the current zoning along the northeast embarcadero is from north point down to broadway, 40 feet as shown in orange. the purple section is the site of 8 washington from broadway to washington street. this crossesthis is currently 8n height. shown here in yellow, the entire embarcadero street front from washington to broadway will be reduced from the current 84 feet. from this point, i too will step back and away from waterfront and away from neighborhood of to address the city. this can be seen in detail. this outline shows the waterfront. you can see the insertion and how it steps down the neighborhood from the city and perhaps even more graphically here, for stepping down from the city alcoa building down to our

smaller 8 washington shown in yellow and makes the transition from the city to the waterfront. but perhaps it would be best shown in three dimensions. it is a three-dimensional plan as well as the process. the current on global as 84 feet across the entire length and width of all three blocks. it also allows up to 600 dwelling units. our first design began with piercing this envelope through jackson and pacific to create a cree legend between neighborhoods and the embarcadero. the design we have proposed, working with an 84-foot height, proposed two developments with a courtyard separating them, stepping down to the fitness center and eventually to a park on the north. the final revision in this is a step further. the entire street front is along

the embarcadero down to under the 84 feet, and steps further down in with the aquatic and recreation center and then steps up away from the neighborhood to be the city, so you can see back away from the waterfront. as i mentioned, this reduces the overall project by 10,000 square feet, achieving this scope the mass, as recommended by the steady. finally, we pressed further the envelope down, and as a result, we have also taken a green carpet, a tapestry, the sweeps across the entire site. these roofs and walls are a symbol of a high sustainable level of this project. we are right now on a status of lead platinum for the project. it is interesting that the city recommendations would be permanently locked in by the

project, as we can see here. maybe you can see the project nestled in the neighborhood. you can see how it is a natural part of the city. you can see how this project actually brings a kind of gentle transition from the neighborhood back to the city and to the waterfront. it currently is very abrupt and does not exist. we think it is a very important quality of the city's recommendations for the plan. some of the other issues emerging in the process work public view corridors. the most of 11 identified as this one shown on the screen, the green line between the ferry building and click tower -- coit tower. you can also see the yellow, partially obstructed views, and the green representing views that are currently unobstructed. we are changing nothing except a tiny piece here. you can see i read just north up very terminal and south of pier 1.

just so you'll remember, if you look right now, this is the important view that was identified from ferry terminal building footsteps but to court -- up to coit tower. you can see there is no change. i will outline it so you can see more clearly. there is no change in the visibility. likewise, from the other key public spaces around telegraph hill. pioneer park, for example, you can see that there is no encumbrance of views on these pieces. preserving light and sun lights basis, this is part of the project design. we are including 30,000 square feet of new sunlit public spaces. as you saw this morning, the effect on sue bierman park. by computer, you can identify two rivers. previously less than 1/1

thousand of 1% of any effect. believe me, this is imperceptible from the point of view of us as human beings using the site. design excellence. the project requires the highest level of design. to this end, we are designing a building which is quiet and elegant, designed to be a strong urban edge, defining the civic space that it fronts. the intention is to withstand the changes in fashion and trends over time and make this a project that wears well in terms of aesthetics but also in terms of materials used. we are using limestone, naturally patinad materials. hardwood with a buy the building of high quality end age naturally over time. there's not much time this morning, so quickly, here is an overall view of the project from washington to broadway. you can see the housing piece on the far left-hand side of the image there, designed with a

series of smaller almost brownstone scale buildings. will do a quick view from the corner of washington along the embarcadero -- restaurants, cafes, retail, the entire public first floor of all these buildings, starting with this restaurant and then moving north, walking along the embarcadero, we are sliding along here. you can see the qualities of very lively, pedestrian scale space. very important. this new aquatics center, recreation fees, overhanging park is a big restaurant, which will anchor this new child- friendly, family-friendly park at the northern end. if we look then at the details looking back, here is an elevation of the building. you can see how it is punctuated at the quarter that

separates the building from the left and the embarcadero building on the right. to look at the street level view of what this will actually be, here we are in washington street. you can see a sidewalk of 30 feet, which will accommodate both new public benches as well as indoor/outdoor dining. likewise, looking back along washington toward the alcoa building, you can see this new urban edge that replaces the current surface parking lot and blank wall. this will now be a very engaged urban edge with public art throughout. looking back toward washington, again, indoor/outdoor dining, to be connected to the public realm, to make this a very lively, active, socially vibrant edge to the city. here is the current view at jackson street, looking back toward the embarcadero. our proposal is to take down the

pedestrian freeway and replace it with this. this is a view of the new jackson st., is. you can see it supported by cafes and retail. finally, back along pacific park. likewise, open spaces, looking at places in which children can play, adults can enjoy espresso, picnics, and have a child- friendly place. we can review the details later. i too will be one of the most environmentally innovative buildings in the city. the values then talked about, fiduciary values. more and would leave the value this brings to a new waterfront for our city that would permanently affect, we think, a great new civic edge for a global city of san francisco.

