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tv   [untitled]    July 28, 2011 5:00pm-5:30pm PDT

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>> theman planning commission regular hearing for july 28. please turn off any mobile devices that may sound off during the proceedings. we are on items 19 a, b, and c for 2009.068 3-d, 2009.0685 d and case number 2010.0577 dd at 309 through 311 eureka street. mandatory discretionary reviews and a publicly filed
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discretionary review. on may 19, 2011. following public testimony, the commission continued the matter until july 28, 2011. the public hearing does remain open. >> good evening president olague, members of the commission. the item before you is a mandatory discretion review as well as a discretionary review application. it's on the east side of eureka street between 21st street. this was before you on may 19, 2011. i want to summarize a little bit about the project. the proposed project is to demolish the two-family home and construct a new one. the lower unit would have three bedrooms, the upper unit will also have three bedrooms. concerned expressed in the publicly filed d.r.'s were impacts to light air and
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privacy at the rear and then gorge howser who lives to the south of the subject property also brought up issues of compatibility concerns regarding the demolition of the potentially historic structure and impacts to the street to the north. ncerns raised by commissioners at the may 19 hearing varied, but to summarize, there were concerns brought up about the compatibility with the street face as originally proposed. i'm going to put up an image of the building as it was originally proposed. as well, commissioners expressed some concern regarding impacts to light and air specifically to the neighbors to the north on 20th street. at the hearing, three recommendations were made by the commission and this is a generalization, there was quite a bit of discussion at the may 19 hearing. to generalize, the
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commissioners suggested that the sponsor consider reducing the overall height of the proposed structure. i'll put up an image of the structure as revised. commissioners suggested that the project sponsor consider reducing the height, revising the street elevation including the roof form to make the building more compatible with the surrounding area and then finally, the commission suggested that the project sponsor consider reductions at the rear including rescalp thing at the hearing to lessen impacts to the neighbors primarily to the north. they have considered to revise the project and worked with the architect. the overall height of the building has been reduced by 14 inches. the depth of the proposed new structure has been reduced to each level at the rear. as you can see of the image on the screen, the front elevation including the roof form has been revised after taking a look at the neighborhood for a
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second time. or a third or fourth time. the department's recommendation remains that the commission not take d.r. and approve the project. that concludes my summary, but i'm here to answer questions. president olague: let's here from the d.r. questioner and we are going to -- the d.r. requester gets five minutes and then all preceding seekers will be limited to two minutes because we have heard this project before. >> yes, good afternoon, commissioners. could i have the slide? president olague: yes. >> george howser. at the last hearing, we left with the hope that we were going to kind of turn the corner with the project sponsor and enter into a more collaborative design phase and i have to tell you that did not happen. the sponsor basically retrenched, they made a few changes, modifications to the project, very minor in scope and basically handed them to us as a kind of take it or leave
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it proposition. we were very disappointed when we saw that coming. we decided the best use of our time was to developed some alternative schemes. we presented them to the sponsor. we met with them to discuss them. they rejected them. there was very little discussion of the merits of those schemes and about the only comment we got was, well, they were done by you. we are not interested in them. i want to show you a number of slides here, kind of comparing the various schemes, the schemes that they're presenting to you and the schemes that we're proposing as an alternate. this is an elevational slide that shows the scheme that they presented at the last hearing. the orange line is what they're proposing now. they dropped the height a foot at the top portion and they pushed it back a little bit in the back. they added some opaque guard rails which effectively increased the height in the back over each of the decks and
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added the front roof in the front, but all it does is add additional volume. there is no additional useable space associated with that. this is the scheme we presented last time. the orange line is what we're presenting now. we're proceed posing a roof over the main part of the house as a gesture and we added volume in the rear. this is a view from eureka street. the view you saw earlier is misleading because it doesn't present the oblique view and demonstrate that this roof in the front is really just tacked on and then behind it, there is still this very large layered building, which is the part that we find most objectionable. it's the part that is really causing the shadowing on the northern properties in the mid block open space. you can see it better from here. the project sponsor scheme son
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the left. the cut away roof in the front with the large mass behind it the orange line is a reference line. our scheme is on the middle right. we actually developed two schemes. it has a hipped roof, a hipped gable, shed dormers on the side and we feel it's much more organic and contiguous with the context surrounding it which is essentially victorian cottages. from the northeast demonstrating the same concepts, the sponsor scheme is in the upper right-hand corner, large layer mass as compared to our proposal in the lower left corner which will admit much more light. you can see with the orange reference line how much larger the sponsor's proposal is in relationship to ourselves. also, you get a very good sense of the forms of the roof here that we're proposing.
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and then this is a view from the mid block open space looking toward the rear of the property. the sponsor's scheme is on the right, upper left. you can see we put a reference line in you can see the large mass of layers down and then our proposals are on the middle right, lower, there is an actual parity between the sponsor's keep and our scheme where in their proposal, it actually steps up where as the contours of the block step downward. and so we're encouraging you to take a very close look at our proposal and we feel like it's an appropriate limitation to the massing of the project and we ought to be able to work within those massing limits. thank you. president olague: thank you. i'm going to read a few cards here of people who are in support of the d.r. requester.
