The Historic Preservation  Review Commission (HPRC) met Thursday morning in a special meeting to hold talks on the downtown historic district design guidelines.
The Downtown Historic Conservation Plan was established in 1990 to provide guidelines for construction on commercial and residential areas in the parts of town designated as historical. The city was recently awarded a grant from the State Office of Historic Preservation to help fund updates to the design guidelines and procedures.
The meeting was held because the city is currently looking for feedback on the existing guidelines and possible updates for other guidelines. Principal Planner Suzanne Thorsen had noted at a previous HPRC meeting that the language of the document could be more user-friendly with more images to provide examples.
In attendance for the event were the Historic Preservation Review Commissioners and Winter & Company, a Boulder-based consulting company hired by the city who were at the meeting to help facilitate discussion.
At the meeting, Winter & Company provided a series of questions for the commissioners to answer. These questions included characterizing the development of the historic district, identifying positive examples of design within the district, identifying negative examples of design within the district, contrasting how Benicia’s downtown historic district compares to other cities and identifying what needs to be updated in the design guidelines.
For an hour, the commissioners answered the questions Winter & Company provided. Commissioner Jon Van Landschoot expressed he had a concern about residents’ lack of knowledge about the historic district and the various guidelines.
“I think the design guidelines of the city are quite good,” HPRC Chair Tim Reynolds said. “I think it’s the process that we need to look at.”
Commissioner Gilbert Von Studnitz acknowledged the process could be very frustrating for various builders and architects.
“You can spend a lot of money on plans that you don’t really know if you’ll be able to do it ‘till you come to the commission even though you think you are doing the right thing and you are told you are not,” he said. “Then you have to start over from scratch and that’s an onerous, time-consuming thing and an expensive process. Anything that can help in that regard, a lot of people would appreciate.”
At the end of the meeting, the two representatives from Winter & Company provide the commissioners with a packet book of their previous work with other cities. The commissioners spent the final minutes of the meeting looking through the books and marking the sample work they liked.
There was only one member of the public at the meeting.
The HPRC meets every fourth Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the Commission Room at City Hall. The next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 25.

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