>> we can now have the block of time for ms. astor and her group. let me change the microphone, just a moment. ok, go ahead. >> sue hester. first, i want to incorporate the written comments that we have submitted and others have submitted on the project and specifically as the planning commission to turn down the eir workers insufficiencies. the city has gone through a series of visions. in the 1950's when golden gateway and embarcadero center were planned, a division was tied to the embarcadero freeway. the said they wanted the site for housing and paid $1 million beside the $6 million land payment for community facilities because this is hud-finance,

middle-income apartments. the vision of the city evolves. that was 1959. in 1970's, there were huge, huge discussions about a corporate heights -- appropriate heights and urban design plans. there was a ballot measure in 1979 on height limits. when the last phase of golden gate we came up for approval, the area, what is now known as golden gate commons -- there was an environmental impact report. one of the first in the city. it found that the heights that were approved for golden gateway were a violation of ceqa, and they made a unanimous recommendation that they could not be built without violating ceqa -- unanimous recommendation by the planning commission. that triggered a three-year process. in the end, they changed the height limits in golden gate way

to 84 feet. the findings were the view impact on the slopes of the hill. there was not one mention of coit tower. significant adverse impact was found by this planning commission based on those findings and those corridors, which are not even discussed, let alone made findings. the city has made a finding, and there has been no intervening change, but that -- that there are significant adverse impacts on views towards the ferry building across this site. after golden gateway was built, golden gate we started on 83- series -- a series of three attempts to build on this site. this is the maps from the redevelopment agency. we did not color this in. this is their colors. this says recreation facilities.

all the green is recreation and open space. this is the redevelopment plan for this area. when the first three projects came through, redevelopment controlled this block. their jurisdiction extended. the redevelopment staff and the redevelopment commission kept shooting down proposals to develop this site because it was not consistent with the redevelopment plan that called for open space and recreation facilities. mayor feinstein said letters as the mayor. she said another one as the senator. the fourth attempt to approve the site was in 2002, to develop what was supposed to be just what to 01 -- lot 201, but they found at the intruded in the area of the block to the north.

this is a specific attempt. every one of these is involved, golden gateway, because they own the land. you are being asked to approve a project that you have incredibly sketchy information on. you have a lot of fancy drawings, and they look really nice, but look for two things -- where do you see how this project -- a really good rendering, the visual from sue bierman park, a huge part that is the southern boundary of this site -- there is not one visual that is a real rendering that would be expected on a project with a plan unit development. that part boundary is an incredibly important boundary because you see the water, you see the day, you have no renderings that showed the garage openings. on both drum street and on washington street, which is why they did not do these renderings. this is a 400-car garage topped

by very high-and condos. you do not see accurate diagrams that show you how shadowed the open spaces on this block are. they are creating green spaces around the periphery. jackson commons is going to be in shadow in the middle of summer from noon on. they are not looking at the fact that there will be no sun along the embarcadero because this project is shadowing it. thank you very much. >> members of the commission, i want to talk about a couple of reasons you are being given for why this is a justified act. one is that this is high-density residential, and the other is that it is housing helping the city meet its housing needs. is it really high-density?

your staff says no. in a preliminary project assessment last year, pointed out that not 600 units as you heard a minute ago, the 693 units were allowed as of right on this site. that is more than four times what you have before you today. staff said increase the number of units, and what did the developer do? went from 165 to 145 to now 134, taking an already low density for this site and made it 20% lower. does this really help the city's housing needs? the answer is no, and it is in your housing element. the city housing element lists what areas we need more housing in. i will not bore you with the chart, but for market-rate housing, which this is at the high end, we are at 153% of our goal. every other goal is between 12% and 80%. the lowest is moderate-income housing. we only reached 12%, which is what is in the golden gate way

now. all that is left of the 29 inclusion air units, but there is a problem -- they are not building those units. they are just writing a check to pay for part of them. several commissioners point out -- why pay the same inclusion very fee for a $6 million condo for -- that he paid for a $600,000 condo? the way things are done, you will write a check, and it will be many years before the gatt bill. why? people do not build 29-year project anymore. we would have to wait for a number of these checks to stack up before you could build anything. the biggest reason, the biggest problem is the golden gate way. i want to put down on the chart so you can see what role they play in the spirit they own 80% of the site. on this side, if you approve this project, was in peak right here, the golden gate we still owns in the end.

