Every argument for the return of three objects removed from the Mission Inn has so far required someone to win a fight over the sale documents. In public comment before the Riverside City Council on Tuesday, Dave Stolte described an alternative route.
Stolte, president of the Old Riverside Foundation, said the Taft Chair, "California Alps" and "Charge Up San Juan Hill" were individually designated as Cultural Heritage Landmark Objects by the city in 1976 and 1977, and that Title 20 of the Riverside Municipal Code governs the removal or relocation of designated items.
"Most of the public discussion so far has focused on ownership and what may have been agreed to when the Mission Inn changed hands in May, or even when it was previously sold in 1992," Stolte told the council. "ORF believes there is a separate, straightforward path that's received very little attention."
The three objects left the hotel before its sale to the San Manuel Investment Authority closed escrow May 28. Workers removed the two paintings from the lobby area May 20. The Taft Chair, commissioned by Frank Miller in 1909 for the visit of President William Howard Taft, had been gone longer, by some accounts since 2023.
Ownership and Regulation
The position rests on a distinction between owning a thing and being free to do anything with it.
Private property rights are important, Stolte told the council, but private ownership does not by itself exempt a designated cultural resource from laws governing its alteration, relocation or removal. That does not mean the government owns the property. It means ownership and regulation are separate questions.
He cited Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld New York's landmarks law against the argument that applying it to Grand Central Terminal amounted to a taking of private property.
Zoning is the everyday version of the same principle.
"Just because I might own a residential property doesn't mean I can turn it into a slaughterhouse," Stolte said.
If the objects were designated, a contract allocating ownership between a buyer and a seller does not by itself dispose of the city's regulatory interest in them.
Stolte also said Duane Roberts signed a Mills Act agreement with the city in 2021 that expressly committed the property to abide by all of Title 20. The Mills Act grants property tax relief to owners of historic properties who agree to restore and maintain them.
What Title 20 Requires
Title 20 is the city's Cultural Resources Ordinance and the primary body of local preservation law in Riverside. It establishes the Cultural Heritage Board, sets the criteria for local designation, and governs what can be done to a designated resource.
Under Chapter 20.25, a Certificate of Appropriateness is required before the rehabilitation, alteration, demolition, relocation or change of a designated or eligible cultural resource. Applications go to Planning Division staff or to the Cultural Heritage Board, which meets the third Wednesday of each month.
Riverside has designated objects under the program before. A city account of its preservation history records 27 Cultural Heritage Board objects designated as of 1980, alongside 40 local landmark buildings.
The years Stolte cited fall inside a period of unusual city attention to the Inn. The Redevelopment Agency purchased the property in 1976, prompted in part by concern over an earlier owner's sale of valuables from the collection. The National Historic Landmark designation followed in 1977.
Asked what a resolution might look like, Stolte said: "My understanding is that simply returning the objects is one potential remedy in the event a violation is determined to have occurred."
Stolte also raised code enforcement.
Recent concerns over the city's treatment of street vendors have raised broader questions about consistency, he told the council. When residents see highly visible enforcement involving small vendors while a potential violation involving one of Riverside's most important historic resources appears unenforced, he said, it raises questions about whether the city's laws are being administered consistently. The city's responsibility to administer its ordinances should not depend on the identity or prominence of the individual in question.
An adopted ordinance remains in effect unless it is amended, repealed or determined not to apply, Stolte said. He asked the council for a clear public statement: an account of what the city has determined occurred at the Mission Inn, a determination of whether Title 20 applies, and a statement of what remedies are available.
Kelly Roberts has maintained through her attorney, Patrick O'Brien, that the objects are the lawful property of Roberts and her late husband. A later statement issued on her behalf said the artworks were expressly excluded from the sale agreement, that they were removed before the close of the transaction in accordance with its terms, and that she left the great majority of the hotel's historic furnishings and collections in place.
Neither the mayor nor any member of the council are allowed to respond to public comments during the meeting.
The Gazette has not independently verified the 1976 and 1977 designations, the 2021 Mills Act agreement, or the records underlying them. This story reports the Old Riverside Foundation's position as stated to the City Council.
