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Historical Resources Board Meeting Excerpts - July 25, 2024
September/October 2024
Editor’s note: These excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity.
1:31:45 Discussion of the Heart of Bankers Hill National Historic District nomination. HRB member RAMMY CORTEZ asks applicant why a National Register listing was selected versus a local district. Applicant refers to the account given by previous speakers, architectural historian Diane Kane and preservation architect Ione Steigler, who did an extensive survey of San Diego historic neighborhoods, including Bankers Hill. In 2007, they said, city officials shelved the survey, which had been likely to produce several local historic districts. The applicant adds that her group was advised that if they first took the nomination to the City of San Diego, it would take “years and years” for a district to become a reality. She also refers to Mission Hills Heritage/Barry Hager’s efforts re: a proposed HRB procedural update.
1:33:57 HRB Chairman TIM HUTTER: For the record, that’s not actually what Mr. Hager is proposing. Mr. Hager is proposing that people who have done this route that he’s mapped out, that they should be able to come to us with an easier path to then get on our local register after they went around us to get designated.
 Once again, we are on a short time clock. And every time, we are told well, we can only do so much because we’re on a short time clock.
This [nomination] was submitted to the Office of Historic Preservation in December 2023. It is now July and this is the first time we at the HRB and the City are hearing about it. That’s wrong. Barry Hager shows up to every one of our meetings and has a great ability to speak about it. And I know this [district nomination] is not Barry’s project.…All of the folks involved in these efforts know where we live. They know our meeting times, they know how to get in touch with us, they know how to come forward and say Hey, we’re doing this thing and we’d like to get your input, and they are choosing not to. And the reason is exactly as [previous speaker] Mr. Elliott said: There’s a hundred percent success rate if you go to the State. I don’t know what our success rate is, by the way, on proposed districts here.…It’s probably close to 100%, but it’s lower. That’s clearly what is motivating this. For us [San Diego] to be 100% of all of the Office of Historic Preservation [historic district] nominations for single family neighborhoods this year is kind of obscene to me, and upsetting.…
In fact, the timeline of years we’re talking about, right, in the Uptown Community Plan, the proposal was a period of significance from 1870 to 1940. Here [in the Heart of Bankers Hill, which is part of Uptown] we’re talking about a period of significance from 1905 to 1961. So if you take—recognizing that someone’s chopped some of that time on the front end and added some at the end, what we’re really talking about is a period of 90 years. And a period of significance where we’re saying there’s something in common between the homes that were built in 1870 and the ones that were built in 1961. The only thing that appears to be in common is that they are all architectural styles that were built in a 90-year period. With intact examples that the preparer of this report says are all uniformly excellent examples. Staff’s request is to modify that to “good to excellent” examples; there are still no “bad” examples.
I think the process is broken. This is the third [National Register Historic District nomination] that we’ve seen. I think that it is intended to be an effort to preserve a particular subset of homes for a particularly smaller group of homeowners who have the means to hire outside consultants and go around our process. And that’s deeply upsetting to me. And that’s part of the reason why Mr. Hager’s request or Mission Hills Heritage’s request and the repeated requests from others to modify our process to accept and embrace this approach is being rejected outright. It’s being considered now in the process of a grander reform of this process. And that’s why.
It honestly is disrespectful to this board. So I will not be supporting the recommendation today. I don’t support this approach. I think that it is unfortunate that we are being asked repeatedly to review these and that our staff time is being used up toward it, and I’d hope, much like if you were a developer, you’d have to pay for the staff’s time to review your project, because otherwise this is a gross misuse of our time.
1:39:25 CORTEZ: I have the same concern. A community group putting together a report like this of 90 pages when an individual resource [nomination for HRB consideration] is 150 pages and all I get about the [Bankers Hill] property W. Upas Street is five sentences and that it is a contributor. I personally love this neighborhood [for] the architectural features and if this came locally, I’d be inclined to support it. Because it has a majority—it has 80% plus contributors. I’ve spent time walking here. But I think the process is broken. I do feel for the applicant, and I appreciate the response that it may take years to get on the agenda locally, and I think that’s also broken as well. And that’s a challenge.
[Would be inclined to support if brought forward locally, but….] Based on the process and the amount of these [National Register nominations] that are coming forward, I can’t support this.
1:44:33 [added 5 seconds since deleted below] CORTEZ: The challenge with supporting this specifically is, I don’t think the board is here to always take the side of staff’s recommendation, which is what the board is for, or the Board wouldn’t be here. Providing the historic reports that we see with all the history and all the background on the properties with close to 150 pages for each resource is really what we’re looking at to determine and make our own decision, and not a decision based off whether staff supports it or they don’t, but on whether it meets the criteria. And I just simply think there isn’t enough information being provided [about Bankers Hill with only] a paragraph per property to individually make that decision. And to follow the staff recommendation (professional, educated, looking at background information—but we don’t have any of it). And I’m not willing to support based off a paragraph per property and staff giving us the nod that “We drove by and it’s all good.”
1:47:15 HUTTER: I am under no illusion that what I’ve said today will make any difference to the California Office of Historic Preservation. They don’t care. And we could vote unanimously to say “no” to this recommendation and it will still be sent [to the State Historical Resources Commission]. Which is part of the problem. But it’s part of the reason that I feel no guilt about holding back Bankers Hill. There’s 91 properties associated with this nomination and 103 parcels. We have 24 of them that are already individually designated on the local register and several more in the hopper. So that process certainly works. We do individual nominations all the time and I appreciate the need for a district. But I don’t think they care what we have to say anyway.
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