Sunnyvale's Heritage Preservation Commission on Nov. 5 heard a staff and consultant presentation on a planned update to the city's historical context statement to better document contributions made by Asian Americans and other minority groups.

City planner Bonnie Filipovich told commissioners staff secured Architectural Resources Group to lead the study after the City Council appropriated a budget supplement in 2023. Sarah Hahn and Stacy Farr of ARG described the project goals and research approach and asked the commission for guidance on scope and priorities. ARG recommended a bounded research period to allow focused scholarship and said its working timeframe would begin in 1850 and extend through 1990, with high-level coverage of events after 1990. As Stacy Farr put it, the team's approach "would be to start the context update in 1850 and then end it in 1990 when the h 1 b visa program really initiated a major wave of demographic change in Sunnyvale."

ARG said the study will: develop a context that documents underrecognized contributions; create eligibility and evaluative criteria for historically significant properties; identify up to five locally eligible properties associated with Asian Americans and other minority groups; and produce a usable public document. Farr said the research will rely on archival records, oral histories (including existing Japanese American incarceration interviews), demographic sources and community outreach. The team listed primary candidate groups for focused research including Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, Portuguese, African American and Hispanic/Latino communities and said the list could expand as research proceeds.

Commissioners pressed ARG and staff on several practical points. Several asked how the city should treat places with low physical integrity or sites that have been demolished. Farr said the team would propose flexible approaches and asked whether the commission wanted to recognize ephemeral sites and former business locations as part of the city's historic record. Commissioner McManus suggested the library could host a permanent display or a designated space for plaques and noted that oral testimony can capture experiences that surviving buildings do not. As McManus observed, "history is written by the winners?" — a comment made in the context of urging inclusion of difficult, contested episodes and the viewpoints of residents who opposed returnees after World War II.

Vice Chair Para Sharma and other commissioners urged ARG to explicitly include South Asian/Indo-American contributions and to consider how findings could be incorporated into education and outreach. One commissioner asked whether the scope should include religious or queer communities; ARG and staff said the present study focuses on racial and ethnic groups that faced legal exclusions but that intersectional perspectives and future study topics could be acknowledged in recommendations. Commissioners also recommended looking at models from neighboring jurisdictions and working to get an executive summary or curriculum-ready materials into schools and the library.

ARG and staff outlined next steps: public outreach with a community meeting tentatively scheduled for December, administrative drafting over the winter, and a target for an administrative draft in March that would include the context, associated property types, evaluative criteria and a preliminary list of properties for potential designation. Staff emphasized the importance of community input for this project.

No final action was taken by the commission during the Nov. 5 meeting; the session was framed as a fact-finding and feedback opportunity to shape ARG's research plan and outreach.