Presidio Trust 2014 Annual Report of Nhpa Compliance Activities
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January 30, 2015 Carol Roland-Nawi, PhD State Historic Preservation Officer Attention: Mark Beason Office of Historic Preservation 1725 23rd Street, Suite 100 Sacramento, CA 95816 John Fowler, Executive Director Attention: Katherine Kerr Office of Federal Agency Programs Advisory Council on Historic Preservation 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 809 Old Post Office Building Washington, DC 20004 Christine Lehnertz, Regional Director Attention: Elaine Jackson-Retondo National Park Service – Pacific West Regional Office 333 Bush Street San Francisco, CA 94104 Frank Dean, Superintendent Attention: Steve Haller Golden Gate National Recreation Area Building 201 Fort Mason San Francisco, CA 94123 Reference: 2014 Annual Report on Activities under the 2002 and 2014 Presidio Trust Programmatic Agreements, the Presidio of San Francisco National Historic Landmark District, San Francisco, California Pursuant to Stipulation XIV of the Presidio Trust Programmatic Agreement (PTPA, 2014), enclosed is the 2014 Annual Report of activities conducted under that PA. After 12 years, 1,073 projects reviewed, and many hundreds more documented the Trust retired the 2002 Programmatic Agreement this spring after successfully consulting on a new agency agreement document, executed in April. The number of project reviews accounts for the rehabilitation of over 300 individual buildings, dozens of contributing landscape features, millions of dollars in cyclic maintenance investment and 30 acres of replanted historic forest. It is perhaps fitting that the sunset of the 2002 PA occurred in the same year as the conclusion of the Trust’s most ambitious rehabilitation project to date: the Officers’ Club. Closed to the public for nearly five years while it underwent a comprehensive structural, functional, building systems and programmatic upgrade, the Officers’ Club reopened with great fanfare on September 23, in a ceremony highlighted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of State George Shultz. Now a centerpiece venue for the enjoyment and interpretation of the Presidio, the Officers’ Club features state-of-the-art multimedia interpretive installations, a full service bar and restaurant, assembly venues, classrooms and other visitor serving amenities. Its renewed purpose is to help welcome the public to the park and introduce visitors to the Presidio’s deep and fascinating history. The venue is enriched by ambitious evening and weekend programming – all free to the public - that range from to lectures on Presidio topics, to live music, to children’s art classes. The revived Officers’ Club showcases the Trust’s best practices in historic preservation, developed over the past 16 years, as well as its ambitions for welcoming the public to the post. Other building rehabilitation highlights during 2014 include the full occupancy of building 101 (Enlisted Men’s Barracks, built 1895), with the debut of The Commissary restaurant in the former south-wing mess hall and kitchen, and the opening of the California Society of Pioneers archive and gallery in the north wing. At the Public Health Service district, the rehabilitation of long-vacant buildings 1818 and 1819 (Infectious Disease Research Lab and Offices, built 1932) as a preschool continued apace, working toward a spring 2015 opening. A two-year comprehensive cyclic maintenance program focused on the Infantry Terrace neighborhood (Officers’ Family Housing, built 1910-12) was completed, and Trust crews wrapped up an exterior stabilization program for building 2 (Post Hospital, built 1864), one of the oldest American-era structures on the post. Due to the renewal of the PA in 2014, the Trust utilized Stipulation VII of the 2002 PA through April, after which the project review process shifted to Stipulation IV of the 2014 document. For all intents and purposes, the process remains the same. The 2014 document, however, explains in a very detailed manner – via both text and a flow chart – exactly how the Trust moves a project through its internal project reviews along with how decisions are documented and disclosed. The 2014 PA also cites the Trust’s use of a combined National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) into a single review process (known as N²) in keeping with the 2013 Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and ACHP “Handbook for Integrating NEPA and Section 106 Reviews”. The 2014 process remains supported by the same highly-experienced team of reviewers as in years past, who together represent the full scope of historic preservation practice. A complete accounting of projects reviewed under Stipulations VII and IV is included in this report as Exhibit C, and a detailed description