Blas Aguilar Adobe Project Hits Another Snag

Restoration of the Blas Aguilar Adobe continues to move through the political ranks, but the Parks, Recreation and Senior Services Commission expressed another concern Monday evening at City Hall that will again delay the proposal from reaching the San Juan Capistrano City Council for final approval.

The city received a $498,000 award in 2010, called the , to redesign the site in collaboration with the Blas Aguilar Foundation, which maintains and operates a museum that displays Native American artifacts.

The five committee members raved about the plan’s design, which was presented by the City of San Juan Capistrano Director of Development Grant Taylor and Assistant Director of Development Services Bill Ramsey. The conceptual landscape plan and environmental review already have been completed.

But Chairperson Kathy Hooper brought up the fact that during special events such as the Summer Nites Concert and Tree Lighting ceremonies, the Historic Town Center Park people and the Blas Aguilar Adobe Foundation people might not exactly see eye-to-eye when it comes to using the common area that separates the two areas.

The other committee members agreed.

“The plan is wonderful. I want to see more avenues for people to learn,” Hooper said. “I just think when we get ready to get this agreement done we need to be extremely specific.”

The licensing agreement the city has with the people who run the Adobe concerns just the Adobe where the fence is located. It does not specify that the woodchip area needs to be designed because the city uses that for major events.

Ramsey said he agreed.

“The whole reason we are here this evening is because of the issue of HTC Park and Blas Aguilar Adobe. If we didn’t see this as being an issue to begin with we wouldn’t be here before you this evening,” he said. “We need to sit down and work out some guidelines. We don’t want to get to a point where the application and planning for an event sometime after these issues are resolved becomes a problem. I think it’s an issue of getting these two groups together with the committee and figuring out a plan to manage them.”

The committee concluded the meeting by approving a motion to have its staff get the Adobe Foundation and the groups that use the area together to come up with a set of guidelines on how special events are going to be handled in the common area, and for Taylor and Ramsey to provide an update before the next meeting on July 16.