good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, december 7th, 2023. to enable public participation sf govtv is broadcasting and streaming this hearing live and we will receive public comment for discussion and action items on today's agenda. each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes and when you have 30s remaining you will hear a chime indicating your time is almost up. when your allotted time is reached, i will announce that your time is up and take the next person queued to speak. we will take public comment from persons in city hall first and then open up the remote access lines for those persons calling in to submit their testimony. you need to call area. code (415) 655-0001 and enter access.

code 26634125920 and press pound twice. to comment, you need to raise your hand by pressing star three. and once you've done that you will hear a prompt stating that you have raised your hand to ask a question. please wait to speak until the host calls on you. when you hear that you are unmuted, that is your indication. to begin speaking. for those of you joining via webex, you may log in via the link found on today's agenda and enter pass code 2023 and use the raised hand icon to raise your hand. best practices are to call from a quiet location and please mute the volume on your television or computer for those persons attending in city hall, we ask that you line up on the screen side of the room or to your right and please speak clearly and slowly. and if you care to state your name for the record, finally, i'll ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceeding times. and i will

take roll commission president tanner here. commission vice president moore here. commissioner braun here. commissioner dimond here. commissioner imperial here. commissioner koppell here, and commissioner ruiz here. thank you, commissioners. first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2022 hyphen 001045. ca 2515 folsom street conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to january 18th, 2024. item two case number 2022 hyphen 005728 drp at 1212 union street a discretionary review has been withdrawn further commissioners under your regular calendar item 11 case number 2023 hyphen 009000 pca for the cannabis retail uses planning code amendment. we've received a request from supervisor stephanie's office to continue this matter to february 29th, 2024. i have no other items proposed for continuance, so we

should take public comment. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on any of these items proposed for continuance. only on the matter of continuance. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing seeing no request to speak, public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. are there any motions on the continuance calendar? commissioner imperial move to continue all items as proposed. second, thank you commissioners on that motion to continue items as proposed. commissioner braun i, commissioner ruiz i. commissioner diamond i commissioner imperial high commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high and commissioner president tanner i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 and places us on your consent calendar. all or the matter listed here under constitutes a consent calendar is considered to be routine by the planning

commission and may be acted upon . excuse me, by a single roll call vote of the commission. there will be no separate discussion of this item unless a member of the commission, the public or staff, so requests in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or a future hearing. item three case number 2022 hyphen 001553 ca at 949 grant avenue conditional use authorization commissioners before we take public comment, i believe commissioner ruiz has a request to recuse. yes. the project sponsor is my employer, cdc is there a motion to recuse commissioner ruiz move to recuse commissioner ruiz. second. thank you, commissioners, on that motion to recuse commissioner ruiz. commissioner braun, high commissioner ruiz high. commissioner diamond high. commissioner imperial high. commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high and commissioner president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. i don't think you need to go

anywhere. it should be quick. members of the public. this is your opportunity to request that this item be removed from consent and heard today under the regular calendar. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three. see seeing no request to speak. commissioner's public comment is closed and your consent calendar item is now before you. is there a motion on the consent calendar? commissioner mario move to approve second, thank you commissioners on that motion to approve your consent calendar. commissioner braun, a commissioner diamond high commissioner, imperial high. commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high and commissioner. president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and places us under commission matters. item for land acknowledgment commissioner muriel is going to read the atlantic knowledgement this week. okay the commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of

the ramaytush ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their tradition as the ramaytush alone have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as their caretakers of this place as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respect by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank you. thank you. item five consideration of adoption draft minutes for november 16th, 2023. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on their minutes. again, if you're in the chambers , please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three. seeing no request to speak public comment is closed and your minutes are

now before you. commissioners, commissioner brown move to adopt the minutes. second. second. thank you commissioners on that motion to adopt your minutes. commissioner braun high commissioner ruiz high commissioner diamond high commissioner. imperial high commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high and commission president tanner high . so move commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. item six commission comments and questions. are there any comments? questions or future agenda items? commissioner dimond um, i wanted to bring everybody's attention to the let's glow exhibit in downtown. i went to see it last night and it not last night, the opening night last friday, and it was spectacular. it was drawing all kinds of crowds, people wandering from exhibit to exhibit, then pausing to eat downtown, kind of exactly what we've been talking about in terms of finding new reasons to draw people downtown. and then on saturday night, i was in the union square area around 9:00,

which was packed to the gills with ice skaters. and it was equally fabulous and exciting to see that area of town. so you know, shout out to the organizer of both and really encourage everybody to go take advantage of this. the glow exhibit ends this week. there was a nice article about it in the kron this morning. i think it's still the 11th. is that right? i think yeah. through the weekend. it'll be up so definitely happy to have the good news reports. commissioner moore. i wanted to express my absolute delight in reading in the paper that mission housing and meta were awarded the marvel in the mission, formerly the monster in the mission non affordable housing project with 350 units which were indeed ups of what originally was supposed under different conditions. and i think this is a great step in the right direction. and i think we should all be really, really happy about that, given the fact that i think construction is

projected to occur or start occurring in the very near future. and this would probably be the first thing to start taking down our obligations on affordable housing. yeah it's very exciting. thank you. i don't see any other hands up. all right. thank you, commissioners. okay. if there's nothing further commissioners item seven, remote public comment. so at your november 16th hearing, you may take this up for the first time and requested it be continued to this date to reach out to the mayor's office to see if they could provide any more background. i did so as expected, the mayor's office simply affirmed that the mayor was interested in invigorating the civic center area and to have consistency throughout the city and county of san francisco with all boards and commissions. i've been reaching out to other boards and commissions. they seem to be falling in line with the direction from the mayor's office. i haven't heard of any

that have not. i have heard some that are not starting effective immediately. but at the new year. so with that, we should probably take public comment. absolutely members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on remote public comment item seven. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. good morning. no, good afternoon. happy hanukkah. i sent an email about the about this and i think two minutes is that i get two minutes. this is the second time we're okay. okay. that's fine. i'm sure you read my email. you get my point. the virus is are increasing and i think it's a democratic process. yes. and as i wrote in the email, you know, you can watch it on tv or on on your computer. and if that technology is available live, it

seems like you should be able to call in. it just seems the same for me personally and maybe other people have this story. i wanted to come last week. i had a family issue. i couldn't come, but i was able to call in because i wanted to participate. and i think people want to participate and they can always come down here. and i don't know that people coming for our meeting specifically on planning issues is necessarily going to revitalize civic center. i don't always go by a piece of pizza over there at out of sight pizza even though i'd like to. but i just think that as long as the virus is around, at least keep it through the winter until we see what's going on. and you have very important issues that a lot of people from all cohorts in the city need to comment on. so i really hope that the mayor won't get mad at you if you decide to do it, because i think it's a reasonable thing for this commission specifically, given how it's been successful to continue the remote public

comment. thank you very much. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward. let's go to our remote caller. this is sue hester. i would second what georgia said about covid. i've sent you an email and pointed out that the public comment pardon me, the packet that went out to the commission and the public as a fail didn't include the mayor's directive, didn't include any kind of analysis. even then, one that was done today by the planning commission. secretary, you are in the midst of a really difficult time with between the state and the city about the housing element. the last thing you should do is deprive people of commenting on it. that can't come physically into the planning commission. the other

thing that's going on right now is, is the planning pardon me, the board of supervisors is figuring out how how to deal with disabled people and the current rule is you have to ask permission two days in advance before the hearing to get permission. and so there's been a lot of things that have been added the time frame to deal with people requesting comment. you have a directive that you're about to shut off a shut off the ability of people to feel vacant positions in the planning department across the city, as well as cut things off in general. the last thing we need to do is put more burdens on the staff to deal with disabled people. finally the planning commission secretary has immediate power to cut off

person voting in that they're abusing the planning commission. president can give direction on that. but the last thing that you need to do is cut off public comment at this point, i'm really. thank you that was your time. commissioners. this is lorraine petit, affordable housing advocate for seniors and people with disabilities. i urge you not to make any changes in the remote public comment practices allowing remote public comment as greatly increased accessibility for the public and so as long as public participation in matters of planning and zoning, the commission has also benefited itself by exposure to a much broadened exposure to the public's perspectives, the

public's knowledge and real world experience and observations is the record of how well remote public comment has worked at planning commission meetings. it's more than adequate to demonstrate its value. the more public comment has been enabled, the more informed decisions the commissioners have been able to make. this is not a nice little expendable amenity. it has developed into an absolute necessity for public scrutiny and equity and thus it should not be eliminated. also, i would remind the commissioners that what's involved here is preservation of public access in two different ways. it must be recognized that what the supervisors have done and the mayor is asking you to do is to not only cut off the public from calling in, but to remove their ability to listen in. 25% of the san francisco's including seniors and low income people, have no internet or computer power. their only access to hear

planning commission proceedings proceedings is by telephone in deed. that is the only way i myself am able to participate. so when you make your decision, be aware of the full extent of what you are doing. please keep remote public comment for full public participation and maintain the planning commission's independence to acquire all the input and knowledge required for its complex deliberations. thank you very much. good morning. afternoon. my name is and speaking as myself as an individual and i echo the previous speakers, comments and sentiments. in addition, i'd like to add that it for people with disabilities and ears who are unable to make it to the

building or to a hearing room. we also are again, the virus is on the rise. people much more vulnerable and also do actually new medications that actually are immuno suppressant more and more people are on them who would not like to be entering places where there are large groups or people who would be sitting close to them. but at the same time, i'm remote public comment is important, especially in the middle of the day of a work day when the rest of the city is work. also, most other municipalities around the state run their meetings in the evenings to accommodate and actually support and respect the public, the public's business be done at an a place that is

available for them and not just on a playback, but to also be able to participate that is their right. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. this is anastasia albanopolis with san francisco tenants union and the race and equity coalition. this is a matter where you need to be informed and very well informed and the public helps you to get that information. so you can make your decisions. um and this is an a matter of equity. you support equity and jonas, the clerk has said he has no problem being able to cut somebody off if they're speaking off topic. so i think that it's

in the best interest of everybody concerned to keep remote public comment and personally me as a i'm in my upper 70s now, it's kind of a hardship for me to come there and i've been coming and speaking on housing topics for many years. so you're going to be missing out on comments from people all in the know who want to inform you and members of communities and you know, who have information that will help you in making your decisions. so please keep remote public comment. thank you. okay. last call for public comment on this matter. seeing no additional requests to speak public comment

on this item is closed and it is now before you commissioners. i'll only add that i guess elderly who don't have computers. it is broadcast on television live and there are other means by which members of the public can submit their testimony in advance s via email or or in writing. so thank you, commissioner. muriel, i have a question in terms of the request for ada accommodation. what is the process for that? essentially if you were to invoke the mayor's directive, people with disabilities would need to contact my office in advance and we would provide them with the call in information or would be like in one day in advance or two days in advance. i would i believe it's 48 hours in advance. i would make every accommodation i could as long as i received it in advance to provide that person with the information they needed to call in. thank you. great maybe i'll add to that

just for our discussion and for members of the public. you know, certainly we use what i would say would be the honor system for disability. so we aren't querying what your disability is . we aren't writing that down. we are taking it at your word that you are have some something that is preventing you and disabling you from coming into city hall. and so just to say don't have a fear, i think of calling in and making that accommodation request. in addition, as the secretary said, we do receive the corresponding whether you send it to us directly or you send it to the commission secretary, they do forward all of the email correspondence that we receive on items or even if it's by mail, we also get the things that come in by mail or other means transmitted to us with one caveat if i know the person requesting it is an able bodied person, certainly. well, i would. i would i guess i would caution us to take an approach where we don't assume that we actually know everyone's disability. and so we should

probably be mindful of that. the airlines i know if you say you have a disability, they take your word for it and they don't inquire as to your health condition. so we might want to understand what best practices are around understanding abilities and how they differ from person to person or change over time. and able bodied is, you know, not the same from one person to the next with that, i want to call on commissioner ruiz and then commissioner braun. yeah. someone on public comment said that if we were to remove this, they would no longer be able to hear for the hearings via telephone. is that true? no. well, they would need to have the call in information, so if they requested it in advance, we could provide them with that and they would still be able to listen to it on their phone and not have to watch on tv. okay. i just wanted to clarify that point. um i would just want to say that i'm not in support of removing remote public comment. i feel like it's a inequity to remove it. i think

it takes a great deal of time and it's also a privilege to be able to come to city hall to make public comment. i think i've seen in even in my own experience, you know, it's paid staff time to come here and make public comment. and if you're a working person and you don't have the ability to step outside of your work day to come and make public comment, then you don't have have access to this. so and to implement, you know, an extra step like if you're, you know, disabled, you can participate. i just think that's an extra step people have to go through in order to participate. so yeah, that's all i have to say. great. thank you. commissioner braun. secretary, i, i have one one other question about the ada accommodation. so a person would need to ask for

that accommodation every week that they want to make a public comment. is that right? yeah, that's correct. okay. so it is. it is definitely a, i think a not a huge burden, but still yet another barrier, yet another step. and i, i also struggle to support eliminating public comment. i don't i don't support doing that. um, i think for many of the reasons that commissioner ruiz articulated and also i just , i believe that we've actually benefited greatly from having this expanded access to, to enabling people to participate who otherwise might not be able to. and it is a huge burden in terms of even just getting to and from city hall, from the other side of the city to have the opportunity to listen to one agenda item and make a 2 or 3 minute public comment. and those are voices that we might lose if we lose remote public comment. so yeah, i definitely do not want to lose it. i am i am open to seeing what happens down the line. if we somehow if let's say we maintain it, we fall out of

consistency with other commissions. and then that gets confusing for people. but for the time being, um, i, i don't support eliminating it. thank you, commissioner. more the word struggle is an appropriate description. thank you for using that. i am of two mindsets on this. it is always important to support each other relative to the workings of governance in city hall. and that would mean we jump on it and basically support of what we asked to do. on the other hand, when i reflect on the very public nature of what we do and the responsibilities that it entails, i believe that speaking for myself, i greatly benefit from public comment either made in this room or being transmitted by a telephone at. and i believe that at a time where we have many, many important issues for which we do need public comment, we should give ourselves a little bit more

time, perhaps till the spring to weave with discretion. it is a double edged sword also for the for the staff. i feel bad seeing staff sit here for 4 or 5 hours for a very possible discussion on an item that last minute may be continued. it's a real waste of resources and not to talk about the difficult schlepping from here to the office and back and forth and i believe it would be in the interest of this particular commission and this department to give this a little bit more time and get a more finer grain of what it does mean or what it what it means and what it doesn't mean. so i am trending towards what both commissioner ruiz and commissioner brown said and ask that we consider a further extension of our practice, at least through the beginning of spring. thank you, commissioner moore. commissioner diamond, when this discussion came up

last time, several of us asked for if the city attorney could provide clear guidance to commissioner aiona on what's appropriate to cut off and when it's not appropriate to cut off. and i know that's a super challenging task, but is the city attorney's office in a position to give that kind of guidance to the commission? the city attorney's office has actually provided that guidance in written form. there's a policy with fairly explicit guidance. so you feel like you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time that you have standards that you can apply against the comments that are made if they're inappropriate and cut them off using your best judgment. click of the button. yeah all right. i'd like to use it more often than i should. i could go either way on this. i am inclined to want to support the mayor and her request. she. we went back to her and she asked again. and so i believe that deserves a fair amount of

deference, although i understand and the desire to not limit public access, but i want to. the mayor's request isn't just in light of our commission. it's looking at the whole of all of the commissions, asking for a consistent practice and i feel like that's worthy of a lot of deference. so i would be inclined to support it if there were three other votes to do that. thank you, commissioner diamond. commissioner koppell i'm right there with you. commissioner diamond. seeing as though this is the second time we've heard it and the second time we've been asked and that the ability for access is still there. i'll make a motion to honor mayor breed's request to cease public comment after the first of the year. second, commissioner, period. do you want to add any comments? yeah, i just want to also have my position be be stated in here as

well. you know, from the last hearing that we had about this, i was more prone into having a hybrid. a hybrid or flexible in a way that there is 15 or 20 minute time lapse for, for just for the remote hearing. i thought that would be a good balance. however, i also because in a way that again, there are some points that commissioner gabriel raised and commissioner braun and commissioner moore in terms of like the access to ada, where let's say there are certain public comments that would make comments every week and that means that they would have to request for ada every week as well. so that's kind of like the balance that i'm trying to see as well. on the other hand, in terms of governance, if we're talking about the principle of governance as well, consistency is very important and you know, we've had we've

done this before for and for me personally, it in terms of being a commissioner, it benefits to have a more in-person an activity as what's happening here in the city hall. you get to see who are the speakers, you get to see the energy and you get to see the dynamic between the public and as commissioners and as decision makers. i think that's a very important principle in terms of decision making process. so there is that for me as well. but i do understand the technology. i am more leaning in terms of supporting the remote, supporting the in-person going back. but if there's going to be if we're trying to find the balance, i hope we can do that. but but, you know, as i'm sitting here, there are times that we sit here for an hour or

two hours of all remote comments and it seems like those comments just wave off from my brain. and so, you know, you know, we're also human. so we also need to come from that perspective as well. so yeah, so i'm also supporting in terms of the. of going back to the in-person and having the ada accessible. if there's a way that we can make that ada accessible, more accessible, where perhaps they can request you know, less than three hours before the hearing, perhaps we can accommodate that as well. but yeah, so that will i'm coming from. yeah, yeah, certainly. if we could be more flexible, that'd be something interesting to look at. and if we do i imagine we'd probably have a number ready each week anyways just on the chance that it has to because we wouldn't be recreating things every time so that, you know, just to folks, if this motion does pass to not shy away from requesting and if we can't accommodate you, we will we'll try to accommodate

those who need accommodate us from a week to week basis with that, i don't see any other hands up. and so we can vote on the motion that is presented. very good commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to cease remote public comment beginning january 1st, 2024, on that motion. commissioner braun no. commissioner ruiz no. commissioner dimond i, commissioner imperial high commissioner coppell i. commissioner moore no. and commissioner. president tanner, i so move commissioners that motion passes 4 to 3 with commissioners braun ruiz and moore voting against commissioners. if i could, this was somewhat of a two part direction from the mayor's office. and so i didn't hear anything related to staff being required to be present in in the chambers. i would imagine that would extend similarly, i'll ask commissioner moore if she wants to speak to this. i would strongly support it to split out that staff will be allowed to

continue calling in. i think it is more effective relative to work efficiency and since their presentation are already with us in writing, this is only more or less an exchange of questions and clarifications. i do not see any reason why that should not right. and i think that that department's practice and direction is for the primary plan for to be here in person. but that secondary staff who may be available for sort of one off questions that may come up would still be able to participate remotely. and i know that staff would not take unfair advantage of it unless there are pressing circumstances. certainly i think staff has shown remarkable resilience through this difficult times, primarily planners being here, including sidekick et cetera. sorry about the use of that word, but having the ability, though, to reach back to the office and speak to specific expertise by other people on on on a work team is extremely important. if there's consensus with the commission, i

won't request the second motion, but i'll let you all deliberate before i call on commissioner dimond, i'll just say i would agree that the practice we've been having of the lead staff being present at and then any kind of secondary resources, especially if we have other departments, i mean, often we may on occasion have a question for them. but i mean, it's not often that frequent that the staff who is the lead can't answer the question that we have. commissioner dimond, can i just get clarification that mr. aiona and the city attorney miss what? mr. hillis the lead would be here and if it's a multiple party presentation, they would all be here. i will just say that it is much easier for me to understand and hear when people are in the room and when they're on the phone. it's much more challenging. so i definitely understand why we don't need to have people who don't have a primary role here, but everybody else, in my opinion, should be here. yeah for example, i think

when we had last weeks presentation regarding the housing element update, there were several staff here and i think that was appropriate to have them there both for the actual presentation and for resources. but we've had, you know, big projects where we've got like multiple agencies on the line in case we have a question and that seems appropriate to continue that practice, to be able to be remote or they also are welcome to come in if they're able to a very good if there's consensus, then i won't ask for a vote. and it looks like there is. thank you, commissioners. thank you. um. department matters item eight directors announcements. yeah. good afternoon. no announcements from me. item nine review of past events at the board of supervisors. there is no report from the board of appeals of interest to the planning commission on the historic preservation commission did meet yesterday. good afternoon, commissioners. aaron starr, manager of legislative affairs. this week the land use committee considered the mayor's ordinance city-wide expansion of allowable commercial restaurant and retail uses both. the

original file and the duplicated file were continued from last week's committee hearing this week. there was no public comment or supervisor discussion. the original file was forwarded with a positive recommendation to the board as a committee report for the duplicated file. director. tang provided a high level overview of the forthcoming amendments to the duplicated file. these include changes to the temporary fee exemption for converting pdr uses to non. pdr uses lcu allowances, use size limitations formula retail restrictions and changes to the polk street. in response to community feedback. the item was then continued to the call of the chair. next, the committee considered the initiation of landmark designation for the this is a tough name gregangelo velocity art and entertainment building located at 225 san leandro way. this resolution was sponsored by supervisor melgar and co-sponsored by supervisor

preston. the proposed landmark designation will still need to go before the hpc for their review and recommendation, but this action starts the process. there were a lot of speakers for this one. all were in support for the designation and most were artists who had found a community at the site. after public comment, the item was forwarded to the full board with a positive recommendation next, the committee considered the resolution urging the city attorney and the mayor to respond to policy and practices review by seeking extensions of deadlines for required actions and certain revisions and corrections. as i mentioned last week, the resolution was amended. mostly, it seems that the amendments were related to the overall tone of the resolution and some other relatively minor modifications. for example, the long title of the resolution went from resolutions directing the city attorney and the city lobbyist on behalf of the city to request first that the state department, state department of housing and community development extend the housing element implementation action plan deadline to a

resolution urging the city attorney and the mayor to request the state department of housing and community development to extend the required actions in hcd's policy and practice review. and that item was forwarded to the full board as a committee report. lastly, the committee considered supervisor madeline's amendments to the constraints reduction ordinance that would remove the queue to exceed certain unit and building size in the central neighborhoods large home and the corona heights large home sued commissioners. you consider these amendments last week and voted to recommend approval with modifications. those modifications included two one change the maximum building size from 3000ft!s to 3500ft!s. sorr, unit size. keep doing that. allowing a 20% increase in both sides. amend planning code section 311 so that the word building permit is replaced with planning entitlement and for purposes of expansion, allow under the 20% increase. at a five year look back on building

permits to avoid serial permitting, the supervisors did not increase the maximum use size or allowable increase from 15 to 20. but he did allow the 15% increase in the corona heights sued. he intends to include the five year look back. however, the amendment was not ready, so the file was duplicated and so that this and other amendments supervisor peskin intends to include could be added later. also the 311 language we anticipate will be added this coming monday. as usual, there were public commenters, some in favor, some against. nothing new that this commission or the board had not heard before or after the item was amended and duplicated, it was sent to the full board without a recommendation. then at the full board this week, the irish cultural center passed its first read at the citywide expansion of allowable commercial restaurant and retail uses passed its first read. the landmark initiation was adopt and the resolution urging the

city attorney and the mayor to respond to hcd was also adopted. and then last but certainly not least, the board took up the mayor's constraints reduction ordinance at the full board. the original file was merged with the duplicated ordinance that included supervisor mandelman amendments. several supervisors spoke out on the item, notably supervisor preston said that he was comfortable voting for the ordinance. now the provisions had allowed that had allowed the demolition of two unoccupied, tied rent controlled units was taken out and that the city could lose affordable housing funding if we did not pass it. supervisor safai noted that while the ordinance was setting the framework for success, the market conditions were still such that we may not see a lot of housing out of this immediately. several supervisors also praised supervisor melgar for her work on this ordinance, something that the planning department staff also is very much appreciative of. in the end, the board passed on first read the constraints reduction ordinance on a 9 to 2 vote with

supervisors chen and peskin voting against it. finally, this week i also took the constraints reduction ordinance to the youth commission. the youth commission is made up of 17 members, one from each supervisorial district and six appointed by the mayor. i gave them the same presentation. i gave you and the land use committee. there were very many thoughtful comments and questions that came from the commissioners and they seemed very appreciative that i came to present many commissioners commented on the need for more housing, especially for their generation. they're concerned about being priced out of the city when they move out of their parents homes. there was a comment about preserving the city as is, and how this ordinance will impact the physical character. but most commissioners spoke in favor of the changes proposed in the ordinance in the end, the commission passed a resolution to support the constraints reduction ordinance on a 16 to 1 vote, and the next day the board voted 9 to 2 to support it as well. was that a coincidence or no? anyway, that's my presentation on. thanks if there are no questions for mr. star,

the historic preservation commission did meet yesterday and well, actually, commissioner. right got covid, so he was not there. otherwise we would have had a full the commission fully seated with seven members. amy campbell joined us a couple of weeks ago and hans baldauf joined us for the first time yesterday. the commission approved, proved or adopted recommendations for approval for several small business legacy registry applicants. orderly, orderly on sacramento city art gallery 2.0 on valencia, lamplighters music theater on bryant street, san francisco. women artists house on irving street. polly an ice cream on noriega street and woody labounty strongly recommended avoiding the avocado flavor firefly restaurant on

