I now call the San Juan Capistrano Cultural Heritage Commission meeting of April 22, 2025 to order. Cultural Heritage Commission Secretary, please call the roll. Yes. Commissioner Ronan. Here. Commissioner Coova. Here. Commissioner Burger. Here. Commissioner Lopez. Here. Here. Can I share a low pass? Here. I'd like to first welcome our new cultural heritage commissioners. Burger and the coval to coval coval coval thank you to to the commission we look forward to working with you to be interesting to have some males here. All right. Now moving on to the pledge allegiance. I will now lead the pledge of allegiance. Please rise. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands when nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now moving on to oral communications. Oral communications is the time for the public to address the Cultural Heritage Commission on matters not listed on the agenda. Persons wishing to address the Cultural Heritage Commission on any items not listed on the agenda may do so at this time. Please limit your remarks to three minutes. If there's anyone that would like to address the Cultural Heritage Commission on any item on the agenda Please have them complete a yellow request to speak for them request to speak for them Are available at the entrance to the city council chamber and submitted to the secretary? I will call you forward at the appropriate time Are there any individuals who would like to address the culture heritage commission on matters not on the agenda. Now moving on to the consent calendar. Items on the consent calendar are considered routine and may be enacted by one motion and vote. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired that item may be removed from the consent calendar will be considered separately. We have one item on the consent calendar which is the draft. March 27, 2025 Cultural Heritage Commission minutes. Secretary Stokes, do you have any requests from the public wishing to pull this item from the consent calendar? I do not. Do any cultural heritage commissioners wish to remove any items from the consent calendar for discussion? Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? Is there a second on the motion? You know, one moment. Yeah. I'm now realizing that because Commissioner Coval and Commissioner Berger were not here, they will not be able to vote on this item. Right. I'm sure to that because Commissioner Covelle and Commissioner Berger were not here they will not be able to vote on this item. Right. Commissioner Dickinson will not have the ability to have a quorum on this item. Okay. So let's post-pollumnus possibly to the end of the meeting. Okay. And with hope, Commissioner Dickinson does come and we can readdress us at that time. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. We will then move on to public hearing items. There are no public hearing items, so we move along to new business items. Secretary Stokes, please read the title of item E1. Yes, item E1 is reorganization of the Cultural Heritage Commission, selection of chair and vice chair. Do any cultural heritage commissioners have any questions of staff? I will now ask our secretary to open the nominations for Chair. I nominate Paul Lopez for Chair. Is there a motion to close the nominations for chair? Is there a second on the motion? I second. I will now call on each cultural heritage commissioner one by one to vote on the nomination of Paul Lopez for Chair. Commissioner Berger. Aye. Commissioner Ronan. Aye. Commissioner Kolbout. Aye. Aye. Will also vote aye. Okay. Commissioner Lopez has been elected as Chair. Vice Chair. Are there any nominations for Vice Chair? Thank you, Commissioner. I nominate Commissioner Ronan for Vice Chair. Is there a second on the motion? I second. I will now call on each cultural heritage commissioner one by one to vote on the nomination of Anne Ronan for vice chair. Commissioner Berger? Aye. Commissioner Coulville? Aye. Commissioner Ronan? Aye. I also vote aye. Is there a motion to close the nominations for vice chair? So motion. Is there a second on the motion? That second. Based on a vote, Commissioner Ronan has been elected as Vice Chair. Now moving on to new business items. Secretary Stokes, please read the title of item E2. Yes, item E2 is consideration of a request to find a proposed new three-story single-family residence with an attached two carcarage, holding 3,197 square feet and an 858 square foot accessory join on a vacant .09 acre site located at 31302, Andres Pico Road physically and thatically compatible with the adjacent Dunford Marko Forster House, a structure listed on the city's inventory of historical and cultural landmarks in accordance with the city council policy 603 section 5. The project manager Justin Polly is here with the presentation for the commission. Mr. Polly, may we have a staff report please? Thank you commissioners. I see some new faces up here as much before so Justin Polly on the project manager for the air residents on the associate planner for the city plant division. So as mentioned by Laura this is consideration of land use improvements for the air's residents. So I'll start off just going over an aerial image of the property insanity map. I'm essentially highlighted in yellow. We had the project site. The zoning is Mission Residential District 4,000, also known as MRD 4000. Located just down the street from the mission, just off the I 5 and in between Andre's Pico road and Don Juan Avenue. The request per the City Council policy mentioned prior. Essentially the cultural heritage commission is tasked with reviewing for concurrence of land use improvements to make sure they are physically and aesthetically compatible with any IHCL or inventory Fist Oracle and cultural landmark designated properties of which there is one across the street across on under a spico road So I just want to kind of explain the current process and then the next process that this project will be going through And as mentioned before this is the finding of compatibility with that with