thing that we need to tout and be proud of in the city as it relates to the rest of the country, but this is still a time of closing budget gaps and dwindling resources. to echo what the mayor and the supervisor said, it is so important to hear from you tonight. for those of you that submitted but did not get to speak, we will be taking them back to city hall and it will all be read. thank you all for coming out tonight. two of the department heads. lastly, i will hand it over to our great moderator, tina. [applause] >> you all have gotten a lot of thank yous. thank you, from me. all of you, it is terrific you are coming out, being collaborative and having your voice is heard, because they are listened to. those cards will go right back

to the appropriate department heads. thank you, like the mayor said, for not bringing i and throwing them. i have one announcement. doyle drive will be closed on april 27 through monday. april 27 -- my glasses. 27, 28, and 29, reopening of 5:00 a.m. on the 30th. this is just a heads up. they are bringing in heavy artillery things that will make a lot of noise. i hear that some of the equipment is coming from new york? new york. maybe it is a good weekend to stay in the city or whenever you want to do. that is a heads up. thank you for coming. good night. [applause]

>> one item on your regular calendar. item 14, case 20 11.1151d. there's a request for

continuance. i have not heard whether or not the project sponsor is in agreement with that continuance. i did not have anything at this moment, so i will ask that you take up this continuance of the call of the item as opposed to right now. i'm not sure if anyone is here to speak to that, but even if they were, i would ask that you take the item of that the call of the item. would you like to allow them to speak on that? >> we can have public, about the continuance itself, but i think that the bulk of it should be discussed at the item. >> at the call of the item. thank you. with that, commissioners, we can move on to your consent calendar. items one through five make up the consent calendar this week. they are continue -- considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single roll call vote on the commission. there will be no separate discussion of the items unless

the member of the commission, the public, or staff so request. in that event, the matter or matters would be removed and discussed at a separate future hearing. item one is 375 alabama street, a request for office development authorization to establish 40,189 gross square feet of office use on the entire third floor and a portion of the fourth floor at the 375 alabama address and a pdr 1-g. two is 901 cortland avenue, request for conditional use authorization which would then enable the small scale neighborhood commercial zoning district. item three is 5098 mission st.,

request for conditional use authorization to allow formula of retail use operating as a self-service specialty food use within an existing automotive gas station and retail grocery store in a neighborhood commercials moderate scale district. item four is nine west portal avenue, a request for conditional use authorization to modify the conditions of approval contained in motion 18163 and allow an increase in the permitted hours of operation and an increase in the number of seats for the existing bar and liquor store. in -- 5a is for 929 broderick street, a request for conditional use authorization to add a sixth dwelling unit to the existing five-unit residential

building on a lot measuring approximately 6351 square feet. the project site is located in a residential house. 5b, requests for variance at the same address is to encroach into the required rear yard. commissioners, following public comment, which would remove these items from the consent calendar, these items are before you for your consideration. commissioner wu: is there any public comment on the consent calendar? ok, seeing none, commissioner antonini. commissioner antonini: i would like to ask that item four be taken off the consent calendar. but i would move that we approve the other items, if i could do

both. at the b-1, two, three, 5a only. >> on the motion for approval of the items as they are pressed on your calendar, commissioner antonini: aye. commissioner borden: aye. commissioner miguel: aye. commissioner moore: aye. commissioner sugaya: aye. commissioner wu: aye. >> thank you, commissioners. those items are approved as they have been proposed. commissioner fong: on item 5b, c and a public comment, we would be inclined to grant the requested variants. >> we will take item four at the beginning of the regular calendar? commissioner wu: yes. >> commissioners, we are now at commission matters. commissioner moore: i wanted to join the director and everybody

else congratulating eir staff on winning a national planning award. there are very distinct projects which won awards, many of them went into things similar to what the city does, so i encourage the director to support the department to continue to showcase what the department does. second point, i had a brief conversation with mr. putra on why we are not discussing the consent item which was approved a few minutes ago. i would like to raise a policy issue, at least as a discussion item only. we have a formula retail applying for occupying a gas station convenience store. the gas station probably falls under the formula retail

category as well. i am wondering why, when there is a ready-made store and local small businesses would not be the ones which would have a shot at occupying the spaces. i think we have plenty of people looking for business opportunities in space which are easily adaptable for small operators to find a space. these spaces would be ideal. i just want to hang that out as a discussion item. we do not have to discuss it right now, but i would like this commission to expand some but -- to spend some thought on it. as we all know, our formal colleague just declared candidacy. she sent an invitation to all of us to join heard this evening. i am just saying it in recognition of our colleagues.

commissioner miguel: yes, there is an article that came out in "cities and towns" that dealt with the comparison of the migration out of cities in the 1950's and 1960's in the current migration back into cities and some of the reasons why, which i found interesting. they are discussing it in light of generations, from safety of suburbs, isolated to connected inconvenient to convenient and card dependent to car independent as well as a number of other reasons, including the aging population that had moved to the suburbs and now finds when they have difficulty driving, unable to drive, or

difficulty driving at night, that they do not have access to services and so are tending to move back into the city. i have a copy of it here if anyone wishes to see it. also, last thursday, b. "wall street journal" had an article -- the "wall street journal" had an article about rules and lightening the burden on entrepreneurs, and it had to do with the item that was just passed by the board of supervisors unanimously. prior to that, regarding restaurant definitions and some other items. although we often appear in the "new york times" bay area section, i do not think we have appeared too often in the "wall street journal."

