to ask the supervisor a very practical question, if i may. i spend a few hours in this building every thursday, and i found a phone number of yours. the restaurant give people choices, even on a short break, to have some food other than a cookie. would it be possible under your legislation to see food trucks be in the civic center area at the edges here across from city hall during lunch break or so, which would offer people who work here other choices? >> commissioner, you are unfortunately unlucky that maybe you should schedule took a different day. we have two days a week went off the grid comes out to civic center plaza. i'm happy to give you that phone number, and you can ask them to extend. i wish they were here every day. i will say that are almost never go to those food trucks only

because every time i go out there, the lines are so long because people love them so much. they need to probably bring more. >> could there be, like, a couple more, and there would be choices? >> i will raise that point with them, that they should be your more days. >> in particular, this commission attracts large numbers of people for a large band of the day. i find it difficult, even when the restaurant downstairs or the food facilities downstairs closed at 3:30, there is nothing here, and we are stuck. >> they are currently permitted. they just happen to only be there two days a week. they do have proper permission from the park, and the current planning code allows them to be there. commissioner fong: i will convey your request. commissioner sugaya: since the supervisor mentioned the union square area as having had some

concerns because the food trucks were concentrating their and perhaps because there were more restrictions in other parts of the city, it is kind of parallel to and medical cannabis dispensary where we have lots of restrictions about location and what not, for schools and other things, so now, we are getting concentrations in closer to the cbd if you want to use that term. it is an interesting parallel. we have concerns about clustering coming to us. >> right, but with food trucks, there is another piece of legislation i have that is a public works code amendment, so it is not coming to planning, but other requirements that drugs be at least 1,500 feet from middle schools and high schools, even though middle schools are closed for lunch, and most high schools have closed campuses for lunch. that is even a much more significant restriction than

this restriction and loves of the bulk of the mission, for example. any time you place restrictions and you go maybe a little bit overboard, you will just cause problems elsewhere. commissioner wu: i think that the decision to craft the legislation on colleges, university hospitals is a smart one. i understand that the supervisor has been part of a working group with bricks and mortar restaurants and also some residential representatives, so i think that this legislation is great. going forward, if there's more or if there's interest in looking more in other areas within our districts, i think there is a lot of conversation to be had there. again, just would support this legislation. commissioner moore: there is the legislation about the food

trucks themselves. in an earlier part where you work for starting to discuss the legislation, i saw you also included a discussion about what is in it. one thing i would strongly urge is that we are not reverting to a model of formula food within those trucks because you mentioned earlier, there is an entrepreneurial opportunity. it strongly encourages the liveliness and authenticity of san francisco foods come to those trucks, rather than seeing those which primarily show up to serve a construction site. those of the type of food trucks i'm not very interested in. they have a purpose, but adjusted in food trucks which address a larger variety, one of expanding small business opportunities and offering a larger variety of food than what is currently available in many places. commissioner fong: ok, any further comment? commissioner antonini: i would

move to approve with modifications. commissioner miguel: second. >> the motion on the floor is for approval with modifications. commissioner antonini: aye. commissioner miguel: aye. commissioner moore: aye. commissioner sugaya: aye. that motion passes unanimously. you are now on item 14, a transit center district plan, and informational presentation. >> mr. president, i have a little problem because i have not that it does with the city attorney's office in yet, but the company did some work for tjpa to evaluate historic resources within this area -- i

have not vetted this with the city attorney's office. but this being initiated -- i do not know how, but you know what i mean? it is not initiated by tjpa directly, is it? >> no, the plan has aptly been initiated by the department. >> right. i think i should have vetted this on the city attorney's office before this. commissioner antonini: it is not an action item. it is an informational presentation, but it is important to point out. i think because it is an informational item, if it is ok with the board -- i mean, with the commission, i will stay, but in the meantime, before this comes before us for any kind of vote, i will check. >> that would be great.

