[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[1:24] The City of Maple Adheritage Preservation Commission meeting on Thursday, September 10, 20, 26, 7 pm. It is 7 pm. We're in the city council chambers. And we'll start with roll call. And first,
[1:46] curry. Yep, your cardinal. And David Hughes is
[1:54] excuse a couple a little bit more. David Hughes is excused as he's having a
[2:02] Joel fight for and Christie Reese and John Kasper. All right Richard Curry's
[2:13] here, it's here, Bob Cardinals here, Joe Shearer is here, and Arlea's on,
[2:23] go where he Lee is here, and Pete Boulay is not here. Okay, that is the roll call,
[2:33] move on to approve the agenda, but he have their agenda in front of him, so
[2:38] anybody want to add anything to the agenda?
[2:44] Okay, is her motion to approve the
[2:46] agenda? Motion to approve. Is there a second? I have a couple things to add to it. Okay, go ahead.
[2:54] One, we should try to have a like a bus, take a bus or tour of the city to select historical
[3:07] sites or districts we can do that under our by-laws that we don't have to have
[3:16] a lot of approval once we have the that done and we can go farther and I do
[3:24] have the by-laws here in hand okay what do you want to label that tour of the
[3:32] city or what do you want? I want to call it. Just to go around and see you try to pick
[3:39] out some designated areas. I'll one area that we should have. We're not going to discuss
[3:47] it right now. We're putting it on the agenda. All right. So I'll call that tour of city.
[3:52] Tour of city. Historic tour. Yeah. And then what's that? Where? Where do you propose putting
[3:59] it. You want to put it under? No, we'll put it number six. Okay. Number six.
[4:08] Okay. Richard,
[4:09] did you have another one too? Oh, yeah. What do they? I forgot. No. Okay. We can do it next
[4:17] time. I'll think of it later. Okay. All right. So we have a
[4:25] Christie. Just a point of order.
[4:29] Christie has the emotion because we've added it. So she has the motion at motion to approve the
[4:34] agenda as amended yeah so is that a motion that is a motion to approve agenda as amended
[4:40] second motion a second on favor say aye aye opposed okay we have an agenda we'll look at
[4:50] approval of the minutes please look at the minutes meeting anybody
[5:05] want to add anything to
[5:11] to approve.
[5:13] Parade.
[5:16] Motion.
[5:17] Motion.
[5:18] Thank you, motion to proceed.
[5:20] John Gasmer makes a motion to approve
[5:23] the minutes as drafted.
[5:24] I'll take that.
[5:25] Christy seconds it.
[5:27] All in favor, say aye.
[5:28] Aye.
[5:29] Opposed?
[5:30] Okay, we have a approval of the minutes.
[5:33] Have agenda, roll call, new business.
[5:38] We'll start with number one.
[5:41] Preservation Forum overview, I think I'll turn to Joe here.
[5:45] Okay, yeah, I'm going to tell the story back to you.
[5:47] So, Minnesota had the privilege this year of hosting the National Forum for Historic Preservation.
[5:54] It was in downtown Minneapolis, four of our commissioners were able to attend thanks to scholarships through the Department of the State Office of Historic Preservation.
[6:07] And what I asked is a new wrinkle this year to get that scholarship reimbursement was to report back and figure out how attending the conference shaped this commission and how you're going to make an approach to this position.
[6:23] So I asked each of the members to take some notes as they were there and report back just the key highlights what you found most interesting and chair cardinal that you picked the order.
[6:34] Okay. Okay.
[6:37] So,
[6:40] start?
[6:42] Sure. No, I was very happy that we had the opportunity of so many of us attending.
[6:47] One of the things that really stood out for me as someone newer on the commission
[6:51] was just really having a chance to network with other historical commissions
[6:56] and hearing about some of the challenges that they're facing.
[6:58] And again, things have been echoed in our own group about wanting to have diversity,
[7:03] a lot of community input and really just kind of having an advocacy that we have for our
[7:09] historical buildings and the history of Maplewood.
[7:12] So I think that was something that really stood out and just hearing that it was echoed across
[7:17] and was able to hear of some pretty amazing ideas of ways to kind of infigrate and making
[7:23] sure we're informing city council as much as we can and being an aid to them and they're
[7:28] decisions and it was just a wonderful opportunity. I'm glad we had that. Thank you.
[7:33] Thanks, Chrissy. Joel? Yeah, I found it. I was very happy to attend. I found it very informative.
[7:41] As somebody knew on this commission, it gave me just a lot of background information and a lot of
[7:50] things I wasn't even aware of as far as having like subcontractors who specialize in historic
[8:00] rehab and things like having window manufacturers who have designed building windows and things to go into historic structures and just was unaware of all this infrastructure that is there to support historic preservation.
