Watsonville’s Redman-Hirahara house to be delisted from historic inventories

WATSONVILLE — The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors decided to delist the Redman-Hirahara house in unincorporated Watsonville from the county’s historic inventory, which begins a process of removing it from the national Register of Historic Places and, ultimately, clears the way for its eventual demolition.

Each supervisor expressed a high degree of consternation as they mulled things over at Tuesday’s meeting. Concerns revolved around the desire to preserve the important history embodied by the structure while recognizing the eyesore it has become and unsafe condition it has been in for decades. But in the end all supervisors, with the exception of Justin Cummings, approved the move.

“If this house was going to be saved, if there was enough community support to save it, then that would have happened by now,” said Supervisor Manu Koenig. “It’s too bad that the support wasn’t there to make it happen. I think at this point, it’s time to delist it.”

The two-story, Queen Anne-style unit sitting next to the border of Watsonville was built in 1897 and added to the nation’s historic registry in 2004. However, the home has been uninhabited since 1986 and, aided by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, has fallen into extreme disrepair that would require an investment of millions of dollars to restore it to its former glory.

County staff explained at the meeting that the home has received no maintenance work since the 1980s and now rests in a state of advanced decay. Last year, the county’s building inspector studied the 128-year-old structure and prepared a report concluding that its condition was dangerous and it remained uninhabitable.

This led the county’s Historic Resources Commission to unanimously recommend in February that the board delist the home from the county’s historic inventory — a call that was answered this week.

“It’s a sad situation,” said Supervisor Monica Martinez. “And, also, it’s time to make a decision.”

While the county can remove all barriers to demolition, the authority to bring the building down is held by Elite Agriculture, a Watsonville-based farming and land development business that acquired the property in 2015.

Embodied history

The home — located on Lee Road near the Riverside Drive exit and easily spotted from Highway 1 — is the work of William Weeks, responsible for more than 150 structures in the Watsonville area and one of the most prolific architects in California’s history, according to local historian and Sentinel columnist Ross Eric Gibson. It was commissioned by the Redman family, who grew potatoes and sugar beets, among other crops, on the famously fertile farmland in South County. Labor was provided by a diverse swath of migrant farmworkers, including many from Japan.

James Redman, son of the home’s original patriarch Patriarch Kendrick Redman, sold the stylized homestead in 1937 after the death of his wife, Ella. It was purchased by J. Katsumi Tao, but the deed was transferred shortly thereafter to Fumio Hirahara — a naturalized American citizen — in 1940 for a $10 fee. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Hiraharas were among the 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were American citizens, that were forcibly incarcerated in camps in the early 1940s.

Fumio Hirahara managed to tap an attorney to act as guardian of the 14-acre property during his family’s internment in exchange for a $50,000 lease. This allowed the Hiraharas to eventually return to their home after release and they used it, in part, to house other displaced Japanese American families. The property was eventually sold to Palo Alto real estate developer Ryland Kelley in 1982 and the home was declared vacant in 1986 following the death of matriarch Tayo, the final Hirahara family member to live there full-time.

The 1989 earthquake made the home completely uninhabitable, and it was red tagged by county authorities. Then, in 1998, a nonprofit called the Redman Foundation was formed as part of an effort to restore and preserve the old gem. But apart from lifting the structure up onto stilts in order to repair its foundation, the restoration effort was a failure and the nonprofit declared bankruptcy in 2009.

Vocal opposition

A handful of attendees from the public voiced displeasure at the county’s proposal, arguing that the decision should be deferred so that the community can make another attempt at restoration.

Larry Hirahara, who has no relation to the building’s namesake, has been involved in efforts to preserve historic buildings in Salinas and pushed the board to get a second opinion for assessing the home’s condition.

“It’s a very historic building,” he said. “I think it’s something that deserves extreme consideration for continuation.”

The item also sparked loud protest from Aptos resident Becky Steinbruner, whose frequent outbursts nearly forced her removal from the meeting. Steinbruner blamed the board for not stepping in sooner to prevent the building’s continued degradation, which served as the basis for delisting.

Cummings was sympathetic to some of these arguments and suggested that the building was left in disrepair for years so that its dilapidated state could later be used as justification for its eventual dismantling.

“I’m really conflicted with us allowing some of our historical buildings to just deteriorate and then wiping that history away in our communities,” said Cummings, who registered the lone “no” vote.

Juggy Tut from Elite Agriculture told the Sentinel just after the vote that he had no plans for the Redman-Hirahara house to share yet.

“I’m not going to tear it down tomorrow,” said Tut. “They (the county) wanted to clean up their registry, so I said ‘fine.’”

According to county staff, once the delisting has been submitted to state and national partners, the county, using funds supplied by the property owner, will engage the services of an architectural historian to document the home and preserve artifacts and building materials. Before any demolition, the county will seek to offer the structure to the general public for removal or dismantling for salvage at no cost.

Board Chair Felipe Hernandez, a Pajaro Valley native, said he’s long been a fan of Weeks’ architecture, but said if there was a financially feasible path to preserve the home, it would have emerged by now.

“I’d hate see that go away, both the history and the history of architecture here in the Pajaro Valley,” said Hernandez. “But we’re left at this difficult point and I think that’s where the difficult decisions are made.”