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Facing a rebellion from homeowners, Palo Alto is largely abandoning its effort to designate roughly 150 local properties as “historic” structures.
Instead, the Palo Alto City Council is now preparing to consider just 13 private properties and three city-owned sites for the designation when it meets on April 22 to rule on the proposed designations.
The revised approach follows a year of heated hearings in which dozens of residents pushed back against proposals to list their properties on the local Historic Resources Inventory. While the designation carries some clout for local history buffs (Caroline Willis, a member of the city’s Historic Resources Board, was pleased to see her home added to the list), critics contend that it would bring down their property values and complicate any future plans to renovate or redevelop their properties.
To determine which homes to add to the list, Palo Alto’s planning staff and consultants focused on 154 homes that were identified as eligible for the National Register in a 2001 survey and 13 that were deemed eligible for the California Register. Last year, the city hired the consulting firm Page & Turnbull to review these properties and confirm that these homes retain their historic integrity. The consultant concluded that 147 properties remain eligible.
Some residents struggled to understand why their homes were on the list in the first place while their neighbors’ similar homes were not. In some cases, homes were targeted for designation because of architectural significance. In others, it was because they were associated with a famous resident or an important historical trend.
Not everyone, however, agreed with the consultant’s standard for fame. In public hearings and letters, residents pushed back against the idea that their homes should be designated as historic just because a constable, a notable professor or a former mayor once lived there.
“Our home is not historical. It is simply old,” Carmen and Roger Stuhmuller wrote to the city in February, protesting the proposed designation of their Cowper Street home as “historic” because of its association with education leader Florence Bingham and her husband Joseph between 1931 and 1973. “The architect is not famous. We are not famous. We are only the second family to live in this house. The original owners were not famous either.”
Many others shared this sentiment. Vicki Vaughn challenged the city’s determination that her two properties on the 300 block of High Street are eligible for historic designation.
“I completely understand and support other property owners who wish to have their property designated historical,” Vaughn wrote. “Just not mine. In my opinion, it would be a great overreach of city government to demand that a property owner have their home designated historical if the owner objects.”
She was hardly alone. According to planning staff, 83 of the 146 property owners objected to their property being added to the inventory. To comply with their wishes, the Historic Resources Board had recommended adding only the remaining 63 properties to the historic list.
Now, that list of 63 is facing further culling. According to a new report from the Department of Planning and Development Services, many of the property owners on the list never responded to the city’s certified mailing notices informing them about their properties’ historic eligibility. And while the council has the authority to list all eligible properties on the local registry, planning staff and the board have recommended not moving ahead when a property owner objects.
“Moreover, staff is concerned that the City has not heard from most of the other property owners remaining on the list. This may be because property owners are unaware of the potential for nomination despite extensive outreach and certified mailing, or, less likely, because owners are ambivalent to nomination,” the report states.
City planners and board members have touted the benefits of a historic designation. The report notes that communities that preserve historic resources “create a sense of place and identity and can foster community pride as it celebrates its connection to the past.”
“Robust preservation efforts can support economic development and support environmental sustainability through rehabilitation and reduced waste from construction,” the report states.
A historic designation also makes properties exempt from Senate Bill 9, which allows lot splits by right in single-family zones. It was the introduction of this law that sparked Palo Alto’s conversation about updating its historic inventory, though city officials have since focused on the cultural benefits of preservation. During a Feb. 23 community meeting on the topic, Historic Resources Board member Christian Pease marveled at the discrepancy between how much residents value historic commercial buildings in the downtown era and how angry they get when it comes to designating private homes as historic.
“Some of it has to do with the influence of the owners, but why is it OK for Palo Alto to love to have beautiful historic buildings downtown like the Cardinal Hotel, but as soon as you turn to a neighborhood it becomes a Satanic conspiracy to degrade your net worth?” Pease asked.