[8:21] I also had a chance to talk to a lot of people and just network and, again, a few things
[8:33] that I heard consistently across all of these workshops and things is, you know, get the
[8:41] community involved, get their backing. And, you know, one thing that many will talk about
[8:47] more is the changes of the 106 and how you know that had everybody there very
[8:54] concerned and that that got talked about probably more than any other topic
[9:00] during the during the conference. Okay all right David Hughes is not here he
[9:10] attended. So, Christie, Joel, David, and myself all attended. And we were sitting in the same
[9:21] conferences frequently, but we covered probably everything.
[9:27] David is excused today.
[9:29] He's got a health concern, so he won't be reporting. I would say that that was a very, very important
[9:39] thing for our preservation commission because we had presence there and like four of us were there.
[9:49] Met people from all over the country.
[9:52] Joel's right, that Section 106 was the thing that they jumped on right away.
[10:00] That is going to affect preservation. And I think that there'll be a real follow-up on that.
[10:08] It was the biggest thing.
[10:09] I mean, they got everybody's attention right away
[10:11] and talked about this section 106 under a threat.
[10:18] Meet met people from all over the country,
[10:21] very well attended by people around the country.
[10:30] People like ourselves and people that work in preservation.
[10:35] There were contractors there.
[10:39] The facilities at the conference were excellent, good speakers, well attended, and the next one is next year, and I think it's Louisville, wasn't it?
[10:53] Louisville, do you see that?
[10:55] Louisville.
[10:57] But that was very good.
[10:59] I did see some people from Minnesota still water.
[11:05] somebody from up north. So I think it was well worth applying for those
[11:12] scholarships and it's really a good conference.
[11:19] I don't know if there's a follow-up on
[11:21] that other than us reporting I think Joe has our our comments and we could
[11:31] go over that if you would like, but I think it was well worth it.
[11:36] I would like to add that David and I were also in attendance of Dermy Ellis who was also
[11:45] here at our earlier commissioner meeting and he highlighted Maplewood in our history
[11:51] of African-American residents and perfectly talked about even our meeting that we had here
[11:56] and he talked about appreciating our commission and listening and being eager to put a spotlight
[12:03] and our efforts to really highlight that community and how more can be done.
[12:08] So that was something that was brought up at the commission with a lot of other people
[12:11] from around the country, hearing about Mabel Wood.
[12:13] Yeah, that was good. I think you and Dave tended that, didn't you?
[12:18] Okay.
[12:22] Any questions for any of us? Richard, do you have any questions?
[12:30] John, do you have
[12:30] any questions? No, I appreciate everybody being able to go and attending it and representing
[12:38] maybe would well. Thank you. That was excellent. Well worth it.
[12:43] We got to get Bob to talk up for.
[12:46] And this is usually a state conference.
[12:50] We usually attend the state conference, but this was the national conference.
[12:56] So people all over the country, it was good mix.
[13:00] When I first got there, there were only, I didn't see quite a few people, but then when
[13:05] they had those big forums and they filled up those rooms, and you could tell it were two
[13:11] three or four people there because most people attended those big sessions so. Okay, good enough. We'll move on to the 106 changes.
[13:26] Changes, Joe, did you want to give some background on this? I think most people are familiar with how this works, but any time federal funding is involved in a project, whether it's a road project, a rehab project, anytime they're going to do major construction, the federal government demands and
[13:42] dictates that a historic review is done on that property to make sure that if there's something historic that it's either recognized, protected in some way.
[13:53] Maybe it would have been a part of several 106 processes.
[13:57] The most recent one or most recent few have been when they were considering the Vento Trail for the then purple line, we identified a few parcels that were of historic significance.
[14:10] And then the other piece of this is when they did the water treatment plant, a big chunk of the plant had been designated as potentially historic.
[14:22] And in order to move forward with a major public hundred year public works project, they couldn't save it, but in lieu of that they decided to create a book that commemorated the site and explain why it was important.
[14:34] And you may know more from the discussions that you attended at the conference, but essentially
[14:40] the overview is the federal government is trying to consolidate the process, trying
[14:46] to take, not the authority, but trying to take some of the expertise of different experts
[14:52] out of it and trying to either speed up the process or limit when and how the process could
[14:58] be used.
[14:59] There's a concern.
[15:00] Veterans around that, things will get missed. And obviously, unless they have a really good framework that everybody agrees upon, we're going to have years and years of lawsuits, potentially. So where it is now is that in July, 2024, it was voted on and submitted to the office of information and regulatory affairs for review. There's going to be stakeholder meetings over the next couple of months.
[15:28] I don't know if the, we wanted to take any formal action, some options would be to connect
[15:34] with, and again, they might have talked about this at the conference, but to just maybe
[15:39] take the lead from SHIPO and see, and SHIPO is the state historic preservation office to
[15:45] see if there's anything they want locals to do, whether it's call their local Congress
[15:49] person, connect with their senator, those kinds of things.
