so yesterday i took a picture. there is a lot going on here, so bear with me. i took a picture from the pedestrian overpass on cesar chavez. this is a view looking at the whole area from the north. it is rather obscure, but this is the peak of 1559 hampshire street. pardon me. this is what i have to work with. that is my best guess as to the size. if you see there is kind of a slow on the hill here -- and

that is the peak of 1569. lastly, i have done my best to keep this to scale. this is a close-up view. down below that is the deck, a full 40 feet down. president olague: thank you. >> my name is gabriel. a few years ago, the mayor had a town meeting and took my question about muni. we have the transit. the streets are narrow. it is very steep. he put me in contact with the

guys at muni. we e-mail back and forth. after a month of doing this, the answer is we are never going to have transit in our corner of the city. recently, the proposed even doing away with 27 bryant for physical reasons. that would mean having to walk even further. i know you have seen this image of the garage. there we go. the contact parking there, there are three cars. the parking dimensions are shown in the plan submitted by the developer as 7 feet by 16 feet, 112 square feet. the compact parking requires a minimum of 127.5 square feet. the planning code minimum for a compact zone is 112.5 square feet. you can see the parking plan is unworkable. five cars will not fit in the garage.

the problem here is one of overbuilding. the parking is a mechanism to keep the building in scale. thank you. >> good afternoon. i live at 2 peralta. everybody that moves into these huge new buildings will have to make a u-turn in front of my driveway. i have seen 17 accidents since 1983 when i moved into the house from people speeding up the street and turning onto peralta. this exacerbates the problem. i am upset that all the efforts we have made, after several meetings with the developers and the owner and the architect -- it has resulted in false information being presented to you and to the planning

commission. several of these things have been covered, so i will not repeat them. but is it too much for our neighborhood? we need all the green we can get in this city, in this world, and especially in this block of peralta. president olague: thank you. >> good afternoon. i live at 120 haliday, corner of peralta. every morning when i walk my dog, there are illegally parked cars. these cars prevent fire trucks from reaching my home, should there be a fire. two years ago there was a fire at the corner of york. trucks were detained from getting there and the house was gutted. this is a danger to the

neighborhood. if the project is scaled down to fit within the parking they can offer, it will make our neighborhoods sipper. -- safer. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is sean traffic. -- sean patrick. i have been here for 11 years, and my wife has lived on this block of peralta all her life. i would like to see this empty lot of some property built on it. i do not like empty lots in the neighborhood. i would be a supporter of a project in context with the rest of the week. i recently had work done on my property. i met with the neighborhood. i feel this has not been the case with the proposed project and the goal is to push through

a project they note is not consistent with the rest of the street. they did not get the approval of the design review board, nor did they have meetings with the neighbors. the building size creates a dwarfing effect on property surrounding it, apart from the fact that the property is not consistent with the street in design. but they are proposing is an apartment building with 11 buildings. they are trying to squeeze for families into a space for two, with vertical mast and book. as ridiculous as it sounds, they want to put all the parking in one building. the downhill lot is 3300 square feet. my one parking space will be in another building that will require me to use a pilot system -- a pallet system.

this will be incredibly difficult to use. to reiterate, my mother-in-law, who lived in the neighborhood for 50 years, who commented first on the bus zones -- she does not believe in people having as many cars as they do in the city. she is 82 and bought a car so she could drive to the bus stop. she drives three blocks to the bus stop because she cannot walk up the hills. please listen to the east slope review board. this site needs a property that is compliant with our street. i know it has been a long day. i appreciate your time. >> good afternoon. my name is michael keats and i live at 35 peralta. i am here to express my strong

opposition to the overall size and scale of the proposed development. this in no way fits with the existing character of our neighborhood. section 242, bernal heights special use district, states that the special characteristics and hillside typography of an area of older buildings on lots smaller than other low-density areas in the city -- there shall be a special use district. this is too much development for such small, precarious lots. these lots should not be over build so that the current developer can make large profits without regard for neighborhood impact. nothing really changed with the plan between june 5, 2010, when the design review board wrote the project was not complying with the spirit or the intent of the bernal heights east slope

guidelines, and february 2011. in the last letter, the review board rights, "we cannot recommend the department of city planning approve this project as proposed." in that time, the developer and owner only changed their game plan, hiring a lawyer. since then, they have presented a petition without making substantive changes to the project. their plans, presentations, renderings, reports, and letters have all tried to paper over the fact that they are trying to build too much on too small a space. it would also appear the planning department may not be using the local expertise and long experience of the design review board, as set forth in the planning code. it is instead of arguing that the property developer should

push this project through, ignoring the code. bernal does have specific parking requirements, but the special use district is not a tool to provide an abundance of parking. it keeps project in scale with the rest of the neighborhood. this is not an out of date notion. this is what the planning code has for this area so it does not get over build for the benefit of city tax revenues. this is partly why the east slope design review board came into existence in the first place. the planning department has dropped the ball by not making the developer adhere to these requirements. we are not against building on this space. owners should be allowed to build if they follow the city requirements. create a properly scaled the

design. thank you very much. >> david pilpel. i do not live in the neighborhood but am familiar please stand by. please stand by.although both st olague: -- of peralta have a mix of one and two-unit buildings, there is a retaining wall have with across peralta.