that IHCO designated property. That's what we're here to look at tonight. And then moving forward, this item will be going to the Planning Commission next month. There are two entitlements associated with this project. One is a great plan modification to modify the existing gray on the site. As the site has never been developed in the second would be essentially zone variance, multiple zone variance requests for deviations from the zoning code. So I'll start out here with some renderings of the project site provided by the applicant. This project was previously reviewed during the workshop with the Cultural Heritage Commission almost and year ago in May of 2018, 2024. It is a request for a single family three-story home with an ADU built in on the ground floor. It's an accessory dwelling unit. So I'm going to just briefly go over these next two slides here. These are more focused on what's going to be in front of the planning commission, but I just wanted to basically provide you guys with some background. Like I said before, the zoning is MRD 4000. So you'll see where I've kind of put checks and x's and these are the standards that are not being met in the code and therefore its own variance is required for those deviations and then the ones with the checks. Sorry.'ll, are the ones that have not been, or that have been made and do not require the variance request. Same with this slide. Here we have some sections, as well as the building footprint. Again, just kind of showing the amount of grading that's going to be done in fill, as well as cuts, established these foundations for this residence. I'm just kind of showing that it's set three storage structures as well. Again, we have some deviations from the code on the left as well as compliance with the code, just individual development standards. So there are standards that are very specific to the MRD 4000 zone. And they're essentially broken up into three main categories, including building material standards, site design standards, and architectural standards. These are not standards that are development standards, being like setbacks, lock coverage, things like that. These are more focused, like I said, on building materials and architectural design. So I'll just briefly go over these for building materials. All building materials shall be authentic and character for the area. In addition, no metal sawing or fiberglass panels are permitted on either side of a primary or accessory structure and permitted building materials shall include wood stone brick, St, asphalt, composition, shingles, fire resistant foot, wood shingles, clay tiles, and horizontal lapsiding. We feel that all these standards have been met. So this would not be a request to, you know, as part of the variance request. Moving on, we have the site design standards. Essentially, these include primary structures and all dwelling niche. I'll be oriented towards the front street. So as to minimize automobiles related uses and emphasize the main pedestrian entry. In addition, there are limitations to how much the driveway can occupy in the front yard. This is inclusive, oh, I'm sorry. It's a maximum of 40% paved area within the front yard. Oops. Sorry. Keep going back. And essentially, there are a few deviations that would be required and that would require the variance requests. However, there are also other standards within the site design standards that we do feel that are being compliant here with the current design. And then architectural standards. Essentially, architectural styles must be consistent with the area. The applicant has proposed a Spanish colonial revival style of architecture, which is consistent throughout the neighborhood. Structural structures maintaining a eclectlectic design throughout the street meaning not the same right next to each other. There should be some variation and then no fluorescent colors and just compatibility essentially with the massing of adjacent existing structures throughout the neighborhood especially on adjacent properties. Here in this slide we have the IACL registered property just across the street. It's called the Dernford Markov Foster House. Forster House, excuse me. It was built in 1928. It's a Spanish colonial revival which is consistent with what the African has proposed architecturally. In 2006 it was registered as a historic property and essentially that was Done because there's some history in regards to the judge Marco F. Foster and having the house and Don Dernford And having the house who was a previous city council member Okay, so we have We have essentially just the rendering and this is taken from Andres Pico. This would be the front of the proposed residence. As you can see, there's a roof deck incorporated above that story. We have the garage, and then you have access that essentially gains access throughout the proposed residence kind of stepping down that hillside in the form of an exterior stereo On the bottom again just another rendering of the IHCO registered property just across Andres Pico Similar managed architectural design the proposed residence appears to be single story as well from under's Pico road just like the IHCO Designated property across the street even though it is three stories. It's very hard to see that, especially when you're facing the proposed structured face-on, as you can see in the rendering above. And then complimentary colors and just general design and materials have been incorporated into the proposed design to match the IHCL designated property as much as possible. So our staff recommendation by motion is to make an advisory determination to the development services director that the proposed single family residence is physically and aesthetically compatible with the adjacent structures listed on the inventory of historical and cultural landmarks. That does conclude my presentation. I'm available to answer any questions that you have with me. And the applicant is also here in the audience. I'm available to answer any questions that you might have. All right, thank