24th street. they also adopted a recommendation to you for the installation of business signs, which you will hear today, as well as the enforcement penalty guidelines, which you already acted on. and the state legislation in informational presentation, which you will also hear today. if there are no questions, commissioners, we can move on to general public comment at this time. members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items with respect to agenda items. your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes and when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit. general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. good afternoon, president tanner and commissioners. my name is oscar mazariegos. i am a proud member

of the nor-cal carpenters union for the last 13 years. i'm representing over 37 members over the of the northern part of california. more specifically, a 3000 members here in the city of san francisco. look for 22. i am here to talk about the what being part of the union has done for my life and the life of my family. i am from a hispanic background. my parents came to the united states chasing the american dream. i grew up in poverty with my parents, trying to give me what they could with what they were making. i as i grew up, i became an adult. i went from minimum wage job to minimum wage job, trying to get by, did many warehouse and nonunion jobs. i was lucky enough to have had a friend to nudge me in the right direction and then joined the union as a carpenter. i went through the apprenticeship making more than i was making in a previous jobs. not only that, but i was. i had medical and dental benefits that allowed me to start thinking about what the future building a

family, my youngest son was diagnosed with autism when he was a little bit over one years old. i don't know what i would have done without the benefits the union has provided for my family. i've been able to provide my provide him with the aba therapy, which is applied behavioral analysis therapy and speech therapy that i would not have been able to afford otherwise. it have helped him out tremendously and he is one of the happiest kids now, being three years old, expressing himself and talking so much now, i believe that everyone should be able to benefit from carpenters. aaron carpenter area standard wages to be able to live in the city they work. they should be able to have medical and dental that they i'm sorry, have medical and dental. they need to take care of themselves and their families and no extra cost to them. and they should be able to not stress over their retirement with a pension and annuity. these are all things the carpenter union has provided

for me and wish for everyone to reap those benefits. thank you for your time. three minutes or two. oh good. thank you. good afternoon. george schultz. i got a 311 for a roof deck near me and i was puzzled because i thought the policy. i have the overhead. please there it is there. and i thought the policy was for hatches and this one is not a hatch. it's a stair penthouse. here's another picture of it. and i thought that there was an objective standard from the design guideline as which was if you had a hatch, if you if you didn't have a hatch, if you had a stair penthouse, had to be against the wall and that one doesn't. so i just wondered what the objective stands were. and i

think what's in the design guidelines is objective. the other thing i want to say is i was really upset to see that article about moody's, about the conversion of housing downtown. one of the buildings recognized is where i go to get my hair cut and there's a lot of viable business is in that building. and i'm thinking, well, if that building gets converted to housing, which would probably be high end housing, what happens to those businesses? i mean, i know there's a lot of empty buildings, but that but it's kind of like a an what do you call it where something happens that you don't an unintended consequence of building older buildings. i guess it used to be called b buildings that have viable businesses in them, but are going to suddenly be b, be sort of overwhelmed by this desire to put housing in them. it's a great idea. but if the buildings got viable businesses in it, then does it make sense to lose those viable businesses downtown? and my other thing is,

i don't know if you saw overhead again, if you saw this wall street journal article yesterday in the paper and maybe this is more to come in on the state stuff, but there's that building next to sale force and it's very big building 71 stories, i think . but the thing that caught my attention is this. if the project proceeds as planned, it would open in 2028. bayhill said it would charge top of the market rents of more than $8 a square foot a month. that would come to more than 8000 a month to rent a 1000 square foot apartment. now i know we want things built, but 8000 a month, that's a lot of money for a rental unit. i don't know. i mean, i couldn't even live in that, you know? anyway that's all. thank you. hi my name is

harry thomas. i live at 2970. 21st street. i just wanted to comment on 2515 folsom street, but i got a notice about that being built. i live very close to it and i'm all for that particular project. the housing that there is now, the single family home, it's not very well utilized and i think it may even be abandoned. so i'm looking forward to that construct happening in my neighborhood. thank you. okay. if there are no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. eileen bogan with speak. it speaks volumes that rupert murdoch's publication, the wall street journal, recently ran an article on december 6th on page b1 with the headline san francisco developers pack housing tackle housing woes. the article states and i quote, real

estate developers are launching a series of residential projects in san francisco, responding to new efforts by the state and city to create more housing in one of the country's most expensive places to live. and what would be the city's most ambitious residential development. in several years? local property developer bayhill ventures last month announced plans for a 71 story rental tower in san francisco's ailing financial district, end quote. even though the scale of the project will have environmental impacts, there will be no review . despite the scale of the project, there will be no planning commission review to as approvals will all be ministerial unintended consequences or intended consequence. aces. thank you. bruce. wolf on open meetings

process alone but used as an example the action you just took on a significant item earlier on remote public as presented by the secretary that it also included another factor regarding staff's ability to use or to continue to use remote comment to your public hearings. but instead of taking action on all the conditions as put forth by the mayor, it was by created by you, what is very concerning and this is not alone, is that you had substantive discussion on this second condition. and then the secretary called for consensus, which is an official action, without allowing for public comment, could be of that could be a violation of the brown and sunshine ordinance. i urge you to review this process for taking action at public hearings and meetings to ensure

the public that you remain in compliance with the law. thank you. this is david elliott lewis, coach, chair of tenderloin people's congress. we want to continue to advocate for affordable and deeply affordable housing or consider one of the priority equity geographies in our in the people's plan, especially the plan that race and equity and planning has put forward. i know we our city has done well in building market rate housing, but not in building housing for below market for people in who need prices below what the current rental market is charging and we're being left out and the state is of course threatening to take this over. but we can do a better job of serving our our

in need jeopardized vulnerable communities. and i'd like to see the planning commission step up and serve these vulnerable communities. in terms of the decisions you make, thank you for your time and consideration on. okay. last call for general public comment. good afternoon, commissioners. tom radulovich with livable city. i'm wondering if i could have the overhead. um, i have an illustration. so you probably all seen this meme going. well, let me, let me start by saying i've been thinking a lot about what would make a livable city and also what will save the planet from existential threats like climate change. i presume you all are thinking about the same things as well. so one of the things i've been thinking about is obviously zoning isn't going to save the planet all by itself.

but, you know, i think it can help. i think it can help with some local conditions and some existential threats as well. so you probably all seen this meme going around. it's sort of it's about three dozen people getting coffee and about three dozen people enjoying coffee. right. so you've got a sidewalk cafe on the lower picture on the upper picture, you've got a drive through. so you know, we've had conversations about retail and is there too much retail? is there too little retail? i think it's the answer is it depends the type of retail that we build really affects the livability of communities. it affects their character. it also has really, really different impacts on the transportation system. so, you know, three dozen people sitting alone in their cars is, you know, has a very different transportation impact than a neighborhood serving cafe that you can walk up to. now, one of the things that exists in city government is, you know, we collect impact fees or you all collect impact fees on new developments to pay for transportation impacts. but the curious thing is these two cafes

would even have very, very different impacts on the transportation system. and we have tons of studies to back this up. they would pay the same fee per the city's code because you do not charge any transport an impact fee on a parking spot on square footage of parking on anything related to parking. and so, you know, to make this even more absurd, if you said, oh, let's fill in that parking lot with some neighborhood serving retailer housing, well, that new building would pay a bunch of transportation impact fees because it's considered to have a bigger impact than the parking lot that it replaces. now, a few years ago, you did the transportation sustainability fee. we pointed out, well, this is pretty stupid the way that you're doing it. you're still doing it that way. it's still stupid. it's maybe even stupider than it was then because we have a lot more evidence that the amount of parking in projects does affect people's travel behavior, how much traffic it generates. so maybe in the interest of creating walkable communities and encouraging these lively storefronts on the

ground floor, it's just better to put storefronts in if you see the new buildings going in downtown that don't have storefronts, they're terrible. it's better to put the storefronts in. so what are what incentives do you have? maybe you could lower the fees on neighborhood serving storefront, commercial or eliminate them entirely and instead shift the fee burden to the things that actually create the transportation impact, which is the parking spaces that generate automobile trips. you could also look at for in the downtown you charge you basically require people to use fa to do ground floor retail, except in c3r, you could allow them to do it everywhere without the fa burden. so please have a look at this. thank you. thank you. final last call for general public comment. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no additional requests to speak, general public comment is closed. i'll simply address the comments made by the callers suggesting we acted in appropriately with the remote public comment. i checked in

with the city attorney's office as to how to proceed in for this particular item to consider the mayor's directive. and they essentially the direction we received was to follow the same process that we did to allow for remote public comment and we did not adopt a resolution. we did not hold a specific hearing. it was simply a direction from the commission to me and my staff to continue remote public comment. after all, the covid restrictions were lifted and so forth. i suggested to the chair that we actually take a vote in this particular matter. we actually agendized it and received public comment on it. it was two parts, but they were all called up together under the same item. so i wanted to make that clarification. and just as an alternative, i know other commissions are not even agendizing it. they're simply going to make an announcement to that effect. i would say further , if the commission had wished to make a motion on the second part, i think you were

confirming that we were intentionally not discussing or not intentionally omitting the part around staff. and i think that that was the will of the maker of the motion or motion and the seconder. and then those who voted in favor of the motion. so thank you. very good commissioners, regular calendar item ten, case number 2023 hyphen 006996. pca permits to install business signs to historic buildings or buildings in conservation districts in the c three downtown area. planning code amendment. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. michelle taylor, department staff the ordinance before you would amend the planning code to require compliance with the procedures of planning code article ten for certain work involving a business sign on a designee landmark site or in a designated historic district. and to require a hearing before the historic preservation commission rather than an administrative review. by planning department staff of applications for a permit to

install business signs to a significant or contributory building or a building in a conservation district in the c three downtown area. provided that the permit is for a major, major alteration in before getting into the details of the proposed ordinance, i'm going to take a moment to explain the three different tiers of preservation review for article ten and 11 properties. the strictest level of reviews for major scopes or alterations to an article 10 or 11 property. these scopes of work require a full hearing in front of the hpc or historic preservation commission and a preservation an entitlement through the certificate of appropriateness for article ten and major permit to alter for article 11. the second level of review is for scopes of work. the hpc has determined to be minor alterations ones and are delegated to planning department staff for administrative review. approvals are notice for 20 days, but do not require a

hearing in front of the hpc. the third level of review is those that are considered minor and routine scopes and can be reviewed by preservation staff through a same day. permit also known as over-the-counter review . all tiers of review require review by a qualified preservation planner and must meet all relevant code requirements and preservation guidelines prior to 2018. small scopes such as awnings and signs were reviewed through the administrative certificate of appropriateness or a minor to permit alterations applications under that second tier of delegated staff review. however, in 2018, in an effort to streamline review of these projects, the board of supervisors with full hpc and planning commission support approved an ordinance to review signs article ten and article 11 buildings through the over-the-counter review process. additionally, an article 11 districts improvements related to accessible entries

non-visible rooftop appurtenances and new awnings became eligible for over-the-counter review permits. this means that since 2018, signs and other small projects in article 10 or 11 properties are eligible for same day permits that do not require the additional review times or a hearing in from the historic preservation commission. these streamlining efforts were then later supported by two pro-business legislative changes that came in response to covid 19, the first save our small business initiative, or prop h, was a voter backed ordinance that aimed to reduce processes for most small business. the second was a series of initiatives and improvements commonly referred to as the downtown economic revitalization ordinance. through that, the city agencies mayor and board of supervisors work together to counteract the harmful effects of covid 19 on many sectors of the city, including downtown

commercial businesses. as a result, the ordinance included improvements to support streamline permit review to better support existing businesses and attract new businesses. downtown under the proposed ordinance before you, the following changes would occur all new business signs on article ten buildings would require certificate of appropriateness. application and a hearing before the hpc. all new business signs and article 11 conservation districts. downtown or c-3, would require a major permit to alter application and a hearing before the hpc. an article 11 district improvements related to accessible entries non-visible rooftop appurtenances and new awnings would still be eligible for over-the-counter review. however, preservation staff would also be required to draft findings detailing how the improvements met the preservation guidelines and requirements of planning code

section 11. as proposed, the ordinance would require the following implement efforts for new business signs and article ten and 11 buildings. firstly although the ordinance requires a hearing in front of hpc, the new business signs could be reviewed administratively by staff as delegated by hpc. the cost of an article 10 or 11 sign review by the planning department will increase from a flat fee of $225 to a time and materials charge, with an estimated cost of 400 to $600. and. whereas, today, a sign permit typically undergoes a same day review and approval process as an over the counter permit under the proposed ordinance, it would likely take the department 2 to 3 months of process to review and approve the new sign permit on an article ten and 11 building between 2018 and 2023, when those streamlined ordinance went

into effect, the department has successfully reviewed a approximately 94 article ten permits and 231, article 11 permits over the counter. taking all of this back round process and data under review, the department finds that we support the overall goals of the ordinance because it's consistent with the department's commitment to preservation of city of the city's historic properties. however after careful consideration, the department recommends approve all of the ordinance with modification. as the department proposed recommendations are one an modify. section 111, 11 and 11.6 c to two maintain that all new business sign permits for article 11 properties would remain eligible for over-the-counter permit review and two remove new language under section 11 11.6 c, requiring preservation staff to

prepare written findings affirming that the following scopes of work eligible for over-the-counter review permits and article 11 conservation districts meet the preservation guidelines and requirements of planning code section 11 11.6. the department is proposing these modifications in an effort to maintain the streamline review of article 11. signs which is consistent with both the department's commitment to preservation of the city's historic properties and reduction of review costs and review times for downtown businesses. streamline review of business signs on oracle 11 properties has allowed for a flexibility while ensuring that all proposed work meet the preservation guidelines. the department has not proposed modification to the ordinance as it relates to additional oversight of article ten properties. article ten landmark buildings represent the finest example of the city's historical architectural and cultural past

and the proposed ordinance will ensure that new business sign permits, review and administratively are held to a high standard of review and the distinctive qualities of historic property will be preserved. the department has received one letter from the union square alliance, which supports the ordinance with planning department amendments. the letter notes a desire to maintain a balance between streamlining permit requirements for businesses in article 11. properties and respecting the unique nature of article ten properties each. hpc reviewed this this item at yesterday's hearing and unanimously support the proposed ordinance with all staff recommendations. this concludes my presentation. i'm available to answer questions. thank you. with that, commissioners, we should open up public comment. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no members of the public

in the chambers coming forward. let's go to our remote callers. eileen bogan with speak repeating comments from yesterday's hpc hearing in strong support of this proposed legislation by board president peskin and opposing amendments proposed by the planning department at a board of appeals hearing regarding new rink and annex signage, president peskin attended this meeting in person. the legislation used by planning to ministerial approve new signs on historic buildings was his legislation for streamlining housing production. the board president stated very clearly that his intention in this original legislation was not to have planning department ministerially approve new signage on historic buildings. the board president went on to state that the planning department was misapplying his original legislation and that he would be introducing new

legislation to address this issue before today's meeting, the board's president has introduced new legislation. the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods, of which speak is a charter member, is also strongly supporting the board president's newly introduced legislation. the ordinance simply required a review by hpc of new signage at historic buildings, which is something that people think is already required. the planning department's recommended amendments would weaken the newly introduced ordinance, and these amendments are strongly opposed. both by speak and the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods. the planning department alleges that this ordinance would and is unnecessary because there are few appeals. that doesn't negate its importance. there are also few appeals due to a lack of neighborhood noticing by the

planning department or the understand, adding that an appeal to hpc is an option. also, property owners don't appeal as ministerial review is basically a rubber stamp and finally, the department has apparently been using an incorrect a secretary of interior standards for new signs on historic buildings and we're not producing written findings to support their decisions. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. this is ken rich representing the union square alliance. we are the organization that represents the interests of the 27 block area around union square. and we are in support of this legislation with the department's suggested modification options. as your staff mentioned, you have a letter from us in front of you, so i'll be brief. um the union

square district includes a large article 11 conservation district as well as several individual article ten landmarks as stewards for this district. we understand the importance of maintaining and celebrating the historic fabric we've inherited. but we also recognize the importance of streamlining the process for new businesses to open. this is particularly important, as i know you're aware at this point in time when we are dealing with a very unusually high vacancy rate amongst our ground floor retail spaces and the need to really make sure that downtown comes back stronger than ever. so we believe that the proposed legislation with the amendments proposed by planning staff strikes the right balance between these two important priorities. and we urge the commission to recommend approval to the board of supervisors. thank you very much. okay. last call for public comment. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no additional requests to speak, commissioners public comment is closed and

this matter is now before you. thank you. want to thank staff for a great presentation of the legislation and a well written report as well to explain both the proposed legislation and our amendments. i want to thank union square alliance for calling in and giving us insight into how they're thinking about and feeling about the proposal. and i would say it struck me at first as a little bit of a step backwards in terms of trying to encourage more businesses to open. and i think trying to strike the balance between having preservation for historic buildings and having them have a life that's current today so that they can be preserved, that they're used, they're inhabited by businesses and they contribute to the fabric of the city. i think what the staff recommendations, we've struck a balance between the goals of preservation in certainly giving hpc some capacity and they can delegate to staff if they do so wish. that is their purview to really try to make sure we are getting back to folks of not encouraged to hear it could take

3 to 4 months when folks have to take this in versus being able to come in and get something heard over the counter and getting a response right on the spot. so i would be interested to hear what my fellow commissioners think, but certainly would want to forward this to the board with the staff recommendations on my part. commissioner moore i noticed a great deal of confusion in yesterday's meeting and perhaps miss taylor could speak to that. i do not think that preservation could easily understand what was in front of them, and i kind of echo that same feeling. i do believe that there is historic preservation and historic preservation commission adds an extra level of expertise that comes with practicing practice. owners and experts really helping and supporting the planning department. don't miss taylor, if you wouldn't mind explaining a little bit what happened yesterday. perhaps that would enlighten the rest of our commissioners who may not have listened to that presentation.

should i be happy to? michelle taylor, department staff there was some confusion yesterday, and i have to say a great deal of the confusion was about the three different tiers of review. there's certain levels of nuance that happens because there's three separate processes that article ten and 11 building projects must go through. it can be a little bit confusing. there was also some discussion about what would be the staff time for if we were to accept this as a the ordinance as proposed versus with our amendments. so there was some discussion and i think i would defer to the management to answer any questions about staff time. but i do believe a great deal of the confusion did come around, came about because of those three levels of review and how exactly this ordinance

fits into that. so thank you for explaining that. i think one would have to listen into it to get the nuances here. were practitioners having similar stuff in front of them as we have today, not quite being able to grasp. and i think there are two competing interests here. we all believe that streamlining in today's planning world is the way to go. and while there is a certain amount of truth to that, there is another area, i think, where we need to apply increased vigilance and additional care and just for my own point of my own perspective, i do think that there are noticeable examples in san francisco regarding historic buildings were in the last few years signage has occurred that i find more than questionable not to talk about the debacle with lincoln tower, which i assume most people are aware of, and it may be that perhaps used

the helping hand of the historic preservation commission. indeed adds stability and further scrutiny to what we do. we have a lot to lose. we have more to lose than just leaving it where it is. but we have to gain it by spending an extra couple of hours in examining what it really is. we're preserving in san francisco. i'm not seeing anything new here. it strength comes from the careful. kind of guarded interplay between historic and exceptional modern architecture. that is where the strength of the city lies. it is not just because there are a couple of older buildings standing around, but because of the way they have been curated. the way they have been interspersed with carefully selected modern buildings. that is unique to san francisco and very few cities across the united states can show that strength. everything else which comes with it is in the

guidelines for which we preserve the environment of the inner city. to highlight how we perceive historic buildings. but that said, i myself over the years remember calling former zoning administrator sanders and saying, what happened to this historic building? an incredibly awful sign went up on it. not only is it a sign going up, but it's ultimately the interference with the way that sign is attached to buildings where the problems occur. people with signs come and go in. san francisco knows that very well. people make a big deal moving in and then when everything is over, they leave shambles behind . and it's when it comes to taking older, older signs down that is where the damage to our building occurs and not the immediate detachment of having a new sign up there. and i believe that we can do better. and i do believe that in this particular case, we should embrace the ability to have support to look at this with more careful eyes

and indeed apply the helping hand of the historic preservation commission to take one extra look and guide us in the right direction. i am in support of the legislation as it is and strongly ask that the department itself give itself a little bit more room and a little bit more time to tend to this in a manner that strengthens of what we do with historic with historic preservation buildings. thank you, commissioner. imperial i have a question on the planning recommends nation because as i read this, the planning recommendation in and also the suggestion to approve it, modify locations. the modification seems to be like in opposite of what the legislation is trying to do. am i misinterpreting it in that way? i'm trying to understand the balance as what we are, as what the planning department is, is mentioning. sure. essentially the proposed

ordinance without modifications would require that article 11 building signs and article ten building signs require a that second tier of preservation review by review, by preservation staff through an intake process. yes. and it could cost a 2 to 3 months of review. we are suggesting that we are recommending that we not change anything about how we review article 11 signs, which are primarily located in the downtown district. however, we would do that extra level of review for article ten buildings, which tend to be individual landmark buildings. i see. okay. thank you. and also, have you had a conversation with the supervisor's office in terms of the article 11, your the modification and what have they

been the response? yes, we have reviewed our modify relations with them and they're not opposed to them. they're not opposed. they're not opposed. okay thank you so thank you very much so maybe you can clarify that. can you clarify that in terms of the. sure, i'd be happy to. first off, i want to clarify

that all signs are reviewed by preservation staff for article ten and 11 buildings there. they must be qualified preservationists. we also have strict guidelines that we must follow for each sign. those are both in article six, which is our sign guidelines and article ten and article 11. these mean that we look at attachment type, set size methods of attaching point illumination metal materials. all of that is clearly laid out and we have clear guidance on it. and so we are very comfortable with with our ability to review signs over the counter. since 2018, we have not had an appeal of any article 11 signs. there have been no complaints about our article 11 signs. we have had one appeal for an article ten building that occurred earlier this year.

