AgdaPkt 2018-07-23 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 7:21 PM, Kaia Eakin <kaia eakin(a sbcalobal.net> wrote: Honorable Mayor Bain and members of the Council, My name is Kaia Eakin and I have been a resident of Redwood City for 15 years. I served for 6 years, from 2009 — 2015, on the Historic Resources Advisory Commission. I speak as a member of the community and am not representing the HRAC. I applaud you for studying the idea of declaring the lovely Mt. Carmel neighborhood a historic district and heartily support the designation. Many of the homes, apartments and other buildings between Alameda, El Camino, Jefferson and Whipple have character defining features which give the neighborhood a feeling of authenticity. We all know what it feels like to walk in a neighborhood or along a street that feels special, like you're walking back in time. You cannot manufacture this feeling and it's created when communities preserve structures that were built in another era. Once an historic resource is gone, it's gone. Let's preserve these resources now, while we are lucky enough to still have them. In the last decade, we've all witnessed the renaissance of the downtown anchored by the historic "Old Courthouse" building. But, it's important to realize that the 2 — 3 blocks between Vesta Restaurant at 2022 Broadway and the courthouse at 2200 Broadway there is not one historic resource on the east side of the street. Every single building along those 2 — 3 blocks has been so altered and re -configured as to lose its historic designation. Have these haphazard remodels over time created more wealth for the building owners? I doubt it. In fact, it's more likely the opposite. Many of those buildings were probably stripped of their historic character defining features in the 1950s to 1970s during a time when the architectural aesthetic was very different and there was little regard for preservation. 2