it significantly affect the way the block face is viewed. if you have not been out in the area and have heard from the speakers, there really are significant sloop issues. this case really argues for a scale model. it argues there is a complete down slope there. it is very difficult to get around what i am saying is that only the north side should be relevant to your discussion. i strongly encourage you to take dr to reduce this project to two single-family units. that would eliminate the need for the parking variance. president olague: are there any additional speakers? seeing none, project sponsor. >> i am brett gladstone.

i would like to introduce a new addition to our office. i represent tom and gene. i want to thank ben fu. we had three meetings with the neighborhood, three with the design review board separately. about muni, i am not going to go into it. as you probably know, the family behind me that is building this army and the people. the can tell you there is a bryant street stop two blocks away, and there is a turn -- [shouting from the audience] this is a case about parking and units. the design review board could not have said it more clearly. that board is not an overnight organization. it has been around a long time. i respect it more than some groups that just arrived overnight.

your staff thinks that are wrong about compliance with the design review guidelines. some of what they say simply does not follow today's policies. we told you very simply. they have the extra parking requirement not only because they like cards, -- like cars, but they try to keep your lots than the zoning allows, and they want smaller units. it is a trade-off between parking and cars. because people can walk to muni stops, i do not think it is the place to give up units for cars. tom bought this land for his family, as you know. he is putting his daughter and grandson in the units. he grew up a few blocks away. his mother still lives there. the rentals will be keeping the mortgage payments down, allowing his children to live there for less and giving him returned

income. he is not a developer. the design review board -- is a long letter. if you read it, it separates its concerns from the immediate neighbors concerns. read it carefully. the design review board has only two remaining concerns. we have made 10 or 12 changes the architect will tell you about. but there are two left. one is that the design review board once the upper floor of the lowest building of the hill to be smaller. the design review board once seven parking spaces instead of four. regarding the lower floor, that is an important part. that is the floor where rhonda, her husband, and their children will be living. big need three bedrooms. the design review board would take a rare and a 7 foot

setback and go from 7 feet to 15 feet setback, with a five-foot said back on the side. that leaves a room of eight to 9 feet in length. 19 feet in size is enough to have a stairway to get up to a bathroom. that is about it. we ask you to keep that in mind. i do have drawings to show you in my rebuttal. if the commission wanted a reduction, there is a way to do it. the way to do it is not to set it back and the side. there is shifting that can be done. regarding the parking, we do not have to do five. we offered five to the neighborhood. we could do four. they look the same from the

outside. if you wish us to do five, there was a mistake in the drafting of the drawing, and the mistake is that i just learned that the drafter drew in a full-size cars in compact spaces. that is the reason you cannot find people opening the door to get in. if you do not want 5, that is fine. regarding the flooding and the sidewalk, on rebuttal i can talk about it. i met with the p.w. and the architect -- with dpw and the architect. they thought we were creating a safer sidewalk. i can go into that later. some of the important things to remember is that there is a good 25 feet between me dr

requestor's home and the side of our building. that is generous, especially by san francisco standards. president olague: speakers in support of the project sponsor. seeing none. dr requestor respective -- dr requestors, you have two minutes each. >> commissioners, i am almost beside myself. the sponsors response to our complaints -- it is terribly upsetting. if mr. arcolini works for muni, he clearly does not take a bus. we will stand by our commitment. there is not a bus stop within three blocks of that property. there is not. if you do, you have to climb a mountain to get there.

secondly, this irrelevant stuff that gets in there -- i don't know. the owner of the property owns three other properties, one of which is a six-unit apartment building not a half mile from where we are talking about. if he has a problem with renting income in retirement, there is something wrong with the other three buildings he owns. thank you. president olague: would you like the additional two minutes? project sponsor, you have two minutes. >> i wanted to talk a little bit about the sidewalk. i and the architect met with dpw and with the building

department, and what they like about what we are doing is the following. there is a wall that has been cut in two. that now creates a dangerous condition. a car could skid off the roadway and down into the sidewalk. we will be cutting back that wall, making it a safe corner. the driveway across it will be safe. what the city also likes is that where the wall used to be, the neighbor next door has created a bump in the sidewalk which has a 30 degree angle because she wanted to make a level entrance from the street into her garage. that will be even off in front of our properties so it is only a 20 degree. at the lower end, there will be a compensation. there will be better lighting. people now walk down that the

sidewalk below the roadway with no lights. there will the foliage there and additional planting. what dpw also likes is currently in the winter the rain comes down the sidewalk, with hampshire street properties and everything down there. with the drainage provided on either side of the new sidewalk, the water will go directly down into city drains, and not over all the soil and fled the bottom. they are also happy that at certain points there will be foliage and soil to retain the water. i would also like to point out that the randomness of the water flow is really to be contained. president olague: public hearing is closed.

