avenue, you have the sense that you're looking at the tops of those towers. you basically are. you are up at about 100 feet. they are at about 145. >> the other thing that we took note of, the retail part that i mentioned his under ownership -- it is owned by a separate owner. there are plans that we were noticing that the plans called for development on the block and it would create a four-story fabric up against nineteenth ave. what is interesting is that the 65-foot base that we are talking about, by the time you get up to nineteenth avenue, it will be about 35 feet above the high point.

the towers that i mentioned in the southeast corner, the view coming in the san francisco right now, this is what you see coming out nineteenth avenue. what we wanted to do was replace the towers so that it would actually have a different kind of appearance, and not dated appearance from people coming up so that we really update the southern entrance from what it is today. one thing to keep in mind from the standpoint of what the neighborhood is going to feel like, the way we have thought about the streets, they are really meant to be friendly to the pedestrian and friendly to cyclists.

and friendly to residents of that when they have opportunities to open up their homes and engage with the public, part of it includes a series of setbacks. it will allow for and have ground-floor units that are required as part of the guidelines. all the units are required to have injuries from the adjacent public way. this setback gives us an opportunity that ranges from about 6 20 feet. that setback is divided into two parts, one is a common set back his own for landscape, and unified neighborhood, and a portion of it and that is dedicated for use by the residents that would be opportunities for students and

other kinds of private uses. all the buildings will be required to have about 18 feet of occupied the space against the public way. trying to make sure that we don't have long as blank walls that all of the front edges of the buildings are actively used and will actively engage the public realm. one thing that i think is also important, one of the things that we have done is we have created a regulating plan that is folding into the guidelines. this actually codifies the lot of the very specific ways for each block. what you see here is one of the plans -- on the left-hand side of the page, what you see is the amount of footprint that is allowed for each category.

even though we have a 45 foot high category, this block is limited to 72,000 square feet of coverage for 45 feet. there is a requirement of 17,200. that is our way of making sure that there is variety at each block both in terms of the scale and type of building, but in terms of the technologies that might be inserted. each of those areas and types are signed with anything above 45 feet having a designated area. for example, there are areas for 85 feet or taller. you concede there is a total of 19,000 square feet to allow for buildings that are taller. it is done in such a way that you can't put that all in one

place. it has to be divided up into smaller buildings. this is a way to make sure that this is a fabric that is appropriate to the scale of the neighborhood. as i mentioned, each of these buildings would have had set back from the public way. on top of that, there are a series of requirements. we thought a little bit about positions of the buildings and how they are regulated in each block. there is a series of design guidelines standards that will limit the size of the building. you have a series of requirements like a maximum floor area, maximum diagonal, and one of the things we have

found is that there needs to be another device or mechanism for further refining the shapes and portions of the building. any building shape, you could have a certain size, but either side of that building can be greater than a surge in dimension. what that gives us is an opportunity to actually, for example, take a large building and require that it not only be articulated, but actually have it be divided to a much finer skill of building sovereignty. there are many good examples of this, various neighborhoods such as building at the foot of the

bay bridge. in addition, to insure that the street wall is active, a certain amount of articulation and additional architectural detailing requiring active ground floor in certain locations, i mentioned to the dwelling unit has to have been directly from the outside. one of the things that really helps people recognize residential buildings is when you see balcony's -- [inaudible] and the guideline for outdoor balcony. those are the buildings. the open space is the next broad category. i will go through this fairly quickly. the idea in general is that

every resident is within a short walk of some open space. i am pretty sure there is not point in the project where you are not more than a block away from some form of open space. what we have done is try to take a series of spaces that are in roadways and roundabout circles to try to collect those left over spaces to gather them up with one concentrated area, so that they become usable for people. it really isn't necessary where families -- will start to gather up spaces and create open spaces and it becomes the kind of place. there are six neighborhood commons.

