The Benicia Historic Preservation Review Commission agreed Thursday that Carter Rankin should operate his co-working office space company in the Commanding Officer’s Quarters.

Senior Planner Suzanne Thorsen said Carter, who is leasing the city-owned historic building in the Arsenal district, and the city of Benicia, as its owner, need a use permit because Rankin’s business isn’t defined as a use that is allowed by right in the area.

While Carter’s Biz Café is an office use, its purpose is to give operators of home-based businesses an array of concierce services and the building as a place to meet clients in a professional setting.

Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani, representing the city, said Benicia had accepted grants of $900,000 it used to renovate the historic building after it had been closed for about two decades. Previously, it had been a restaurant, until a fire revealed code violations.

Those grants require some public access to the building, Giuliani said, and Rankin has promised to have four public events to comply with that mandate.

Rankin’s rent would pay for maintenance and capital improvements, and his use of the building is seen as a way to prevent the decline of a historic resource, Thorsen and Giuliani said.

The absence of two commission members and a conflict of interest for two more Thursday meant that one agenda item had to be continued to a future meeting. Luis Delgado was attending a family reunion, and Maggie Trumbly was absent because of a death in the family.

Meanwhile, Commissioners Toni Haughey and Gilbert von Studnitz live too close to 1025 West Second St. and would have had to recuse themselves from hearing a Mills Act work plan modification request from the home’s owners, Carla and Paula Chiotti. That left the commission without a quorum to hear the Chiottis’ request.

The city’s Mills Act program allows owners of historic properties to obtain contracts, exchanging promises to complete a work plan of tasks and subsequent appropriate maintenance of their sites for reductions in their property taxes.

The sisters, who are restoring the rental property, will need to wait until June to ask permission to remove front door and back fence requirements from their mandatory work plan.

They have said the wood door is consistent with doors of the home’s era and style, and that the back yard fence, covered with vines, doesn’t detract from the house’s historic character.

The other two Mills Act contract modification requests mustered enough commissioners, who agreed to recommend the changes to City Council, which has final say.

Jose Coelho convinced the panel that a wood picket fence at his house at 141 West F St. was a recent addition to the property, rather than a historic element.

Photographs indicate the picket fence may have been added some time in the past 30 or 40 years, while early pictures of the house show no such fence.

The commission agreed that Coelho’s work plan shouldn’t require him to replace the wood fence. Instead, he only needs to install a stone retaining wall but not replace the fence, if the Council concurs with the commission’s recommendation.

The panel also agreed with Bill and Sue Venturelli’s request concerning their home at 171 West H St.

While a work plan task would require them to replace a front window with a historically appropriate double-hung wood window, they successfully argued that the window currently in the house may be original to the home.

They also received approval to reduce modifications of the house’s entrance. They would still need to remove the entrance’s half-columns, the panel said, but they added a notation that if other entrance features need repair, they can be made of concrete.

In addition, the commission agreed the home’s gutters don’t detract from its historic features and shouldn’t need to be changed.

One commission member went a step further.

“Functioning gutters preserve the house,” Commissioner Steve McKee said.

The Council will hear the commission’s recommendations at a future meeting.