulings can be demonstrated by the Pinho House on Marsh Street. The proposals to either demolish this
historic one-story building or relocate it to the master listed Jack Garden were rejected in favor of relocating it
slightly forward on its'lot. Nonetheless, the four-story Manse was, in 2006, constructed six feet away from it in
a perpendicular wall. Current practice on the CHC is that adjacent new construction be distanced and massed
away from a historic structure and not overtop it.
• Development sensitive to preservation concerns The developer at 71 Palomar employed as its
environmental consultant Applied Earthworks, a firm so respected in local preservation that its managing
principal Barry Price received a Preservation Award from the History Center in 2015. The research and analysis
on the site were exemplary. The development was distanced and massed away from the Sandford House and
did not overtop it, in line with recent CHC precedent.
First hearing Despite this, there was plentiful public testimony against the project, and the CHC asked the
developer to "reduc[e] the extent to which [the Sandford House] is relocated," "increase the distance
between [it] and ... the new development," and "re-evaluate ways [...] to reduce the scale and massing and
detailing of the new development to ensure that [it] does not overwhelm the prominence of the historic
residence."
• Developer response The developer removed the third story from the project, pushed the new buildings
closer together, and enlarged some apartments to compensate. Complaints against the current project that it
is intended to be a student dormitory are, sadly, a response to changes set in motion by the CHC. Creating a
larger bubble around the Sandford House had the consequence of a more cramped and monotonous
environment for the tenants of the new development. The developer had, however, followed CHC direction,
and in its second hearing, despite continued public testimony against the project, the CHC resolved that the
project met both city guidelines and SOI standards.
■ Misconceptions of preservation practice Among the preservation -based objections to 71 Palomar, chief
have been the notions that (1) there is a higher standard than master listing that would prevent relocation of
the house, (2) historic structures can never be relocated, and (3) the current lot at 71 Palomar consists of a
cultural landscape that cannot be developed at all.
1. Master listing is the city's highest standard of protection—though it does not guarantee preservation. It is
possible, even probable, the Sandford House lacks the integrity to meet the standards of master listing today.
The developer, however, has not sought to remove its status but instead intends to preserve it by repurposing
it. Without a purpose, a structure inevitably faces demolition, whether by neglect or intention.
2. SOI standards militate against decontextualizing a historic structure by moving, for instance, Washington's
lodging at Valley Forge to a dissociated place, but relocation on the same lot or even another lot is a common
practice where a structure has been listed, like the Sandford House, for its architecture rather than
environment. The environment of this house's period of significance disappeared decades ago under
neighborhood development.
3. Though a number of fine trees are on the lot, there is no documentation that allows us to posit either an
original cultural landscape or integrity in what survives. Compare the Jack Garden, which has extensive
photographic and written documentation from the 1870s through the 1920s that defines it as the oldest
designed landscape in the city and with current integrity to its period of significance in setting, design,
workmanship, materials, feeling, and association—the SOI standards for a cultural landscape. If 71 Palomar
was, as has been suggested, an Italian Renaissance garden surrounding an Italian Renaissance house—and
there is no documentation of either—both the house and garden are long gone.
There may be reasons to oppose the development at 71 Palomar, but historic preservation is not one of them.
The Sandford House will be preserved with a viable use, and acknowledging the developer's preservation
efforts will, ideally, encourage other developers to approach San Luis Obispo's history with equal seriousness
and sensitivity.
Yours sincerely,
James Papp