however however, that appeal was withdrawn. so in the five years since it's become over the counter, we have not seen any major issues with signs. okay thank you. you're welcome. thank you. i do want to see miss ward. did you have something to add to the conversation? yeah, i was just going to add a little additional color, and i think michelle touched on it a little bit to really clarify that there's not additional substantive review between an over-the-counter review of a sign permit and the delegated scope of that second tier that michelle was referring to. really, the difference is akin to what you guys experience of like a 311 notice goes out and the public can see it, which takes it to a hearing. that notice is an opportunity for somebody to request that it's heard by the hpc. but as michelle said, we've had when that was sort of that practice was in in tow prior to 2018, we didn't really get any of them being requested. so i think really what that showed us was that our judgment was right. no one was a no one's been

appealing them while over the counter. but even prior to 2018, when we did send out these notices, they were not getting appealed up to the hpc and overturned. and so again, the level of technical oversight is exactly the same. it's just the question of whether we have to introduce a clerical intake process, whether it goes in our sort of intake queue of review is whether staff have to prepare a notice, whether we do the mailing, whether we have to sit on them. and that's basically the delta between the two processes. and so that's why we're really trying to say that, you know, we don't have to guess what the difference in process is. we've been there before. we've lived in it changed environment. and so we're trying to really analyze those two outcomes. and given there was a very contentious project this year, we know that was a bit of an impetus for this legislation. but that is also one case of over 300 permits that we've had in the last five years. and we want to make sure that that is sort of factored into this discussion. okay. that's great. i'm going to go to commissioner braun. yes i think that the i

understand the need to strike the balance between historic preservation and ensuring that we are doing a good job of reviewing these signed permits and other permits while also not creating an overly burdensome process in instances where there doesn't seem to be an issue. and i've been listening carefully to all the conversation and staff input and it does you know, i, i think i can support this with these staff's recommendations because i do think it strikes a good balance between the over-the-counter review for the article 11 buildings, while also applying a higher standard of review for the article ten buildings. you know, i'm just looking at the 231 permits that were issued over the counter for the article 11 buildings in the last five years thinking about adding two months of delay to each of those and thinking about the 38 years of time that collectively would be added on to those approvals processes and it's just yeah, i struggle with that. so i actually would make a

motion to approve with staff recommendation. second thank you. commissioner braun. thank you for that math that you did as well. commissioner moore, i have a question for ms. swati. over the years, historic preservation as a center of excellence was basically restructured to have historic preservation planners move into individual quadrant and now district teams that by which the discussion and internal expert discussion of preservation planners among each other is somewhat diluted. how are you dealing with signage applications? are they basically assigned by districts in which you occur, or are they still going to a dedicated group of preservation planners who among themselves form a cohesive pod of experts sitting in one room and talking with each other? so i would i would disagree a little bit with the idea that by having preservation planners on

each district team that we've diluted any kind of expertise. we have a weekly all preservation meeting that's led by rich zucker, who's our deputy director, but also a preservation planner. so every week there's roundtable about projects that are a little unusual or projects that preservation planners have. any issues on. and there is roundtable discussion and collaborate on those. we also have of four, i believe, of i'm counting right now preservation managers that have oversight over those collective preservation staff. rich zucker manages our public information counter where all of our preservation planners have a shift. so the level of oversight i really don't feel is diluted. there's a lot of collaboration. i think actually technology during covid has even enhanced that collaboration. there are i get copied on all of the team's chats when people have questions and at the pick where there's an application in front of them and there is that sort of collaborative, ongoing conversation. so i really don't think there's any dilution. if anything, i think it's grown an expertise. mr. wimmer, who is

online for this item, who is our acting manager right now for our article 11 districts, for our sort of district three and district six team. he was originally hired in as one of our sort of specialists working on almost exclusively signs pre 2018. so i think has a really unique familiarity and has been leading, you know, ongoing trainings and is seen as sort of our manager and go to when people have questions on signs. so there's a lot of different ways we tackle making sure that we've got the expertise that we're being consistent and that we have a wealth of knowledge on this matter. thank you for that, for that comment. i don't have any further questions. thank you . thank you, commissioners, for a good discussion. we have a motion that's on the table. i think we'll take up very good commissioners. if i heard correctly, there's a motion that has been seconded to approve the proposed amendment with staff modifications on that motion. commissioner braun, high commissioner ruiz, commissioner diamond high commissioner, imperial no. commissioner

coppell high. commissioner moore no. and commissioner. president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes 5 to 2 with commissioners imperial and moore voting against commissioners. item 11 was continued to february 29th, placing us on item 12. excuse me, could you repeat the date on that february 29th? okay. thank you very much. item 12 state housing laws and hcd's policy and practice review information. final presentation. commissioners. good afternoon. dan snyder with planning department staff this next item commissioners is the substantial . i'm going to spend a few minutes talking to you about hcd's policy and practice review. this was released just in late october. and then kate connor will speak to you about the sort of recent round of state legislation, what we're doing with it, what it means for

our office and for you commissioners. i do not want to waste your time. we've got a lot to get through, so let's jump right into the policy and practice review. whoops there we go. starting with the obvious commissioners we take to long to approve housing. we recognize that we've made real strides over the last couple of years. most recently, as aaron starr mentioned earlier, with the constraints reduction ordinance just on tuesday, we've made real strides to shorten that length of review to. it's also important to track what's happening on the ground and on the sort of production side of the house where we really are punching above our weight, where the smallest county in the bay area, we have just about 11% of the bay's population. but in recent years we've produced

nearly a quarter of the region's total housing. we've also produced about a third of the bay's new lower income homes. so those are those are real numbers , we think. but with this in mind, we must do more. we know this and apparently hcd agrees. so to that end, they've issued their policy and practice review. this is hcd's first ever daca moment like this. it does look like there will be more to come in the future for other cities, it's a lot of research done partly by academics and really the thrust of this document is that it's trying to identify and remove barriers to new housing. one of the questions is why us? why did hcd target us and not one of the thousands of bay area or california cities or suburbs whose housing production really is anemic and for starters, we do take the longest of any

jurisdiction in california to approve housing also. and this is in no small part due to the state of the market and we're on track to fall far short of our rina goals for this reporting period. and lastly, we complaints. it turns out that people like to complain about san francisco's permitting process. who knew in this case, some of those complaints really do have some merit. the review is a 44 page long document. it ultimately provides 28 total actions, 18 of which are required. very importantly, it also provides timeline to act on those items, timelines range from 30 days on up to about four years of importance here is that almost everything in the ppr is taken directly from either the mayor's executive directive on housing for all or from the housing element itself. so there's not a ton here that's

genuinely new to just to give you a sample of some of the things that are in the report on your screen, you can see actions with a 30 day clock. all of these, i'd add, we believe that we have now met. we've started the conversation about codified public benefits in priority equity geographies. we've gotten rid of the pre application requirements for sb 330 applications and we've generally gotten rid of commission hearings for code compliant projects outside of priority equity geographies, along with projects that involve state density bonus applications as looking a little further down the road to our 60 plus day clock, here's a smattering of items here within a year, we are on track to remove public art requirements for affordable housing. also within a year we will be required to make all of our subjective criteria for large project authorizations. ob

objective in three years. we need to stop performing studies as part of sequa that aren't required by the state law and lastly, we need to create a local minister surreal approval process for housing. we've got three years for that one and we may need it. the mechanics here are important. how does this all work? hcd has been very forthright with us. we appreciate that they've told us how they plan on enforcing the document tonight if we miss a deadline in the ppr, they send us a letter. if we don't fix whatever's identified in the letter in 30 days, they have told us that they will decertify the housing element. on the flip side, they've promised to recertify by just as soon as we make the necessary fixes. and this cycle can sort of repeat itself as we move forward through the various timelines in the in the report. it in light

of this and, you know, not surprisingly, we have had some questions about our relationship with hcd. so i want to speak very briefly about this. we do have a good working relationship with our colleagues at hcd. it is respectful, it is professional. we are in frequent conversation with them. we have a standing weekly meeting and there's a good kind of healthy give and take process. we do not agree on everything ing, but that being said, our fundamental goals are in alignment. both of us believe that we do need to approve more housing faster. last slide here, commissioners, just to bring you up to speed with the very latest. we did receive a corrective action letter from hcd last week. the main focus of that letter, perhaps not surprisingly, was the constrain saints reduction ordinance. and as mr. starr mentioned earlier, the board

passed that on first read just on tuesday. at that same meeting on tuesday. also, as aaron said, the board passed an urging resolution that would have the mayor and the city attorney ask hcd for more time to comply with the with the report. and later this month we will be writing hcd to update them on our progress. and we are very optimistic commissioners that hcd will find us to be back on track. so that's where we are. that's what i have for you. i appreciate your time. i'll stick around until the end of kate's presentation and i'm happy to respond to your questions, but i'd like to turn it over to her now to run us through state legislation. thank you. good afternoon. president tanner and members of the commission, kate connor, planning department staff. today i'm going to

provide an overview of five pieces of state housing legislation that may affect planning department or planning commission, review of housing development, project in 2024. i'm going to touch upon the following pieces of housing legislation. ab 2011, which actually became effective july of this year, sb 423, which extends sb 35, but will have a more expansive impact on san francisco. sb four, which allows for 100% affordable housing developed by nonprofit religious and higher education institution as ab 1287, which modifies state density, bonus law and finally ab 1114, which governs and defines post entitlement phase permits. so what are some of the trends that we are seeing this year? there were over 60 housing bills that were signed by governor newsom during this session. topics included

ministerial housing programs, expanding state density, bonus law, tenant protection bills, homeless housing, sequa and accessory dwelling units. so my focus today is going to include the five bills that i mentioned and those touch upon housing production program does state density bonus and building permit appeals. so reoccurring reference throughout this presentation will be compliance with objective standards as as a reminder, objective standards are those that involve a no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and being uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and knowable by both the development applicant or proponent as well as the public official for all housing production bills that i'm going to speak about today. projects must be considered code complying with the understanding that state density bonus projects are also considered code complying, including any

waivers, incentives or concessions as so the first bill is ab 2011. it was actually part of last year's legislative session, but it became effective july of this year as a ministerial program. ab 2011. projects do not require review under sequa, nor do they require any discretionary applications like a conditional use. they must be located on a site where office retail or parking are principally permitted and there are on site affordability requirements and projects must contain five units and be considered code compliant. ab 2011 actually provides two different ministerial programs. one is for 100% affordable housing projects, which has broader application, and the other is for mixed income housing projects and includes stricter eligibility requirements. ab 2011 uses the term mixed income, which really

means market rate projects with between 10 to 20% of the units as affordable. you'll notice location must be made to the california native american tribes for vacant sites. this is a familiar process that we're used to because it is required for sb 35 projects. however, sb 35 requires this notification on all sites, whether it's vacant or not. projects must meet minimum construction, labor standards, including pain, prevailing wage and for projects of 50 units or more, providing health care coverage and apprenticeship programs. there are timelines for review, which are the same as sb 35. we're looking at 90 days from submittal of an application for projects of 150 units or fewer and 180 days for projects that are larger. o an eligibility criteria include most of the locational criteria that are currently in sb 35. there are also some additional criteria

restricting the use of the program if it is located within 500ft of a freeway or on a site or adjacent to a site that was used as an industrial use. so listed here are all the sb 35 location requirements. that's they're going to pop up in some of the other housing production bills as well, with the exception of hazardous waste sites and maybe a handful of protected habitat areas. most of these do not apply in san francisco. so i'll start by providing some details on the mixed income program, since it is more restrictive than the 100% affordable program, mixed income projects must be located on commercial corridors between 70 and 150ft wide. this typically means property line to property line and does include the sidewalk. there are on site affordability requirements that must be met. as you're all aware, our local include

requirements were just recently reduced and we have to merge both the state and the local programs and it results in on site affordability requirements that are shown on this slide. generally speaking, the affordability requirements are around 15% on site and for sponsors that are choosing to construct ownership projects, there is an option for moderate income. in addition, there's also commercial tenant relocation requirement. it's for mixed income projects. and then finally, there's also the prohibition of demolition of housing that's been either occupied by tenants in the last ten years or subject to price controls. and then finally, there's also a prohibition on demolishing a local state or national historic resource as part of the development project. this is also another requirement that you're going to see in many of the following state programs. it is a bit more protective of historic resources than just density bonus itself, which does not protect locally listed

resources, only state resources. so under ab 2011, the 100% affordable program is more flexible than the mixed income program and more sites are eligible. there is no commercial corridor requirement. it just does not apply for the 100% affordable projects. there's also no restriction on the demolition of units or historic resources. this is in contrast to both sb 35 and the mixed income program. therefore, our affordable housing partners are really going to have to decide which program works the best for them. if there is a need to demolish a residential unit, then an ab 20 11th may work better. but if the sites say 500ft from a freeway, then maybe sb 35 is a better choice. so currently we have three projects that have filed for ab 2011. two of them are mixed income and one is 100% affordable. so moving on

to sb 423, which is an extension of sb 35, sb 35 also kind of included two programs that involve the construction of at least two units for jurisdictions that were not meeting their rena goals for low income projects would receive ministerial review when providing at least 50% of the units as affordable for jurisdictions not meeting rena goals for above moderate income projects receive ministerial review when providing 10% of the units as affordable. and this only applies to projects where there's at least ten units. we generally kind of discuss it as the 10% requirement. aren't this 10% program also allows for ministerial review without any affordability requirements for projects of 2 to 9 units. so currently in san francisco we are subject to the 50% program since we were meeting our rena targets for above moderate income housing. but with the revised targets we will be subject to the 10% requirement next year. and i think one

effect in this change in program applicability is that any housing development project that's providing on site inclusion airy housing could qualify for ministerial permitting provides that all the eligibility criteria are met. so sb 35 has been in effect since january 2018. it has resulted in the approval of over 3000 dwelling units. the vast majority of which are 100% affordable. it does create a ministerial approval process for multifamily housing developments of two units or more. they must also be two thirds residential. there is no sequa or discretionary approvals and the projects must be co complying. and there are the on site affordability requirements in addition, in a provision that's unique to san francisco, the 10% requirement will be effective next year in early 2024, while other jurisdictions in the bay area that are switching from the

50% requirement to the 10% requirement because of the new rena targets will have until 2027 to comply. so the eligibility criteria are almost exactly the same as sb 35. there's the same prohibition on demolition of housing, both rent controlled and units that are occupied by tenants. in the last ten years, the notification to the california native american tribes remains unchanged and is required for all properties, whether vacant or not. the labor requirements are similar to ab 2011, but the prevailing wage kicks in at 11 units. and there's also the addition of a skilled and trained workforce dependent upon the height of the project. so the timeline for review also remains unchanged and are the same as the same for all the other programs. so because we're going to soon be subject to the 10% requirement, we anticipate that this program is going to be more widely used

than sb 35 was in the past. our local inclusionary program applies and it is considered to be an objective standard that must be met for a project to be considered code complying. san francisco's inclusionary applies to projects with ten units or more and for sb 423 for projects with more than ten units, it requires 10% to be affordable. so again, we have to merge both the state program and the local program to determine the required affordability. please also keep in mind that, as you know, our inclusionary rate changes from property to property depending upon the zoning. so these are all kind of based on the citywide rate for projects that have ten units. exactly only our local inclusionary requirements would apply. and this is due to the fact that the affordability requirement sets and sb4 23 only kick in over ten units and then finally, there is no affordability. any state or local requirements for projects

between 2 and 9 units. this would mean that there's no neighborhood notification or discretionary review, provided these projects are considered to be code compliant and meet all the eligibility eligibility criteria. so another noticeable change, a notable change that sb 423 made to sb 35 is to require a pre-application public hearing , but only in certain geographic areas. so if a property is located on the california tcac hcd opportunity map and is designated as a moderate resource area, a low resource area or an area of high segregation and poverty, a public hearing at the planning commission is required. this hearing must be held within 45 days from the notice of intent to file an sb 423. oh yeah. so two months out, so would you mind spelling out certain one of them ca c is an unfamiliar term

to me. oh gosh, there's a challenge. hold on. let me see here. thank you. i appreciate that. let me let me actually look up for tiktok. it's the california tax credit allocation committee. like i always get the a and the c, kind of confused california tax credit allocation committee. that is not a term we use very frequently. so thank you so much. generally speaking, it's kind of our priority equity geographies plus a little bit more. okay and this is a map that's updated annually while we have this pause, i want to know, i think we're on two out of the five pieces of legislation. we're nearing the end of 20 minutes. how much time would you need to continue the remainder of your presentation? five, seven minutes. what are you thinking? i think i'm definitely at least half way through. okay. well let me do another five minutes and see where we get. thanks. please continue. so this public hearing must be held within 45 days of the notice of intent to file an sb 423 application. this notice of intent is not a development

application, but it will contain basic plans as well as a project description. and so this hearing must be held at the planning commission would be considered as an informational item. it's really intended to allow the opportunity for the public to make comments on the project site. however, there is no requirement for the sponsor to make any sort of changes dependent upon either the commission or the public's comments. so the last housing production bill for today is sb four. it becomes effective january 1st and creates a ministerial approval process for multifamily housing developments of two units or more. for these projects must be developed by nonprofit religious institutions. local public entities, independent institutions of higher education on land that's owned by these entities. and this program is reserved for 100% affordable housing projects that are co complying. the eligibility criteria is similar to the other programs with like minor deviations. it includes the same

sb 35 location criteria, but also contains restrictions for proximity of to freeways as well as industrial uses. it's similar to ab 2011, but of course it's not exactly the same. projects can be located within 500ft of a freeway, provided there's merv 13 air filtration. there's also some additional industrial use requirements. the restriction on the demolition of housing and historic resources do kick in with this bill and remain the same as ab 2011. as for the mixed income as well as sb 35. and then like ab 2011, tribal notification is only required for vacant sites. all projects must meet similar construction labor standards and then there are the same timelines for review as the previous programs. and so we anticipate that sb four will have some utility in san francisco. but given all of our local programs for affordable housing and the existing state programs, it may be limited and so what would be

a state legislative session without an amendment to state density bonus law? so enter ab 1287. what we are calling the double double ab 1287 allows for an additional density bonus and one incentive if the project maxes out on the underlying density bonus, which is typically 50% for a rental project or 24% for an ownership project, the extra bonus may be achieved by providing additional very low or moderate income units. and so here is a sample project. if you have 100 units in the base, you can provide 15% of very low income to be able to get that 50% bonus, which would be 50 units. now you can provide an additional 10% at very low income and get an additional 38.75% bonus or 39 units. so the resulting project would be 189 units or 100 in the base, 50 in the first bonus and 39in the

second for a total of 189 units with 25% of the base being affordable and 164 market rate units and 25 affordable. the effective rate when you look at it is approximate 13% switching gears a bit to permit processing and the last state law for today, ab 1114 will affect all permitting agencies in the city by providing streamlined timelines for review. the bill defines a post entitlement phase permit. it also imposes a requirement to provide sample plans and exhaustive list of requirements for these permits. in addition, the bill sets timelines for review. this is for all city agencies collectively. and finally, it prohibits any appeal from the public on these permits. the only appeal that would be permitted is from the project sponsor. the definition of a post entitlement phase permit is shown on this slide. it's fairly

broad. it applies to housing development projects with at least one unit that are two thirds residential. it includes all non-discretionary permits that are required after an entitlement process, but it also includes all building permits and that could be construction, demolition, alteration of buildings provided it's a housing development project. so for san francisco, that would include any building permit for a housing development project. so that could be a site permit that follows a conditional use authorization or that could be a building permit for one unit or more. so there's two timelines that are stipulated in the bill. one is for completeness, the other is for approval. all all permitting agencies have 15 business days to determine completeness and provide written notice to the applicant. 15 business days is approximately three weeks permitting agencies have to be really transparent about what is required to have a complete permit and if incomplete, the agency must

provide the applicant a list of all of the different items and those items must be on the published list that the agencies have. the applicant may submit missing materials, however, an agency may not require anything additional that was not on the published list or the first letter and then the city will have 15 days to review when any revisions come in. and if the timelines are not met, the permit will be considered complete. so the timelines for review are dependent upon the size of the project. the city has 30 business days, about six weeks after a complete determination for projects of 25 units or fewer. then we have 60 business days for larger projects. that's again, the city's got to spell out the noncompliance to the applicant and once revisions are submitted , we would have 30 days to respond. so as i'm sure you can imagine, implementation of this bill requires an immense amount of coordination between all the different permitting agencies. the department's been working on

implementation efforts for a couple of months now, although our strategy is not completely fleshed out at this time, i'm happy to provide a separate informational just on this item alone. there is an interagency working group that's been meeting that's really been headed by our permit center and they're trying to figure out how we can clearly define and flag permits that are subject to this . and then we also really need to ensure that review may be completed. similar taneously by all agencies since it applies to city review and not individual departments. we will keep you posted. as for we will keep you posted as to our progress, but it does end up being effective on january first of this coming year. and so the implementation of the various ministerial programs will also be challenging in their own way. we have drafted bulletins to detail the implementation of sb 423 and sb four. we anticipate those will be up and ready to go on our website by the end of the week. we already have an ab 2011 application and a bulletin that

was published in june of this year, and then we're going to be revising our bulletin on state density bonus as well as the application to reflect the additional bonus and the incentive that's afforded through state law. and then janice also passed out a matrix of all the ministerial multifamily housing programs. it doesn't include sb nine or ministerial adus it also includes ab 2162, which is for 100% affordable supportive housing that went into effect back in 2018. in that legislative session. but as a tool, this is helpful for our affordable housing partners. so then the impacts to the role of the planning commission, there's going to be these informational hearings for some of the projects that are subject to sb 423. in many cases code compliant projects with on site inclusionary would be considered to be ministerial. they'll probably be a reduction in the amount of state density bonus projects that you will see since they're considered to be code compliant. also, the mayor's

housing production ordinance will potentially further reduce the number of hearings and then finally, code compliant projects under ten units that meet sb 423 eligibility criteria could also receive ministerial review. so this could result in a reduction in the number of doctors as well as conditional use authorizations. the one thing is just to keep in mind that a project isn't eligible if it requires the demolition of units that have been occupied by a tenant in the last ten years or subject to price controls. so all of those is a really big change. there are significant protections for demolition. so please understand too, that this is our initial analysis of how these bills are really going to be implemented in the city. at this point, the state hasn't published any official guidance on these new bills, and so we may need to adapt our implementation action if we receive direction from the state to do so. i'm definitely available to provide additional

information, information on ab 2011, in the new year, but this concludes my presentation and thank you for bearing with me and i'm available for questions. okay we should open up public comment. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. five minutes. this is our last chance to talk forever. no chance. no chance. through the chair, each member of the public will receive two minutes. two minutes. okay. real quick. no doctors, no cars, no board of appeals. it's a whole brand new world. and here's some examples. i'm thinking about. suppose somebody. maybe it's good, maybe it's not. i don't think so. major excavate station next door to somebody. they're taking a huge amount of soil away. cubic yardage. there's no sequel, so there's no, no, no. a

geotech study. so there's no need to do underpinning. so the neighbor doesn't know that is what it sounds like to me. that's just a question. i don't know. i don't know the answer to that. that's why i'm asking. there's no plan for shoring what about somebody adding a deck? what if there's there straddling the property line? where does the neighbor go if it can't go to the board of appeals? these seem these are these are sort of petty, minor things, but they're important. i think, to people in san francisco. and i just don't think they deal with that. i looked at this map. i read the thing last night at three in the morning. thank you, miss conner, for your very. involved thing. but i looked at this map that's in there and i guess my question is, does that make these these maps for the legislation just passed by the board moot? does it matter what the board did? i don't know that it does. it can.