[15:53] So again, people who are involved in this discussion, I'll turn it back over to you to
[15:58] decide and talk through what we want to do for next steps.
[16:03] Okay, Kristie and Joel, do you have any thoughts on that?
[16:08] What you heard about the 106?
[16:11] Sure, and at least in the discussions at the meeting,
[16:15] this is something that trickles down to the smallest communities
[16:20] and its impact.
[16:22] And particularly by removing expert voices,
[16:24] I think can have a serious impact and our ability to make decisions, informed decisions about projects that are happening and the largest response was call for action to contact our persons in power and advocate for the need of experts and for the voice of even smaller communities to speak up.
[16:54] because it very much removes voices that talk about the impact and what that impact means
[17:02] to our communities. So there was a discussion of a need to move fast because the ability to
[17:10] review this and have discussion was extremely short and there was very little time to react.
[17:17] So that was the overwhelming voice at the conference that I had.
[17:20] I don't know if there's anything to do with that.
[17:23] Joel, just one thing to add is they talked about what's happening today.
[17:29] They also talked about what happens if this does go through and how if that does happen,
[17:36] how you may be able to fight this or protect historic structures and sites better if this does happen.
[17:47] So there was some longer-term thoughts and discussion as well as short-term.
[17:54] And I'll echo that.
[17:56] That another thing in addition to that was things that have been kind of lingering properties
[18:01] that we, you know, talked that we needed to maybe, you know, work on having a designation
[18:06] that moving a little faster on that, of getting those, you know, kind of pending things
[18:10] that we know we've needed to work on and solidify, making sure that we, as a historical commission,
[18:16] are doing what we can to really highlight those
[18:19] because if they're not designated, they're not protected.
[18:23] So that was, yeah, I agree, Joe.
[18:25] Just, thank you.
[18:27] And just a logistical thing, your mic is a little,
[18:30] it's not a sensitive is.
[18:31] We actually, I'm gonna pick on the council member for a second.
[18:36] We actually turn the volume on that mic down
[18:38] because he is so loud, so make sure you're talking
[18:40] right into the mic.
[18:41] Your mic is about the only one that I can hear.
[18:44] Yeah, I could hear her, okay, all right, this is a point of logistics. I just want to let people know to speak in
[18:53] 20 years of Bob Joel. Yeah, and again, just a technical point. People at home could hear us just fine.
[19:04] Just right, but it's in the room. It's in the room that makes minus. Okay, so I'll speak up a little bit.
[19:16] I would just like to add for the public view if they hear section 106 this is something
[19:24] we should probably talk about at every meeting see how this comes about but it's called
[19:30] section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and HPA and I imagine if you googled that
[19:40] that you'd probably find out what it's all about and they talk about the National Historic
[19:49] National Historic Preservation Act being 60 years old so that's not something that was
[19:56] just started that's got some real history to it and it's just about preservation and the
[20:03] conditions when you can destroy something or you can't.
[20:07] So, that's something I think we should have on the agenda for the next year or so and address it if we hear anything different.
[20:20] Okay, any other comments? John?
[20:23] The paper work to put something on the National Historic.
[20:28] I'll let Joel refer to that.
[20:30] The 106 is completely different than registering something on the National Historic Preservation List.
[20:37] The 106 is automatically triggered when somebody applies and is granted a federal, basically
[20:44] federal money to do anything.
[20:46] And so what they then do is go through, but as Commissioner Reese stated, it's really,
[20:57] really important that we as a Heritage Preservation Commission are ahead of some of these projects
[21:03] so that there is documentation because they're going, when they're looking at projects, they're
[21:08] going back to what's, and if you remember when Commissioner Koski, former Commissioner
[21:13] Koski walked us through the Shippo inventory. If something's already in the Shippo inventory,
[21:20] then it's there, and they have a record of it, and they understand the historical significance
[21:27] of it. Now, as part of 106 processes, the cataloging of the exhaustive cataloging of everything
[21:36] in the card or everything in the area of construction will eventually be in the ship
[21:41] of inventory.
[21:42] So a big chunk of the ship of inventory was triggered by 106 processes.
[21:47] So if 106 goes away, our understanding, our knowledge, that comprehensive look at what's
[21:53] in the historical registry, not the registry, I'm sorry, what's in the inventory of potentially
[21:59] historic structures will be limited.
[22:07] It doesn't limit us in being able to do historic preservation, but what it does is it limits
[22:16] experts from coming in and doing a lot of the legwork that we would then rely on.
[22:23] So when we're looking at properties to designate, if there has already been a 106 process done
[22:31] and an expert has already looked at it determined the history, determined the significance, that is a huge advantage for us to then go in because they've already done the research, they've already done the legwork.
[22:44] It's, you know.
[22:45] Okay.
[22:49] Any other comments?
[22:52] All right. Thanks, Joel, for their clarification.