we are broke -- unless we are proposing initiation of the plan, it is fine. >> great. >> good afternoon, planning commissioners. we are here before you with an informational presentation regarding the transit center district plan. thank you. we are here after several years of working on this transit center district plan. we have been before you a number comes with informational discussions in the past as we have gone through the planning process. we are now nearing the end of

the process and hopefully moving into the adoption phase of the plan. we provided a copy of the presentation of going through today so you can follow along. the draft plan was published after working on a public process in consultation with the public and various stakeholders and our agency partners. we publish the draft plan in november 2009. since then, the department has been busy at work, primarily working on the environmental impact report, the draft of which was released this past september. you had a hearing to take comment. i believe the comment period close at the end of november. we are nearing the point of bringing the actual plan before you. today is an informational presentation to remind you of the contents of the plan and update you on a few minor things which have been revised since

the november draft plan was released. then, currently scheduled for may 3, as the director just mentioned, is a hearing to initiate actions related to the adoption of the plan, including a general plan, planning code and zoning map amendments. then, assuming the commission votes to initiate those actions on may 3, on may 24, we would hold the hearing to consider the adoption of those actions as well as other plant-related actions following a hearing to certify the final eir and that dr. ceqa findings related to the plan. we do have a couple new commissioners since we were last, to present the plan, so i would just quickly backtracked a minute and go over the context that this plan is framed in. the downtown plan was adopted in 1985, and the premise of the plan was the the downtown should

remain and continue in its growth to be compact and walkable and, above all, transit-oriented district, as sort of the premier business and central district of the bay area. the most will serve area with transit with all of the muni services, and other regional providers which serve this area. you should be able to essentially walk across the business district in 20 minutes or less. that was sort of one of the core premises. one of the other core premises in shaping the continued growth of the downtown in this vein was to encourage the concentration of additional growth south of market street around the trans bay terminal. at the time, in the early 1980's, there was a lot of pressure to demolish a major historic buildings in the older financial district, and the desire to landmark or otherwise

preserve many of those buildings and shipped development pressure south of market street where it was considered underdeveloped, and there was a major transit infrastructure and major growth capacity. in implementing the downtown plan, a couple of things were done to help cement that pattern. one was disowning the area around the then transbay terminal with the highest heights allowed run the city, as well as transferring programs across the downtown. one of the elements of which was the ability to transfer unused developments from historic properties from all over the downtown to this particular area that you see just on the south side of the terminal. and the plan has been very successful. the recent growth you have seen along mission street, which is now arguably the premier street of the financial district. it is all the result of the policies adopted with the downtown plan. of course, at the time, the

downtown plan was adopted until the last episode, it was ringed on the east and south side by the embarcadero freeway. it was removed, and that caused some reconsideration of the adjacent district on the southern edge of the downtown. as you know, in 2005, this commission and board and redevelopment commission adopted a couple landmark plans, one of which was the rincon hill plan. and the development plan, which together created a blueprint for a new high density neighborhood just to the south of the terminal of over 10,000 new units and supporting infrastructure. since then, and sort through that process, there has been another major change taking shape in the downtown, and that is the construction of the new

transit center to replace the old terminal. the project, which also includes the rail extension is a multibillion-dollar product, which you are all fairly familiar with, but it will both reshape this area, create a new public amenities, substantially increase the transit capacity in the area as well as cause us to rethink some of the patterns in the area and whether there is an even further land use response to this major investment. additionally, in 2006, the mayor convened an interagency working group made up of the planning department and a number of other agencies including othertjpa -- including the tjpa to look at whether we might be able to

raise additional revenue from additional develop in the district to help fund the project, including the downtown rail extension, which still is looking for additional funding. so that interagency working group recommended a new sub- areas plan begun for the area around the terminal, and that is what brought us to this planning effort. so the plan again is sort of a fairly regular rectangular area, roughly bounded by market street on the north, the embarcadero on the east, folsom st. on the south, and about hawthorne street on the west, so coming up against the eastern side of the yerba buena district. it extends beyond but completely contains the redevelopment area, which is split into two zones, the first of which is the area along folsom st. the is being planned for that new residential neighborhood. zone two primarily consists of

