Fate of Watsonville’s Redman-Hirahara House to be decided in August

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote in August on a plan to delist the historic Redman-Hirahara House in Watsonville from the National Register of Historic Places, paving the way for the building’s eventual demolition.

A landmark not far off Highway 1, the once-proud Victorian was built in 1897 and decayed in recent years after an effort to preserve the structure ran out of money. A foundation set up to save the property managed to lift it off its crumbling foundation but went bankrupt in 2009; the current owner, Elite Development, bought it in 2015.

Senior planner Matthew Sundt told a meeting of the county’s Historic Resource Commission on Monday that staff will formally recommend that supervisors delist the property during an Aug 5. meeting. 

Commissioner Barry Pearlman told Monday’s meeting that the building was made a historic landmark in 2006 as part of the effort to save it. The house has been “subjected to vandalism over time and poses a potential fire risk,” according to a February commission report. New commercial development across the street, such as the Hampton Inn, has also detracted from the site’s original agriculture qualities. 

With the fight to save the historic house all but over and the building deemed by a consultant to have suffered “severe adverse change,” the historical designation no longer applies, Pearlman said. The county’s commission voted earlier this year recommend the landmark be delisted because the building “lost its historic integrity due to deterioration.”

“The purpose no longer exists for which it was listed,” Pearlman said. “It is a very emotional thing that I am very sad about.”

History of the Redman-Hirahara House

Only two families ever lived in the house, whose lifespan encompassed nearly a century of agricultural history in the region, from the Spreckels beet sugar factory to the tumultuous labor strife of the 1980s in the Pajaro Valley.

At the turn of the 20th century, sugar beet farmer James Redman commissioned renowned local architect William Weeks to build a home for Redman’s family on a 120-acre property. Weeks built many notable buildings up and down California, including Santa Cruz High School and the Lettunich Building in downtown Watsonville.

In the original application for historic designation, the house is described as “a strikingly detailed Queen Anne structure.”

After Redman’s wife died, ownership eventually passed to Fumio Hirahara in 1940, right before President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order to forcibly relocate Japanese Americans from the West Coast to internment camps. While some Japanese Americans in the area lost their property, the Hiraharas were able to transfer the house to a Watsonville attorney named John McCarthy by paying a $4,000 fee.

The Hiraharas were able to return after the war, even sheltering other dispossessed Japanese families until they could get back on their feet, according to the 2003 application to the National Register of Historic Places. Since the last member of the Hirahara family to live in the home died in the early ‘80s, the house has sat vacant.

The Redman Foundation purchased the property in 2005 for $1.9 million and attempted to repurpose it as an educational center to showcase the Pajaro Valley’s agriculture history. However, the foundation went bankrupt in 2009 and the Tut family bought the property in 2015.

Across the street, a Hampton Inn and gas station opened on land also owned by Elite Development in 2021. The developer is planning another hotel, restaurant and shops next door on the corner of West Beach Street and Lee Road. Jagjit Tut, president of Elite Development, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The 13-acre Redman-Hirahara property remains right outside the city and zoned “CA-W,” for commercial agriculture. But it falls within a zone called the “Highway 1 Gateway Area,” which is a swath of land designated by the city to be turned into “regional retail, community recreation and visitor serving uses,” according to an environmental report summary as part of Watsonville’s 2050 General Plan. This is a zone that allows Watsonville to expand city services outside its defined urban growth boundary.

Not all are happy with the news that the home is headed for a formal vote to strip it of its historic designation, but there was a sense of resignation at Monday’s commission meeting that the weathered grande dame’s days are numbered.

“There has to be some public recognition of the significance of this building so that it goes down, hopefully not in flames, but as the public recognizing what it was in our community,” said activist and researcher Becky Steinbruner.

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