there are four on the west side. it becomes particularly important because it becomes places for residents to live a little bit further from the retail street. the requirement is about 0.35 acres. it can be designed for there to be a minimum size. each one of these six, pretty much every resident is within two minutes of walking radius and it is quite large. they give identity to subareas -- many of the community

meetings, people like to gather their and walk their dogs. we are keeping that space, but we are adding to it. actually a small pond, and it is the gathering point of a corridor that as part of the home system. i don't know if you recall that all of the water is not being sent to the stores anymore and having to be treated. it is going to run across the surface. the beginning point is collecting a lot of the water and having it run through this pond. it is connected to an 18-acre series of open areas that include sports fields, organic farms, a stream corridor that

flows out and it might be a little hard to see, but basically, on the right side of this image is where it starts. it cuts across and becomes parallel to gonzales at the lower half of the page. i mentioned the organic farm. this is something that is part of the sustainability aspect. it gives us the opportunity to have some fresh stuff grown here. we have been speaking to a variety of nonprofit organizations as well as organizations that operate in a similar farm up in the headlines. a very similar climates. and then the corridor culminates in an overlooked.

at the very extreme southwest corner of the community, where it connects, its position is such, and when we look at some of the historic photos, it is a wonderful vistas of the lake. you can't see it right now. the piece of program is actually a parking garage. we want to open that up to the public. we want there to be scarce for people to come up directly from the intersection in terms of the residents back to the late, which is the regional point of origin. as the athletic fields in the south side of the neighborhood, this part of the city, there is

a lot of residents in neighborhoods that are looking for recreation. we think it is an opportunity for soccer fields. one of the things we have been doing is talking to the presidents -- they are excited about the possibility of places for the teams to play and practice. away in the corner there, we have a street connecting and we can have a pedestrian path to allow the sports teams and our neighbors to connect up to the playing fields. one of the smaller places, this is an important one.

originally, we wanted to come further into the neighborhood so that it can access and run through the neighborhood retail street. in order to allow it to run more efficiently and give it to a dedicated right of way, it is now behind the retail street. it acts as a link between one of the stations and passes right by the grocery store. get off in the evening and walk by the grocery store on the way home. you can see that the stock is at the right-hand side of the image. we see this as a very important part of the project because it is something that not only serves the neighborhood, but it is integral to the greater community. it takes what is currently a

very overcrowded -- it is the busiest surfaced stock. it moves it out of the center of highway one. when the platform goes up, it becomes dangerous because people have to stand on the trackway or on the roadway. it moves that station onto a parcel that will be dedicated to the transit stop. actually having the design standards and guidelines, magazines and newspapers can make it convenient for commuters. and also the opportunity to provide over had shelter or windbreaks making transit much more convenient. the residents or the people that use the san francisco on safe

users will only have to cross nineteenth ave. the last piece is this a series of community gardens between the towers. at first, it might seem strange to locate the community gardens between the towers. it is almost 200 -- it is much wider than the buildings are tall. in the shadow analysis, where there are plenty of times when the shadows don't come anywhere near the community gardens. in fact, there is a set of community gardens that what we had envisioned was expanding. this comprises a total of about 1 acres of open space.

one of the things that we heard a loud and clear was how much they love the courtyard fabric. one of the things he wanted to ensure is that the majority of the blocks have a provision and a requirement for open space that is not on top of an elevator raj and would be accessible to all of the residents of that bloc. and we have created opportunities for that open space to be visible from the street. there are actually pedestrian paths that will let you see when and walk into some of these courtyards. much like what you see out there today. on the northwest corner, there is some open space associated with the towers.

this is one of the first blocks that would be built. you see the buildings on the southwest and northeast corner is. what is currently a surface parking lot would actually be reduced to a simple street with a minimum parking spaces that are something that we needed to obtain in order to honor the leases for those residents. that concludes my presentation. commissioner miguel: before we continue, do you have any questions on this section? commissioner antonini: this was really good. let me gather my thoughts here. when you pointed out the densities in the area, you focused on the dense parts of western san francisco. that is, at the old side, it is

much less dense and the extension, not that it matters, but the area's most closely aligned are the least dense. those are not put in here, but just as a matter of analysis. in rendering of the towers is really early. they seemed a little glassy, and i am not sure if that is conjectural -- contextual. that design can be held as we move along to try to fit into the architecture to the west of western san francisco.