very confusing. i think that it undermines this stuff from sacramento. regards of gorbachev and reagan up there undermines under mines what the board has done, what the commission's done for years and what the staff has done for years. i'll give everybody credit and just remember, in my 19 seconds, left this article from the wall street journal that miss boken also referred to $8,000 a month for a 1000 square foot unit. that's what's coming down the pike. is that what's coming down the pike? i don't know. thank you. i feel sorry for mr. swig. he's going to have nobody visiting him at the board of appeals. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. jake price with the housing action coalition. and i wanted to call out one specific part of the ppr

that was not mentioned, which was recommended action 6.6, which is regarding the state density bonus program, which says it is recommended that any local programs are an opt in rather than being required. and i think that that is important for us to consider as we proceed with our rezoning efforts, because i think at this point we are a little bit over optimistic about the pipeline and we've made a lot of efforts to get the pipeline moving. but we are currently on track to fall well short of our rina goals. the article in the chronicle earlier today about radioactive objects being found at the shipyard, i think underscore laws that we are overly reliant on projects such as that, which have some doubt. i hope they move forward, but we're not going to meet our arena goals if we are expecting every single one of those projects to be built within the next eight years and being

hostile to the state density bonus does not help. it will leave with that other than i support this commission's general being anti acronyms, i think we have far too many acronyms and i think catherine more for her comments. thank you . good afternoon, commissioners. tom radulovich with liverpool city this is great. i think it it's a great presentation. thank you. very informative. i think it underlines the importance for me of thinking about standards quality on a form based code as we are talking about streamlining, i'm all for streamlining. about four years ago we worked with a local aia. we identified about two dozen recommendations as to in increase the number and increase the ease of creating small infill projects around the city.

multi unit without demolishing existing sound housing. i think with the passage of the ordinance, this week, most of those two dozen things have been implemented. so i'm all for streamlining. i'm also all for design quality. i'm all for livability, i'm all for beauty. i think we're really beginning to understand that, as you know, especially when you pack people denser and denser and denser, the quality of our public spaces , the quality of buildings is really, really important to our health, to our happiness, to our economy. et cetera. there are very few fields of human endeavor where by lowering your standards, you get consistently better results. it's we, as you know, have mostly euclidean code defines a box and how big it is. and then you can mr. potato head style, put whatever you want on it. then we do define all these these aspects of building form how the building meets the street, greening all of those things through guidelines and those need to be merged. we need a proper form based code and i understand steps are being taken. saw the presentation last

week about the beginnings of a form based code. thing that worries me is the stakeholders are being treated. it's just, well, we're just talking to architects and we're just talking to developers. there's going to be no public conversation about things like beauty and character and form. what makes a good building, what makes a good street? public benefits from development. you need to open that conversation up. we are all stakeholders. we all live here and we all have a stake in creating a beautiful, livable environment. thank you. um good. good afternoon, commissioners. david elliott lewis, co-chair, tenderloin people's congress. one of our models is development without about displacement. i want to repeat that development without displacement. i live in the tenderloin. i have since the early 2000s. we're in a neighborhood that's in danger of gentrification and displacement.

we've protected it in some ways with the hotel conversion ordinance of the 1980s by designating many sros as landmarks. but we're still in danger and having every last piece of space infilled with development doesn't necessarily serve us. we are a neighborhood with the least amount of park space, square, foot of park space per resident of any neighborhood in the city. both park spending and park space. we don't need to have every last space built up. we need open space too, and we don't need to have our people's voice taken away by streamlining. you want to reduce impact fees. you want to streamline and reduce sequa and other abilities of create other abilities for residents to challenge projects, eliminate them entirely through streamline owning this. this is not helping. you know, our neighborhood as both part of district five now and previously part of district six, we bore

the brunt of a lot of the development of the city d five and d six, i think accounted for the majority of new housing in the city. you know why not spread out some of that housing to other parts of the city, stop burdening and risking our very vulnerable residents of the tenderloin through this streamlining legislation, taking away the people's voice. lastly i strongly ask you to look at race and equity in planning, wrap coalitions, people's plan. i think they have a lot of good ideas. as for our priority equity, geographies, peoples, david elliott lewis, tenderloin, people's congress, thank you for your time. okay. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers. eileen birkin will speak the preamble to the city charter begins with the words and i quote in order to obtain the full benefit of

home rule granted by the constitution of the state of california, end quote, per american legal, the state constitution, article 11, section five a is the home rule doctrine for charter cities is found and is specific only authorizes them to govern themselves free from state intrusion as to matters deemed municipal affairs. on december 5th, the board of supervisors passed board. file 231175. a partial summary for this resolution is as follows and i quote resolution urging the city attorney and the mayor to request that the state department of housing and community development hcd extend the deadlines and correct hcd's policy and practice review to be consistent with san francisco's status as a charter city imbued with the power of local action over municipal affairs and

setting forth that as part of the city's housing element. implement implement action. it is the policy of the city to address the dual goals of production of new housing, as well as the preservation of existing housing, end quote. thank you. go ahead. caller. uh, this is sue hester. i want to bring a couple issues to the floor. one one is that planning department has to follow policies that are implemented by voters in ballot measures. one of them is prop k, which has a severe limitation on shadowing on parks was triggered by shadows who were cast being proposed to be cast on portsmouth square, which is a

living room for people living in really, really small s-r-o's in chinatown that don't have light that was passed by the voters. also passed by the voters in 1986. pardon me. yeah, 1986 was prop m, which is thought of as an office development limitation, but also has policies that the planning department applies in their analysis of projects are doing how they fit into the city. and that is a done by voters and it was litigated as well. and so it's a state proposing to eliminate all changes or evaluations that are done right now because because they were put on the ballot and voted on by the voters of san francisco, not by the supervisors, by the voters. that's very important question in my mind. also i, i

really want to know what other departments have been consulted. dpi and the bic. they do an evaluation of every project that the planning department does because they permits are issued by the dpi and the there should be a joint session between the bic and the planning commission. i'm a person who has brought that up several times, but we need to understand some of the delays they. hi, my name is erica zweig and i'm calling from the outer sunset and i could hardly hear for the presentation for the clinking of very expensive champagne glasses by the

developer and, and so i couldn't really hear what was being said. but it seems like it totally makes a big business. and developers very, very happy. and i think everybody knows it. so let's not be let's not try to put the blinders on. let's just say how it is. thank you very much. bye bye. go ahead, caller. i'm sorry, i was muted. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is jonathan. i i'm a resident of district two and a lead with northern neighbors, an urbanist organized nation in district two. i just wanted to address two things that i heard in prior

public comments. the first question i just wanted to strongly refute the notion that because san francisco as a as a charter city, that this should be like just the domain of the city and the state shouldn't intervene. the housing crisis is a problem of the entire state and san francisco is a major contributor to the housing shortage by just not building enough. and if you look at all the sprawl happening and us having the highest share of super commuters in the nation, that's why it's the responsibility of the state to intervene here. it's very important that the state intervenes here. in fact, the second point i wanted to address is just a comment i heard prior previously and wanted to reemphasize around state density bonus law and just wanted to raise this commission's attention to the need to make sure that in san francisco we maximize and not hinder the application of state density bonus law as one of the most powerful and reliable tools to increase housing production in san francisco. thank you. okay.

last call for public comment. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no additional requests to speak commissioners public comment is closed and this informational presentation is now before you. okay so i just got want to thank staff for a really robust presentation. really appreciate your time. i have a request from some commissioners to take a very quick break. before we come back, before discussion. so a five minute break, please do not take one if you don't need one. commissioners we'll come back in five minutes. we'll have our deliberation. and i would also encourage us to remember that we're not deciding anything today. we're discussing things that have already been decided. so we want to get better understanding. you can pound your fists a little bit, but please just try to keep the conversation germane to what we need to understand to do our jobs as commissioners. thank you .

i'm sorry. great. everything okay. so we're going to go back live. okay, commissioners, we left off under your regular calendar on item 12. the state housing laws and hcd's policy and practice review informational presentation. great. thank you. one of the things staff, again, not just for the presentation, but all the work that's going on and we know that staff on our department, but also other departments, the mayor's office, the board certainly taking up this work and trying to understand and take action. i want to just note on a positive note that it sounds like from

mr. snyder's presentation, we have been taking action diligently on the required action and are also having a timeline and thoughts around the recommended actions notwithstanding some of the timing for the constraints, legislation and understanding the state needs to take a closer look at that. so just want to be on the positive note there. again, there were things that i spoke with the department, with the director and also with the mayor's office about in the policy and practice review that i may be objected to or thought that we should raise in conversations with hcd. certainly if you didn't have a chance to do that, you can raise those now. but i felt confident that my concerns either already had been noted by the department or by the mayor's office and were part of the conversation of, i think, being collaborative with, but also gently pushing back on areas where it isn't simply a matter of the staff, the board or any one particular body simply taking an action to undo, perhaps again, an initiative that had been approved by the voters. for example. we can't simply just undo that overnight or within 30

days or even 45 days or 60 days. some of that is going to be quite a bit of work. and so i hope that is listening and trying to understand the realities of what it will take to implement some of the recommendations, however well-meaning they may be and however diligent we want to pursue them, it may not ultimately be up to anybody. it may be up to the voters. in some cases to take action. so i want to spend a little bit of time understand ms. connors legislation that she was presenting in particular to understand how it will affect our work, but also the department and the work that we sometimes don't see. but we might see it through our budget. and so in particular i'm thinking about and ms. wada, you may end up wanting to talk about some of this, some of the requirements for the timeline for approving permits and particularly the questions we've heard around what is our coordination with other agencies . if we can certainly do our work to get our things done in time and that is our purview. but with other agencies having a time limit, just kind of i know we've been working on that already, so maybe we're feeling really good about things, but if you could share just a little

bit about where we're having success, where we may have some challenges with that law. absolutely. so i think this is directly correlated to ab 1114 that kate touched on. and as she mentioned, we are literally in the thick of finalizing our implementation strategy. so it's not 100% complete at this point. we're working on it diligently. so it will be by january one. and we are happy to come back in january 1st, because i do think there have been a lot of requests for a larger conversation about our interagency collective permitting. so i'll sort of put a plug for that for later. but what we are really focused on right now is making sure we can comply with ab 1114 and i think really it does us three primary things that we're focused on. one, it's really focused on post entitled permitting. so once the collective city family has established this is a project that we want to approve whatever that looks like, what what the uses are. et cetera. then the nuts and bolts of how do you build it? should be streamlined, predictable, coordinated and really enable people to get financing and have a predictable path forward. and so i think

that's really the intent of ab 1114 and that's the 15 days for, for a completeness determination. but but we don't want the completeness, determination to be a surprise to people. so part of the bill is also telling us as a city you need to put checklists on your website of what constitutes a complete application, what is a complete plan? submittal and that's easier said than done. so that's what we've in large part been working on with public works and fire and db and puc and all the agencies. so that's sort of one big part of it. the second part is once it's deemed complete, all city agencies will concurrently do their review and have either 30 days or 60 days to review, which again is a pretty wholesale change. traditionally we do. we've done a sequential permitting review in this city, so normally things come to planning. then when we're done, it goes to building, then it goes to fire. like it's this very sequential process. and if there's ever a revision, it loops back fully sequentially. and as you can imagine, that adds a lot of time when there are all those sequential steps. we are working with leveraging some new technology systems so that these

are going to be fully digital, which allows things to basically triage what city agency needs to review them. and then it's a concurrent triage out where everyone has shared access to reviewing the same set of plans at the same time and comments are issued concurrently. so there's a lot of that kind of less interesting, but really in the weeds, critical kind of infrastructure side of how we change our system by doing it online and again, structuring it in such a way that we're asking the right prompting questions. it also enables us to have data and to be able to track these projects. and so the city's permit center is really stepping into a role of having that 10,000 foot oversight, being able to see what projects are approaching that 15 days and maybe a letter hasn't been issued yet. and doing that sort of manual then prompting and bugging of people. so i don't know if this is for you or ms. connor, but with the legislation, like if we look at the matrix, which is wonderful that you've provided and it goes to i think there's a line, i think it's on, these doesn't have pages, but i guess i would say it's page, page, i don't

know, five i guess public improve public hearing. so we see that a number of things. ab 2011 not required for a public hearing. ab 2162 sb 423 just depends on the location of the project site. so if a project is coming in ministerially is that is ab 1114 is that considered post entitlement or does it still go to planning first to get approved for planning and then subsequently assuming they probably may also have to go do their construction documents and what have you, then the post entitlement is that review of their actual construction where planning is still looking at maybe schematic or conceptual level, like just can you help us understand what. absolutely. and that's actually one of the other big changes we're working on right now is to really reinforce that ab 1114 is post entitlement . we're really trying to draw that bright line between when a project has been entitled, which basically means done with planning review versus not. so for these ministerial programs, we're going to be creating what we just basically have planning approval, letter since there are so many projects that are now

eligible for ministerial, we do that already for the for the ab 35 sb versus ab, sb 35 projects. so we already issued these like word documents as an approval letter for those. and we're basically expanding the utilization of that to apply to all ministerial programs. we're going to be doing that basically for all projects. and so then people will get that letter and then go to the building department and get this consolidated post entitlement permit. and so for these hearings that you're pointing out on this spreadsheet, all of this has to do with the planning portion of review. okay? and so if there's a hearing that's required because that's on this, the priority geography map, for example, that would be part of prior to us issuing a planning letter, they would need to do that thing. and all of the eligibility criteria are things that we scan for before issuing that letter. and likewise, anything that does that does come to the commission for entitlement. it would have a you're done with planning and now you're in the post entitlement. ab 1114 right? so if you still needed a icu for

whatever reason you'd go through the normal process, we would issue this additional cover letter and then you go to dp. and while we're sort of on this topic, just to respond to doordash comment about geotech life safety, things like that, since we don't have sequa those issues are absolutely dealt with by the department of building inspection. so they have, you know, entire segments of their structural review team that focus on geotechnical review excavation, even when all of those things are required. so it is not reducing in any which way the life safety and the quality of construction that will happen in the city. right? so one thing i am encouraged by even though, you know, 1114 doesn't affect our department as much, is to hear that it is affecting the post entitlement and that is planning and building. but i've also talked with folks who try to build housing and it's public works. it's puc. i think we even see we certainly see that in some of our large projects that those tend to be years long discussions around how to supposedly move with something, move forward with something that's supposedly we all agree we want to build. and so i am

hopeful that this can bring some uniformity to that process as well, which we don't have any control or influence over. but we will see and i would hope that we can, as a department, as we are thinking about and trying to assess the impact on our staff, just like seeing if we are getting more efficient. but if we're losing anything in that efficiency, see if you know, if 30 days really isn't enough for something or, you know, x number of days really isn't enough so that we could provide some data to our state legislators to try to get some changes made. not in the spirit of not wanting to comply, but in being able to actually meet the demand. and especially as we look at shrinking city budgets, which could mean limited staff or limited ability to fill vacancies, or we just have a workload that we need to have people available to manage. and with that, i think there's just a few other questions i wanted to ask. let me just look here for i wanted to understand for the sb 423, the projects over ten units is the 10% have to be

affordable or the local inclusionary requires. if the local inclusionary is higher. so because our ten units, i guess it would depend on how many units, over ten units it is. is that kind of what that's saying? it's basically a king county planning department staff. we have to kind of merge both the state and the local requirements . and so currently our local requirement is higher. so right now we have a 15% citywide rate. and so what 423 requires is 10% at that very low income bracket. so if you take the 15% of citywide, you've got 10% at low and then you split the difference between the moderate and middle. so 2.5 at each. okay, great. thank you very much for that. um, and then the hearing, the map for the map that was used. thank you, commissioner bond the california tax credit allocation commission committee map, which i think tries to get at some of the things that there's various ways to map how we're trying to take protection for certain communities that maybe need that. and i think that's what this is trying to get at using a different maybe statewide available data set as opposed to

prior to equity geographies. and we've i think we've done cal enviro i mean, there's so many different mapping agency and this is the one that's been chosen for that. it seems to map fairly well to our priority equity, equity geographies for the most part, which is probably not an accident. and it seems pretty good. um and i think certainly looking forward to making sure those bulletins are hopefully clear and accessible and available so that we can continue to see good communication for folks of what exactly is required, when and how, and that we can make sure that our folks know what pathways are available to them. um, the last thing i wanted to ask, i wanted i want to just really call out the public speakers who did call in to comment today. and certainly we want to acknowledge that this is a lot of changes that are happening. and i do think overall it's trying to move in the direction not just of streamlining, but trying to create predictability, trying to create uniformity. and i think where our role hopefully can shift as a commission is to things like we have later today. stonestown these big projects

really thinking about what what is the lay of the land for those projects or really turning our attention to neighborhood planning, thinking about what are the objective design standards that might not just be just the citywide ones, but also getting to that fine grained neighborhood planning, planning for our public facilities. rs and so we can be more efficient with the permitting part, but maybe perhaps more more attention can be given to our long range planning instead of a project by project approval. but noting that the layers of laws do create more complexity for everyone and so wanting to make sure we can figure out ways to administer all of this efficiently and effectively. so that will be a challenge and look forward to hearing how we do in meeting that challenge. so with that, i'm going to call on commissioner moore. thank you, president tanner, you touched on a couple of very important issues, particularly when it comes to the change in practice and getting up to speed and creating efficiency, which will take time because many of the tools to do so requires a complete rethinking about the traditional way of planning. how

planning has been done that does not address the interactive, less siloed thinking of other departments and coming together at once. something i have advocated for years. i want to direct my questions to you, miss connor. this is a mind boggling, herculean effort. that is a mild way of saying thank you to you. i would like to ask you, out of the 200 pieces of legislation, 200 or more pieces of legislation that have been trying to address housing are the five ones that you chose the most likely ones to affect this community? i mean, i think that our planning department staff definitely see sb 423, the extension of sb 35 is definitely potentially going to have a pretty expansive impact on the city. and then i would say definitely 1114 as far as the permitting, we'll have a very large impact on just how we process these permits. and the reason why you brought up the

others is that they are potential candidates. i think the other ones. ab 2011 and then sb four are ministerial programs . so they are these could potentially be projects that would normally have maybe been seen by this commission that would not be seen now because they will be ministerial. so it just maybe being able to kind of let you guys know that there are some more ministerial processes out there for larger scale housing developments. does that mean this is a very hypothetical question? i should also address that to ms. wadi. you are you being forced to reorganize how your department works? because these are specific areas of expertise by which you really need to pull on expert giving, how many variables you have here, because i don't think that that can be efficiently addressed on a district by district level. the way the department is currently organized, i'm happy to respond to that. i don't believe we need

to do any kind of major reorganization. as you guys probably know, about a year ago, we did a pretty significant reorganization of the current planning division. i think where we're more likely to make changes is what types of the cadence with which we work and the types of review and advice that we're providing. so, for example, i mean, we were just on a call this morning talking about this where i think a big part of our staff job, especially over the next year, is people are getting more familiar with everything that's in the constraints reduction ordinance, as well as the state laws as being in an advisory seat to people and being able to say, you know, your project is x, if you change this thing or this thing, it could open up all of these different avenues for the increased affordable housing, increased housing production or different processes, whereas in the past we've usually been more responsive where an applicant has said, you know, i want to do this process. and i think being more well versed on what the options could be with sort of minor adjustment to project is, i think the seat that we're really going to need to step into over the next year. and

that's an expertise that i'm really asking all of our managers. kate's taking a leadership role in making sure our staff are really trained up on these programs so that we can hit the ground running on january 1st and be that resource to the public. so i think that's one area where we're really going to change. and then the second is, you know, our staff used to review things, high volume of work, but work that took a long time. and i think that's just going to be kind of collapsed down where we're going to have work. that just concludes sooner, but we're going to have to do quick reviews, one after the other. and so it's just a different cadence of where our time is spent. but all of those things can happen within the structure that we have. we've we've really beefed up and supported kate's team so she can take the occasional weekend off. but otherwise, i think we've got a good structure and a great management group to really be able to move forward with this in the new year. the thing i would be concerned about if i would be in your position is the abbreviated time, to the extent that haste makes waste and we

all know that planning is a complicated profession and by artificially clamping it down to hardly any time to think about it. this is not just checklist stuff. this is serious thinking about consequence that happen on all levels. i am concerned that we potentially at least in the first trials and i'm not objecting to speeding up and doing things differently might run into errors that may be consequential. sure. i'm just hanging that out there as a thought. absolutely and the one thing i'll just i'm sorry. i completely lost my train of thought. so go ahead. well, i was just going to add, because i think one area that kate's been wonderful on, but i think we also have to broaden kind of the knowledge of the entire department. in your knowledge has been broadened on this over the years. the state density bonus, because how these ministerial approval processes and their basically approval processes are kind of work with state density bonus where we have base projects and then have to calculate bonus. and as you saw, there are changes to how

the bonus can be calculated based on how much affordability you provide. so that's an area i think we've got to get more, more knowledge on and educated on across the department because as you've seen more and more projects as a percentage of our entire workload are taking advantage of state density bonus in using waivers and concessions in ways that they weren't being used initially. and so i think that's that continues to present kind of a challenge for us is to is to ensure that our staff is knowledgeable on state density bonus and how it's applied across projects. because while we haven't seen state density bonus projects on geary or noriega, i think as we rezone and as state law changes, we will start to see them in those neighborhoods where they've been kind of confined to where we've rezoned in the past. and while i support all the attempts for densification, i would like to see us also track the potential cumulative impacts on livability