private parcels with the exception of the transit center and its transittjpa-owned parcels. seconds and was always intended to be under the jurisdiction of the planning commission and planning code and was always intended to come back with further amendments to look at this area, and that is what this plan is. this plan will not affect zone 1, the residential program, and the former redevelopment agency, now its successor agency, will still be pursuing the developments of the public parcels in zone 1 as part of the program, and that is still moving forward as originally planned. there was essentially a for your core objectives of this plan. one was a comprehensive land-use plan, what should the response be? secondly was, getting to the quality of place, both in terms of how the downtown should be shaped in terms of both the skyline and sort of the quality

of the street level experience that people experience on a day- to-day basis as we grow this area even more densely, as well as how the streets and open spaces should respond to continued growth. very importantly, the core objective of this plan was to raise revenue, particularly for the downtown rail extension as well as for other key public improvements needed to support the continued growth of the district. lastly, to ensure that the district is really preeminent in terms of environmental sustainability. as i reminded you, the draft plan we published in 2009. it is a lengthy document. you have received it in the past, and we are including it in your packages that you are receiving today. in your packages that you are receiving today and we will be putting up on the website and making publicly available as of tomorrow -- or today, rather -- is the draft plan addendum,

being published right now, which will clarify and update certain aspects of the plan. it has been -- in the past couple years since the plan was released, there's been additional analysis on the topics such as historic resources, some additional refinements and corrections that had just come up over the course of the past couple years, so this document, together with the original draft plan, represents a draft plan. once the plan is fully adopted and goes through the whole process, we will print the full document with all of its corrections in a nice, glossy format so that can be the final record of the plan, but for now, it consists of the original document and this addendum. as i go through reminding you that going over the basic plan components, i will highlight a few things being updated and reflected in the draft plan addendum, and they generally are fairly minor revisions. i think the plan definitely has

the the test over the last couple of years in terms of the concepts, and we feel that it represents the plan that the city ought to adopt. first, in terms of urban form, building heights, the plan proposes what we would refer to as a strategic or in surgical of zoning of various parcels in the plant area. we are not proposing to increase height limits across the board. we really closely looked at opportunities -- major opportunities, as well as other issues of urban form and shadow impacts and conservation district character and other aspects to form this proposal. the major thrust of which is creating sort of a new what we call crown on the skyline to emphasize this district in front of the transit center as the

center of the downtown, both in terms of its transit access and, sort of, density and concentration of activity as well as on the skyline, its position central to the broader downtown skyline, a good buy the transamerica pyramid and bank of america towers. so the plan proposes to create a height limit immediately in front of the transit center of 1,000 feet. which is the site commonly referred to as the transit our site, the property commonly referred to as the that they are selling to a developer. within half a block of the transit center to both increase the capacity of the district to accommodate more transit- oriented growth as well as scope urban form and skylight,

that you can see a few sites, one of which is zoned for 850 feet, one on the south side of the terminal that is also a site owned by the, and a couple of -- by the tjpa, and a couple of others. on the far northwestern part of the plant area, you can see a 600-foot zone at the palace hotel site. there are some other minor additions -- minor changes are around the periphery of the planned area, mostly to create more logical transitions to reflect the changes that have been adopted for the redevelopment area, but those that i have mentioned are the primary changes to the height matt that are proposed. here's just a couple simulations

of what the changes to the skyline will look like. this is the view from 20 that probably gives the best overall perspective of the city and how the skyline appears both in the city and sort of regionally. this image is as the city will look under existing zoning if this plan were not adopted. this is what the city will look like. again, these are rough forms, not building designs, but they represent the general height and general dimensions -- maximum dimensions of what buildings could possibly achieve. you can see the transit tower forming, sort of a central spire at the heart of the skyline of buildings that provide a transition for that new ground in the skyline down through the adjacent districts. this is a digital simulation of