you. I will now call on each cultural heritage commissioner one by one to ask whether they have any questions of staff. Commissioner Ronan, something to you? Can you refresh me? We saw this about a year ago. Correct. And then where did it go from there? trying trying to get remember the history of the project. Yeah 100%. So after submittal to the planning department, this actually was taken to design review committee at the request of the applicant. Just get some feedback, get incorporate some changes. And after that, I think it was within a month that you guys saw in the front of you. And then after that, we held off taking this project project back to the Cultural Heritage Commission for Review because we wanted to ensure there's a lot of topographical issues here. You know, we wanted things straight down in regards to review of solar reports and just the grading plan, generally the precise grading plan, just to make sure that no changes that would be required through that review would end up kind of trailing into like the architectural changes. Okay, the other commissions didn't approve it yet. They just made recommendations and the client has taken those recommendations done what they could with them and now they're starting through the whole process again. Correct, and then the next step would be going to plan and Thank you Commissioner burger Any questions? I don't have any questions now Commissioner Koval First time here, so I might ask question it may be out of line But I can't help myself because I went out to the site and What a great site that was and what a great great community I never noticed it. Are you going to let us know if the neighborhood is good with the structure and you've received feedback? Do we learn that here in this commission? Correct, yeah, it would be discussed. Or you would be made aware. We didn't notify for this. I should mention we did notify 1, a thousand foot radius from the project site and then as a requirement of going to the planning commission Which again is the next step. There's on site notification, which has already been posted actually on this site Now it was just on this week or end of last week and then again another thousand foot radius notification from the exterior boundaries of the project site and I guess one question is just about the drawings is the drawing of the design of the design of the design of the design of the design of the design of the design of the design Is the drawing of the the elevation that we're seeing that you have there accurate to the way the garage door would be designed or is that just a For instance or is that the style? Yes, no, that would be the style that is incorporating the final product That's my only question Thank you I Don't have any questions, but I will say just based on On staff report and the amount of the process that the applicant has gone through to make this compatible with the Strombling neighborhood property and then including what Commissioner Ronan has the question she asked, it seems like the applicant has gone to great lengths to really make sure that the property is compatible, which we appreciate and it looks beautiful. That's all I have to say. And now, in the meeting. I have a yellow request to speak forms and we'll begin calling the names and ask that you line up until your turn to speak. Please let me your remarks to three minutes. Commissioner Lopez, I only have one. I'll read it for you, but I apologize in advance. I probably will botch up your last name. Angela Ducic? You got it. Excellent. Good evening, members of the Cultural Heritage Commission. My name's Angela Ducic, 31372 Don Juan Avenue. I live on Mission Hill. Looking at the architectural renderings, in my opinion, it is compatible with what you can build on the Hill, all the good lots of been built, so you have to be creative. It does deviate a bit from the zoning requirements for MRD 4000. And I don't have any concerns about it. The majority of the building is going to be going down facing the freeway. So it's not going to be a biblical portion for the residents. I do have one question. Was the subject parcel an existing parcel or was it subject to a lot split? If you can answer it. Yeah, to my knowledge it was an existing substandard parcel and that's why we're there having to apply. I just even outside of like the topographic issues it's just substated in size and width and it's. Thank you and I you know like I said all the good parcels have been built on all the. I don't think any of them are flat. So you do have to get creative in building new quality construction. I finished. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this matter? Do any cultural heritage commissioners have any comments or discussion concerning the item? I do. Yes. I went out and walked aside. Is the builder a developer here? I thought you did a great job. And I couldn't believe the site that you could have the massing as it rolled down that hill without affecting your neighbor's view corridor and looked at the beautiful homes up there that I never knew existed California Craftsman as well as the mission style and I thought you did a great job on a purely subjective level as I can get away with saying it at the garage doors a of mass, and there's so much opportunity of mission style with those doors. If you're going to make it more historical than newer, looking up and down that street, just saying. But I thought it was extremely well done, and it didn't seem to impact the neighbors on either side. Or is it the farthest work? That that historical house directly across the street. So I tip my hat to you. Can I speak as well? Yes, of course. Yeah, so I also walked the property. And as a disclosure, I did run into one of the neighbors right there. And honestly, I think it sounds like we're an agreement or I'm an agreement that you guys did a great job as well and I think it's it seemed to be welcomed from the neighbor that I that I spoke to who was Amy she lives not directly across the street one door over but they all seem to be excited about about this so I think it seemed like it wasn't wasn't ruffling any feathers that I could find. Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner Rubin. Just very creative. Congratulations. All right. We have concluded our discussion on the item. Is there a motion on this item? If so, please state your motion. Motion to approve. I second. All right. I will now call on each cultural heritage commissioner one by one to vote on the motion. Commissioner Berger. Aye. Commissioner Ronan. Aye. Commissioner Coowell. Aye. I also vote aye. The motion passes forward to zero. All right. Thank you to everybody who presented on that. Now moving on to unfinished business. Secretary Stokes, please read the title of item F1. Item F1 is a verbal discussion regarding historic preservation month activities for 2025. The Stokes maybe have a staff report please? Absolutely. Annually, the city recognizes May as the historic preservation month. And the Cultural Heritage Commission takes upon themselves to try to be more active in the community, get the word out there about historic preservation month, and do whatever it can in order to encourage the public's interest and attendance at different activities within the city for historic preservation. At our last meeting, we discussed it briefly because the commission knew that there was two new members coming on board, and only three returning members from the rest of the commission. And so there was limited discussion about getting the word out there through social media, different avenues, but the item was to be brought back for the new commissions discussion and furthering that incentive to get the word out about Historic Preservation Month. So I'll turn it over to the commission to further that discussion. I don't know. I'll call on each commissioner one by one to ask if you have any questions of staff Come share Brewer I don't have any questions no No Would it be appropriate if I just brought them up to speed a little bit? Okay, so I know you were here at the last meeting so you heard it, but I don't think that you got to hear it so In the past we've tried years and years ago they did some bigger events. People had tours of inside people's homes and things. Those people have gone, that's just not able to be recreated. So we tried a few different events over the years. SA's writing contest with students at Paul. We had very limited attendance. It was fun for the folks that participated, but for the amount of effort and how many people we touched. Wasn't that great. We tried offering special tours all a one day, and that was pretty well attended, but it took a lot of volunteers. We give tours every Saturday, except holidays for two different organizations, historical, society friends of the library, and the Blagrilla Museum can do Adobe tours as well. And we're already doing those, and our thinking was to promote what we're all, step back. I took a good look at all other cities in California and what they do as well, and many of them highlight what they're already doing. So we thought we would use the city in the past has given us $500 to spend as we wish. And we were thinking of this year really doing social media blitz promoting the tours we already do. And we would tie in probably a little bit more on our 250th anniversary of the city as well. Coming up, thank you. Yeah, so that's over right now. I don't recall last time. Did we also discuss putting it in the dispatch, or are we just going to focus on social media? I think our former chair was leaning more towards social media. I think our current audience that we do get are the older folks like myself who read the dispatch might be more than some of the other ones. Okay, I'm putting in my category. I think we could reach a larger target if we went with a lot more social media. That's my thinking. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense. And the City Managers report maybe at least once, get put in there. That would be read by some of these people that read the dispatch as well. Christine had a thought about documenting it somehow. I forgot the platform that she mentioned. Jeez, that's right. It was something they were doing. Well, we can ask her or we can go back and look. Yeah. I in attendance at that one, and I think it was like some street art activation thing, if I remember right? So they had street art that they were proposing that walked you through California history or something like that. Oh, that's right. That's what they have in Irvine. And she suggested something like that. Yeah. I've seen it at one particular park. Yeah. Was the suggestion that it would, we would replicate that similarly here in San Juan? I think maybe she was talking more about the big anniversary coming up and not obviously. That could be, that could be. Not particularly, not right now with preservation month. Yeah. Because that seems like a. Yeah, that's a larger scale. Yeah. Project to even propose. But yeah, I mean, how would we go about. Getting on social media, I mean, for San Juan. Well, I can start with the city as a web has some social media platforms that they may allow us to post it on, I think. And then I would be happy to probably not do it myself, but get somebody to help me do it with the Friends of the Library website and their social media. It's mostly Facebook with these folks. The Historical Society has Facebook. They're not using it. We have an Instagram, nobody's using it. We haven't built the audience for that, but we could start there. And the city does have a Facebook page that they send out updates on. The city does, and I know that last time we had mentioned the newsletter and whatever, I think whatever flyer or whatever you end up kind of producing to like get the word out Those things we can discuss with our senior manager to see if it can go into our newsletter see if it can be posted on the Facebook page as well Yeah, I mean at this point were late April. I don't think I think a flyer would be out of the question Seems pretty what's the deadline Preservation