. we as we need to build, there will be consequences and particularly as we're running up against sunshine ordinance. et cetera and standards of livability, i think we need to be account ing ourselves of what the consequences are. and i'm not saying that to be a measure which stops the effort to build housing, but i do think that we need to think about the long term consequences. yeah and the good thing is we've seen state density bonus in use. so we can anticipate it being used. and as we rezone and as you're considering the rezone, you've had discussions about this. how will the rezoning and then state density bonus on top of that rezoning result in projects and the end result? and so we can account for that better than i think what we did in the past. and when it says as said for a moment, it was missouri, the timelines established for 11, 11, 11, 14 seem very difficult

to understand. so there is a project, 25 units that has 30 business days. so then there's a project which has 26 units and up and all of a sudden has twice as much time. wouldn't then any developer really squeeze a couple of more units in in order to take advantage of that other timeline? but let's just be practical. these are arbitrary timeline timelines which do not create the effect of what you would like to have. sure. i would just say to that, i think even the longer timeline is probably more than a 200% reduction in timeframe from the status quo right now. so i think everyone's just excited of either of those options. i mean, i hear what you're saying, but i think it's such a dramatic reduction from where we are today that folks will be happy to have that predictability. and the one other item that i was forgetting that i was just going to mention is there is a lot of change right now. and to your point, concerns for accuracy is definitely one of the points of utmost concern for us. the good news is volume is down right now. i mean, normally i wouldn't

say that's good news, but given the amount of change, it gives us the opportunity to have a little bit of breathing room as we're creating entirely new systems and structures and getting kind of our feet wet with a new cadence and a new rhythm. and so i think we're sort of thankfully taking advantage of this down market right now to make these structural changes so that when the boom times come, we've kind of worked through all the kinks. we know our protocols, we know our rules, and we're going to take that as a, i guess, a silver lining of a of a bad economy. a question for ms. connor. thank you for your comment. ms. vardy the organizational structure do you use between items one and five? what was the reason to organize this the way you did? it's just a question for me. this is ultimately a driving manual for people who are many in many cases now will be on the sidelines. this is the commission itself who will be just watching this. i would like to have an understanding as to whether or not is from projects small to large or earlier versus

later abs or whatever. what is the underlying structure by which you did this? absolutely. kate connor, planning department staff. so i wanted to at least introduce ab 2011 since it is already effective and it was part of last year's legislation live session. typically we would want to come and provide an informational hearing to you just on the new bills each year. this one kind of became effective mid-year. so we started with that one just to say this is already in place. then the second one was of course, sb 423, which we think will have that more expansive impact. sb four we don't think it's going to have as much utility, but since it is a ministerial program, we wanted to highlight it. and of course any changes to state density bonus law i think is really important to keep the commission abreast of and then 1114 it just kind of ended up being number five. i hope that ultimately we will be able to have like a tab binder by which we just go to the tab and open up the rules because we'll be driving a lot of different cars, not much to say, but i think it is important that even if we are not actively

participating in decision making, that we have a full understanding of the impact as we still will be shaping the public discussion about a lot of peripheral things coming with us. i'm i'm in support of what we're doing, but i need to see a little bit more user friendliness of how we go about addressing it. and as always would be my comments for the moment. thank you, commissioner diamond. thank you for the very comprehensive presentations. a couple of comments. one is, since i've joined the commission, i've been a big fan of taking actions that increase consistency and predictability. and so i'm very pleased to see that many of these actions lead us in that direction. an i will say, but it's leading us in the direction of consistency and predictability for those who produce housing. but the flip side with state density bonus is it's creating because of the ability to request concessions and waivers. i feel like it's

undermining consists and predictability generally provided by a general plan and zoning. but but no longer is that available for neighbors to understand what might be happening in their neighborhood. it may also reduce that in terms of developers trying to understand what's going to be developing around them, because anybody who meets the criteria can request at the concessions or waivers. so i mean, that it is what it is at the moment. i get that. but to me that is something that i think this may be a follow on with what commissioner moore said is that we need to be monitoring the overall collective impact of that. so we see how neighborhoods are changing. it may result in are wanting to lobby for changes to some of this legislation action because as much as i think consistency and predictability is makes it easier for developers to choose to develop housing. i also want

to make sure that we're creating consistency and predictability for neighbors so that they know what they're investing into or what they're renting into. and i think this takes us into dramatic different directions. so that's really just, you know, underscoring the request that commissioner moore made to monitor the cumulative effects of all this. so secondly, we've seen a flurry of state legislation and also local legislation driving at different parts of the same issue about how we produce more housing. when you add that all together, what do you see as coming in front of the commission? what kinds of matters are we going to see? are we going to hear over the next couple of years? i know we have the major rezoning, obviously, but when you add together the all of the items that have been removed from our scope of work by the commission plus whatever the cumul of

impact is of the varying pieces of local legislation that are being adopted, you know, if you look at our agenda going forward, are we going to see grhs rcas aren't going to be there? i know you think there are major projects, but when you combine the law together with what you have referred to as a reduced scope of work, you know, let us predict what do you think is commissioners we're going to see so that the public is also aware of what's likely to be on our agendas for the next year or two? well, i'll start and i think you're talking about like in the housing sphere, right, because you'll see still prop m allocations and office projects to the extent we're going to see office projects. i really i'm asking not just in the housing sphere, but in general because we haven't, you know, are we really going to see office projects in the next two years? but from a from a regulatory standpoint, the commercial aspect of our code hasn't changed. so where you might need approval in a pdr district to do

a project or if it's an office allocation, you'll still have to approve that. you'll have to approve days where there's large projects like stonestown, which we're going to hear from that that may require a da rezoning. obviously a huge component of this and legislation that may change the zoning post rezoning is a is a big aspect to see use in entitlements in priority equity geographies to the extent they're not taking advantage of kind of state density bonus or a ministerial approval in our housing element and i think the state mirrored this right? there's still there's still we kept cues in large project authorizations in priority equity geographies, although those could go away if a project is using state density bonus and some of the ministerial approvals, although if they are doing a 423 ministerial approval , you'll still have a hearing on that but aren't voting to approve that project. see 317 acres for demolition of existing

housing. i mean, so most of the state, i think all of the state ministerial programs are on code in 317 remains. so we're a project is demolishing existing rent controlled housing i think except in the areas like in the outer districts where we said if you're it's not historic and it's single family and there weren't tenants, you will still see all of those. i mean, i think the good news is we don't see a lot of demolition of existing rent controlled housing. so hopefully we will not see an uptick in that. but those regulatory from a regulatory standpoint still have to come to the commission to get approval if existing rent controlled housing or existing housing with tenants is being being demolished. i don't know if you want to add to that. i mean, i think just sort of fleshing out the non residential side a little bit more like we're still moving through the list of cannabis retail that are allowed to proceed. so i think you'll continue to get those in

the way that you do get periodically. formula, retail, institutional uses certainly will still be before you. i know we've had a little bit of a lull on those, but i would anticipate those would be coming back to you. but yeah, i mean, i think a really big part of the sort of abundance of legislation that's affected san francisco over the last few months is really trying to have us think about spending our time on creating the rules and then not having project by project level reviews. so you know, i do anticipate that we're going to be spending more focus on really being thoughtful about, for example, hcd has told us we have a year to change the residential design guidelines into residential design standards. so that will certainly be an item that will be before this commission and really putting our focus and energy. and again, reallocating maybe our staff architect hours from a project by project by project approach to be focusing their time on developing those standards as an example. and what about grs? think you're going to see a significant reduction but not a wholesale elimination of doctors. you

know, as you all know, a good number of the doctors are a remodel of a single family home, a remodel of a single family home is not being exempted from hearings through any of the legislation that we've seen. now, when they add an additional unit as part of that expansion, an i think some of those projects, depending again, whether it's in or out of a priority equity, geography, those will likely come off. but the pure single family home, i'm just expanding a neighbor files those will certainly still remain on your calendar. okay. one additional question, and i think i have to say it's kind of interesting that that's where the commission's resources are going to be dedicated, is to the single family remodels. well well, i think also i mean, where we'd like them focused is on the broader rezoning, on design guidelines, on general plan updates on how we're how we're responding to sea level rise, our transportation element. i think those are, you know, in other jurisdictions, you tend to see planning commissions spend most of their time on not on kind of what where we've historically been project by

project review that meet the planning code. and that's i think that's the general arc of where it's going that former part of that makes a great deal of sense to me. and to that end and this has come up a few times in conjunction with the rezoning and i think was raised by the prior commissioners in their comments. but i want to make sure that we're not losing sight of i know it's mentioned in the rezoning, but that we're not losing sight of the fact that as we add all this housing, how are we making sure that all of the agencies are taking the actions they need to ensure that the infrastructure keeps up the parks, the schools you know, the wiring, you know, the water capacity, you know, what is the planning commission's role planning department and then planning commission's role in ensuring that these infrastructure projects, which aren't exactly under our jurisdiction, but are absolutely critical to ensure the livability of these units are moving forward? yeah, i mean, that's exactly the long range

planning kind of the neighborhood level planning that are that are citywide and division is doing and will continue to do and hopefully spend more time doing to ensure that as we grow the transportation services there, the infrastructure is there, the parks and the open space is the intersection between that and the planning commission. what's our role in that? yeah, i mean we can certainly bring those items to you. i mean, they tend to be in neighborhood plan documents in our rezoning, but we are doing that work currently where as we're rezoning and anticipating where housing is going to be working with those other agencies, whether it's rec park, mta, puc on how the infrastructure and those services keep up with where we anticipate new housing. it's always chicken and egg, right? because as you rezone, you're not necessarily going to add that transportation capacity 80 to the to geary boulevard in anticipation of rezoning. but you want to make sure it will

come when that housing is built. so i think i will just underscore what i think i heard commissioner moore said is that, you know, we can't manage this if we can't measure it. so how are you comprehensively conveying to us, you know, annually or whatever it is, you know, where we are in terms of how much housing is actually? have there been an entire ailments for or permits issued for side by side with the infrastructure needs? it feels like, you know, unless it's presented to us comprehensively, then we aren't doing we can't do our job of saying, hey, we adopted this housing element that it called for, but how are we monitoring whether all these different pieces are moving forward? and obviously that's happening now, right? there's housing being built in the eastern neighborhoods of the city where we did the planning to also anticipate the additional infrastructure. there's fees associated with some of that, some not. some it's general fund funds that will. so we'll have to think about the best way to come and

talk to you both about what's happening currently or what's happened in the last decade and how we're keeping up with that, that the additional needs beyond just the housing and how we're going to do that on the on the western side, by the way, i keep saying planning commission, but by coming to the planning commission, it's a way of informing the public and providing the reassurance that, you know, in our drive to produce more housing, we are not forgetting the rest of the infrastructure that affects the livability of all of these places. thank you. thank you. commissioner braun. yes, i think just tacking on to that that point, that was just being made, you know, we do have the i like the idea that we are our role is partly transforming more to being on the up planning part of this, doing the actual planning, setting the actual policy updates that are happening to the general plan elements. i know that on a day to day, day to day basis, a lot of departments aren't necessarily looking at the general plan. but even so, it is the guiding policy and growth document for the city and we do have oversight of that and it's part of our responsibility. um i, uh,

but yeah, so i just have a couple of comments and questions. so first of all, i just want to thank kate connor, professor connor for a really a really helpful and wonderful walk through of the state legislation. um, i'm going to actually start though, by shifting to, to the hcd policy and practice review and just a few comments on it. you know, in some ways i appreciate somebody from the outside taking a look and having an outsider come in with fresh eyes to see things that we don't see in ourselves, even if we don't agree and don't agree with everything in there. but still, it's a helpful exercise in many ways. i also thought that the key findings of that report were were still interesting, were illuminating. i appreciate the interviews they did with staff, with commissioners, with other officials, because it really identified the many different ways in which the process slows down and the ways in which sometimes as staff planning department staff have incentives that kind of skew what ends up happening because of their their

their fears or perceptions or or things along those lines. and, you know, there are sometimes perceptions that do and don't align with what the data analysis said is happening in the report as well, including around projects that are undergoing discretionary review processes. um i, you know, just as a quick aside on that, you know, there's a mention in one section of the report about planner's report feeling fearful and overwhelmed while processing applications for housing developments. and it's partly due to the complexities that we're describing today. and i think as any professional in this environment, any professional environment of so many different pathways and laws and so much scrutiny is going to really feel that, um, so just, just comments on that. but then the report also would identify some post entitlement challenges , especially around utilities, connections to assessments and then uniformity and consistency in the department of building inspection reviews. i i'm really heartened to hear the efforts

that we're undertaking to meet the requirements of ab 1114 because to me that we're setting up the ability, at least in the planning department's end of this, to be able to address some of those post entitlement challenges and i do have one question about that, though. so that process happens very quickly with these 1114 projects. there's the concurrent review process. who's steering the ship, though, often? i mean, i work for cities all the time and i'll get feedback on on reports that have conflicting guidance. so and reviewing a development project is much more complex endeavor. so i'm curious , when there's a disagreement or conflicting direction, how does that get resolved quickly? i mean, this is new territory for the city. i think we're going to have to play that a little bit by ear. i think part of the desire of having everyone do concurrent review is at least those comments are all surfaced at the same time. they're not surfaced six months apart from one another. they will be in the

same letter. so hopefully i mean, little things like that, but literally like by being on the same piece of paper, it makes it a little more overt that there might be some conflicting information. i would imagine the strategy is going to be on a case by case of saying, hey, it's agency a and b who have conflicting information. the sponsor is going to say, we need to all sit in a room, the three of us, and work through what the solution is here. and i actually think the beauty of this mandatory concurrent review is that that is happening in real time with people who haven't forgotten about this project because it happened so many months ago and their review happened so long ago. it's fresh in their mind and you can get sort of consensus building. but i do think this is where there's still very much going to be a human, you know, meeting the need for meetings to resolve issues where there are conflicts. i don't think that's something we're ever going to be able to wave away through laws or through technology. but i think it's how do we create a system where that can get sort of surfaced in the most efficient way and so that we can tackle the resolution in in a in a comprehensive way, in a timely

way. sure. and i'll be curious what systems can be set up to allow that human interaction and the consensus building to happen very quickly and efficiently. because just trying to get on people's calendars sounds like a challenge. um no, i was just going to add like, you know, we're not always structured in if you look at how other jurisdictions kind of structure their permitting, even post entitlement permitting function, right? we're different agencies. we're not under a broader city administrator or a, you know, a deputy city administrator for permitting or development services. so it makes it a little more complex in san francisco than elsewhere. i think pd has played a role in helping, like on da's in major projects. judge andrews office has played that same role in da's and kind of bringing the bringing departments together. the permit center is taking some of an active role in that too, but it's kind of the uber structure of the city is not

necessarily geared up to tackle those issues with kind of hierarchy quickly. that's that's a very interesting point. um, and difficult to navigate. okay so my, my last point is just i think there's been some discussion from other commissioners about as, as the these ministerial projects and approvals processes happen, there's a lot less that we'll be seeing in terms of individual projects of the commission, which in many ways could be a good thing. but i would still like i do also have a desire to find out more about what we're not seeing. i know that we get our updates of the projects that are in the pipeline. i think it'd be helpful just to have information about how many housing units, what what pathways are being taken on, where are they located and even just a couple of examples that illustrate what the trends that are tending to happen with the ministry. we have the capacity to give you the list of projects, right? i mean, currently there aren't a lot there are some sb 35 projects

that are primarily the 100% affordable housing projects. there are a couple ab 2011 projects that are working their way through the process, but i think we can figure out a way to just get you the list of projects that are that are seeking ministerial approval and also some just some context as well, where they are, how many units et-cetera as well as as as these this legislation is adopted and implement and how it's working. if there's anything that we should be considering or supporting for changes in how we do things or recommendations around problems with the legislation that exist, that would be helpful to hear that too. thank you, commissioner brown. commissioner luis, i just also want to thank planning staff. i find this super helpful and i know that takes a lot of time to organize in your head and then put on paper. so just thank you so much for all of that work to help us understand all of these new state bills, because it's quite overwhelming. most of my

comments are surrounding the priority equity, geography and how we are in ensuring low income communities still have some engagement with the changes that are happening in their neighborhood. and what we're really doing to prevent displacement. and so i really align my comment or align myself with the comments around monitoring the changes. and i really would like to see how or how how do these state bills or how do they not not help promote more affordable housing, especially since we've not met those goals historically. we my first question is just clarification around the hearing requirements for sb 423. can planning staff just clarify for myself and for the public, what will that look like? how will communities be noticed of that? and then i see project sponsors are not required to make

changes. so it's really just an informational hearing, correct? kate connor planning department staff. yes. it would end up being an informational hearing at the planning commission, so it would be agendized as such, so the public would end up being able to find out about it. but it is only on the notice of intent. so a notice of intent is just a basic kind of project description section and pretty basic plans. so there is a good chance that the plans may not be the same quality that the planning commission is used to. also so this is before it's not really a development application either. so it's really just this notice of intent. so we're not going to have that opportunity to be able to do like a robust review either. so it's really an informational hearing for the project sponsor to describe what the project is and for public for the public to be able to comment and the commission as well. but it's definitely informational. okay so if a project sponsor is submitting an application within, you know, a neighborhood that requires this hearing, planning staff then

informs them, okay, you have to do this hearing. is there any standards that we have set that we inform the project sponsor of that? you know, these are, you know, community based organizations. you should reach out to. you know, these are some of the things we encourage, like what are we narrowing dating to the project sponsor? i think that's a great question. i mean, it's something that we can't necessarily require by state law, but definitely our neighborhood group maps and different, you know, neighborhood groups that would want to participate. i mean, we do have that available online. i mean, we always kind of encourage being able to kind of inform the surrounding neighborhoods. but it isn't something that we can actually require as part of this process. okay and sb 423, you can use state density bonus with that, right? so if they're using state density bonus, then does that still mean they have to do the a hearing? correct. okay okay. um, thank, thank you. yeah. um.

let's see. i have a lot of thoughts. also very tired because of a teething newborn. so sorry if i'm a little bit slower today, but what are our conversations with the equity division in regards to these state bills or are they involved in these conversations? are they hearing communities say, i hear we have started the conversations with communities on codified community benefit agreements? are there other things communities are saying? i just want to have some insight. what is their involvement in all of this? i mean, conversations with them about these rules and how they may impact priority equity geographies differently than i mean, i think these conversations were were underway in as a response to the mayor's constraints ordinance, right. which treated priority equity, geography is different than well resourced neighborhoods. the rezoning that's happening that's most focused in well resourced neighborhoods. and then that the

kind of community planning work that we're doing in neighborhoods that may or may not be zoning related, but there's definitely interest in these. the hearings, the 423 hearings and what they'll be. and i think we've got to kind of sort more of that out on how those hearings will actually be conducted and what what process will there be for projects in priority equity geographies. because again, notice ing and queue requirements, we left alone in priority equity geographies, but some of the state laws kind of undo that. yeah, yeah. okay. well, i just really hope that those conversations and the engagement with that division really continues and that we're really getting ahead of the curve on this. i think for myself, it's really hard to grasp and understand what is even possible with all of these state bills and does the department have some type of assessment, you

know, especially when it comes to the priority equity geographies? you know, look at these parcels within this particular corridor in your neighborhood with these state bills. this is possible. and this is what you could see. like, do we have that? and analysis and assessment for the community? yeah. and i think generally what's you know, if it's zoned to allow for housing and, you know, someone's going to take advantage of state laws for a ministerial approval, there's not much right to kind of stop that approval. so the focus has been more in other areas. how do we strengthen commercial corridors? how do we find resources for affordable housing? and also the affordable housing funding has been more focused on the state level and well-resourced neighborhoods. so how can we also advocate that that that funding also be available in priority equity geographies? how is that housing actually benefiting those who live in the neighborhood, you know, and are part of those communities and things like neighborhood preferences. so the

focus has been more in those areas and less in how, you know, how can we impact this housing project, which may be difficult to impact. so yeah, i mean, all in all, i see a lot of i mean, we have have ab 2011 that helps 100% affordable housing. i do see a lot of benefits for above moderate housing and i hope we meet our goals for affordable housing production and i hate to be you know, a debbie downer but i don't think we are going to meet those goals. and so my biggest concern is now not implementing protections for low income communities who are going to still struggle to find affordable housing. we're going to build all this housing with rents that, you know, i probably can't even afford. so what are we doing in terms of engagement with our communities and getting

really creative about protect options? if we can't, you know, go up against these bills? what are other things that we're doing? as you said, um, you know, one of the things that was mentioned last week was objective standard is within, you know, particular communities. and i know so, you know, even with state density bonus, we might not see those objective standards within particular projects. but, you know, are those conversations starting and how do communities get those conversations starting if they're not right? and we've started where we have start standards. i mean, this was in the legislation that the board passed as part of the constraints reduction to engage in that work around objective design standards. i think you're right, though, in identifying the problem that those standards , you know, at times can be waived through through state, state density bonus. so but, you know, we intend to have those

conversations and come forward to you with those with those improvements on affordable housing. we're also, as you know, i don't think we've given you an update lately. we've got the affordable housing leadership committee that is coming up with recommendations on how we get close to the numbers that are in our arena goals for affordable housing, because i think you're right, it's extremely challenging to get to those to those numbers. but we'll in january, we release that report and we'll come and talk to you about what's in that . you know, and there's obviously some big things to get to the to the to the numbers we need to get to and to find the resources to get to those to those numbers. so that will be a conversation with you. and again, i think a conversation we should engage in more on this commission as to how we get to the resources that we need to build the levels of affordable housing that are in our in our housing element. yeah. and i hope that those conversations stations with the state continue

as well, like things that we need from the state. you know, they're doing all this work to streamline housing. what are they what can they do to help us build more affordable housing, i think is an important and as commissioner diamond said, things that we need to lobby for to really prioritize is that part of our housing element. so i think that's that's really it for my comments. i just want to really emphasize monitoring the changes specifically in priority equity geographies and continued conversations or maybe increased conversations with community members on how we can get, you know, objective standards started. how can we do all of the things that they're hoping to see to help combat maybe some of the harm that these state bills will do? and, you know, i would really encourage maybe a hearing before the commission on how that is going and what

things that we're implementing, what things we have control over that we can do for our priority equity geographies. thank you. thank you, commissioner. imperial first, i appreciate all commissioner's extensive comments and i think this is really this deserves a real amount of scrutiny and conversations. i also want to thank the planning staff, ms. connor, in preparing this. this hearing makes me go hungry. i'm not going to lie, but but also, i want to go, you know, in terms of the hcd policy review. so one from the last week hearing, we have a conversation about the state density bonus and how it may it will be ministerial that it will not go, perhaps it will not go to the planning commission, but perhaps some of it will go under this. so i

still just want to clarify around that and also how is it underlying with. sb 423, sb 423 is using a map by seatac. and in terms of the state density bonus that will be that hcd is asking us to pretty much not hear it and the planning commission, what are the state density bonus projects that are going to be heard in planning commission? thank you, connor. planning department staff. so under sb 423, there is the public hearing kind of within the priority equity geographies or on the tcac hcd opportunity map. but that is kind of almost like a pre application pre submittal hearing. so it's very likely that those projects will be using state density bonus just because state density bonus does afford you all the incentives, concessions, waivers and bonus. of course. so you would still be

seeing those, but it would only be as an information item. okay. and so i also want to get a clarification from the director in terms of the state density bonus in projects that so it sounds like the sb 423 projects will be heard as informational. but in general of other sb five projects, those will not be heard in the planning commission. that's correct. the that hearing after the notice of intent filing is only applicable to sb 423. it's not applicable to ab 2011 or sb four. okay. thank you for that clarification. i think that's something that, you know, i was kind of anticipating to get answer from this today's hearing . also one my question around code compliance and i believe in the rectors response that the code compliant project sites will be. that your code

compliant projects outside of priority equity geographies will not be heard through the planning or will not go through the planning commission. i would say yeah. yes that's what the constraints ordinance did. so you know where you would have had like a queue for a large lot , that queue goes away if it's code compliant, it wouldn't come to the planning commission. and if it's a if it's a 423 project because it's not in the geography identified by 423, there wouldn't be a hearing for that project. so that means in the world. so thank you again for, for that kind of clarification. it does. again i think one of the public comment has mentioned about the extensiveness of objective design standards of who are we also talking not just affordable housing, not all not just developers. i think i want to emphasize that residents, workers, businesses are also