a couple of things involving the department -- this week, spur's second of a for your monthly programs, part of their noontime forums, dealt with medium urban design. the last one is small. the next will be large, and then very large. steve was a member of the panel, and it was, as usual, in spite of the inclement weather, standing room only, so there is a great deal of interest in this. those four programs are sponsored by spur. also, the annual housing forum that was yesterday. this one was entitled "housing

after redevelopment, quarter man and was again, as usual, very excellent speakers involved in it -- entitled "housing after redevelopment," and was again, as usual, very excellent speakers involved in it. it is an excellent program, and i would be happy to discuss it with anyone who is interested, but in particular, having seen staff members this week fight -- and of course, many times in the past, in non-planning department or commission functions -- i really want to let everyone know that the department's staff comport themselves beautifully.

they represent the department, and i think the commission also, in a manner that is really admirable. they engage with the public. they do not speculate. they deal with fact. they are able to answer questions, and it is really a great representation of the department. commissioner antonini: i, too, was in attendance at the housing action coalition's excellent hearing. a very, very good staff of speakers, including mayor lee and matt franklin, and a number of others, and they came up with some early interesting ideas. the theme was that even though

everyone is disappointed with the loss of redevelopment, they see it as an opportunity to maybe more broadly address our housing needs then was the case even when redevelopment was a round. in particular, i think it was the mayor who presented some very interesting concept that he will be, of course, going into more detail in the future, but i think that franklin really looked at some of these issues -- matt franklin really look at some of these issues and talk about something i have been thinking about for some time, which is if you have shallow subsidies and make a higher percentage of affordability at a higher price level with the recipient, being a rancher or an owner, contributing more, you can produce more housing and begin to address the gap, which we will address in a few minutes as part of the housing study that has just been finished for

the last year. but he had some really good ideas along those lines. to be able to do those kinds of things and coming from his present position in the mid- peninsula housing group, which actually has extension all the way up from the south bay and all the way up beyond nevada, so that is another possible source of housing, partnering with jurisdictions to try to deal with some of our housing needs. a lot of the same ideas we have heard before, but some good ones. i forget who it was brought up the idea, but the one-time conversion fee for condo conversions, which is a great source of funding. i think it was tim walk heart who talked about the fact that san francisco has very high bond ratings -- i think it was tim la carte -- tim lockhar who talked about the fact that san

francisco has very high on raising. those are some of the slots but i thought i would mention those, because i thought they were very good ones. hopefully it will begin a dialogue that will answer a lot of the challenges that we have. commissioner borden: i will not say a lot more but just piggyback on commissioner miguel's comments and say that the staff was exceptional. the city hall fellow's a program for recently graduated college students that may have an interest in city government. the idea is to expose the more -- expose them to more departments and hope that the best and brightest will choose to work within cities. this is modeled after a program in new york city. the founder had gone to that program. commissioner wu would know something about it, but it is

here in san francisco, and it is interesting because these fellows get paid, and most of the departments are enterprise departments because they have the flexibility. several had degrees in urban planning or urban studies or architecture, and it would be great to figure out a way to get one of these people on staff at some point in the future. these fellowships run based on the san francisco fiscal cycle. we did a study looking at eastern neighborhoods, and they went for generally the planning department code and talk a little bit about eastern neighborhoods and took a project study and had a developer talk a little bit about the give and take. it was interesting. i felt like i learned a lot as well looking at how developers look at projects and how they feel that they get to interact with the city. it was quite in lightninged in

that way as well. >> if there are no other commissioner commons, we can move on to directors report, directors announcements, and a review of past week's events of the board of supervisors, board of appeals, and historic preservation commission. >> thank you, commissioners. i wanted to point out a couple of things. a number of staff, including myself, will be at the national planning conference this year, which is in los angeles. i am very pleased it is in our times and this year, given the of the times of some of the meetings -- very pleased it is in our time zone this year.

the environment planning staff does not often get awards for eir's, which are very technical documents, so we are very pleased about that. i wanted to spend, if i may, a couple of minutes updating you on the activities of the oversight board and the success of the redevelopment agency. since we have sat -- since we have had several new agencies -- and i will put this in writing for your next report as well, but to give you a quick background on what we have been doing. just as a reminder, assembly bill 26, which eliminated the agency, required or allowed cities to create successor

agencies to take on what are called the enforceable obligations of the redevelopment agency. just as a side note, in the case of los angeles, as you may have heard, the city chose not to take on that responsibility, and the governor has set up a panel to take over the los angeles redevelopment agency's responsibilities. the mayor proposed legislation to transfer two clusters of assets. one is the housing assets that the agency has in the mayor's office of housing, and the non- housing assets were transferred to essentially the city administrator's office, and there is now a redevelopment division within the city administrator's office. that legislation that the board passed also identified three large projects