commissioner moore: this is a very interesting discussion. this description is not substantiated in the drawings. the drawings to not indicate more than that there is a 20% drop into the garage without the necessary transitional grade. from what i can tell, and it is more important to meet -- it is not the words i hear. it is engineering points that show this particular project, whatever size, depending on how many cars we require for this thing to do -- that the project itself is not accessible without interfering and impairing the public realm. this is an extremely difficult situation, one of san francisco is steepest streets.

the unusual mass of having a street where you operate on two levels is almost like being on a roller coaster, whatever that thing is called. in any case, if this project would honestly show us that it worked from an engineering point, i would perhaps give this some thought. but i do know that the way the garage is drawn does not work. you cannot stipulate what kind of cars your renters will drive or your owners, that they are three compact cars out of five. that is in itself very speculative. should those people on larger cars, there will obviously be doing the loop de loo on the public streets. for us to consider this project,

it is not as much branting a -- granting a variance, but having substantive points beyond the word of mr. gladstone -- the architect is not make any attempt to do so. i am not sure when this project was applied for internally. the 2010 code has a slightly different interpretations on doors and stairs. i do not even want to talk about it. i am really concerned about how this project meets the rest of the world. i think the neighbors support and we all support appropriate development where it can be done. at this moment, i do not have enough evidence that this will work. vice president miguel: this whole project and this whole area is exceptional and extraordinary. you first have to find the

block. i grew up around it several times. i could not find a minibus stop two blocks away. if there is one, i have no idea where it is. i looked at the muni maps and i still could not come out to be truthful. there is no question in my mind that a 15 foot setback, if this project was going to be built, is an absolute necessity. i took a look at the one drawing that shows the scope of the garage, not very well done as far as i am concerned. i park pandemic on a steep street and have to back out into traffic. at least one eye back out i am somewhat level. my wife is lower than in the car than me. it takes a lot of time to back out. she can actually see in back of her.

you cannot see the street, if i am looking at that grade. it is totally impossible to see the street along the sidewalk. it cannot be done. it is an extremely dangerous attrition. that, coupled with the variance request for cars, does not make me want to consider this project at this stage. commissioner antonini: thank you. i actually took a trip out there yesterday. very interesting. i took a ride along holliday, where i had never been before. right along the 101, it gives you perspective of the neighborhood. they have done a beautiful job of putting all the streetlights underground recently in many parts of the -- in many parts of bernal heights, which makes it a lot nicer. i appreciate the testimony by the woman at 17 malcolm who talked early in the hearing and

mentioned she was the only one without a car on the hill and the only reason she could do it if she was retired and could spend her whole day getting to the bus stop. this is typical of much of san francisco. these people who insist we do not need cars are not grounded in reality. a lot of the times, they are either not working or that are working for an employer that is very liberal about the hours to get here. i have people on russian hill of like you to meet who testified last week. to the substance of our hearing today, i have concerns about being able to back up the ramp to get to the street, which apparently is the plan. i think this is potentially a very good project. i am not concerned about the size. the hill slopes steeply down toward caesar job as -- cesar chavez.

it drops down to have the lower floor. the parking is a concern. we may have to have a continuance or some more considerations to see if we can figure out a way that you can get whatever the appropriate amount of parking is, be it five cars or four cars. i do not think you are going to get eight cars, which would be the code -- 7. i do not know if there is enough space. whatever you do, you have to get the parking in there and you have to come to a place maybe with a ramparts to the parking garage, so that when they are approaching the street it is more level with the street. then you would have a chance to be able to move your car around and be able to drive directly out onto the street. peralta does have that retaining

wall. you have to come out and make would be a right turn out of there. it is going to be really tough if you are trying to back up the hill at peralta. that needs to be worked out. i am sympathetic to the situation that to make the project work you probably need two units on each one. if it turns out the project sponsor can do it with single- family, that would be fine. i do not know if it is going to work. the key to me is figuring out a way to get the parking so that it can be accessed from a level site, and creating enough space so that the cars parked there would have the ability to back up with in the garage and then proceed forward to come out onto peralta. commissioner fong: i will make this very quick. i am familiar with this block. i have three friends that live there. there. it is one of our