community stakeholders and that needs to be part of the community engagement. when we're looking into the objective design standards, i also want to ask about what hcd think, because from last week hearing we, you know, many of the some of the community stakeholders were emphasizing about the areas of vulnerabilities. do you i'm wondering if the areas of vulnerabilities as what other rep would mention is that something that city kak map is looking into or what or yeah, just trying to clarify the maps that going to be used by hcd, you know, what are the thoughts of hcd around that and what are we in the city looking into when we're talking about areas of vulnerabilities. okay. connor planning department staff. so

yes, there are a couple of maps that are out there now. so definitely the tcac hcd opportunity map, the areas that are noted as far as requiring the public hearing are very similar to our priority equity geographies plus just a little bit. i mean, that map is also updated annually. so so and just something about the map as well, at least for the public. it is something that's going to be a layer on our property information map. so it's something that you'll be able to access and just figure out if it's actually on one of these maps. same with our priority equity geographies. but for the most for areas of vulnerability, there's a lot of overlap. the majority. okay. yeah thanks for that. i think again, this is going to be a lot of lobbying happening or not lobbying, but conversation will be happening from the community perspective all the way up to the hcd because those can be debatable as what are the maps would look

like in terms of there's one that piqued my attention in terms of ab 20, 2011 when it comes to the demolitions that you know, that demolition of historical resources and dwelling units are permitted possible. it looks like it. so can you. yeah. can you clarify anything? absolutely connor planning department staff. ab 2011 has two programs. one is for this mixed income, which has between 10 and 20% affordable, kind of depending upon the local inclusionary rates. and then the other one is for 100% affordable. so the 100% affordable ab 2011 program does not have that prohibition on demolition of resources, gis or prohibition on demolition of housing. but that's only for 100% affordable projects. the mixed income ab 2011 program does have those protections for demolition of housing as well as demolition of resources and the demolition of resources and

housing is also present in sb 423, as well as sb four. so it's only the ab 2011 100% affordable program that does not have those and so when we're talking about the demolition of dwelling units, we're talking about also rent controlled buildings. so the yes, i mean, potentially, but it we also have senate bill sb 330 and so that also requires replacement replace payment. right of first refusal. you know, all of those requirements would also kick in if there is any sort of demolition of rent controlled housing, because we would consider those to be protected units and they would be required to be replaced. okay. thanks for that. clarifying because the way it looks like it's like demolition of dwelling units and i was kind of like picking my interest in in terms of the rent controlled. so yeah, those are my questions. miss connor, thank you again. just like irritate reiterating what other commissioners it would require a lot of staff

effing and time. well not time. we're actually trying to get running out of time and as what other commissioners mentioning in terms of the assessment. one thing that i can think of is like how is the housing balance report that is kind of like in a yearly basis and i think it will be in a great interest to have that kind of model that it's like whether it is housing balance report is an ordinance. but as can be as an appendix or addition to the housing balance report in order to assess all of these changes and how it's affecting more than just the units, but also the livability as well. i hope i'm not sure how is that going to look like, but i think commissioner braun has actually mentioned many of the terms, how it looked like. so those are my comments. and yeah, thank you. appreciate the robust

discussion. commissioners, did just have one question. i'll make some closing closing comments and bring us the next item when there is a conflict between either a state law or i know it's different in directive and a local ballot measure. do we know what we need to do to unwind those or in some cases to state law specifically say we don't care what your local laws are? now this is the law. so we just don't have to follow a ballot measure that's been adopted by the voters. could you provide some insight or if it's something you need to come back to us later, that's also fine. deputy city attorney austin yang it's a case by case basis and it's like a four and a half factor test that the courts apply to determine whether it met. our statewide concern can override a municipal affair. so it's a little bit complicated for this conversation, but i'd be happy to talk about it so you could look at it. but there is some guidance that sounds like that is established to look at the state laws and local ballot measures to figure out what controls. maybe it's not always clear, but there is at least a starting point for looking at

it. that's right. yeah. great. thank you. did you want to add something, miss connor or. i was just going to ask it because on prop k, which came up in shadows, you might want to just talk about how that's how state law intersects with with prop k? absolutely. kate connor, planning department staff. so we've been implementing sb 35 since early 2018. and with regard to shadow, you know, sb 35 gets rid of any discretionary process. so that would include any sort of hearing at rec and park in terms of shadow, though, if there is a budget with a quantitative or if there's a quantitative budget and it's park with a quantitative budget, sorry, that is an objective standard that would have to be met. that also being said, if there is a state density bonus project, that is something that could either be waived or you could ask for an incentive or concession. so i think that we are still kind of looking at shadow, but a lot of the parks don't even have the quantitative budget. so it's a really subjective process. and so in that case, it's just something that we can apply. okay, great. thank you for that. i'll just close by saying, you know, i think mr. snyder opened by

reminding us that we do build housing in san francisco. in fact, we build quite a lot of housing even relative to our peer cities. so i think that should give us some hope, even in light of all the changes and kind of, you know, the policy and practice review, the complaints that drove that, that we are a city that build housing and hopefully we can leverage some of these laws to build more and have more affordable housing, be part of what we're building. i'm also hopeful for our staff. i know they've got a lot to do now and tight timelines, but i'm hopeful again from prop prop h, where we had timelines to review small businesses and we figured out how to do it efficiently. so there's going to be some of that figuring out new ways of doing things, the old ways we were doing things aren't going to be able to achieve these new timelines, but we can figure it out. that said, we will need resources if we do have liaisons or coordinator to help resolve those issues and meet with folks in tight timelines. that's resources that has to come from somewhere and someone's budget. and we're in a constrained environment. so we have to think through that. and lastly, to our folks at hcd and our friends

there, i hope that if they do continue more policy and practice reviews, they might consider looking at high opportunity communities that do not build housing where families of low income and people of color could move in order to take advantage of the resource laws that are in those communities. they may be small in some cases, and so the proportion of housing units assigned to them could be small. but the impact the real people who could live in that housing could be quite significant. and so i hope that they will turn their gaze to those communities next. and with that, we will i'll call on commissioner moore for our last, last word. and then we'll move on to our next item. so i had one more comment. speaking for myself, i believe that the endeavor of changing city policy, to the extent that we do is challenging, but also in some way intimidating. and i do not want to comment on any of the type of language that has been used in communication. i want to kind of look forward in the positive way, and i would like to suggest that we create a dashboard on the planning

website that monitors what projects are not just entitle ed, but how we actually build. and that is the only measure when it comes to counting on success in the challenge that has been placed upon us. and that means that if indeed financing is not available and we are just rushing and entitling and entitling, which we have actually done quite successfully over the few years that this group has been together. for, i would like to see a reality check by the dashboard shows. ing what type of housing, what size, and the degrees of affordability build in how many affordable units are we creating? only in light of the fact that we are way behind on that score. and i think it would help all of us. perhaps at the end of the week saying we are making progress. oh, we're still stuck in the mud. and i think it would help all of us psychologically, because this is indeed an unsettling process to feel more comfortable that there

is a reality to everything. what we are rushing through. because i fear that the changes to the city will be significant unless we stand watchfully at the edge and watch what in reality is possible. i am not interested in just handing out more theoretical entitlements unless we see ways how we can deliver. and just. i mean we are the pipeline report that you are used to seeing were converting that into a dashboard. it's almost ready to go live so we can come and talk to you about that and get your reactions and what you want to add, add and subtract from that like minds think alike. great idea. you can download an app and see it on our own cell phones to see what's going on. yeah. thank you . great idea. thank you, everyone. appreciate your time. very good. commissioners we can move on to items 13 a and b for case numbers 2019 hyphen 014485. and 2021 hyphen 012028. gpa a

for this town's town development informational presentation and general plan amendments initiation an. good afternoon commissioners president tanner patrick rice planning department staff and senior planner in the citywide division and the department's project manager for the stones town development project. the project site, as you know, is approximately 30 acres of mixed use development directly adjacent to the existing stonestown mall. the project was last before you on september 14th of this year for an informational presentation to review the revised variant design, a project with increased or increase in total unit count as well as a preview of the draft benefits package that remains under negotiations between brookfield properties. the project sponsor and the city

. prior to that, the draft eir hearing on february in february 2023, drafts of the infrastructure master plan, transportation demand management plan and the design standards and guidelines document, or dsg, which will be covering today, were published for public review on november 20th. at today's hearing, the project sponsor will first provide an information presentation highlighting recent project updates and an overview of the draft design standards and guidelines document for your review and comment. i will then introduce the proposed general plan amendments for initiation and your action. i'm joined today by other city staff, including lily lenoir, principal planner at the planning department. shinya liang, also principal planner, and ted conrad, project manager at the office of economic and workforce development, as well as project sponsor representatives, including christy donnelly, senior development director at brookfield properties and laura amano, co-founder of site lab urban studio. i'll hand it off

to christy, who will walk us through the overview of the draft esg. thanks, patrick, and thanks to the commission for this opportunity to present on the stonestown dsg this afternoon in this moment is really exciting for us because we've spent the last four years working hard and the dsg that we're going to be presenting to you today represents it's the culmination of years of community conversations and collaborations with our consult teams, as well as the city staff and sets the framework for how we will transform stonestown from a retail center into a vibrant, mixed use town center. we've created a plan that fosters economic growth, social interaction, an environmental sustainability and community wellbeing. this plan features a

walkable and bikeable, community focused retail, dining and entertainment destination option with new parks and open spaces for all. we're building much needed new housing on 27 acres of underutilized parking lots while improving parking access and connection ins in and around the site. our project will be built in phases as around the mall in a thoughtful way so that businesses can continue to thrive during construction. an ultimately stonestown will become much more than a retail center. it will be a vibrant community that will thrive through economic cycles. before we get into the details of the dsg, i'd like to take a moment to outline the major project elements at stones town. we recognize that we have a shared responsibility to help the city alleviate the housing crisis. and to that end, have produced a revised plan that we shared with

the commission back in september, which will provide up to 3500 new residential units in buildings that range from 3 to 18 stories, with up to five towers at the heart of the plan are nearly six acres of parks plazas and open space that knit together the phases of this new, vibrant, mixed use neighborhood. we're also creating a new retail mainstay reit, with housing above safe and accessible bike and pedestrian pathways, an underground and above ground parking garages and strategic location zones to improve access , access and ease of parking. now i'd like to invite laura cusumano from sitelab to walk us through the main elements of the stonestown dsg thank you very much. hello good afternoon. pleased to be here. to be able to share this with you today. i'm going to move fast because

i'm told we don't have too much time. but i wanted to give the highlights here as we'll see how low that can go of the design thinking and the dsg. so many of you know the site very well, but just to situate us, the stonestown site is a large opportunity site at the m-line muni location. and really, you know, at a convergence of the single family residential around it. and then these larger sites of stonestown, parkmerced and then bridging to the open space of lake merced. let's see if i can make this work. come on. one, two. up that one. okay. there we go. thanks so you here, you can see it a little closer in the stonestown town site is also surrounded. not only does it have the mall, which is a destination in and continues to be quite successful, but it is also surrounded in addition of the housing by sfsu, by churches

and by schools as the thinking that went behind the site plan and the design that is the underpinning of the project and the dsg is to really transform that surface parking lot into more of a city grid and an extension of the city so connected on all sides, breaking down the scale and then creating a sense of place. you know, it has one sense of character on 19th avenue, which is a state highway, another on what is going to be a kind of renewed 20th avenue, turned into a main street. right now, it's more like an aisle through parking lot. and then making the west side not a back of the mall, but actually a part of the neighborhood with a new town square and connection to ralph nichols park. and so the dsg tracks with this thinking of the site plan, as you have seen in other projects, it covers the range of topics from land use, open space streets, buildings and lighting and signage. i'm just going to give some highlights going through it, but happy to answer any questions as

from a connectivity and streets perspective, the project as we as you can see here, reestablishes walkability new or expanded sidewalks cross walks. these are all required in the dsg with minimum dimensions. mid-block passages, as well as connectivity through the mall that will have extended hours. that's something i should say that lives in the day, not the dsg, but is a part of the project. and we connect on all sides. we've also added dedicated bike lanes, separated bike lanes on all of the streets, 19 sorry, not 19 20th buckingham and winston, as well as a slow shared a shared bike path on in the northwest loop to ralph nichols, the project takes the what is surface parking and puts it either underground or embedded inside buildings and one new parking garage. so we have circulation throughout, but we've done the work to kind of manage the curb cuts and pull

cars off and out of traffic to really change change. i think the experience of the site today to make it safer, safer and really encourage all the modes of transport so you can see here a sense of what a street, what 20th avenue is today and then what we look to transform it to once this project is built. so in the dsg, you will see not only these kinds of street sections, but requirements that set the maximum curb to curb the maximum dry five space that has been worked out closely with dpw and sfmta and planning and then minimums for the sidewalk minimums for the bike lanes and minimums for the plantings and vegetation. there the open space as as you saw in the beginning of the site plan is designed really to create a network. we know that there are larger open spaces nearby with stern grove and lake merced. this is more about neighborhood serving and more urban open spaces starting

from that, the commons, which is the pink closer to where you enter from the muni. so we've given a new kind of entrance from muni and then cycling around so that there is this network of spaces and each space is located where you have a convergence of housing and the mall and new inline retail that totals about six acres of new open space each open space is further detailed in the dsg and has requirements not only for the design of it, but also for the programing. so there is seating of a variety of types to serve multiple generations as well as things like performance areas, plazas and multi-use lawns. this is an example of one of them, the town square, which is right kind of tucked in where whole foods and sports basement is now. and you see here a mix of hardscape and soft scape that is required. this is also to support the farmers market that's quite successful at stonestown in a new location just across the way here. and we've also been working with them and then also including

sightlines to ralph nickel playground that is also also connecting into saint stephen's church and school. so from a retail perspective, we are lucky in this project that we already have a retail destination and there is, you know, we believe energy to create not only that indoor support, that indoor retail, but expand to outdoor. so that's the main street on 20th avenue. and having that kind of indoor outdoor experience that that stonestown doesn't have as much right now. so what you see in dark pink is the priority retail. so there is the highest requirement for our traditional retail dining and shops for the pink is a combination of 50% of those frontages and then an additional 30% of active uses. so the majority of those frontages on 20th will be activated. they also have entry requirements and transparency requirements and then the light pink is an expanded definition. again, retail office, amenities, lobbies and then the yellow. is that the broader definition that we find most closest to the

planning codes? active use definition. so you'd have residential amenities or residential uses from amassing and building fabric perspective, the project is predominate 6 to 8 stories trying to optimize a mid-rise building construction and typology, but at the same time providing an i'll talk a little bit more about articulation and other things to break down the scale. we do have lower heights and proposed townhomes as we go to the northwest and then the higher heights are located to the south where the topography actually goes down about 30ft. and we've worked to kind of cluster those towers and have increased requirements such as the orientation. they can all they can't all be oriented the same way to create a like a line of the towers from any vantage point as well as the floorplate requirements. and then depending on the size of floorplate floorplate additional tower shaping and modulation requirements, we've also set back the tower from 19th avenue, and that is the one at 145ft,

whereas the others are at 185 across s we have requirements around massing modulation and articulation and what we've tried to do is dial these to the location. so 19th avenue has the most massing requirements because it's the highest visibility and it's potentially all new buildings there. 20th avenue puts has some of those requirements but puts a little bit more onus on the ground where that main street is. and so, for example, we have requirements that we've tried to create a fair amount of flexibility because we know that we don't want to create hurdles to this getting built. and so creating that flexibility that says for example, a massing reduction, you can't build a full extrusion of the box, especially for the larger parcels. you have to carve it. but that carving has to come to the outside of the block so that you experien use it and it shapes your experience on the street or on the skyline. so you can't do a pure courtyard building on the majority of the buildings. you have to get that carving to come out to the street and depending on how much carving you can either do a lot

of carving and not have to do as much in terms of the facade, or if you do less carving, you have to do more work on the facade itself. so this is a diagram just to conclude that that may be familiar for those that know the pier 70 for d, but we've done a similar strategy, which is to say it's really a suite of tools from the buildings perspective and it is location specific. so depending on the size of the building and depending on where it sits in the context, it has a different kind of layering of those rules to bring that together with a sense of the streets and the open space to hopefully make a really compelling place once built. and with that, i will conclude and hand it over to patrick. thank you. thank you, laura. the planning department has been working closely with the sponsor and design team over the past year and a half to ensure that the dia will memorialize the dsg that supports the city's and community's goal of creating a vibrant, livable a4, affordable and attractive neighborhood. to that end, and collaboration with the sponsor and design team, the city has been able to provide

guidance to the team for additional massing controls, as you saw, that will allow for greater building articulation modulation and mass reduction strategies to create a more unique and vibrant neighborhood. ground floor controls around active frontages have been modified to increase the percentage of active uses and entries required, reducing the opportunity for blank or untreated walls and allowing for more opportunities for shops and dining. as laura described, neighborhood amenities and ground floor units. east west connections have also been worked through and will go a long way to making it easy for new residents in the northwest corner to access transit along 19th ave by extending public access through the mall from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day. the city continues to be actively engaged in finalizing the dsg, ensuring that the controls are measurable and objective and consistent with the development agreement. zoning changes and the city's general plan. with that, i want to change gears slightly. and talk about the

general plan amendment initiation as noted in my introduction, this was also our intent today, the project advances many important city goals, priorities and policies and bodied in the general plan, including advancing environmental justice, sustained development, helping to meet our housing and affordable housing goals and improving access to recreation and open space amenities. the proposed amendments are intended to ensure the general plan reflects the community planning efforts associated with the project and to align the general plan with the proposed project. so staff is proposing amendments to map one and map two of the commerce and industry element. the amendments would align with the proposed land uses for the project at staff has proposing amendments to maps four and maps five of the urban design element to align the building height and bulk controls of the proposed project. the red circles you see here are just for reference today. finally, the last

amendment is updating the land use index to reflect these map changes. the project site is not within an area plan. planning staff recommends approval of the resolution, initiating general plan amendments and is recommends setting a hearing for their adoption on or after february 15th, 2024. note this date has been updated since your packet was published last week, assuming adoption of the resolution today. introduction introduction of the study and zoning amendments will be before the board of supervisor members in january. the project would then be back before the commission in february to seek approvals on amendments to the general plan planning code and zoning map certification of the eir and approvals of other related plan documents, including the dsg infra structure, master plan and development agreement, board of supervisors approval hearings would follow in late winter or early spring 2024. this

concludes our presentations and we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. thank you. thank you. thank you. with that, we should open up public comment members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. and if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. to the chair. you'll each have two minutes. good afternoon, commissioners. jake price with the housing action coalition. our project review committee first reviewed this in 2022 at in december and we gave it very high marks then and have been really pleased by the changes since then, particularly increasing density and adding young homes up. to 3500 at various income levels. we believe that this will activate the western portion of the city, providing dense housing, open

space and community serving retail, all of which is desperately needed. and in the neighborhood it's a transit rich location and promotes alternative forms of transportation through added bike infrastructure as well. so we believe the community engagement process has been exemplary and think other project teams could really we stand to learn a lot from the way that brookfield has engaged and we have our strongest level of support for this project. thank you. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers. i did logan with speak at the september 14th hearing of the planning commission stated that an infrastruc finance district or isd would be a recommendation

. the question was still is pending. has brookfield agreed to an ifd also planning has stated that the intention to have the development agreements for the brookfield property. effects five ampure 70 and stonestown be consistent as part of their development agreements or existing conditions. all three projects will have a site dedicated emergency fire fighting water system pipes. five meters already has a hookup to dedicated hybrids and the city's dedicated pipes. pier 70 will have a hookup to dedicate hydrants and the city's dedicated pipes. stonestown is the only brookfield project which will not be connected to dedicated hydrants and the city's dedicated pipes. as part of stonestown development agreement by. wd speak with strongly urge the project sponsor to be required to provide dedicated hydrants and dedicated pipes to the vicinity

of the oceanside treatment facility. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is john von neumann. i'm a resident of district two. i just wanted to emphasize how the importance of this big project, this exciting project out for hitting our arenas targets and actually building the 82,000 units that we need to build over the next eight years. i was at the meeting and my neighborhood last night an informational hearing with meeting with planning staff as part of the community engagement efforts and just became really clear the community's desire to get these pipeline projects realized in part to prevent even more rezoning efforts that are certainly possible through not just possibly the. builders and the facility gets certified, but also there is a circuit breaker

in the city's housing element that would possibly cause more rezoning if we don't hit our pipeline targets right now. so i strongly support this project. we want to hit our numbers. we want to make a difference in the housing shortage. thank you. this project is a transit rich location. will serve by several bus lanes, specially the inline. and i think this project will also add the central bike parking for the residents. i'm strong support of this project. build it fast and good luck. hi hi. i'm calling from district four. the circus wife. i think it's a great place for

development and affordable housing activists are supportive of it. if there's a good a great deal of affordable housing at all levels and you have absolutely no facts and neither does anybody that we know that the project sponsor has not put out money out of numbers at all. they have said that they will need the required percentage of affordable housing and mixed use developers, which has just been significantly lowered. and so i hope that those questions get asked and that every person that's negotiating with them for the da or approving a find every moment to push that we don't have a housing crisis. we have an affordable housing crisis.

you've heard this a million times and you know this. and so let's get there's the one place to get a lot of affordable. there's many people on the west side that are neither nimbys or nimbys. we want to see affordable and we want our children and working people to be able to have places to live. thank you very much. i attended the meeting at saint stephen's last week and while there were three lovely ladies that gave a presentation on regarding this project, there were there were more questions and less answers provided that night meeting and it would be really helpful to have maybe actually the project sponsor or someone higher up in the food chain come and speak at these community meetings because they could not answer questions

like, will any of this housing be available for residential purchase or are they all just going to be rentals? that's just one example as well as the issue about the northwest portion of the development over by the park. i know that there are a number of trees and if there's a height requirement, i would think that the that there would be more community input before these parks were developed with high rise buildings. so i hope all of this is taken into consideration. and thank you. okay. last call for public comment. seeing no additional request to speak, commissioners public comment is closed and this matter. oh, there's a one late request. let's have the last person. okay. hey, good

afternoon, don hartman. i live in merced manor, which is about 500ft from the stonestown parking lot near ralph nicol park. residents of our neighborhood, i've had several informal meetings. are concern is the proposal towers on the northwest corner of the existing parking lot. those are to be constructed immediately adjacent to ralph nicol park. the park is used by many residents daily for relaxation and dog walking. it really serves as a needed respite from the surrounding neighborhood, which includes three schools and the ymca specifically. we have concerns with respect to the shadowing of the park, which is acknowledged in the eir and also the effect of noise both during the years of upcoming construction and the permanent noise. once the construction is completed, which is going to have a significant impact on the wildlife in the park, which includes a family of hawks and various songbirds, we

also have concerns about the construction noise on our surrounding neighborhood, which we all know will last for years as well as the effect of the noise on the surrounding schools, particularly lowell high school, which is 100ft from the proposed towers to be built on the northwest corner. it should be noted that ten blocks stretch from eucalyptus avenue, from 23rd avenue to middlefield contains three schools. saint stephen's middle high school and lakeshore middle middle school. each school day, 3500 students descend on a stretch of eucalyptus and it's gridlocked morning and afternoons. and the additional construction is certainly going to add to that. so we just we urge that the towers be moved to the center of the project or reduced to four stories as they were originally discussed several years ago. thank you. okay, commissioners. with that public comment is closed. this matter is now

before you go ahead, three commissioners of the lights on. before i go to them, i just want to say this is an exemplary project. as you heard this, we've tracked this project for several months now over its development. and again, the outreach has been great. the carefulness and thought and the working together between staff and the project sponsor to really thought fully create from the mall a new neighborhood growing around it, which is very, very exciting. and i think i'm just look forward to continuing to see this project both take fruition here, but more importantly, to grow up and out of the ground and actually see it live in in person. so we look forward to that. i'm going to call on commissioner moore then. careful urban design and attending guidelines are ultimately the key to large developments of this kind. i am delighted to see this project having moved forward with such quality and such high intent in as few months as it has so my thank you and congratulations to a job well done. this project

meets the same. level of attention by which pier 70 was done. probably one of the better guideline packages in this city for many, many years actually done by the same firm who has created this project. i have one lingering question for miss cusimano if she wouldn't mind coming up to the mic here. i'm looking at your surface parking lots and the allocation of green space as supporting housing, and i am wondering about the south southern portion of taller buildings where i see relatively little open space is in that area. is there anything in the adjoining neighborhoods? is there anything built into the building type itself where open space would occur? that focuses, obviously the larger number of residents in the southern portion of the site? sure. well, for one thing, we are on the west and south bordering sfsu.