[22:56] We'll move on to significant properties map.
[22:59] Okay, so I'm going to transition into the map here, and this is a long time in the making here, but if you remember all the work we've done identifying the 20 most significant properties in the city of Maplewood, what we've done is worked with our GIS experts to map that out.
[23:19] So, as you can see up on the screen there, we have the map of little, you know,
[23:26] little bullet points of what's what. And, eventually what you're going to be
[23:30] able to do is click on the bullet point. You'll have a little drop-down menu and
[23:34] it'll tell you what is there. So, you could go through the list on the
[23:39] left-hand side, and if you're not quite sure where something is, you would click
[23:44] onto it, it would show you where it is on the map, and then you click more
[23:48] information and then it pulls up all of the information about that property. So it gives you the
[23:54] address, what it is, the year was built, it gives you the ship O as we were just talking about
[23:59] the ship O inventory number so you can cross reference it back to the ship O list and
[24:08] then we have
[24:09] it then cross reference to our website as well. So as part of the new website we are going to have
[24:17] this embedded in the I believe on our on our page or there's another page that we can put
[24:23] this on around city and community history that will post this. So again it's a you know
[24:30] it's part of the reason why we recognize Commissioner Koski and yeah and you can see
[24:36] you yeah so you just kind of go and click on the actual if
[24:45] you go and click it gives you
[24:47] to what the corresponding information is for each of those pins.
[24:53] There should be a function that hovers, I think that's the next step in here.
[24:57] So instead of having to actually click on it and get in the sidebar,
[25:01] you would click on it or hover over it would give you that.
[25:03] So I just have to double check on that.
[25:06] And again, you could just go around the city.
[25:08] Like I said, you could either search via the map,
[25:10] or you could search via this listing.
[25:15] And what we'll eventually do is put, instead of having the maple wood logo right there,
[25:19] we'll put a photo from that.
[25:22] But I just wanted to sort of speed up the process so I gave you some kind of mock up.
[25:26] I know we've been talking about this for a bad year, so I wanted to make sure you were able
[25:30] to see something as it comes out.
[25:34] I'm open for questions, I'm open for suggestions, but this is essentially what we had envisioned
[25:39] when we took on this project.
[25:41] Now when will this go live?
[25:43] This this is currently live so we can link it on our website right now.
[25:47] How was the website I couldn't find it? Yeah, it's not it's I haven't linked it yet
[25:51] We literally just got this two days ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, so
[25:55] Yeah, we got this about two days ago and I was playing around with it a little bit today
[25:59] We'll have it. Well, we could put it on our site when I say our site the HPC site for now
[26:05] And then when the full website redo goes live at the end of this month early October
[26:10] So there's two elements I'm waiting for to go full-life, so I don't want to piece mail
[26:14] it and have, so there's two other elements from two other city departments that I'm waiting
[26:19] for to finalize so that we can go live for the new site.
[26:23] But this could be linked right to our site right now.
[26:26] Okay.
[26:27] I just wanted to give the commissioner preview before we did anything and give you a chance
[26:31] to weigh in with any feedback before we went too far along the long run.
[26:36] So impressive.
[26:37] Yes.
[26:38] Very nice.
[26:39] Okay, very nice.
[26:41] All right.
[26:41] Okay.
[26:42] We can put the regular screen back up.
[26:44] Thank you very much.
[26:47] Any comments about that?
[26:49] I think we're all kind of impressed with that.
[26:50] That's very nice.
[26:51] Joe.
[26:52] Yeah.
[26:53] Big thanks to Chad Bergo in my office as well as Bolton Mink.
[26:58] They're the engineering team that put this together.
[27:00] And Commissioner Koski and the commissioners on this commission
[27:04] who've done a lot of the legwork to make sure we did the debate
[27:09] to make sure what priority projects were on there.
[27:13] We tried to limit it to 20 so that it wasn't this giant exhaustive list and it wasn't.
[27:18] It would be useful to people who looked at it.
[27:22] Thanks, Joe.
[27:23] Very good.
[27:24] Good.
[27:25] Okay, can we move on to demo permits, Richard?
[27:29] Actually, I'll give you the demo permits.
[27:32] So we had three properties that were up for demolition or have a permits for demolition.
[27:37] One is 30, 69 White Bear Avenue, that is the old Ocopoco.
[27:42] That is going to be demolished and in place,
[27:45] there's going to be a, I believe a Korean bakery in its place.
[27:48] So again, changing of, changing population, changes, some new life in that area.
[27:54] The building was a little older, the building was a little dated.
[27:57] So again, nice, nice new fit for that north end.
[28:00] If you remember, if you're kind of picturing where Ocopoco used to be,
[28:04] It was essentially kind of right behind where that Keynes is right off of White Bear Avenue by the mall.
[28:13] The next one is 1300 midnight road, three buildings on that property were demolished.