of the process is included as Exhibit B. The N2 team that participates in the above process is comprised of nine preservation professionals that meet the Secretary of Interior’s standards for Archaeology, Historic Architecture, and Architectural History. The group of historic preservation professionals regularly involved in full N2 reviews in 2014 is composed of historical architects Rob Wallace and Chandler McCoy; historical landscape architect Michael Lamb; conservator and preservation project manager Christina Wallace; archaeologists Eric Blind, Kari Jones and Liz Clevenger; and historic compliance staff Rob Thomson and Michelle Taylor. In 2014 the Trust also hired a new ii full-time historian, Barbara Berglund, Ph.D., who will contribute to N2 reviews in the years to come. As in years past, the historic compliance staff collaborates closely with the Trust’s operations and maintenance crews, who work with the NHL’s buildings, landscapes, roads and forests on a daily basis. These crews are composed of journeymen carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers, gardeners and foresters, many of which have been trained in preservation maintenance practice, and/or have multiple years of experience working with historic resources at the Presidio. The enclosed report documents all compliance decisions, including Appendix A, administrative and full compliance reviews. Between January 2014 and December 2014, 49 projects were reviewed by Trust preservation professionals through Stipulations VII and IV of the PA. Of these, 28 were reviewed at the administrative level and 21 at the full level of review. Undertakings reviewed include projects ranging from full building and landscape rehabilitations, exhibit installations, parking and traffic planning, and natural resource management. The Trust also continues to review a substantial number of “repetitive or low impact activities” through Appendix A of the PA. Appendix A includes actions such as cleaning, painting and cyclic repairs to buildings, replacement in-kind of deteriorated roofs, road and parking lot maintenance, mitigation or abatement of hazardous materials, and other such low impact activities. Compliance department staffing remained unchanged in 2014, with Rob Thomson continuing his role as Deputy Federal Preservation Officer, holding the responsibility for carrying out the terms of the PTPA on a day-to-day basis. Michelle Taylor remains the Trust’s Historic Compliance Coordinator, helping to administer our environmental and historic preservation review process, and acting as a liaison with our residential, building maintenance and project management teams on historic preservation issues. Michelle has also overseen the production of two historic structure reports over the course of the year, for buildings 99 (Theater, built 1939) and 105 (Enlisted Men’s Barracks, 1895). In addition to her day-to-day role supporting the agency’s NHPA and NEPA programs, Michelle serves as a point-person for the Doyle Drive monitoring and cultural resources protection efforts, and as a compliance program representative at several ongoing construction project meetings. The Presidio Archaeology Lab (PAL) executed an ambitious range of fieldwork, project support and classroom-based education in 2014, punctuated by the opening of the Officers’ Club and increased visibility of the Trust’s heritage programs. The PAL monitored lead-in-soil remediation projects around buildings on the Main Post (buildings 45 and 49), Crissy Field (637, 651 and 652), and in the Public Health Service District (1818 and 1819), as well as natural habitat restoration projects at Mountain Lake and Tennessee Hollow. Stabilization and rehabilitation projects at the Officers’ Club and building 2 also required monitoring during soil disturbing activities around the buildings’ perimeters. An Archaeological Management Assessment (AMA) was prepared for one project: the Lyon Street Reforestation III and Boundary Wall Repair, which includes work within an area identified as potentially containing Mexican-era (ca. 1830) archaeological deposits. Research in 2014 focused primarily on a new identification study at El Presidio de San Francisco, the Spanish-colonial archaeological site and a contributing area of the Presidio NHLD, and the launching of a long-term research project on Pershing Square in the Presidio’s Main Post. Fieldwork at Pershing Square revealed intact, intersecting serpentine stone foundations from the 1815 El Presidio adobe fort and deposits iii associated with the earlier, smaller Spanish fort. A new, lightweight, temporary “field station” tent helped identify the area as an archaeological project to passersby, and a team of 10 archaeology docents were trained to aid the PAL team in basic interpretation. Over 2,000 people visited the site over the course