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The complications of maintaining San Juan Bautista’s historic look and feel were fully displayed during a hybrid meeting of the city’s Historic Resources Board and Planning Commission. The main topic of discussion was… paint. Specifically, the color of a newly-painted building.
The building in question, identified as the Petersen Warehouse, is located at 507 Third Street. It is owned by Patricia and Dante Bains and is listed in the City of San Juan Bautista Historic Register.
According to the city’s Associate Planner, Ilse Lopez-Narvaez, the recent repainting of the building’s facade from dark red to white (with burgundy trim) triggered a complaint to Code Enforcement. Lopez-Narvaez said that city staff determined the work had been done without the appropriate historic preservation permits and now required a review because the exterior appearance had been altered.
However, because the building is located one block outside the city’s National Historic Downtown District, Lopez-Narvaez said, the rules that govern paint colors do not apply to it. Only certain historically accurate colors, cataloged by paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams, can be used in repainting buildings within the Historic District.
Lopez-Narvaez said that an evaluation of the building performed in 1981, when it was added to the city’s master list of historical resources, indicated it had been built in 1916. At that point, it was considered part of the historic district.
A second evaluation performed in 2006 pushed the construction date to 1930. Evidence for this later date came from a “Sanborn map” produced in 1929. (Sanborn maps were commonly produced to catalog buildings and available resources in case of fires within cities.) The 1929 map indicated that no building was at that location on that date, meaning it had to have been built later.
At the time of the second evaluation, the city’s designated “period of significance” was defined as including buildings constructed between 1834 and 1910, effectively removing the Petersen Warehouse from the historic district and thereby relaxing the restrictions on modifications that older buildings had to follow.
Lopez-Narvaez said that the painting of the building still had to fit ten different standards:
- The work did not alter use or change materials
- The paint does not remove materials or features
- The paint does not give a false sense of historical development
- There are no changes in historical significance to the building
- The paint does not substantially change the wood exterior
- The paint does not change exterior design or alter a distinctive feature
- No chemical or physical treatment was done
- No archeological resources were involved
- There were no additions or constrictions to the building
- There were no additions or constructions adjacent to the building
Lopez-Narvaez said the previous dark red paint was also a relatively recent change to the building’s exterior, “so the color will not affect its architectural history or significance.”
She concluded that the staff determined that the repainting, though done without the proper permits, was categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act guidelines, and recommended that the Historic Resources Board and the Planning Commission both accept and approve the design review. Separate votes were required by the boards, which share identical members, and it was passed unanimously by both.
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