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El Cerrito Historical Society Meeting Summary
Sunday, April 29, 2007

The President reported on two historic preservation projects. The first project was the Rodini property on Elm Street, where the owner had been considering using the three parcels to build an apartment building. Given the results of the historic resources survey that was made on the property, it now appears a design that includes or incorporates the historic nature of the property may be required under California law before the project can proceed.

The second project was the Miraflores project (the former Oishi/Sakai nursery property). A meeting was held last week (on April 25th) to solicit community input on development options for the property. The agenda for the evening called for a review of the project status and then a presentation of three possible development proposals. After this the attendees were to be broken up into several subgroups; given copies of the three proposals along with scissors, paste and marker pens; and asked to cut, paste, and draw their desired development alternative with a focus on four key issues: a) housing types, densities, and locations; b) sustainable design plus the treatment of Baxter Creek; c) management of historic resources; and d) air quality. Regarding historic resources, all three of the proposed plans addressed preservation of the Sakai house, the water tower, and the oldest greenhouse. One of the plans presented moved them off-site (to an unknown location), while the other two plans presented integrated them into the proposed development. The development proposal that suggests moving the historic resources off-site may be vague enough to qualify as no preservation unless the moving, rehab, and reuse of the historic resources are part of the Miraflores project.

The meeting generally followed the planned agenda. Regarding historic resources, four of the five subgroups recommended integrating the Sakai residence, the water tower, and the oldest greenhouse directly into the project, while only one of the subgroups recommended moving these historic resources off-site. Several subgroups suggested additional steps such as naming the streets to honor the Japanese-American community that lived there; using some of the other historic Sakai family residential dwellings in good condition currently on the property as residential units; and adding distinctly Japanese design elements to the plan, such as making the footbridge over Baxter Creek an arched Japanese-style bridge. The next step in the process is to use the input from this meeting to create new plan that reflects the subgroup recommendations.

The President next spoke about the status of the Society's website. He noted that the general plan for the website is to place as much historical information about El Cerrito there as possible. A new section on the website has been created to provide a list of books, monographs, papers, and similar materials that are directly relevant to El Cerrito and the surrounding area. This new section of the web site has been active for less than two weeks and questions and feedback from internet users and researchers has already garnered the Society copies of two 1853 deeds of sale for property owned by Victor Castro and also additional information on the Gallagher and McAvoy families, pre-1900 settlers in town.

After the President's remarks, a video of Sundar Shadi was shown. El Cerrito resident Tom Nixon made the video in 1994. In it Mr. Shadi talks about his garden and his various annual displays as he walks around his house and garden. After Mr. Nixon's video, a little bit of about 7 hours of video donated to the Society by former resident Tom Hopkins was shown. This video primarily chronicles the events in the life of the Hopkins family but it includes a number of remarkable segments relating to El Cerrito High School, Fairmont School, and El Cerrito in general. The membership viewed a few of the segments relating to El Cerrito High School and Fairmont School.