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jane segal, uta rikart, joe quigley, tony kim. >> excuse me, there are two d.r. requesters, i think we both get -- president olague: of course. the second d.r. requester gets five minutes. that's my fault. sorry about that. >> could you put the slide back up on the screen? >> just go ahead and start talking. >> thank you for your time today. i'm here to represent myself, my husband, and our three young children. we're the homeowners at 4437 20th street. we have filed a d.r. in response to this project. our family lives directly downslope about a nine-foot drop from 309 eureka. here is a picture of the back of our house. these are the windows that receive all of the sunlight for our house.
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upstairs is our bedroom and bathroom and down stairs is our kitchen and great room. these are the -- well, these are the rooms where we spend the bulk of our time as a family. let me go to the next slide here. so here is the current house as seen from our kitchen. the upslope about nine feet from us and their current structure shades our house and yard partially every day. you can see even at their current two stories and height of 19 feet, they do appear to tower over us, mostly because they are upslope. so they're asking to add an additional two stories to their home, changing their height from the current 19 feet to 35 feet. this would significantly impact both the amount of light we get into our home every day and any ability to see anything beyond the massing of their house when we look out the primary windows of our home or stand in our yard. so as the building stands today shown in gray, our sun disappears behind their home at
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between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., depending on the time of year. the shade study that they have conducted concluded this. by adding the additional 16 feet to their building as shown on the upper right, we will be losing the sun much earlier in the day during the summer months and in the winter stand to not get any at all. there has been an argument put forth that since some of our sunlight that comes into our home is dapled by neighbors' trees, the additional height of their new house won't actually affect the light into our home. well, we take great issue with this because while some of the sunlight that illuminates our home is dapled by our neighbors' trees, dapled or not, this is sunlight into our home. the proposal will completely block our light. they're almost doubling the height of their current structure. so the bottom two drawings exhibit ideas put forth in plans by george howser referred to as the neighbors' design. i am in support as the neighbors' design, it takes the bottom level of the house 4 1/2
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feet down to grade. thereby decreation the overall height of the building and preserving some of the sunlight into our home and small yard. george came up with two different ideas here. one is three stories. one is four stories. they exhibit a different use of space to achieve comparable square footage to the plan. they have explained to us that they do not want to do this because they do not want to incur costs associated with excavation and they don't want to impede the natural light coming into their home, but we hope that the commission can take all of that into consideration as you make your decision. president olague: i'll start calling up those who support the d.r. requesters. jane segal, uta reich afternoon t, joe quickly followed by tony kim.
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two men's. -- minutes. i'm not sure if the mic is picking you up. >> they switched over. president olague: ok. and the time will be limited to two minutes. >> you want me to start over? >> president olague: yeah, please. >> i'm jane segal. first i thanked you but i'll skip that. i own and live at 315 eureka street, just two properties to the south of 309, 311. i attended the may 19, 2011, hearing here. since then, i have been tracking the design revisions that are being proposed. as we were contacted, we had a meeting last week. while i really appreciate that the project sponsors made an effort to create a facade design change, i'm referring to the front on eureka street that's more consistent with the
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architectural look of our block, i still do have some concerns. first, there has not been a successful collaboration with the neighbors, the fords and the howsers on the revision of the design. my understanding from the hearing, the last hearing is that the commissioners requested a collaborative revision. the neighbors processed and work together. i agree with that recommendation. i think that the ability to change the revision based on neighbors' input is crucial, so i support a more open process and more compromise. my primary concern is that the design is still too tall and too large in the rear, in the back, not to what is on eureka street. where it shadows the fords and other properties. if you look at the design from eureka street obliquey from
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eureka street or from the vantage point of the northern neighbor rear yards, that's what ariel ford just showed us or from the mid block open space which is where i fit in, the reality is that the design has not changed all that much, i don't think, since may 19, that back part. it's still a series that looks to me like a series of long -- no! president olague: thank you very much. >> good ann, commissioners, my name is uta reichart. i will read clarify moon's letter who can't be here. she owns just north of the eureka project. they are rear yards adjoined. i lived in my property for many years and intend to return
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there. i'm greatly impacted by the design for 309 eureka street. i do want to note that i'm appreciated of their approach. i am requesting that you reduce its height and overall size. at the may 19, 2011, planning commission meeting, the commission continued the 309 eureka hearing and recommended that the project sponsor work with the d.r. requesters to revise the project. the commission suggested that they examine ways to minimize impact on the ford's property and to make the building more consistent and appropriate for the surrounding neighborhood by considering the roofline and the treatment of the bay window. we ask that the building be brought down 4 1/2 feet to grade. i am in support of these goals and i am especially concerned about lowering the height and
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reducing the impact on the fords property and my property, both of which will be shadowed by this new building. i have seen the sponsor's july 14, 2011 design and it does not address the commission's may 19 comments. the height has only been reduced a foot. the rare -- rear massing has been slightly reduced and is too large with relation to the north end properties. they reduced impact on the other properties by using transparent guard rails instead of opaque. the design does not resonate with the neighborhood. president olague: thank you. >> hello, my name is joe quickly and i'm here for my wife. we live at 313 eureka in the top, there is an apartment on
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the top that is about a floor and a half. i also spoke at the last meeting in may and i had a chance to look at some, the drawings we just saw here today and my and my wife's concern is that we can't really speak to the architectural integrity of the neighborhood, but we can tell you that it will have a massive impact on the amount of light that comes into our apartment. our kitchen window would be completely blocked and that's the main source of light into the kitchen. the new designs from what i have seen just there, it looks like the new designs will also block the main source of light into our bedroom, which is above the kitchen and the designs also show that as they did at the early meeting that all of our light into our