After a 20-year wait, San Jose has granted historic landmark status to the Schiele Avenue/Alameda Park District, but questions remain on whether the city’s goal to preserve long-standing neighborhoods is at odds with its long-term vision to add more housing near transit.
Residents of the 132-lot district, which sits west of downtown and a short walking distance from Diridon Station, have bickered at public meetings during the past several months over: saving the unique character and history of the neighborhood versus increased costs, regulations and potential barriers for development.
“The Schiele subdivision in Alameda Park is a beautiful, walkable, community-facing neighborhood where you can easily imagine life in an earlier time,” said Kay Gutknecht, one of the original four property owners that pushed for historic status in 2004. “The land on which it sits has an incredibly rich history that encapsulates much of the city’s history overall, and it’s a neighborhood that’s occupied by singles, couples, families and with the racial mix that closely mirrors that of the city.”
Granting the district historical status makes it the sixth existing area to receive landmark status after Hensley, Lakehouse, Reed, River Street, and St. James Square. The district — with Queen Anne, Tudor, Craftsman, and Spanish Revival homes from as early as the late 1800s — is the first historic district designation granted since 2007.
Documentation issues and staffing vacancies have contributed to the 20-year delay in the historic process, which then Councilmember Ken Yeager first supported.
But while the current City Council unanimously approved the district, the decision’s future impacts have conflicted some residents and city officials for months.
“This historic district designation would change, moving the goalposts after we already committed to our home,” said resident Michael Rogers. “If you look at the written public comments, there’s a significant number of other residents who also do not wish to be subject to the significant amount of restrictions. We honor and respect the past but this respect should not be at the expense of the present and, more importantly, the future.”
Newer homeowners have lamented the longer processing times and higher costs of making changes to their property, which they say are not covered by the financial incentives historic designation provides.
However, preservationists say those claims are rife with misinformation.
“Historic district designation will not prevent current or future residents from modernizing or expanding their homes or adding accessory dwelling units and historic designation does not regulate any interior changes or land uses within the district,” Ben Leech, executive director of the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, wrote in a letter to the City Council. “Instead, historic districts encourage sustainable development by conserving existing material and structures, stabilize property values and maintain a diversity of housing options.”
Some detractors of historic preservation have cited the neighborhood’s close proximity to transit as a reason for larger buildings and denser residential development.
San Jose plans to invest heavily in Diridon Station over the next few decades to turn it into a major transit hub. Separate from the city’s plans, Bay Area Rapid Transit and U.S. High-Speed Rail also will run their services through the station in the future, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
Augmenting the improvements in mass transit, city officials have targeted the area around Diridon Station, which includes Google’s proposed Downtown West neighborhood, for significant housing, office and retail development.
Before the City Council’s decision Tuesday, the planning commission narrowly passed a recommendation for granting historic designation by a 5-4 vote last month, with several commissioners expressing concerns about how preservation statuses could affect future housing goals.
Although he acknowledged there was no evidence of misuse of the historic designation in this case, Commissioner Justin Lardinois warned of the precedent the city could be setting with many older neighborhoods, similar to the Schiele/Alameda Park District.
Over the past several years, as state officials have implemented new laws to ramp up production, housing advocates have accused several neighborhoods in California, including in the Bay Area, of weaponizing historic designation statuses to block development.
“The need to build new housing shouldn’t undermine the goal of historic preservation but that does have the effect of historic districts being a tool to undermine the production of new housing,” Lardinois said during the Aug. 28 Planning Commission meeting.
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While residents acknowledge that historic preservation would limit what can be built in their neighborhood, some say that’s not a bad thing, with Gutknecht recalling an interaction in 2022 with Google’s then-head of strategic portfolio planning.
“He was excited to learn about our neighborhood because not all Google employees want to live in high-density condos or apartments but like living close to work in the communities that provide a safe and nurturing environment,” Gutknecht said. “Across the nation, historic districts are viewed as extremely attractive neighborhoods for living and I have seen no evidence that San Jose would be an exception.”