[28:19] If you remember a few months ago, there was a pretty bad fire back there.
[28:23] And after the fire, we had, we've always had issues with urban explorers kind of going through the property and trespassing.
[28:31] If the fire kind of got worse, and again the building wasn't this repair, it was a hazard, so we worked with the person who owns the building to then go ahead and have that person demolish it.
[28:44] So it's safer, it's a clean site, in fact it works out, unfortunately it works out this way, but it also gives developers trying to come that to that area,
[28:54] a just a fresh ladle land to rethink, repurpose what they want to be there.
[29:01] Mr. Chair?
[29:02] Yes.
[29:02] As I was going up white beer, I see the red lobsters shut down, everything is pulled out
[29:10] of it.
[29:12] Is it on the...
[29:15] No, I believe the red lobsters not on the demo list.
[29:18] I know the red lobsters not on the demo list.
[29:20] I believe and I would have to check with our economic and community development director.
[29:23] I believe the property owner is trying to repurpose it or trying to sell it.
[29:29] Joe, did you, so, $36.9, $36.9, wait for Avenue, Occupoco.
[29:38] Yes.
[29:39] Everybody knows where that is.
[29:40] Where is $1300, McKnight Road?
[29:43] So it's basically McKnight behind Gisemite.
[29:46] McKnight Road behind Gisemite.
[29:48] There's a little overpass and it's at the bottom of that overpass.
[29:52] It's a really tucked away area so unless the some town homes right to the south of it so unless you really know it's
[30:00] There. It's kind of a hidden site. It's right, it's adjacent to a train track. And at one time, and I think we've talked about this at the last meeting. At one time, it was warehousing and some buildings that were connected to the rail, the rail line right there. Okay. Okay. And then number three. And then lastly, it's 1375 Frost Avenue is known as the Gladstone House. That is being demolished so that, so that, again,
[30:29] And triggering a one of six process, that was being demolished because the beacon interfaith housing is putting about 50 units of deeply affordable housing at that site.
[30:42] So they applied for the demo over the summer.
[30:45] It was, I was talking to, again, our director of community and economic development today.
[30:53] And normally what they'll try to do is maybe repurpose, try to salvage.
[30:57] It was so beyond, so beyond repair that things were crumbling, falling apart.
[31:02] It was just the safety hazard.
[31:03] And is anybody, I'm sorry, it was the Gladstone House on 1375 from Stabino.
[31:11] The city hall was across the street.
[31:14] Okay, yeah, I know that one, the city hall, the clients.
[31:19] Yeah, the most recent iteration of city hall, which is now the Philippine Center.
[31:23] That sits right across the street from the Philippine Center, which was city hall and
[31:26] then, at one point I believe was, the town hall, and I said there's construction is
[31:33] actively underway right now to put the footing in for this property.
[31:39] Thanks, Joe.
[31:40] I have driven by that a couple of times lately and it's a gigantic hole and Bob Jensen indicated
[31:50] that they did some excavating of artifacts and whatever.
[31:57] So they're going through that process right now.
[31:59] And it'd be interesting if you haven't driven by it.
[32:02] If you do it in the next week or so,
[32:04] you're going to see something just a gigantic hole.
[32:07] And they went down and they got some artifacts
[32:09] from a couple of bifis or whatever they call them toilets
[32:14] or whatever.
[32:14] And so Bob Jensen from the Historical Society is doing some excavating, excavating there.
[32:25] And it's really, that's kind of the center of Maplewood.
[32:33] They had the city hall there across the street.
[32:37] I think John, I think you're right.
[32:39] That was the city hall for period time.
[32:42] I was moved to that, I think I'd believe.
[32:44] Okay, and then it was a Gladstone house,
[32:47] so it was a catering furniture store.
[32:50] Furniture store, yeah.
[32:52] And it's been closed for a number of years,
[32:54] 20 years or whatever.
[32:57] So, thank you.
[32:59] Okay, we'll move on to number five,
[33:03] Maplewood Area Historical Society Annual Meeting bylaws.
[33:06] So I did pass out to the members here, some information, and it seems like there's some
[33:19] struggle going on there in the historical society.
[33:23] They did have the annual meeting, I think it was Sunday, August 23, I know I attended, anybody
[33:29] else attended?
[33:38] I don't know how much we want to talk about it, but they're trying, they're trying to save it in that information that I presented to the members of the commission.
[33:57] Richard, I'll finish.
[33:58] I'll finish, and then you can talk, okay.
[34:01] You will see a list of life members of the commission,
[34:07] of the historical commission, historical society.
[34:15] Maplewood, area historical society.
[34:18] And there's not much involvement there anymore.
[34:25] From my point of view, they have a lot of volunteers.
[34:29] David Hughes is vice president and they have a lot of volunteers for some
[34:36] events but I think there's a lot of struggle there and maybe we can help
[34:41] them out in some way so if you look at that and keep that information handy if you
[34:48] want to understand where there's some issues there.