the open space issues, the organic farm looks awfully big. it seems like an awful lot of space and i am not sure how many people are going to be tending to vegetables or whatever you are going to try to grow. it is nice to have son when you grow things like that. i think you have to really look and make sure that you don't allot more space that is practical. you have it aligned in a situation where you get as much as possible. the neighborhood commons look fine, keep them as simple as possible. and letting as much sun through as possible. you want trees that are not blocking too much sun and are more ornamental than shade

trees. most of the rest of the stuff i thought was really good. i think with some of the courtyards, they were a little complicated. i think the lawn is really a good idea and it works well. not many complicated plantings, people want places where they can relax and it is a lot more maintenance as you keep putting different elements in there. anyway, that is my view on what you have presented so far. commissioner moore: i personally have difficulty using other parts of the city has a density comparison because neighborhoods like north beach and others are older established neighborhoods

that rely completely on mixed use. from the very beginning, they fall unto [unintelligible] buildings and streets interact in a way that high-density is supportable. when i compared to what we are doing, we are retrofitting even if it is a suburban neighborhood. from a low density of 21 dwellings to 59, it is a transition from low density to high density which i have slide problems with, partially because it tries to make a recall on the suburban notion that are counter

to basic principles of identification. i am wondering why you would not have tried to develop a diagram to completely read developed the east side of the site in a manner that would take on contemporary forms of neighborhoods with conventional streets and blocks that don't have to work around the awkward geometries. i think we are getting into a conflict here. while the west side is generally quite convincing to generate a smaller block, i find the design on the east side somewhat unconvincing. for me, that is where the largest amount of problems lie.

>> that was a subject that was one of the issues and challenges, something that we had a great deal of frustration for us early on in the project because we wanted to do exactly that. we wanted to take away this remnant of a 4 in san francisco geometry is tried to make something that was much more a part of san francisco. when we got to the specifics of analyzing how this would happen, we had to deal with the fact that this is a living community. there are residents that live here every day. they made this commitment that they would only have to move once. the streets are all city streets with infrastructure on them or underneath them. we could not find a way to simply wipe the table clean. in the implementation of this,

we have to work block by block. yet prevented us from being able to do this. one of the things that we really try to do is to take that streak that can be quite disorienting. actually, if we can get -- the hexagonal st., in its current form a kind of and suddenly. we tried to unravel its soviet reforms and neighborhood boulevard. and you have this large open spaces of that you can orient yourself. although we have this radiating geometry of what was there, i think what we have done is try to take that can turn it into creating a single street that runs through the neighborhood and ties it together to become a

way for residents and visitors to become oriented and access smaller, individual streets where people might be living. commissioner moore: let me ask you a question if i may. what determined the density of the project for you? we do want to create a higher density near transit, but the distance of your showing in one of your diagrams, this one by far exceeds the established distances by which people walk to transit. we have studies throughout the united states from the introduction of the red line and green line in washington d.c. where we are trying to retrofit suburbia more closely to downtown washington, it is used as a criteria that people did not walk much further than five

minutes. if the normal expectation is 3 minutes, the actual expectation will be beyond five minutes. in the existing established neighborhoods, like north beach in the downtown neighborhoods, you are probably walking a little bit further. more than just about 50% of the units lie beyond the walking distance. how do you resolve that many people living as far away from transit as they do? >> the bus that comes through the neighborhood, there will be a neighborhood shuttle.

if you go back to -- [no audio] if you look at the diagram, there is a red line that moves through the neighborhood that is kind of like a keyhole shape. the neighborhood shuttle would allow residents to easily access all of the transit and it would also serve directly to the daily city. during non-peak hours, we would use it for the residents to have access to west lake as sort of

regional shopping in the area. commissioner moore: you believe that a shuttle system will ultimately encourage people to use transit even if the shuttle is a more on demand type thing? >> it will be a scheduled shuttle. the way m thatuni -- way that muni is setting up the system is a transit line the other buses can come into the neighborhood and feed into. the shuttle becomes a parallel component to that strategy. commissioner moore: could you explain to us the densities? it is very high density given that people live in a completely different building type except fo