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HAPB Minutes 11/15/2024 Draft 1 COLLIER COUNTY HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PRESERVATION BOARD COMMITTEE MEETING FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2024 – 10:00 a.m. LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County Historical Archaeological Preservation Board in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 10:00 in REGULAR SESSION at Everglades City Hall, 102 Copeland Ave. N., Everglades City, FL 34139 with the following Members present: BOARD Barry O’Brien, Chairman, Archaeology Ray Bellows, Zoning Manager Rachael Hanson Cindy Carroll Janice O’Connell, Finance Henry (Hank) Sentowski Betsy Perdichizzi (absent) ALSO PRESENT: Amanda Townsend, Director of Museums Any person who decides to appeal a decision of HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PRESERVATION BOARD will need a record of the proceedings pertaining thereto, and therefore may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made, which record includes the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based, Neither Collier County nor the Historical Archaeological Preservation Board shall be responsible. 1. ROLL CALL/ATTENDANCE Barry O’Brien called meeting to order at 10:07 a.m. and conducted roll call. Quorum established 2. ADDENDA TO AGENDA No changes 3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Motion passed to approve agenda 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Approval of minutes will be conducted at the December meeting 5. NEW BUSINESS A. Everglades City Train Depot Letter Discussion B. Tour of Everglades City (motion passed to do this after meeting adjourns) • Ray Bellows 2 Mr. Odrey has approached the Preservation Board several times over the last few years to see if there was any program or grant that could be provided for historic structure. Unfortunately, the station is not designated historic locally or nationally. The building doesn’t qualify for a County grant, but I think it has historic designation status that the County Preservation Board can recommend to the City of Everglade City to push historic designation. • Janice O'Connell He did the right thing by inquiring with the State and asking for status. My interpretation of what the State is telling him is that structurally, architecturally, historically, it's falling short. We stopped at the Depot and there is a historic marker by Everglades Historical Society dated 2014. He needs to go back to the City of Everglades. We know that that no public entity will give money to a private entity. • Amanda Townsend 1. A National Register Designation only protects a historic site or structure from acts of the Federal Government. The Museum of the Everglades is on the National Register. 2. When they rebuilt the cell tower in the center of town, we were given an opportunity to comment on that design, on behalf of the County because it was FCC regulated. 3. That National Register Designation comes historically from when the National Highway System when roads were being routed through towns and endangering historic buildings. There is absolutely nothing that says that a building on the National Register can't be demolished. However, the power that this Board has is to protect buildings within Unincorporated Collier County. 4. We have written into our Code that when you designate something Historically significant, if the owner applies for a permit to make changes to that property, the Board has the right to review and issue a Certificate of Appropriateness. 5. Local Historic Designation is the strongest protection that can be given to a Historic Site. But this Board does not have full jurisdiction within the city. You have some influence, but you can't have full jurisdiction. • Cindy Carroll The nucleus is the original train station. If you remove all the attachments, you'd get to the historic train station. • Ray Bellows The only thing this Board can do is send a letter to the City of Naples saying we support any effort to designate locally The Depot. I thought it was a good discussion, but I think the next step would be to get backup information about what we have locally that describes the historic • Janice O'Connell I know that we are going to go on a tour, is there any way in the agenda to request that we take things out of order? Can we review the activity log now, make our comments and when we finish the tour, we're done. We can adjourn. • Barry O’Brien Let’s revise the agenda 3 Janice O’Connell made a motion to take items 6, 7 & 8 and put those forward now and followed by the tour. Barry O’Brien seconded Motion passed 6. REVIEW OF PROJECT AND ACTIVITY LOG • Amanda Townsend Zoning staff have been awesome, and their agenda items are all ready to go and loaded into our agenda system. We anticipated the Museum item to be on the agenda for the December 10th Board of County Commissioners meeting, but both the zoning items have been pushed to the 2nd meeting in January, which is 28th. 7. PUBLIC COMMENTS None 8. HAPB COMMENTS • Barry O’Brien The next meeting is January 17, 2025, at 9:30 a.m. 5B. TOUR COMMENCES OF EVERGLADES CITY The Museum of the Everglades tour presented by Patrick. The main gallery at the center has permanent exhibits that tell the history of the area. In the back there's a small theater area. There are 2 short films, about 5 minutes each, that connect the dots between the exhibits in this gallery. We change this up every 4 months and right now we are featuring Python Hunters. We try to either tell a part of our history that isn't told very well in the rest of the museum, or we react to questions that our guests have. People come in and say, what's the deal with these pythons? And I like to be able to answer when I realize that I do not know all the answers. We should do an exhibit. The building itself opened in October of 1927 as a commercial laundry. Why do you need a commercial laundry here? You know, our County's illustrious founder, Baron Collier, came here, purchased a grapefruit grove. The family likes to say he came to Florida in the advertising business but eventually becomes the largest single landowner in the entire State. They're packing boats on the Bear River full of grapefruits from his orchard. And he keeps seeing these expensive yachts sailing a little further up the River to the general store wondering what's going on. Finds out that they are making a lot more money as hunting and fishing guides than they make as proprietors of the general store. He finds out what they're catching primarily tarpon; a fish longer than he is tall. Being a man that made his millions in advertising, he immediately asks, well, how did they advertise their place? He's imagining with these big fish and this beautiful place, what if I bought it? What if I advertised it? And he was successful enough that within 2 years he built a 3 story 45 room hotel across the street from what had been his starter home. It was expanded to become the Rod and Gun Club. Twelve rooms at the Rod and Gun, 45 rooms in the Everglades Inn you have bin upon bin upon bin of bed linens. 4 They were also doing dry cleaning. Look at that picture over the door; that's this room with all that dry cleaning waiting to be picked up in 1929. Why are they dry cleaning? His Hotel staff wore uniforms with wool jackets. There's no air conditioning and the uniforms needed cleaning. Also, the clientele that he entertained dressed for dinner and now he could offer complimentary dry cleaning. Patty Huff is President of the Everglades Society for Historic Preservation. In the Town Crier, their new newsletter, this is hot off the press. You open it up and it says President's Update, Bank of Everglades Building. That has in it anything that you want to know about what's going on right now. The other handout is images that you can also find on their website but primarily architectural drawings of what they hope it to become as a visitor center. Why is it not facing the center of town or at least on the boulevard? Because when it was built in 1926 there was no road. The people that came here were getting off a boat and Mr. Collier really wanted to project an air of economic success. The tour continued to the Smallwood Store in Chokoloskee and the meeting adjourned there. Barry O'Brien Meeting adjourned. COLLIER COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE HAPB _________________________________________ Barry O’Brien The Minutes were approved by____________________________________ Barry O’Brien as presented___________________ or amended____________________