[34:53] Joe, if you could do that and Richard and John and Christie.
[34:58] I know we used to promote residents to donate stuff down there.
[35:07] There was old farm equivalent.
[35:09] Yes, it's not a farm museum, but now they have the historical society and they're also labeling
[35:19] it a museum.
[35:21] There's nothing for a museum because they got rid of all the farm equipment, but a bunch
[35:27] of pictures, well, I got a whole bunch of pictures at home, plus I had my old farm tractor
[35:35] from little farm with all the attachments.
[35:41] But yeah, that last meeting that they had, the president's husband basically got up and
[35:50] screamed at people that wanted to voice objection for the way they wanted everybody to vote.
[35:59] Consequently, it's only us lifetime members, and we don't even have anything to see in there.
[36:10] Okay, any other comments?
[36:12] I will comment I was, had the opportunity to go to the historical society and receive a bit of a tour of the building
[36:19] And I have offered my services as a museum registrar to assist with the collection.
[36:25] Partially my background with cataloging and digitizing.
[36:28] I know there is a need for it, and I think that's something that it's a collection we want to care for.
[36:35] And we don't want lost for our community in general, separate from the historical society or our commission.
[36:42] But it definitely is something worth preserving.
[36:44] But I think, again, advocating for volunteers and assistants would be good.
[36:48] but it's definitely a collection that kind of needs to be refreshed and made particularly
[36:54] focused on digital, so it's accessible to things like educators and our community members
[36:59] who might need those resources. And again, we always want to preserve it and digitizing
[37:04] as a way to help preserve our history.
[37:07] Thank you. Maplewood review no longer exists, but they have all the
[37:25] We've been able to look at that, so that's area we probably should focus on helping them in some way forward.
[37:37] Okay, any other comments?
[37:41] Joel, did you have any comments?
[37:43] No, I appreciate you bringing that up.
[37:46] The city's role we've been making sure that the buildings are well maintained, kept up to date.
[37:54] New security system is going to be going in there, so we've been pretty proactive in making sure the property looks good.
[38:00] As far as the operation of the site itself, the city doesn't have much jurisdiction over that.
[38:05] But if you as individuals are concerned, community members want to help, you're more than welcome to do that.
[38:10] But I don't know exactly what the role of the HPC would be, but as concerned historical
[38:17] preservationist to make what if you want to let your hands, that would be great.
[38:21] Thanks, Joe.
[38:23] Okay.
[38:23] We'll move on to number six, tour of the city's historical sites, Richard.
[38:32] Yep.
[38:37] As everybody knows, I'm a great one for finding stuff out.
[38:43] And I got down digging in my paperwork.
[38:47] I guess what I found, two or maybe even three of the ordinances that basically what
[38:57] I've been saying has been right, the only thing is I didn't put A and B together.
[39:05] I kept them somewhat separate.
[39:08] Yes. We could see. Read what it says. Where is it now?
[39:18] I heard it all lined up. I spent
[39:21] a couple of days with P.
[39:39] Joes.
[39:40] Are you talking about taking tours of different parts of the city or study?
[39:47] We did those tours, they were nice.
[39:50] We did the tour by Frost and English and stuff, yeah.
[39:56] But we never, on the commission side, we never put,
[40:02] this is a historic district, you know, down.
[40:07] Once we put a historic district down,
[40:09] Then it comes into, they have to go through, we have to see everything that goes on planning
[40:23] of anything.
[40:25] It has come to our commission.
[40:28] If you take a tour, you have to invite the public to go along with it, don't you, don't
[40:33] you?
[40:33] Yes, you do.
[40:34] If there's a quorum of members, there has to be, the public has to be there.
[40:37] or the public has to be invited.
[40:40] It's cost money.
[40:42] If you take a bus or something
[40:45] that they go around.
[40:47] Yeah, if you take a bus, the bus would cost money
[40:49] or you could carpool, you could drive.
[40:52] It doesn't have to be a bus tour.
[40:55] Two, 92.
[41:00] It's more responsible for the historic site
[41:04] and all this other stuff.
[41:05] I'm going to give this paperwork to Bob and he'll make copies for everybody because when
[41:13] I gave a copy to the city, it mysteriously got lost
[41:22] by the one that I gave it to and
[41:25] they know who they are because I've been bugging them ever since.
[41:29] How long?
[41:29] How old is that?
[41:31] This is the ordinance.
[41:34] We haven't had any other ordinance.
[41:37] This one's ordinance has changed over the years and stuff like that.
[41:40] Can I have a copy of it?
[41:42] May I expedite the conversation?
[41:47] What I would suggest is if there are properties that we're interested in exploring and looking at and maybe touring,
[41:56] let's between now and the next meeting, let's put together a list of properties that we would like to tour.
