octavia neighborhood. we are here with ddt partners, co-developing the project with us. together our group has a strong commitment to the market octavia neighborhood. we are developing three projects here, including 8 octavia, which will fulfill the market vail of the octavia plan and revitalize the neighborhood after the removal of the central freeway. our offices are located in the neighborhood in haight valley, close to three. our project manager craig hamburg lives in the neighborhood and led the 128-unit development. as ken rich articulated earlier our project in octavia began in 2007 when mayor's office of cousing sponsored a design competition to promote high-quality housing along octavia. stanley won the competition with an innovative and striking design. in 2011 we acquired the interest and have worked closely with mayor, housing and planning and community to define the design and

create an outstanding mixed-use project that will serve as a vibrant gateway to the market octavia neighborhood. this will bring numerous benefits to the neighborhood and fulfill the vision of the market octavia plan. please indulge me as i go through some of the more significant benefits. i will take a site which has attracted crime and vandalism and transform it to a new landmark. will it bring positive activity both during the day and night. it will add residents to patronize local businesses, boost the local economy. it will will add 48 housing units with a good mix of one, two, three-bedroom units where over 70% are multi-family units suitable for families. it will add seven bmr on-site to better integrate affordable housing into the community and limit parking to.5 spaces to promote public transit over private vehicles. it will have 26 bike stalls

to support most transportation other than cars. will it add two dramatic retail spaces to activate pedestrian realm on octavia and market street. it will be environmentally sensitive by storm water collection capability into the features and maximize energy efficiency by using sun shades for solar heat gain. it will create high density housing in a transit-rich area that has more than a dozen city and mass regional transits. the project enjoys broad support from the community. we have strong endorsements and letters of support from the valley neighborhood association, san francisco action coalition, spur, merchants of upper market in castro, lgbt and neighbors at parcel p. we have shared plans with the san francisco bicycle coalition. as well we have met numerous times with individual property owners and businesses nearby including our immediate neighborhoods to the east. we ask for support as recommended by the planning department. we believe the city can be

very proud of this project, the benefits it will bring to the burgeoning neighborhood and elegant and striking statement it will make as a gateway to the city. thank you for your consideration of this project. we will be available to answer questions afterwards. we are pleased to introduce our architect, who will present the project's design, thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm standing as an architect. as you have heard -- can we have the slides? thank you. as you have heard, this project began in 2007. and in the years since, there's been continuous development working with planning staff, neighbors and community groups through many iterations. the input has helped to significant refine, develop and improve the design. the project we're presenting has the benefit

of this long incubation. some of the most significant changes that have occurred during this development includes the creation of a double height commercial space at the corner of market and octavia. increasing the active use along the octavia boulevard and corner of haight. removing the fire house and reducing parapet and adding windows to provide for detail and articulating the eastern facade with windows and material and color changes. this was the site when the freeway came down. this is the site today. the freeway and sight as it

appears today. the gateway is important, where 101 terminates at market and where the new octavia boulevard ends in the really beautiful new park. which has become this sitting community spot in the neighborhood. here we have the situation and our project. the intention of creating these these book-ends which defines the gateway, by maintaining the same height along each of the streets. we also want to give recognition to the significance of the church, by allowing its dome to exceed the height but making the corner lines sort of parallel gateway

elements. the corner itself is articulated with this commercial space, two-storeys in height, which as i mentioned was created by removing a unit in this evolution of the project. on market street this is the entry to both the commercial space and the residential lobby of the project. with a little triangular green space, which is also a bench and provides a kind of respite along that piece of land. also acts to collect storm water, which we intend to do on the entire sort of sidewalks around, using this permeable surface. kind of an interesting evolution of market street

with the significant and contemporary at market and dolores, market and eighth, so there is sort of a new language evolving to mark these corners of market street. here you see the presence of our building and the way that it starts as a 75-foot, eight-story building. through the shift in topography, changes to the neighborhood, the 54-feet building at the haight corner. these are some of the other views on market street. the organization of the building is based on the idea of vertical yard, which the housing surrounds. it is taking the traditional format and translating it into a new kind of scale and a bigger

sort of development. these are the vertical yards, which organized the housing units. every house actually has access to this outdoor courtyard as it moves through. though the market octavia plan doesn't require rail yard, we have provided 25% relief to the coverage of the lot. this allows us to actually articulate and carve up the building in the way aaron mentioned, so it shifts the scale to pieces more in keeping of the adjacent side of the street. as a gateway building at the entry of the city, we asked ourselves what the contemporary version of this post card image of san francisco could be. rather than aesthetics, we chose to focus on performance.

on this long west-facing facade, adjacent to a noisy boulevard, each inhabits and can control relation to the conditions through a system of adjustable louvers which mod lates sight and sound. this concentrates an image of townhouses, with vertical elements which are are contemporary expression of texture and scale of traditional san francisco street escapes. steady of a mute style that is constantly changing, they reflect lives of inhabitants within. this is the market street corner. the blue area is the commercial space which wraps around a green courtyard. the white area is the elevator lobby, then the triangle is that green park that i showed you on the market street side. all of this is two-story.

then the entry or slipway on octavia boulevard to the parking, again connection to upper level of lobby from that parking area. this is the articulation of the active use at the other end of the site. it is basically a court yard in yellow. the blue area is a townhouse with a porch which gives access directly from the street to that unit. then a commercial space, which is entered off that courtyard. that whole area is quite an active piece. so the two ends have this connection to the street. these public uses. then the building as it moves and is organized around the vertical rail yards which shift through the building, the rooftop which is a common outdoor area shared by all

inhabitants and private groups with upper level units. this is the elevation. you can see the shift from the 75-foot market street more dimension of a neighborhood scale at haight street. the way the building is articulated as townhouses with the vertical dimension and breaks that cuts the building through. the way the units actually occurred, this would be a one-bedroom unit with access to the light court and kind of a view of the interior of that space. two-bedroom unit with its living room as large area but not tall. a very open plan with two bedrooms. the view looking through that back into the boulevard.