what the view will look like from alamo square, important manage points for both locals and tourists alike. this is another view from treasure island that give you another overall suite -- sweep of the skyline. with the kali simulations like this from vantage points across the city. they have been up on our side for several years now, and we are happy to bring more if you would like for future hearings. just to show a couple of the minor adjustments that are being made to the site map as it is proposed to be adopted -- first is that the height of the transit center itself, which is under construction and not necessarily under the jurisdiction -- or not under the jurisdiction of the planning commission, we do what the hype to reflect accurately what the building height will be, so the maximum tallest elements of the structure will be under 100 feet, so we have just that. there was some confusion around

it when we first published it because as you presumably know, that the height limits in the downtown are allowed certain additions and increases based on certain code provisions. pretty much all is in the taxable district, which allows a 10% addition of occupy the space, and so to reflect that, it was always intended that the heights that were shown on this map that were less than 600 feet were meant to be in this district with a 10% allowance, and those that work taller than -- 600 feet and taller women to reflect the actual maximum height of the building. just to recognize that one sight that was previously shown a 400 feet is now being shown at 360 with the understanding that with the allowance for the 10% addition, it could reach 400 feet. in terms of land use, right now,

about half the area is areac30 fd, which is in our plan area. the plan proposes to reclassify the area as c30 se so we can reclassify all the plans proposed within the district. a portly, the plan proposed is to eliminate the current maximum s.a -- f.a.r. limit to achieve heights that are proposed, buildings will need to see -- exceed and 18 to one, said the plan proposes to do away with that limit as a maximum and have, sort of, density and will be controlled by height and -- height limits and bulk limits and other urban form controls that are in the planning code. we did extensive analysis when

starting this plan, looking at projections and forecasts coming from other sources about how much the city is forecasted to grow and should grow on policy considerations as well as market forces and came to the conclusion that we do need more capacity in the downtown to accommodate more job growth if we are to meet the objectives of the smart growth policies that the region is moving forward with. this is the premier transit accessible district of the city, and we ought not to squander the opportunity to take advantage of that. one important thing that has been found and is increasingly demonstrated in research is that locating jobs immediately approximately transit has more of an influence on people's use of transit and housing does

immediately approximately -- particularly regional rail transit. so the plan proposes to -- thank you. the plan proposes to create a special use district that is a subset of this plan area, primarily concentrated within a block or so around the transit center, to require that on major development sites, that a majority of the space be dedicated to commercial uses. not that there could not be residential uses in the major projects, but that they ought to be mixed to use and not major towers of residential-only uses. a couple important revisions to the november 2009 planned -- in the plan, we propose that the minimum ratio of commercial to non-commercial uses should be three to one. we have since revised that to

two to one. nonetheless, we do not think this will substantially change the bill that of the area, but this will provide some additional flexibility to build up the district as we think it ought to be built. what i would say is probably an oversight of the november 2009 plan was that we did not propose the elimination of the conditional use requirement for housing density over -- i believe it is one unit for 125 square feet of locked area. currently in downtown you need a conditional use to exceed that density limits, which is out of sync with all the controls adopted in other recent plans around the city where we have eliminated the density limitations by lot area for residential uses and ensure that those are -- the density is essentially controlled by the physical controls, so we are

adding the proposal to eliminate the conditional use requirement for housing over certain densities in this plan area. the overall projected buildup for the plan is a little bit over 9 million square feet, about 6 million of which we project would be office space. that represents approximately 50% increase in development capacity. since these projections were done, the planning commission has approved a couple projects under existing zoning. those would be included in these figures. those are not included in these numbers because at the time we did these projects, this project had not been entitled yet. of course, they are not built yet, so those numbers could change. this plan is not just concerned with the skyline.

that is one form of consideration. we are very much concerned with ensuring that as the district continues to grow, that the street level experience of people is as good as can be and as rich of and experience as it can be. the plan has a number of recommended policy guidelines as well as recommended code changes to insure that we have active ground floors on all the new major developments, for instance, by eliminating the expense of this of lobbies and ensuring we have active retail uses and other public open spaces, the on these major new tall buildings, that we shape the buildings to define the pedestrian experience and the experience of being out on the streets a