so i think there's they have some open spaces and, you know, over time, i think we hope that they will undergo a master plan and develop. and the hope was that the western open space, the greenway that you see, i don't know if i can point to it, but is meant to be shared, right? so eventually, as they evolve their master plan, that becomes like a greenway between the two. and to reach down close to the south, the parcels as we move south are smaller, as we're bounding around them all. so we looked for connectivity and midblock passages that are required to kind of get a grain and really feel like you're never more than like a block or two blocks from one of those open spaces. so that's how we were solving it too. while still maintaining that housing. are you foreseeing vertical green here in these taller buildings? certainly balconies would help with. that's a great point. so balconies are encouraged and are part of the tools in doing the modulation. there is a residential open space required retirement that would be per building, you know, similar to

other very similar to pier 70 on a per unit basis. that needs to be fulfilled within the building's capacity. so balconies, terraces, rooftops that that is a part of it. we just didn't illustrate it. that's true. that was the only lingering question i had. i'm delighted to see the thoroughness, literally looking at every aspect that would be of concern as we move into the future of a project that will not be realized in the year, but the careful kind of general basis and attention to detail is what i think we can expect it as we move through the years of realizing the project. i'm in full support and thank you for a very, very well done piece of work. thank you. commissioner koppel. great job, staff. and there's a lot of people involved with this. so i'm happy to see a great project just keep improving and want to move to initiate and schedule a public hearing on or after january 18th, 2024, second great. thank you, commissioner diamond. um i

too love this project. love the fact that you've come to us multiple times so we're not just seeing it all at once. at the end. i think there's now a very good level of understanding as to what this project entails. so just a couple of very specific questions. um, could you distinguish for us and clear and maybe the documents may need a little bit of work on this to the distinction between the project site and the project and the sud, what is the gallery a part of and what is it not part of? sure i can speak to that. so the project site is the 30 acres of development which does not include the galleria mall. the dsg and the sud will not refer to the galleria mall as part of the project site. does that clear it up for you? yes. okay. the project the project is christie. the project in the dsg

is generally referred to the elements within the project, but not including the mall that the dsg will control. i'm not sure if i answered your question, but we can provide more details. you don't need to provide it to me. but as i read through the staff report and the various documents, it seemed to me there was inconsistent use of the term project site. and so i just think we should be completely clear when you're coming up with the final round of documents. yeah, it's a complicated nuance because there are private streets, there are public streets that are part of the project that will also be improved along with the project. and so the distinction between the two, we can review the document and see if we can make some clarifying edits so that it is more clear to the readers. but in general, you're saying that the galleria is excluded from all of this except for an agreement through the da to be negotiated that allows for passage through the galleria

from early in the morning till late at night. that's right. to facilitate transit access. okay. thanks second question. this is maybe it's a broader city question, but it also applies to stonestown with the increasing use of electric bikes. they're really heavy and hard to bring up with elevators. so do our bicycle parking requirements and bike standards. say anything about evs and also about charging for them? like as someone who rides in an e-bike, which i'm thrilled to be able to do at age 60, whatever, and continue biking the really heavy there, you know somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds. and to bring them up an elevator and charge them in in apartment building or an upstairs condo doesn't seem very feasible. so i'm curious both for this project, but in general, what are our rules around ev parking and ev charging? i'm not sure.

off the top of my head we do have a zoning administrator bulletin on bike parking because some of the rules are quite complex about circulation hallway widths, door widths, level of stairs. you have to go up, that sort of thing. so i would imagine it would be in there if we have it. so i would need to take a look and get back to you. um there are also i don't think as much for bicycle parking, but certainly the building code does have provisions around parking and ev charging for parking for vehicular parking. but again, i'm not sure as that applies to electric bikes. so just as a near term future project, i feel like we should be coming up with standards that apply to all new construction in multifamily that that deals with eb deals with e-bike parking and e-bike charging. and then as to your project, what are you doing about e-bike parking and charging. so the demand for e-bike has grown and we know

that based on our residents in buildings that we own and manage and i think it is an evolving study to understand how we future proof our designs to allow for e-bike storage and charging in a way that our residents would appreciate. and so it's definitely as we approach the more detailed design work that's in front of us, a question that we spend quite a bit of time trying to understand, both from a consumer demand perspective as well as, you know, a building code. there their code requirements that will have to meet baseline thresholds at the time that we come forward with the building permit. so but it's definitely in the forefront of our mind. we we've worked on many projects where this question about what how to store or and where to store e-bikes have come up from our community outreach with

residents, with bike advocates and so it's something that we think deeply about as we approach the design process for each individual building. okay. i just want to make sure that it's not only storage but charging and that you take that into account. i will say i don't know about the rest of the commissioners, but as i roam around the city, there are the most interesting e-bike contraptions that are being developed that allow for carriers for multiple kids on them and groceries and, you know, students traveling and so, you know, it isn't like there's a standard e-bike. there's a continuum evolution of what people are using them for, which is fantastic. and i just want to make sure that your project in particular, which is being designed from the ground up and our rules in general, you know, get in front of this situation. and then my last question has to do with the hotel. are you still reserving that option for this project? i didn't see any mention of it in the dsg and if

you are reserving it, does it require approval to come back here? if you want to do a hotel? or how are you teeing this up? yes, currently we are preserving the flexibility to have a hotel in the future and we would come back before the commission should we want to move in that direction before the commission to do what? what would need to be a conditional use? we would need a conditional use and would the design standards then for the hotel be attached to the cu? yes. okay thank you very much. thank you. commissioner brown. yes just two quick comments. one is i'm in agreement that the design standards and guidelines document was extensive and really well thought out. it's not my area of expertise. but even so, having seen similar documents, that was definitely, uh, i really appreciated it. it was very solid. um, and then the one caller spoke about the enhanced infrastructure financing district, the ivd. i did see in the draft development agreement terms that there would be an agreement to form an ivd.

i just have. so that's going to be very helpful for funding the infrastructure on the site. but i also want to kind of give credit to the city. very minor quibble. it was listed as a community benefit in our staff report, but really to me that's the city putting some skin in the game that is a diversion of our our property tax increments to help fund the infrastructure on the site. and i think it's, you know, it's a great thing to do in order to get all these housing units built. but even so, that's part of the city accelerating the process of getting this built. so it was helpful to see. great. thank you all for your thoughtful comments. and i think we have a motion indeed, we have a motion that has been seconded to negotiate and schedule a hearing on or after january 18th. on that motion, commissioner braun, high commissioner ruiz high commissioner diamond high commissioner, imperial high. commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high commissioner. president tanner high. so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0. thank you very well done, commissioners. that will place us on item 14 for case number 2022 hyphen 003812qa at 533 540

turk street. this is a conditional use authorization an and adoption of findings for the state density bonus program. good afternoon, commissioner. president tanner and commissioners kalyani agnihotri department staff. i am presenting a conditional use authorization to remove an existing parking lot and construct a new 13 story tall residential building with 88 dwelling units. this project is located in the rc four zoning district and the north of market residential sud. the project is seeking a conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code sections 132 .2207.62 53 to 71 and 303 to allow the construction of the proposed building in the north of market without the imposition of building setbacks. modified additions to the required dwelling unit mix construction of a building that exceeds 40ft

in height within the rc four zoning district and to allow deviation from bulk and height limits in the height and bulk district. it is utilizing the individually requested state density bonus program to achieve a 16% density bonus. totally. the project provides 88 new dwelling units consisting of 222 two bedroom units, 55 one bedroom units and 11 studio units. the project satisfies the on site inclusionary housing requirement by providing 13 units, of which eight will be provided to low income households at 80% ami under the state density bonus law. the project is requesting one concession from the obstructions over streets and alleys and seven waivers from development standards, including rear yard exposure, ground floor active uses ground floor ceiling height dwelling unit mix height and bulk requirements. the project also provides 35 off street parking spaces, 88 class one and five class two bike parking

spaces and ample usable open space. at packet publication, the department has not received any correspondence regarding the project. the project sponsors have conducted one community meeting in september of 2022. in summary, this project complies with the zoning and policies of the general plan. it creates a new high density residential development along with usable open space and new streetscape improvements. the department finds the project to be necessary, desirable and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and not to be detrimental to the persons or adjacent properties in the vicinity. and we recommend approval. this concludes my presentation and the project sponsor is here for a presentation. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes.

sorry. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is john heimdahl and i'm a project manager with sullivan development, the project sponsor . i'd like to start by introducing who we are first. sullivan development is a san francisco based residential development and construction organization with a long track record of creating modern, mixed use urban infill projects as a firm that focuses exclusively in san francisco, we take great pride in our history of contributing to the built environment of the city and are passionate about helping to shape its future. this year alone, we have completed construction of mason pacific, a mixed use project located at the corner of pacific avenue and polk street in russian hill. we are also eight months from completion of our 908 harrison street project, located at the intersection of harrison and sixth streets. additionally we

recently broke ground on another project at 905 north point, adjacent to ghirardelli square. these urban infill projects help address the pressing need for housing in san francisco. so today we are proud to present our latest project. 530 turk street. we'd like to start by thanking planning and environmental staff kalyani and jenny delumeau, especially for their guidance and shepherding us through the process. we would also like to thank the various neighborhood groups and concerned citizens who have helped shape the project you see here today. the proposed project is a 13 story residential building located in the tenderloin. this project will add 88 units of housing, 13 of which will be on site. bms to a site that is currently underutilized as a parking lot. now i'd like to introduce riad ghanem, the project architect who will present the project design. nsf.gov. can we go to the computer, please. good afternoon, commissioners. glad

to be here again. it's been a little while since i've had the opportunity to present another project to you as my colleague john mentioned, this is a new 13 story building, and i think it's noteworthy that this building is really site specific. it's an underutilized lot. it's a parking lot right now. and this is an opportune city to use the state density bonus and add much needed housing. again, as my colleague had mentioned, i'll talk just a little bit about the architecture. i think you've all seen the packet and the and the planning staffs work on on unpacking this and so a little bit about the architecture for this building is on a mid mid-block lot. so it's, you know, we don't have a corner so we really have to focus on our one facade. but when i say it's site specific, a couple of things it's doing, it's responding to our new neighbor at 500 turk street. i know i

find that to be a nice bookmark bookend on this corner and we're kind of playing with some of the modern elements on that building and adding a little bit of depth and dimension to the facade by this juxtaposed version of the solid and void. and it also is functional because it includes balconies on every single residential unit. we do have private open space as well as what kalyani mentioned, an abundant roof deck, open space. while it is a tall building and we are using the state density bonus, i would say that this project, it isn't using it using the bonus to the maximum and i don't think it's overpowering the site. i think this image really tells a little bit of a story about where we are in the context of this urban fabric. i mean, we have the federal building across from us, which is maybe the more powerful

structure around us. and we're therefore kind of bridging this divide between some of the taller buildings and some of the shorter buildings in this tenderloin neighborhood. here's an image of the site, as i mentioned, just underutilized. and i'm really pleased to be able to work on a site like this where we can really make a dramatic improvement. and we are using the state density bonus to increase the height. yet we are are we have sort of defined where the natural height limit of this street is. and like i said, we're not using the density bonus to the maximum to over power. this street frontage, this is a roof deck image just showing the ample roof deck space that we have that will be available as a common element. and we generally amenities it with cooking and other facilities up there. we're not meeting the maximum parking

requirement, although we are providing parking. and again, as a mid-block lot, i think it's mostly important to talk about this plan just in that we are trying our best to all organize the utilities and back of house things that need that are needed for a building like this to not impose on the street frontage too much. yet they do need access to the frontage and with that i'll conclude my presentation. thank you. great. we should open up public comment . members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. sir, did you want to speak? mr. lewis? did you want to speak? i didn't realize i was listening on webex and then i. okay, now i'm transitioned to real life, so i have two minutes. right. okay. greetings.

so, i'm david elliott lewis from representing tenderloin people's congress. we have familiarity with this developer, d.o.j. sullivan. they have done other projects in the city and our neighborhood, so we found them to be a good faith developer. what i mean by that is they say what they're going to do and do what they say, and they've been honest. they haven't pulled anything shady, no shenanigan. they are really good developers, so we want to thank them for that. we presented this to our our at our vision 2020 meeting to the people of the tenderloin. and i must acknowledge that there was some mixed reaction not on the project design, but on the low level of inclusionary housing. yes, they're compliant with requirements, but it's not that many inclusionary units and frankly, whoever it was who said 80% of ami is low income, it's not and it's not for our neighborhood. 80% of ami does not serve the needs of our

neighborhood. now, this is not the fault of this developer. this is the fault of a system that pushed by the city that calls us 80% of ami low income. however, having said that, looking at the design of this project, it it looks good. there is no objections to the project. nobody objected to it. nobody said, no, we shouldn't build this. it was accepted. now these are condos and condos are beyond the reach of most of our residents that we that we represent. however you know, james sullivan keeps hoa fees to a minimum, so we appreciate that . they really do try to make their units affordable. they do everything they can. so we're thankful for that. i would say we generally approve of this project and i personally. david elliott lewis, approve of this project. and i'd think it does actually provide needed housing for the neighborhood. and thank you for your time and attention on. good afternoon. we reviewed

this project back in august of this year and would like to echo some of the comments made by the speaker before me. and jay sullivan is a local developer that has continued to invest in san francisco through the good times and the bad. and i think this project is exemplary of their efforts. it's our project review committee gave particularly high marks to the project's land use. the density for utilizing the state density bonus. although we always wish that they maximize the state density bonus, i realize that that's not always a popular opinion. the affordability for exceeding. the state density bonus requirements and obviously the public transit adjacent ness and proxies to various bus lines

and muni lines. all in all, we are very supportive of this project and hope to see 88 new units in the tenderloin. thank you. good afternoon, madam president. commissioners my name is mauricio chavez and i'm a organizer for the carpenters union, local 22 here in san francisco. i'm here to voice our concerns regarding the proposed project at 530 turk street. our concern centers around a lack of labor standards on a significantly large residential project. the carpenters union knows as well as everyone else in the city and state that we are in a housing crisis and there was a huge demand for all types of housing, from market rate to affordable and everything in between. it is our position as we watch the applicant's current active project at 988 harrison drag on month after month with no end in

sight that the proposed development would actually benefit on time and accuracy by using union labor on that note, there is also a crisis on how workers are treated in the city by contractors, developers and end users have a history of exploiting workers by not paying them area standard wages and benefits. that means as we recover from a pandemic, there is no commitment to health care for construction workers. on a project like this. no commitment to apprenticeship or a retirement fund. yes we need housing units, but at what cost? it is important that we support developers who work with labor to get these projects completed on time and on budget, while at the same time creating an environment where the workers who build the project can afford to live in the units that they build. as we green light projects like this, we get further and further away from that reality. we ask that the commission to support construction workers and postpone approval of the

proposed development until the applicant makes a commitment to labor. thank you for your time and service. seeing no additional members of the public coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. good afternoon, commissioners. jonathan brennaman again with district three resident. i strongly support this project and i thought there was one thing worth calling out here. this is right across the federal building on a major job center, really where lots of people that i also personally know still go to work regularly in person. so i think it is very important to emphasize this. this is enables people to live right where they work. this is great from a climate perspective. we're converting a parking lot into a housing, transit, adjacent housing. and i think, as the developer noted, they're not building the maximum parking.

they're actually building less parking. so also incentivizing transit use there. so it's a great project overall. i think it is a real improvement to the neighborhood and i support this. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no requests to speak, public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. great. thank you again for bringing this project forward. staff and the developer and also great to have such reinforcement from the community. so very excited to approve this project today. are there any motions, questions or comments from commissioners? commissioner moore very much in support of the project. indeed, sullivan is almost the only one with this type of project who has delivered over the last five six years and the projects are all of consistent quality. they have enough diversity really add to the quality of our city in the places they are and in support and make a motion to approve. second, with conditions

if there's no further deliberate commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner brown by commissioner ruiz, a commissioner dimond i, commissioner imperial high commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore high commissioner, president tanner high. so move commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 and places us on item 15 for case number 2022 hyphen 0050848 67 potomac street. this is a conditional use authorization, an. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners michelle taylor department staff the item before you is a request for conditional use authorization for the property at 67 potomac street. 67. potomac street is a three story over garage wood frame, single

family home and a contributor to the dubose park historic district. locally designated under article ten. the project site is located within an rh two zoning district and 40 x height and bulk district. the project includes the construction of a four story rear and horizontal addition to an existing single family residence. the addition will expand the existing 2626 square foot dwelling unit by approximately 1279ft!s, resultig in a unit with a gross floor area of 3905ft!s. the project requires a conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code section. 249.92 and 303 to allow a dwelling unit with a gross floor area in excess of 3000ft!s within the central neighborhood's large residents. special use district

on september 20th, the historic preservation commission heard a certificate of appropriateness for this project. they approved the project, finding it met the secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation. although not a condition of approval. hpc recommended that the architects consider for reshaping the roof of the rear addition with a more traditional roof shape consistent with the prevailing pattern of reforms in the neighborhood, the department has received comments and opposition to the project regarding the massing of the addition in relationship to the neighboring property to the north. the department has also received letters in a petition signed by several neighbors in support of the expansion of the single family home. in response to public comment. the design has been modified for greater conformity with the residential design guidelines as specifically a reduction of the overall rear addition massing and setbacks from neighboring light wells to provide relief to

adjacent properties. the department finds that the project is, on balance, consistent with the market. octavia plan and objective policies, objectives and policies and of the general plan, the size of the project and single family dwelling is in keeping with other residential properties in the neighborhood, and the proposed design is compatible with the dubose park historic district because the visible changes at the front facade are consistent with the existing building design, and the rear addition matches the roofline of the existing building, thereby minimizing the visibility of the addition from the public right of way. the property is compliant with the planning code and the residential design guidelines and the entirety of the new building is within the buildable area and will not require any variances or modifications. the project is necessary and desirable because it will expand the existing single family dwelling unit in a manner that is generally consistent with the prevailing pattern of

development. therefore, the department supports the proposed project and recommends approval with conditions. this concludes my presentation. i'm available to answer questions. thank you. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is allison posey. my husband here, tomaso posey. we're the homeowners that live at 67 potomac street with our children aged six, three and two. we come to you asking you that you approve our project that expands our home today. it's very cramped. when we go into our single bathroom as a family to brush teeth, we absolutely love our neighborhood and we don't want to be squeezed out. we could not afford to start again and purchase a home the size that we're seeking that you approve today. and so we're really trying to work with what

we have. and we have like just an absolute affinity to the neighborhood and our neighbors. we have with us today are our attorney, brett gladstone, and our architect, brooks mcdonnell. they are here to answer any questions you have. you may ask us as well. thank you. good afternoon. brett gladstone, land use attorney and the architect birx macdonald. i want to thank first michelle taylor, our planner and 21 of the 24 closest neighbors who are depicted in green here, who have written letters of support to you and planning staff while the habitable square footage of this house is only right. i'm just going to interrupt you real quick, sfcv can we go to the well, the habitable square footage of the house proposed is only to be 3001. square feet. the gross square footage is larger, as you heard, and that would that's what brings us to you today. the home will have a bedroom for each of the three

children. a guest room that will be allison's home office when guests are not present and a home office for allison's husband, tommaso. they're both lucky enough to have home work arrangements that allow them to be with their children. most of the week. after two adjacent neighbors in one building expressed reservations to the hpc, the project was nonetheless approved without any changes by the hpc. i can talk later about the hpc motion of approval, which i have here, to put in front of you to illustrate that their comment. one commissioners comment. the concessions we made are substantial. first, creating a lightwell opposite. the neighbor's main lightwell consists of one setback at almost three feet and a larger one at five feet. there's also a lightwell we created along the property line that creates a setback elsewhere between the two light wells on the adjacent property line. even though the distance of the neighbors

setback is only two feet seven inches the distance of our clients setback at their top floor will be five feet. the next concession was cutting the corner of one of the children's rooms to create a larger lightwell and this will increase the reflective light within the light. well, here i want to show you page 17 of the residential design guidelines because it depicts a light well which complies with the guidelines, of course. and it's very similar to the one we propose here. can you put it on the overhead? okay and this sketch demonstrate a couple of points. first, the light wells do not have to match on opposite sides. i think you have a sketch from page 17 of the design guidelines. it's in your brief, the setback of a proposed building addition to create a lightwell can be at the top floor only at the sketch indicates which you have in front of you and in our case, the setback is at all three floors, not one floor. as the

sketch you have shows, please note that the large windows on the right side of the guidelines drawing in your brief depict a fictitious neighbor's existing light. well, but it's a much larger light well than in the adjacent neighbor's building. today, while we have not seen the floor plans of today as opposing tenants and the size of their light, well, windows we see that the location of many of them at eye level only and the size of them makes us believe that most of those lightwell windows are kitchen, bathroom or closet windows only. like in the sketch, the client's building already covers one half to two thirds of the length of the light. well, of the neighbors at the lower floors as you no doubt heard before, san francisco, as of 2020, had a child population percentage. that is about half the size of the child population in the in the nation's largest 25 cities. nevertheless my

clients are striving to make sure that their children can grow up in the city and have exposure to its diversity and progressive values. and later, i'd be happy to talk about the preservation commission's decision. thank you. that concludes sponsors presentation. great uh, with that, we should take public comment. members of the public, if you'd like to please come forward and submit your comment. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. talk at this. yes hello. my name is heather pedrick. i live at 68 pierce street. so i'm in the neighborhood of allison and tommaso. we've lived there for 12 years and therefore then have been neighbors of allison tommaso for seven years. it indeed is a very wonderful neighborhood to be involved with . i can't begin to tell you how much i've loved it, so it's