He also pushed back against the notion that designating homes as historic reduces property values, a common argument cited by homeowners with eligible properties. He pointed to the tendency of millionaires to buy up and renovate historic properties both in Palo Alto and in places like Pacific Grove, Pasadena and Brooklyn, New York.
“I think there is a market for historic homes and I don’t think anyone who listens to a real estate salesperson tell you that it’s just going to destroy the value should believe anything they say because there’s no evidence of that,” Pease said.
If the city council accepts city staff’s revised approach, it would proceed with designations for just 16 properties, three of which are city-owned. One of the city sites is the Cistern and Pump House on Palo Alto Avenue and Hale Street, which was built in 1924 and served as a critical component of the city’s municipal water system. Another is the water tower at 201 Alma St., which the council recently dedicated as a park.
The third is the Federal Telegraph Company station at 2601 East Bayshore Road, which according to staff is “significant for its remarkable contributions to the field of radio communications that impacted the field nationally and were significant to the effort in World War II.” Known as Marsh Station, the building served as the “hub of all West Coast communication (telegraph and telephone, and later ship-to-shore radio transmission) when it was completed in 1921, and led the world in how many channels of communication could be used simultaneously,” according to a Page & Turnbull review.
The list also includes 13 private properties: 731 Emerson St., 243-245 Webster St., 330 Cowper St., 541 East Crescent Drive, 421 California Ave., 1401 Edgewood Drive, 1474 Edgewood Drive, 2340 Tasso St., 311 El Carmelo Ave., 541 Bryant St., 437 Kipling St., 1275 Dana Ave., and 832 Kipling St.
The new report from Planning Director Jonathan Lait acknowledges that nominating properties for historic listings “can be controversial for any jurisdiction.” While the city already provides some zoning incentives for historic properties, including floor area bonuses and transferable development rights, many property owners have contended that these incentives are unclear and insufficient.
One option that the council may choose to explore is a program based on a 1972 state law known as Mills Act that would reduce property taxes for homeowners who commit to preserving their historical properties. While historic preservationists have supported such a program, planning staff warn that reducing property taxes in Palo Alto would impact revenue to the Palo Alto Unified School District.
“While historic resources do benefit from certain zoning and building code incentives, it may not be as meaningful for homeowners who have already improved or simply plan to maintain their homes,” the report states.
Correction: The story had initially misspelled the name of HRB member Caroline Willis.
I just want to be clear: I have an alibi for this one.
This comes as no surprise. Forcibly identifying homes as historic was a terrible idea out of the gate. It is hard to understand why they believed otherwise.
How much has the city spent on this effort?
A difficult situation for both current homeowners and the city as a whole. But the charm and attractiveness that draws people to Palo Alto will gradually disappear without some effort at historic preservation. See the PAST website for further information https://www.pastheritage.org/ Some communities have neighborhood preservation efforts, involving immediate neighbors to weigh in on drastic changes; I believe Napa is one of them.
46Today beat me to the question of how much the city wasted on this effort with more consultants little or no local knowledge.
Please get back to us with a dollar figure and the amount of staff time wasted on this fiasco.
I and 3 of my friends all own pre-1926 homes and no one even bothered to approach us — not that we would have signed up for the historic designations even though we love and respect our historic homes.
What a waste of tax-payer dollars and everyone’s time & energy. Whose idea was it in the first place that forcing owners to take on a historic designation status for their own homes against their wishes is a good idea??! Another great example of Palo Alto city staff and bureaucracy overreach using their classic playbook of “hiring an external consultant” to justify their stance and cover their a#@. And causing a lot of unnecessary angst amongst home owners. There should really be consequences for attempting to push through such bad ideas and steamroll them over residents. It would be SO logical to instead establish a process that allows home-owners to see if their homes qualify for historic designation status and allow the homeowners to elect to be designated as such (or not).
Great to see the defeat of those who think they have the right to tell what other people can do to their private properties.
My sense is if one’s property is designated historic one can change the interior but not the exterior. There are lot of people who want to do what they desire to their expensive property. Many are new to the SF bay area let alone Palo Alto.