this is where the residents of development goes on. why is this important? it is a major beneficiary of the project. they are converting hundreds of red-controlled apartments. -- rent-controlled apartments. if you approve the project, you are giving the activity of blessing of sorts and providing the owners the cash to innovate more of these units to rent out as hotel rooms. the other problem is, as you read, i handed in a while back the article about how they are using a loophole in proposition 13 to avoid having to record the sale of this and underpaid taxes by quite a bit. this is not illegal. it is wrong. it is mindboggling. it is not illegal. the test before you today is not whether it is illegal or not, but whether it is necessary and desirable. how do you make a finding that it is necessary and desirable to build housing for 0.5%?

finally, it comes down to the decision you will make today is going to set a precedent one way or the other. if you approve the project, what you are saying is that we will grant the first hike increase on the northern waterfront in almost 50 years, for what? for housing 4.5%? all the good things in here you will see in a minute is the alternative. if you vote no, something better could happen. you saw that earlier. something that gives more access to the waterfront, more jobs and revenue to the city, more active recreation space and open space, more of everything that san franciscans really need. what they do not need is more vacation homes for millionaires. thank you. >> good morning, commissioners. i work with asian neighborhood design. we have worked on a series of

community plans for neighborhoods from visitation valley to chinatown. we always begin with the same starting point -- start with the people who live and work in the community. we have worked with various diverse communities, which means doing processes in multiple languages, getting communities to listen to each other, and understand development projects, their impact, their benefits, and the trade offs. in this project, we began by looking at the waterfront from the existing pattern interspersed with buildings that build up to the topography of san francisco. the vision created by the community that looks at all of the publicly-managed locks and crosstown connections. we believe that this is where the port should have begun with this process. i will talk about five major points of the vision that was created. what you have before you is a summary map of what the community came up with. these five points stand in stark

contrast to the point that is before you. first, it begins with a comprehensive development plan for the entire waterfront, not a plan driven by a single project, and looks at the development potential for the entire portfolio of seawall lots within the existing limits that were developed through years of community discussions and urban design for its, and the sizing projects that either meet the city's dire need for affordable housing, as was done by delancey street south of market, or that creates both construction and permanent jobs, such as the maritime-related hotel uses that the port really should be looking at in these small lots. they told us that they're ideal was to create an rfp process based on community consensus, as had been done in south beach. two, development projects, especially those that ask for exemptions or conditional uses, should demonstrate a substantial public benefit to both the city

and communities that live and work in the neighborhood where the project is located. this is best achieved through a comprehensive plan that acknowledges the interconnections and impacts of projects within the waterfront area. for example, you heard earlier about the $2.5 million in property taxes, but a little after, you heard that might be recaptured by the port and used on the site, and the city might not see any of it. brad talked about the affordable housing fees that cost -- the cost of one or two condos is with the city will get for affordable housing? third, when necessary public benefit of any development should be repairing the harm done by the former embarcadero freeway. in particular, repairing the urban fabric along washington's canyon of concrete walls, meaning looking further up then from st., and along the further blocks of connections to chinatd

major connections back to the city. fourth, development should provide resources to help create open space and recreation opportunities along the waterfront by not impacting the existing public parks, which includes not just shadows that we talked about, but the views to the sky, preserving existing resources such as the existing of the day with the serbs rent- control middle-class tenants, and bring resources to create new recreation stations along the small, triangular lots that are not developable. we have various conversations with folks in chinatown, with elders who told us they prefer to take the 30 bus to fisherman's wharf and walk down broadway street or washington street for much closer access because of the problems with access and, frankly, not having recreation opportunities along the waterfront. fifth, the development should be supported by a real plan for parking and pedestrian circulation that utilize the

existing underutilized building garages. one of the things presented earlier was something that set within a short walk, meaning immediately adjacent to the ferry building, parking is at 100%, but if you walk eight minutes away to embarcadero four, three, two, the alcoa building, those are virtually empty on week nights and weekends. we have based this on parking studies. finally, the eight washington project is before you. it asks you to give away public goods in the form of spot zoning, heightened use, as well as giving away public lands. what does the public debt in return? a massive underwater garage being touted as transit-oriented development? luxury condos at 1% that is touted as environmentally and socially sustainable?

with little or no public benefit to the community and virtually no community support, as you will hear in the comments that follow. instead of approving this, a better option might be to ask the court to do what they should have done in the first place -- begin with a comprehensive plan for the entire waterfront that builds from community consensus. thank you. [applause] >> ok, we will address that also. the applause actualu can just, - like at graduations, they ask you to hold your applause until everyone has spoken, and just going to ask you to not apply. if we could now -- to the court reporter's need a break? mr. president, if we could have a five-minute recess for the court reporters. thank you.