[42:02] and we'll go, we'll go that process and it doesn't have to be, we could call, we could call a meeting at any point, we don't have to wait till the next meeting.
[42:10] We have a few days to give a warning, but to give a notice of a meeting, or a notice of a potential quorum, so we don't have to wait.
[42:21] But this is what I'm saying here is, if we do a district, it doesn't have to be a property.
[42:31] It could be, like, say, from LARP under to the railroad tracks, or even the county road
[42:39] be here and from right there have to go in. And we would do that. That would put the
[42:47] community center where they have to come to us too. Well, let's do this because my understanding
[42:56] of it is, I'm not an expert in this area. My understanding of it is you can't just
[43:00] just draw a rectangle and say, that's the district, there has to be sort of a consensus
[43:08] of things that are in that area that will make it historic.
[43:12] It could be, you can't just draw a line and say, we don't want anything going on in
[43:16] this area, so we're going to make it historic and ha-
[43:18] In this section here that I talked about, we have the Ramsey Coney barn floor farm, we have
[43:27] the cemetery, we have Alder Gerina that could go on and right now they're real
[43:36] meaning the plaza theater which is the only going to be the only left movie
[43:43] house in Maplewood for five dollars you can go see a movie. So yeah that's
[43:50] that's a possibility if you draw a historic district in an area like that the
[43:54] things are historic.
[43:56] You've got Gladstone area where there's a whole bunch of places, but we don't want to
[44:05] limit it to one place it can do it easier in a district to bring it from a district
[44:15] to an actual site.
[44:18] Well, I appreciate what you're saying.
[44:20] Would you have the bandwidth of the time to write a report, work through SHIPO, and present an idea of logistically how we do this, and realistically how we do this, and present it to the commission the next time around.
[44:36] And I'm willing to, I'm willing to help with you.
[44:40] I'm willing to do the legwork with you.
[44:43] Even when I go on to have the calendar here, over in my own district,
[44:47] you got the cemetery plus Edgerton school now,
[44:54] but you also have the school before that school was down more.
[45:00] And you have Dean's bar. It's probably older than North St. Paul's bar. I'll tell you what, let me do some digging into designating districts, because again, it's beyond, it's beyond what we do day to day as a city. This would be, let me dig dig into it. I'll report back to the commission for the November meeting. And then maybe, and then we could decide from there what direction we want to take. Okay. Thank you, Richard, for bringing that up.
[45:29] That would be, I got files and files and files, so we would like to throw out.
[45:35] We will put that on the agenda for November.
[45:39] Thank you.
[45:43] Okay.
[45:44] Unfinished business.
[45:45] Three file drawers.
[45:46] Full of.
[45:47] Okay.
[45:48] So if you remember the from the last meeting, we talked a little bit about sending letters to
[45:53] two sets of folks.
[45:54] One would be the people who have homes that are 100 years old and it was a letter that basically
[45:59] said your home is 100 years old, congratulations.
[46:03] The city would like to recognize, would you want to be part of this process?
[46:09] The other letter is in your packet.
[46:11] This goes to the heart of what Commissioner Kerry is talking about.
[46:15] Your property has been identified as potentially historic.
[46:18] The study documented throughout the community, that they have architectural, cultural significance.
[46:24] And it's contributed to the rich history of the city.
[46:28] As the current property owner, would you have any interest in exploring eligibility for some type of local or national and historic designation?
[46:36] We had this conversation last week, the last meeting, the letters were prepared, and I think it was just tabled to give commissioners more time to review, give some input.
[46:47] And so where we are right now is asking, do we want to go forward with sending these letters to the potential properties that we have?
[46:57] I'm going to ask one question.
[46:59] Wait a minute, wait a minute.
[47:00] Joe?
[47:01] Is that?
[47:02] Yeah.
[47:02] Okay.
[47:03] All right.
[47:03] Richard?
[47:04] Okay.
[47:07] One question is, are these due ones that you have found 100 year old homes or are they the ones
[47:15] that we have already given trophies and what have you two?
[47:21] No.
[47:21] So this is the exhaustive list from the Commissioner Cossacky completed.
[47:26] I believe years prior, there was some work that had been done on a hundred year old home list.
[47:32] And then Commissioner Cossacky went through and updated it.
[47:35] Cross-referenced it with some of the Chippo data that was available.
[47:38] Commissioner Hughes then went and had taken photos of many of these houses, did a little more legwork through real estate records.
[47:47] So that's would be the database that we have.
[47:51] And in fact, Commissioner Kowski, I do have the database that Commissioner Kowski had created in our City Archive.
[48:00] Good, I think that's a work in progress there.
[48:06] I mean, I like the letters are well written, but I kind of see it almost as a kind of a dead end.
[48:13] It says to contact you, but I would refer a system where there's links, where they can go in and research if they want on things like the Minnesota historic structure rehab tax credit and things like that.
