Coronado City Council plans to vote at a future meeting on an ordinance that would revise the city’s standards and requirements for historical buildings.
It’s no secret that Coronado is an island filled with old and charming homes with more character than a storybook. As of February of this year, there were over 200 homes listed in city records as historic buildings.
These structures were so designated through the Historic Resource Commission, a five-member committee appointed by the City Council that helps decide the historical significance of buildings based on the city’s municipal code.
Designation criteria include having special significance in the city’s military, cultural, social or engineering history. That includes structure identified with a person or event in local or national history, or possessing distinctive architectural style.
Having a home declared historic means several things, one of which is that owners are eligible to apply for a Mills Act Agreement – a contract that provides reduced property taxes in exchange for the preservation and restoration of the building, according to the city’s historic preservation guidebook.
But individually reviewing each building is expensive, and that’s why the City Council in the last few years has looked for new ways to streamline the process. An ordinance was drafted in December 2024 with a proposed plan that will be voted on in an upcoming meeting.
Coronado’s current municipal code, adopted in 2000, requires historical consideration for any structure that is 75 or more years old.
However, according to the city’s historic resource survey, the code has caused confusion because its 75-year rule treats all buildings as potentially historic, regardless of their condition.
Coronado never had an official, city-wide survey outlining historic resources or assets. There had been two previous surveys completed in the mid-1980s and in the 2000s, but neither was adopted by the city.
Because of all of this, the City Council in 2019 decided that a historic research consultant was needed to provide an official survey listing which homes are considered historical.
The city hired an outside consultant, Dudek, an environmental planning firm.
The survey-based review process is essentially an inventory of properties that are potentially significant under Coronado’s historic designation criterion because they feature distinctive architecture and have not been substantially altered.
Dudek grouped properties into three tiers under the city’s historic designation rules. The third tier comprises homes not eligible for designation because they no longer reflect a historic style.
The City Council reviewed the Dudek report at several meetings and in a December 2024 meeting, directed staff to update city ordinances to exclude Tier 3 homes from historic designation.
Tier 1 homes were classified as unaltered or minimally altered from historic condition and Tier 2 homes were “recognizable as a particular architectural style but based on observation and/or construction history are more than ‘unaltered or minimally altered’ from historic condition” according to Project Coronado’s website.
The staff report from the December 2024 meeting outlined 184 homes in Tier 1, 140 homes in Tier 2 and 1,662 homes in Tier 3.
According to the city, it was also decided at this meeting to amend the appropriate ordinances to implement the use of the historic context statement and historic resources inventory.
The changes have not been officially adopted but are pending council approval at a later date. It was originally on the Aug. 19 City Council meeting agenda, but was pushed back.
This allowed Coronado to streamline the historic preservation program and provide consistency to property owners. Project Coronado outlines the historic context statement as a “narrative of the history of Coronado and its built environment, and identifies important themes, property types, patterns of development, significant events and people that have shaped the history of Coronado.”
Having a historical home comes with benefits, like tax breaks and exceptions to some zoning standards, but it means having to preserve and maintain the exterior and interior to prevent decay or deterioration, and that the owner cannot simply demolish an old dwelling and rebuild.
Modifications can be made to the outside of the home, but only with commission and City Council approval.
Owners of historic houses have to appear before the City Council to make a case for renovating their home, according to the guidebook.