what this or I mean preservation month is May and preservation day is right around mother's the deadline? Preservation month is, I mean, preservation month is May, and preservation day is right around Mother's Day, right? So we're talking like, what, three weeks at this point? That's just seems like two short of a turnaround time. But I, you know, what Commissioner Perry-Gew said last month as far as social media, I mean mean that makes sense. You know, we could spend the money on what boosting the post Not necessarily advertising. I'm not sure you have more expertise in that than I sure. Yeah, I mean Yeah, we could definitely look at I'm not sure what the content would be yet So we'd probably need to discuss what what preservation content looked like for us,, yeah. So we have to work with two people only at a time for the Browns Act. So we have been forming a subcommittee with two people to work on it outside of this time because it's not that much time here to go into the nitty-gritty. So I would like you to be on it. I'm happy to be on that. Thank you. I don't know who else wants to be on it. I'm happy to do so, but I'm also happy to let others as well. It's too bad it's only two, because we're both seasoned marketing. This is in our wheelhouse. But I need so much input. I think I might as well be working on a test-up product. I don't anything about it. So somebody with the knowledge probably should. So just remind me of process in keeping ourselves straight and not getting into trouble. But you and I, we could meet two together. Is it, if they were the subcommittee, is it possible for me to have a meeting just with Evan to give him some background and names of people? And then he brings it to him later, or is that part of that whole thing that you can't do? That's something that you can't do. I've taken that training just check and try it again darn it. It'd be more efficient. Solidistically, how do we do that? So logistically, you need to provide the clear direction to the subcommittee about what their goals and tasks would be. And it can be as broad as put together a social media platform and advertise the intent and activities surrounding historic preservation month. And that's just kind of the marching orders, or you can get down into more nitty-gritty. It's kind of at the discretion, but it does have to be defined. Okay. So then do you two want to be the subcommittee to figure out the social media? I'm happy to be on that committee. Commissioner Ronan? Me? Yes. I would be happy to do it. Okay. Then we'll create a subcommittee to work on or put together the social media, specifically Facebook posts to advertise the city's existing tours for preservation day. not Lee, not to leave you out, but you'll be up next year. Don't worry about it, because I'm going really late, but we both know so much about this. And it's such a blind demographic and we could spend an hour discussing this. But ultimately it's like, who should we be targeting? Where's the low-hanging fruit? And for example, just some obvious stuff, sending email blasts out to all the members of the historical society would be a good idea. And, the mission, if they'd let us, and I assume I don't know if we can get those lists, but I think that would be Does not have those lists but I believe and has some resources with her activities with the Historical Society. Okay. Well, I know I get plenty from the mission so you know they have my mailress or maybe if we Ask them they would let us do something because that would be basically free and and people that are interested in that so you're kind of really targeting those people That would be most likely to come first. So I think that would be something that you want to discuss with the rest of the commission to see if that is What you want to give direction to the Security Committee to deal? Okay And you're just a time I threw it off there. Well, thank you for being willing to do it. You'll have plenty of time to get involved. I do this for the Boys and Girls Club. So that's fantastic. Oh, okay. It's great. And he does. Yeah. Okay. So then is that okay? That's good. All right. Any other discussion on this matter? I now open them up the public meeting. I have a yellow request to speak forms and we'll begin calling the names and ask that you line up until your turn of speak. Please limit your remarks to three minutes. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this? I do not. Do any cultural heritage commissioners have any additional comments or discussion about this matter? We have concluded our discussion of the item and this concludes the reports and updates regarding historic preservation activities for 2025. Now moving on to committee staff comments. Do any cultural heritage commissioners have any comments? Does the secretary have any comments? I have two items I want to go back to kind of rules of order in processing. The first one has to do with the determination of aesthetic compatibility with the adjacent property that we reviewed earlier, the Aries residence. Just wanting to clarify that the motion passed was not the approval of the project, but approval of staff recommendation that the proposed single family residence is physically and aesthetically compatible with the adjacent IHCL listed property. I just want to make sure that that's clear for the record. Right. Do we need to reread that or just you rereading it is okay? One moment. It's okay. Okay. The other item is the minutes. We had tabled them in the hopes that Commissioner Dickinson would come back through as we do not have a quorum on the item, that item is just going to be continued to the immediately, the next being that we have automatically so that we then can act on it with a quorum. Okay. That concludes by staff comments. Okay. We have concluded our meeting. Therefore, this meeting is a Jorns to Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 4.30pm in the City Council Chamber at the San Juan Community Center, 25, 9, 25, Commodore Delabio and San Juan Capastrano. Have a good evening.