## Facts

- Montgomery Ward’s East 14th Street complex in Oakland was an eight-story, roughly 950,000-square-foot reinforced-concrete store and warehouse built in 1923 and later expanded into an integrated, full-block facility.
- The complex was architecturally utilitarian but contained Arts and Crafts–Gothic details, including towers, an arcaded top floor, and arched windows, and was described as the largest industrial building in Oakland and prominent on the skyline.
- The building served as Montgomery Ward’s first California branch and a distribution center for western states, tied to regional manufacturing.
- Oakland adopted a historic preservation element and maintained a historic resources survey intended to identify and encourage preservation of significant older properties.
- After Montgomery Ward vacated the building in 1986, the City agreed to a redevelopment plan involving demolition and construction of a new shopping center.
- For CEQA review, the City prepared an initial study and adopted a negative declaration, concluding that demolition would have less-than-significant impacts with mitigation measures (documentation for archives, further survey work, incorporating design references in the new project, and commemorative markers).
- A local preservation group petitioned for a writ of mandate, asserting the building was a CEQA historical resource and that demolition required an EIR; the trial court denied relief.

## Issues

1. Whether the Montgomery Ward Building qualified as a “historical resource” under CEQA such that demolition would constitute a significant environmental effect.
2. Whether the City could approve demolition via a mitigated negative declaration, or whether CEQA required preparation of an EIR.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment denying the writ of mandate.
- The court held the building was a CEQA “historical resource” based on substantial evidence of architectural and historical significance reflected in the administrative record.
- Because the project entailed demolition of a historical resource, there was at least a fair argument of a significant effect, requiring an EIR.
- The court directed that the City’s approval based on the negative declaration be set aside and that an EIR be prepared before approving demolition.

## Legal Principles

- Under CEQA, a project that may cause a “substantial adverse change” in the significance of a historical resource has a significant effect on the environment, triggering the EIR requirement.
- Historical resource status is not limited to formally designated landmarks; it may be established by substantial evidence of historical, architectural, or cultural importance in the record.
- Under the “fair argument” standard, if substantial evidence supports a fair argument that a project may have a significant environmental effect, an agency may not rely on a negative declaration and must prepare an EIR.
- Mitigation measures limited to recordation, documentation, design references, or commemoration do not avoid the physical loss caused by demolition and generally cannot reduce demolition impacts on a historical resource to insignificance for purposes of dispensing with an EIR.

## Conclusion

The court required an EIR because substantial evidence showed the Montgomery Ward Building was a CEQA historical resource and its demolition could materially impair its significance, making a mitigated negative declaration legally insufficient.


League for Prot. of Oakland's Architectural & Historic Res. v. City of Oakland, 52 Cal. App. 4th 896 (Cal. Ct. App. 1997)