important for all of us as neighbors, you know, to be all together and also to keep the children in the neighborhood. so we fully endorse course. my husband and i. what they want to do with the house. we as well had done our own house remodel recently. in the past, several years, and expanded up to upwards of 3500ft!s ourselves ad we're in the adjacent connected lot. so we look out across at allison thomas's house, one house over. we've seen the plans and we have absolutely no objection to the plans. and we believe that the roof line is in line, consisting with the design in our historic neighborhood. thank you. hello my name is merrill katz and i'm the

neighbor at 63 potomac street. i'm two doors down from them on the same side. i've been there for 24 years, since 1999. i was friends with the family who lived there before for 17 years. and i've been friends with them for the past seven years. and our neighborhood is a really special neighborhood and all the kids play on the street, at the doors are open, the kids can go back and forth to each other and keeping the families in the neighborhood is super important. we sorry, i don't like speaking in front of people. we did our own remodel also because those houses are all really small. you can't it's there's just no space for people. and so you need the space. you want to be able to have the family and you want to be able to also work at home in terms of the neighborhood, everyone's friends and i can see the back of their house from my house. i've looked at their plans also. it looks to me very similar to a lot of the houses

that have been remodeled in the past ten years. i don't really see a difference with it. and my husband and i also fully support their plans for expansion and what they want to do and staying in the city and keeping them as neighbors. thank you. thank you. last call for public comment, seeing no additional requests to speak, public comment is closed in this matter is now before you commissioners. thank you. thank you for the presentation. it seems like a reasonable and well designed project and done in very thoughtful collaboration with the neighbors, which we appreciate. are there any motions or comments from commissioners, commissioner moore i would like briefly hear from mr. gladstone regarding historic preservation and the roof issue. sure. thank you, commissioner brett gladstone. this is the motion of approval from the historic preservation commission. could i have the overhead on, please? and i've

highlighted in green the paragraphs that relate to what i'm saying. the motion of approval was unanimous and there was no condition of approval about changing any roofline at the rear. one commissioner did say that she wasn't sure about that and maybe the roofline should be changed. the architect can tell you why programmatically that negatively affects the inside, but i'm here to talk about the fact that it was one commissioner. it wasn't a vote of the commission. second, as i understand it, i wasn't there. but the commissioner who made that and suggested change to the rear was told that the hbc doesn't have commission because it's not on the national register, it's not on the california register, and it's not a city landmark. and that's why i believe the motion of approval and you can check with michelle taylor doesn't have a condition of approval, suggesting a change to the rear. so what i've put here is page

six of the motion of the cpc excuse me, the hbc preservation commission and in the green letters highlighted it's specifically refers to the consensus that the new rear roof line is consistent with historic guidelines. quote the new horizontal rear addition will not be visible from the street and the proposed side expansions will be set back from the building front wall, all to minimize visibility. and second, they say, quote, the new rear addition will the new rear addition will maintain the visible roof line of this historic property. birx, would you like to talk about what it does to the inside? just for a moment. if we change that as was asked by commissioner. thank you. absolutely. yeah. i think i can do this pretty quickly here. so we actually specifically designed the addition at the top floor to have a flat roof. it already has a very low ceiling. we're up against the height limit. if we were to do more of

a gabled roof, it would result in the height limit is for a sloped roof is determined from the center of the slope. and so it would actually push the ridge up higher here than what we have currently proposed, which obviously making a taller building would introduce even more shadow effects to the neighbors and it would also result in a loss of about a foot and a half all the way around the room, kind of diminishing the size of the room, i think by about 50ft!s to the point where it's almost not really a usable room anymore. so i know that that's interior and we're sort of more concerned with exterior, but that's that was part of the in terms of the exterior, i do think that if we did a sloped roof, it would end up being taller than what you see from the front of the building. you would see it from the sidewalk and there would be more shadow effects on the neighbors, all of which is less desirable for the neighborhood. i accept the

explanation. thank you just for bringing us in line with what the historic preservation did. i am in support of the project and would move to approve as conditions second. all right. thank you. no further deliberation, commissioners. there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner braun, a commissioner ruiz, commissioner dimond, a high commissioner, imperial high commissioner coppell high. commissioner moore and commissioner, president tanner high. so move commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 and will place us on item 16 for case number 2022 hyphen 011529k for the property at 27 alvarado street also a conditional use authorization. good afternoon, president tanner. members of the commission. laura aiello for department staff, the

conditional use authorization proposal is before you will increase the residential dwelling density from 4 to 6 units on a 50 700 square foot lot. the planning code allows three dwelling units on rh, three zoned properties and requires conditional use approval for increased residence density at a ratio of one unit per 1000ft!s of lot area. the project includes demolition of a detached one story garage and construction of a new four story 40 foot tall residence building with two flats and one parking space. the existing residential buildings at the project site will not be altered under the proposal. the site is located on the south side of alvarado street between san jose avenue and guerrero street. the

property measures 50ft wide by 114ft deep. the lot is currently developed with four structures and two driveway curb cuts. the main building facing alvarado street is a three story historic resource, with two dwelling units direct behind this building is a two story residential building with a one car garage and one dwelling unit. at the rear of the property is a two story former carriage house with four one car garages. as a residential unit with an attached deck on the second floor of the former carriage house were both legalized under a conditional use authorization for dwelling unit density and rear yard variance in 2015 on the garage proposed for demolition underway at historic resource evaluation and was found not to be historic. the existing curb cut for this garage will be removed

and the sidewalk restored. all of the parking on site will be accessed via an existing driveway curb cut centered between the main building and the proposed new building. the project maintains a scale of development that is appropriate to the district and compatible with adjacent buildings, the surrounding properties are zoned rh 3rm1 and valencia street, nct, the residential structures in this area are typically flats or apartment buildings of 2 to 3 stories in height and typical rh three zoned lots are 2500ft!s in size and allow three units per lot. there are approximately three other parcels on the subject block that have similar residential density to the project proposed today. the department has received two letters in support of the project and none in opposition.

staff recommends approval of this conditional use authorization request that the project will maximize the allowed dwelling unit density based on lot size. add two new family sized units to contribute to the city's housing stock while retaining the four existing units. this concludes my presentation. i'll be available to answer any questions. the project architects are here to address the commission. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is kevin clark and my wife and i are the owners of this lot. my wife has lived at 27 alvarado street for over 20 years. initially as a renter and we subsequently purchased out the property from our landlord. we live there with our two children, dylan and lola. both kids were literally born in this home and attended the nearby spanish immersion school, buena vista horseman dylan, who is on the autism spectrum, is currently enrolled at stern school in downtown san

francisco, which is an incredible school for kids with learning differences. and lola has soda as her top choice for high school next year. i firmly believe that the two housing units we propose are for much more value to san francisco than the current underutilized garage . if approved, my family will move into one of the new units, thereby freeing up a rent control unit for new residents. the existing property was dilapidated when we purchased it. apart from the extensive renovations to bring the existing units up to code. but my wife and i have no prior experience in construction. our property development and we don't own any other properties. we're just regular people with a passion to build something beautiful well and be a small part of the solution to bring much needed housing to san francisco. despite the challenges and sleepless nights leading up to this moment, we are profoundly grateful for the opportunity to present our case before you. so i ask you today, with an open heart, to approve this project. commissioners thank you for your time. hi.

planning commission. i'm mickey here. i'm the project architect representing winter gibson architects. i don't have that much to add. i just want to reiterate a few points. yeah this is a quirky, big lot in and we can fit a lot of units on it. we're not breaking any previous planning approvals as we had multiple letters of support and the architecture is contextual for size and form materials and scale. so. does that conclude the sponsor presentation? if so, we should take public comment. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item in the chambers. please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex.

seeing no one in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. paypal bailey i live across the street or i've rented across the street for 20 years. i've watched the development of this property from when it was literally what i would consider close to dilapidated in especially some of the other houses. and i think when i think about the city, there are a few things that we really need to help with. the housing one is more units and these this increase is what i would call real units, not just apartments and the second thing is we need people to take care of their properties. if you look up and down alvarado street, it's a mix of dilapidated buildings that are falling apart and some that are very well cared for. and having neighbors move in across the street and take care of their property, i think is been a real asset to the community. and, you know, our building has two families in

it. there are family and keeping making it easy for families like us to be here, i think is extraordinarily valuable. so i vote in support of this. okay. last call for public comment in the chambers. please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no additional requests to speak commissioners public comment is close in this matter is now before you, mr. moore, do you want to speak on this project? yeah, i speak about this project because i support it in 2015. it even at that time was a very, very good step into the right direction. it's a density, an infill type project that we really encourage it is not just a cookie cutter box, which we see many of, but indeed recognizes a context that even at that time was unique. i find this addition a wonderful answer to actually solving a rubik's cube, because the way the parts interact and it creates interest, i think it

creates an example of how to densify not just densify within an extruded box. but densify was on the site. we have the advantage of a slightly larger site than normal 50 by 114 is almost twice the size. it's actually two lots. so i encourage people to see this particular type of building as an example of what can be done. so i'll leave it with that. i am in full support and would definitely move to approve. second, thank you, commissioner brown. i just want to voice my support for this project as well . so this is the exact kind of setting and situation. if i walk by the front of the slot, i'd say, why is there not housing where that garage is? and so i'm really glad to see that there will now be housing where that garage is. so thank you so much. awesome thank you. very good. commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner brown, a commissioner ruiz, a commissioner dimond, a commissioner imperial, a commissioner coppell, a

commissioner moore and commissioner, president tanner, i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 and will place us under your discretionary review calendar for the final item. good luck with your project. so thank you for the final item on your agenda today. number 17, case number 2023 hyphen 000276 at 2919. webster street. these people have been here since the beginning of the hearing. good afternoon, commissioner honors david winslow, staff architect. the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of building permit application 2020 2.12 28.92 79 to construct a three story horizontal rear addition on a new raised roof and a rear roof deck on the fourth floor to a two unit building. the existing building is a category b eligible historic resource built in 1900. the requester. zachary tyler carrico of 2122

union street, the adjacent property to the south is concerned that the proposed project introduces privacy concerns and deprives neighbors of light and air due to the additions proximity to the rear of their building. his proposed alternate is to limit the addition to the lower level in the way that does not negatively impact 2122 union street to date, the department has received one letter in opposition and ten letters of in support of the project. the project is seeking a variance to expand the rear of the existing building sideways within the required rear yard. the proposed addition aligns with the other adjacent rear building wall of the neighbor to the north and similar to other existing property, similar to other existing properties, including the requester. this block consists of other buildings that encroach into the rear yard, the rear yard would still provide enough usable open space for planning code section 134. the

project would have a small step out deck on the third floor and a deck in similar size to the requester's deck on the fourth floor. neither of which creates an obvious infringement of privacy. the project sponsor has additionally modified the plans to reduce the depth of the fourth floor deck by 3.5ft and as modified staff deems, the project complies with the residential design guidelines and presents no exceptional or extraordinary circumstances and therefore, i recommend not taking discretionary review and approving actually, i change that. i. i recommend you do take the discretionary review to memorialize that change. thank you. okay. very good. commissioners. so we should hear from the requester. you each

you'll have five minutes. okay so they're going to the overhead . hello commissioners, and thank you for having us here today. my name is carrie henrich and i'm here representing myself and my husband, tyler carrico, who live in the adjacent property. 22919. webster street. before we lay out some of our concerns, i think it's really important that we help provide some orientation for our properties. so i just want to point to the overhead projector as you can see, the building highlighted in red is the project site and then the building in blue is our adjacent property. we it's important to note that one of the primary reasons why we're uniquely impacted by the proposed project is due to the orientation of our building. while most properties, including 2919 webster, are oriented with the primary living spaces facing the street side of the building, our property actually has the primary indoor and outdoor living spaces facing the rear yards of our neighbor. these unique circumstances are what give rise to our concerns. and i would just like to say up

front that we don't take this lightly and we wouldn't be here if we didn't have real concerns for our our privacy and how this project may impact our day to day living. that being said, we also have great respect for the homeowners, and we hope that we continue to cohabitate amicably, no matter the outcome of this hearing, which is what we intend to do. with that said, we'd like to touch on a couple of our most significant concerns as when we purchased our home back in 2020. we diligence the area and got comfortable with the existing setup of the neighboring properties for some context, today, 2919 webster is laid out with a workshop on the first floor. a family room and adjacent deck on the second floor and a laundry room with an adjacent deck on the third floor. as you can see, all of these spaces, these do extend beyond the average rear yard setback of the neighboring properties, as which is denoted by the dotted line that tyler put up. now so the current uses of these existing spaces on each floor are critical. today, the lower level is an indoor workshop which is both out of sight from our property and all

indoors, making it largely insulated and not impactful to our day to day living. the second floor is more insight. however, it has been largely unused and it's somewhat insulated by the adjacent trees that hover along the property line. the most important floor today is the third floor, where the property has a relatively small outdoor deck that is highly visible from our property and from where we are highly visible to theirs. the deck sits adjacent to a laundry room, which is not heavily trafficked. and although we have often felt a loss of privacy through the throughout this space, we understand that it was part of the setup and we bought into it. though i will say we truly never anticipated that the building could have been approved for an even further rear yard variance above and beyond what is there today within the design of the of the proposed project. we have some major concerns. the new design creates some very specific changes of use for these spaces which result in them being more highly trafficked areas. as such, some of the uses and some of the issues that we've had to live with today, including high sound transmission and lack of privacy, will become even more pronounced given that both the

owners, their pets and their guests will be more readily occupying the areas directly adjacent to our living room. even today, if i walk across my living room floor while the dog is on the deck, it alerts the dog and it will start barking. the same is true if i open my front door. and the same is most certainly true if i step out onto my deck or even just have a conversation within my home. as you can see today, the primary living space for 2919 webster is to the right hand side of the average yard setback for the remaining properties with this new proposal, the primary living space will be essentially expanded. 13ft in front of and 18ft towards our property. and given the change of use of space, this is more of essentially adding a new three story adu to that area, rather than continuing the operations as it has been today. in addition to this new and expanded change of use, the project will be also adding roughly 300ft!s of outdoor livig space directly in front of our house for the context that represents roughly 30% of our entire house at this point. i think it's very important to reiterate the issue that we

raise during the beginning of the discussion as i previously mentioned, our our house and primary living space faces the back of our neighbor's property, our living space has one source of light and one source of airflow, which consists of two sliding glass doors facing the rear yard of 2919. webster our with the addition of this deck, our neighbors will now have further direct line of sight into our house through the sliding glass door. we have struggled with lack of privacy in the layout of the properties today, but with this will significantly be magnified with the new design, our only option in this new layout to protect our privacy would be keep our door and shades closed at all times, which would then lead to no airflow and no natural light for our entire house. excluding our bedroom area. we have tried to explain this privacy concern in the past, but they've not seen eye to eye with us. so we wanted to put it in a slightly new context to help people understand with the existing deck that they have today and with any additional deck, though, we can see them on their deck. they are able to choose when they step out onto the deck and in what way they present

themselves in that space, knowing that they are essentially stepping into a public space the way anyone would on a street or sidewalk. we unfortunately do not have that luxury unless we decide to live with our doors and shade close at all times. we do not have privacy in their home and their line of sight into our space. it's in that space that we that is your time. but you will have a two minute rebuttal. okay thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. can you help me with this. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is albert costa,

architect for the project sponsor. we started this project over a year ago in 2022. we did the pre-application process. contacting all our close the closest neighbors around the area. we came up with a design which we thought was respectful to the neighborhood and the existing conditions. the back of the house of this property. it's a two unit house is falling apart. it's in disrepair. it has a brick foundation which is crumbling. and it's too skinny. so we wanted to propose to create like a usable space back there. so there'll be the proposal will be bedrooms instead of a public deck. can you switch the slides? no, no. we wanted to talk for them. all right. more. one more. let's see

. okay. there it is. so we made the proposal here is to do a side infill addition. seven foot seven in width. and it keeps back from the side property line , the public deck that the applicants are talking about is closer at. and we're going to be . yeah taking that down and then proposing to have making this side space more usable. the proposed infill is not going any further back than the existing back wall. maintaining the existing rear yard to remain. we worked with planning staff arriving at the original design, which we liked. our planner at the time, brandon gun, who's been here in this chamber, supported the side infill proposal. fast forward to the variance where we also were very verbally supported in terms of

privacy. we think the proposed project is actually it has less openings and windows bedroom in the back and, and keeping the side infill that was proposed buried into the massing of the house and removing the existing elevated decks will increase that privacy is what we think. and. there's a timeline that we wanted to make sure that you saw the letters. here's a map of the letters of support from other neighbors around the area who support the project. here's a view of the house from the applicant that was there. diagram and this is the this is

the modified this is a modified version we've in in light of the applicant's concerns, we have voluntarily stepped back the upper level roof deck and guardrail for this hearing this morning. we so yeah so that's what we're doing. we basically have made a concession beyond what was originally supported by our staff planning staff and this is it right here. so just to be so that's. also want to mention that the ridge at the top is being pulled back two feet. is that right? that's good. why don't you take the rest of the time? hello, commission. thank you for being here and for your time. my name is niraj miglani. i'm the were the we live in the home. i live with my wife, laura miglani, and

that's milan, our son laura is a high school spanish teacher here in san francisco. i'm a restaurateur in union square. our family's been we've had our restaurant since 1995. and we opened another 1 in 2000. we took over the old farallon restaurant. when i do hospitality, we you know, it's all about facility management and engaging with our our community. and so for us, this project is to make the home usable for a growing family. we wanted to make exciting space. we wanted to do something of quality. we also wanted to engage the neighbors. so i went around and i knocked on every one's door to let them know about this plan. and in fact, i got everyone's numbers. and at the end of the year, we have a end of the year. high school school, end of the year party where my we invite all the neighbors and our family friends . and i had a mariachi and i got to meet all the neighbors that i had met knocking on the door to share this plan. and for us, you know, we just want to make it usable. we took the direction of the planner from the city. we

took the feedback from our from our neighbors. and we also made a change to it with their feedback. that is your time. thank you. you'll have a two minute rebuttal as well. i don't see anybody in the chamber, but just for procedural matters, we should open up public comment. anyone in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. let's go to our if you want to submit your testimony remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. but just press it once. if you keep pressing it, you're going to lower your hand. mr. erlich did you want to submit testimony. player yeah. he keeps raising his hand and lowering it. but mr. erlich, i've unmuted you. if you want to

submit. great. thank you. i'm charles erlich. i'm the neighbor to the north at 29, 25, 29, 29 webster street. we've been there since 1980. we support the proposed remodel, although this building is largely interior, needs serious work to make it much more usable. the proposal maintains the character in the shape withoutrillioneally encumbering the rear. the average rear yard setback is not applicable because the proposed setback, the proposed rear extension of the remodel is the same as as the existing rear extension of my property, which has been there since 1905. so that's our support. i think the concessions appear to address the concerns and that's what i have to say. great. last call for public comment, seeing no

additional requests to speak commissioners public comment is closed. we should go to rebuttals. requester you have two minutes and if we could use the this again. yeah. great. thanks i was trying to say a lot before, so maybe i'll just try to make it a little bit more clear. so here's our property here is the area above the red line is our livable square foot for our entire house. and that's sort of the light and air door that i was referring to earlier in the proposal plans. the crux of the concern is the porch on the upper level, which comes out. tyler. which comes out to here. and from the inside of our space, they can see essentially directly into our entire living space. so all i was trying to say is that without those shades closed, there's really no sense of privacy. i think that it's a great that they're trying to

improve the property and they're have a growing family and there's a lot of square footage to work with. i think what would resolve a lot of our concerns is if that roof deck was pulled back a little bit further, it would help to alleviate some of our privacy concerns while also still allowing them to expand the property as much as they want to within the intended design that they originally planned. with the exception of that boundary being back a little bit further, allowing us to feel that we have a little bit of privacy within our own home. as far as the neighbors setbacks go, i just wanted to point out that although you can see here, they are, the other neighbors do go back to that line. they are much lower level cars and so they cannot see directly into our space. so it's very it's less relevant for them . we're the only neighbors that are there. so that's why we're specifically raising it and not others. and we hope the best for them in their project. but anything else? okay, that's it. thank you. thank you. project

sponsor. you have two minutes if you want it. yeah, there are. albert costa. there are tight quarters back here in the marina and i really don't have anything else to say. yeah, i mean, just the. the concern about privacy is, you know, we're just a reminder. i mean, we don't want to be being looking into you know, if someone doesn't want us to look in, we won't look in. but what i'm trying to say is we're in an urban environment and i can you know, if i even look at mr. chuck and liz, our neighbors, you know, they're looking into mr. and mrs. fong's allen helen fong's kitchen. and she's always curious. you know, she they're both retired, says i always like looking at her books, you know, and it was always really refreshing just to see, oh, she had all these books. it's a very natural thing to be looking. i can see my neighbor across the street in front of me in their living room and their dogs. and it's just

very it's a very challenging thing to avoid in this urban environment. we're trying to make something usable, elegant, something of quality. we've kind of we've taken the direction of the city. we've taken the direction. we did make a change for our neighbors and we want to be helpful. and listen. so, i mean, but at the end you can look at mr. francesco, who owns osteria across the street in his back, in his backyard, when he comes out with his with his restaurant crew, i can see mr. and helen fong sometimes when they're hanging out in their kitchen. we had the mariachi party, she said, i'm so glad you finished the party at 9:00. i said, i know you're my neighbor. that's it. yeah. thank you. thank you. staff. yes, we want to thank planning staff and thank you, commissioners, for your consideration. that concludes our great, great commissioners. there's nothing else except for you to deliberate. deliberate. thank

you. i just want to commend everybody, your child is very well behaved. he's very adorable and is relatively quiet. he was crying right now. but thank you all for being here for so long and thank you for the amicable presentation. and i sounds like you all will continue to get along, which gives me a little bit of hope. i just wanted mr. winslow, if you can just restate what the change is, because it seems like part of the change does satisfy the requesters concern. but i just wanted to be clear on what what we would be adopting with the modifications. so as presented by the project, sponsor their presentation. turn on your mic please as present by the project sponsor. the latest proposal they pulled back the upper floor, the fourth floor, deck, 3.5ft. right. which which we're just saying. great. take that and take to memorialize it. okay great. and maybe just. and we have the drawings are in your packet. i'm not sure which sequence, but yeah, i just wanted to make sure that i understood that because it seems

like what it was saying and just, you know, additional neighborly thing, i don't intend it to be part of our motion, but plants or other types of screening can help that both will withstand wind because that's also a challenge. when you were talking about outdoor things. so you want to have things that aren't going to blow over, but maybe bamboo or other things that could help to provide privacy and some greening. i don't i don't feel it needs to rise to the level of us mandating that happen. but again, you sound like very amicable neighbors. and so maybe there's some other solutions that can be added that aren't part of the built environment. in addition to pulling back. so commissioners, we would need a motion to take and approve as modified. commissioner dimond, beyond the change proposed, i don't see anything exceptional or extraordinary. so i would move to approve as to take and approve as modified. second very good commissioners. there is a motion that has been seconded to take on approve with modifications on that motion. commissioner braun, a commissioner ruiz, a commissioner dimond high commissioner, imperial high, commissioner coppell high.

commissioner moore high commissioner. president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 and concludes your hearing today . i will remind you that next thursday, your last hearing, we're starting at 10 a.m. for a joint hearing with rec park next thursday, 10 a.m. joint hearing with rec park. all right. with that, we are adjourned. it.

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to introduce our discussion this afternoon, please welcome to the stage the honorable london breed , mayor of san francisco. so.