[48:28] So instead of calling somebody, we have links or information where they can go research it on their own and see some of the benefits of the historic designation.
[48:40] All right. Thanks, Joel.
[48:44] I think we should study these letters that are built a little bit.
[48:52] Did you draft these letters?
[48:54] I did draft them and I appreciate the input from Commissioner Piper. That's a great idea.
[49:02] So yeah, we could then point out tax credits to give them some incentive to do it.
[49:07] And like I said, these were a draft to give the commission a starting point.
[49:12] They were definitely not exhaustive.
[49:14] Okay, so why don't we individually commissioners take this as homework and come back with
[49:23] our thoughts to Joe to next meeting, November.
[49:28] Is that suitable, that's suitable, John?
[49:31] Yeah.
[49:35] So that take that as homework.
[49:37] work. Okay.
[49:40] And where are we going here? We're going to business.
[49:53] Unless there are any
[49:54] other areas of business? If I could step back for just a second. So, I mean, I think
[50:02] the website and getting all this information out there is great. But I like to see some
[50:10] system where we draw attention to it because less people are on the website happen to see
[50:16] it if we could get some small blurbs in Maplewood living or mentioned during the council meeting
[50:22] or something to make people wear that it exists because I think it's great. I think people
[50:30] find it very interesting and we'll look at it and go check the places out. So I think this
[50:36] This is great, but I think we need a way to make the awareness.
[50:41] And not everybody has a computer that they know what to run.
[50:45] Everyone has a phone.
[50:49] I think that's a good idea.
[50:52] And we're going to give Joe a little time after we get our comments back to him.
[50:57] And then you're right, maybe put a little blur about there.
[51:01] So if people get this letter, they're not going to be surprised.
[51:04] or not all of them are going to be surprised, so and it's not just for those people, it's for the whole city.
[51:11] Yeah, and I think, yeah, I think what we would, what I wind up doing is once we get this up and running,
[51:15] we will, and we will let people know via social media, via the people with living, I probably will try to reach out to a couple of the history teachers in our,
[51:24] whether it's 622 or 623, and let them know it exists.
[51:28] I always see a spike in some of the 60 stories and I'm always wondering all right a teacher must have assigned this because this was dormant for a long, long time and now 300 people looked at it over the course of a week.
[51:41] And, too, you've got to watch fully, you don't let other personal information out on the household order.
[51:49] Yeah, this is set with, I think with Commissioner Pfeiffer's talking about is not the home letters.
[51:55] It's the map that we just showed you, which is mostly area businesses and significant structures.
[52:03] It's not it.
[52:04] I don't believe any one of them is an active private home, and if they are, I'll make sure we don't have any.
[52:09] Okay visitor presentations anyone? No I don't think we're gonna get any comments
[52:18] today. So Joe you mentioned our meeting in November do we have a date? Oh we
[52:25] did discuss that part of it. What's that? Time to move.
[52:33] I've been tabling this
[52:35] just because I want to make sure we have unanimous vote and Commissioner Hughes
[52:39] I think I get the sense that Commissioner Rhys brought up some good points if we're trying to attract working parents and families and people sort of some of diverse backgrounds, maybe the seven o'clock start time it is better.
[52:54] So we can always look at compromising and having 630 as well.
[53:03] And I think we want to stay consistent with the-
[53:06] We get to you at 630.
[53:08] Thanks, Richard.
[53:09] I think we want to stay consistent with the other commissions.
[53:13] Maybe we get their time.
[53:17] And before we vote on it, we should know what time slot is for each commission.
[53:22] and we don't jump out and say yes and then have to retract if it doesn't work okay good
[53:31] enough
[53:33] anything additional oh yes November before we do that next meeting next meeting next
[53:41] meeting is scheduled to be November 12th November 12th unfortunately I won't be here but we will find
[53:49] you a fill-in or we could move it to the following November 19th.
[53:57] Why don't we explore that a little bit and see what our calendars?
[54:01] So that would be before Thanksgiving?
[54:03] Yeah, be the week before Thanksgiving.
[54:05] The Thanksgiving is the 26th.
[54:07] Okay, so the 12th or the 19th, maybe we can...
[54:12] 12th is the scheduled meeting, but again, since I will not be here.
[54:15] Well, we want you there.
[54:17] The 19th is the...
[54:18] or it could be any day, I have to double check to see what other commissions are meeting that week.
[54:25] That's usually the week that the other commissions we have to double check the calendar.
[54:29] So let me do that, the 12th is the safest date, or I'm sorry, the 19th is the safest date, but let me double check.
[54:34] Is it the 12th election, where they might be having a recall or what I have, what's the third election size?
[54:46] Well, maybe we'll focus in on that 19th and then, Joe, see if that works for you.
[54:56] We don't want to miss you, okay.
[54:59] Okay, anything further?
[55:02] We're adjourned.