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By Mary O’KEEFE
On Feb. 27 the Glendale City Council held a special meeting on one topic: Rockhaven Sanitarium.
The discussion, and vote, regarded a contract amendment with SWA Architects in the amount over $900,000, not to exceed $1,050,765, for additional design services.
The Council began the meeting by stating there has been “forward movement in the preservation and redevelopment” of Rockhaven.
Staff presented a brief history of Rockhaven and requested a contract amendment so it can move forward with the design service necessary to get the grounds open and accessible to the public and to start preparing the Pines Cottage building for a museum.
Bradley Calvert, director of Community Development, spoke about the past to “develop and preserve” the site, including exploration into more commercial development. He added there was direction from the Council to look at a number of different commercial options, potentially at private businesses, that could use those facilities.
“In June 2021, Senator Portantino announced an $8 million grant intended for this site with the intent of creating a woman’s mental health museum on the site,” he said.
He also spoke on the evaluation of the deferred maintenance of the Rockhaven property. He spoke about the discussion on replacing the roofs of all the buildings but “we felt there would be a redundancy” in that work if we were to repair those roofs on other buildings that we’re not going to serve as a museum. The direction from Council was to re-roof the Pines Cottage building and tarp all of the other buildings to ensure that there was no further damage from weather. The contract was awarded in January 2023. Some tarping abatement and roof replacement were completed in May 2023.
Calvert justified the staff’s administration of the Portantino grant that, after studies by the staff, was executed in March 2023. He said there was discrepancy in terms of movement related to the grant but the grant “actually did not become ours until about 11 months ago.”
He focused on the renovation of the Pines Cottage building that would be used as a museum and to include landscaping. So that left questions as to what would happen to the other buildings, most are on national and California state historical registries, although the staff seemed to have its own determination as to what was a historic building.
A speaker who described herself as an architectural historian took issue with staff and SWA representatives making decisions on what buildings were historic and asked what their qualifications were to come to that conclusion.
Another speaker brought up the concerns of many with tarping the roofs instead of repairing, adding that many of the tarps had holes in them. CVW had witnessed some of the older tarps falling off during rainstorms.
Joanna Linkchorst, president of Friends of Rockhaven, was just glad there appeared to be forward movement at Rockhaven.
“[I am excited] to be here today to finally talk about things moving forward to get our park and our museum,” Linkchorst said.
A caller from The Glendale Historical Society was heard from.
“TGHS (The Glendale Historical Society) has been engaged with Rockhaven for a number of years and have advocated for its preservation and restoration. We’re happy to see that there’s movement in leveraging the $8 million provided by [Portantino] but would like to make the following observations. First, the landscape is protected as a historic resource and it’s imperative that any restoration to the landscape complies with the Secretary of Interior Standards,” said speaker John Schwab-Sims, president of TGHS.
He added that this issue was not specifically called out in the SWA report.
“The only references to changes in landscape were that it would be removed and replaced with water-wise planting throughout the entire project area. To do this without historic review is not acceptable,” Schwab-Sims said. “It is important to ensure that all historic resources are in scope for any restoration initiatives in the district. TGHS believes that SWA has little to no experience in restoring historic property.”
He was also concerned that the City’s historic preservation planning department has not been involved with the process.
There was talk from the Council about wanting to move forward on this project and so councilmembers voted to approve the additional funding for SWA. Members also spoke about “mothballing” some, or most, of the buildings to protect them from future deferred maintenance damage, like mold and roofing issues.
Mothballing historic buildings is when all means of finding a productive use for a historic building have been exhausted or when funds are not available to put a deteriorating structure into a useable condition and may be necessary to close up the building temporarily to protect it from the weather as well as to secure it from vandalism.
The staff was asked to come back in a future meeting with information on the viability and costs of mothballing Rockhaven buildings.