WHO WE ARE
San Mateo Heritage Alliance was formed in 2022 in response to community concerns about losing irreplaceable historic resources and the resulting erosion of neighborhood character and sense of place that makes San Mateo the special community we call home. We are local community leaders and volunteers. We are your friends and your neighbors who believe that San Mateo can be a vibrant, thriving and diverse city without sacrificing its character or its heritage.
San Mateo Heritage Alliance believes that economic growth and resource protection are not mutually exclusive, but partners in a more prosperous future. We believe that new development that respects the contributions of the past enriches the entire community. We believe the only way to ensure that San Mateo lives up to its General Plan 2040 vision of being a healthy, resilient, vibrant and diverse community, is to grow stronger by identifying, protecting and preserving its irreplaceable historic resources.
San Mateo Heritage Alliance is an alliance of community leaders who believe that protection of our shared heritage is a core value in a mature community. Our heritage is what we have inherited from the past, to value and enjoy in the present, and to preserve and pass on to future generations. Protecting our heritage is one important way we maintain our community's distinctiveness, character and identity.
Heritage, tangible as well as intangible, has a positive influence on many aspects of the way a community develops - a contemporary activity with far-reaching effects. Heritage can be an element of far-sighted urban and regional planning. It can be the platform for political recognition, a medium for intercultural dialogue, a means of ethical reflection, and the potential basis for local economic development. It is simultaneously local and particular, global and shared. As such, it should be the subject of active public reflection, debate, and discussion. Heritage is an essential part of the present we live in--and of the future we will build.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Laurie Hietter, President, Baywood
Environmental & regulatory specialist, retired small business owner, historic
resource advocate.
Keith Weber, Vice President, Aragon
Affordable housing and historic resource advocate, former Trustee California Preservation Foundation, former San Mateo Greater Downtown Commissioner.
Laurie Watanuki, Central
Community leader, Central Neighborhood Association Board member and former Public Works Commissioner.
Dianne Whitaker, Secretary, North Central
Architect, former Planning Commissioner, Vice President Home Association of North Central San Mateo.
Lisa Vande Voorde, Beresford-Hillsdale
Leader of Hillsdale Community Action Group, community advocate for measured growth, affordable housing, and preservation of historic architecture.
Ruthmary Cradler, San Mateo Park
Career educator experienced in education planning, research, programs and policy, with a healthy passion for historic preservation.
Shirley Melnicoe, Baywood
Criminal justice career, veteran of the UC Master Gardener program, committed to historic preservation and neighborhood conservation.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Richard Brandi, Architectural Historian
Thomas Morgan II, CPA
San Mateo Heritage Alliance is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation.
We are an all volunteer organization with no paid staff.
"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy."
- John Sawhill, former Deputy Secretary of Energy and President of The Nature Conservancy