then three-bedroom unit which we have three at the upper level, we basically have almost 82% of two bedroom or more so that most of the units are quite large. just another view on the boulevard. if there are questions i would be glad to answer. >> thank you. there may be more questions for your later. opening it up to public comment, and i do have speaker cards. i will call a few at the time. if you want to land on this side, your right side of the room, would be great. ali shalbalanghe. >> thank you. >> i live up the street at 126 haight street. i get the privilege of actually seeing this project built finally. i'm here to express my full

support. i hope you will too. i thank the sponsors and architect and mayor's office of housing for bringing the project to where it is today. its been a long haul. i trust hopefully soon we will see this built. thank you very much. >> thank you. roden levitt, michael elder, many flores, jim orshal. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is robin levitt. i live about a block and a half of this project off octavia neighborhood and i'm a member of the neighborhood association. we are very pleased to support this project. this is consistent with the market octavia plan, which we worked so hard to realize. it does all the right things. we are particularly pleased the developer has chose en to build the bmr units on-site rather than off-site. that is a really good thing. we are also pleased that

the developer has included some retail towards the haight and octavia corner. the market and octavia dozen vision that. once this is build out there will be ground floor retail spaces along the boulevard, so we are happy to see that. we are pleased that the parking is within the recommendations of the market octavia plans. it is.5 spaces per unit or less. but we do have one concern with the parking access from the octavia boulevard street. there is a lot of bicycle traffic that crosses market. that is a significant bicycle path. we foresee some conflicts with the bicycle traffic there. we think maybe there is a way to improve that, maybe create a raised table at

the entry to that side street from octavia to slow the traffic entry mat. i'm sure those can be worked out with the project sponsor. as noted, this is a very sitting site. it is a gateway not only to our neighborhood but to the west side of the city. to the north side via octavia boulevard and to upper market and castro. so this is a very significant site. the gateway is very important here. i just want to -- i'm very pleased to see the building is consistent with the spirit of the san francisco prized design competition, which i worked very hard on. but the one thing i do want to mention is that perhaps there can be some exploration of a vertical

element to mark this. right now it looks as if it serves as a gateway element but not an architectural element to reinforce that notion. those are some of the comments. otherwise we are very excited about this project. this will help get back our neighborhood. we look forward to it being constructed. thank you. >> thank you. >> president fong, commissioners, good afternoon. my name is michael adler, the president of cana construction north income. i have been part of the construction community since 1978. * i'm excited about the project, not because it is monumental and luxurious and millennium or luxuriousness but because it is quent essentially san

francisco. it is in the right neighborhood, beautifully designed and developed, and looked forward to folks that love the community. this is a perfect urban in-fill. looking at construction costs eight octavia will create 13 million in labor economic benefit, creating more than 165,000 person hours of work. the equivalent of keeping in excess of 80 per year. i commend you for the collaborative effort and urge you to push this over the finished line with approval of conditional use request, thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioner, many flores, carpenters local 22. i'm here to the project request for local conditional use. it appears they have done

their homework. strong support from the community. below market rate, parking spaces for auto and bike. that area is long overdue. we are excited about it. of course in addition, the job creation. what is important is that the community and i'm told is very supportive of this. we look for your approval today. thank you. thank you very much. good afternoon, my name is jim worshel, with the haight valley neighborhood association and active on transportation and planning committee. for all the reasons mr. web detailed why we are so pleased with this project, i won't have to reiterate them, since they are fresh in your mind. again i'm here to show support for this project. developer and architect have done wonderful outreach. they have been a pleasure to work for. this is really a model of

getting excellent design in key locations so i'm extremely enthusiastic. hope you approve it. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> ellen mark. >> thank you. i'm allen mark, president of the mark company. couple things i want to cover. one, we do research really of what's going on in san francisco. presently there are only about 300 market rate condominium units. that excludes the area of candle stick. pretty much when you look at all the city, excluding candle stick, there are 300 units available. by the end of the year it will probably be down to about 200 units available. in terms of what's on the market that compares to even five years ago where there are 2,000 to 3,000 units available.

in terms of what is under construction, 200 and inventory is down by half. unfortunately what that does cause is rapid depreciation with all the job growth. more housing is needed. the great thing with eight octavia is it not only adds 48 housing units but seven are affordable. without the redevelopment agency i think will it be hard to see affordable housing. in addition, we all love this town. have great respect for great architects. too often we see buildings that end up being perfunctory or workforce . this is pivotal. market and castro and central market as well as leading octavia boulevard. so i commend the developer

and also we have stanley sidowitz in this city. i think he is one of the great architects today. here he is creating really a magnificent building at this location. i think i strongly -- i strongly support this. i encourage you to. along with that, there are a lot of two bedrooms and three bedrooms. they encourage them that don't have children to have children or children to move in. >> thank you. >> public comment? >> good afternoon, commissioners. tim colin on behalf of the commissioners on this project. our group reviewed this in the spring. can't add too much more than you can add. we loved it. we love stanley's work. ken rich and mark mcdonald

already expressed elegantly. like the on-site bmrs, parking ratios, like the spirit, how it conforms to the spirit of market and octavia plan area, which we support. this is a great project. love how it addressed the challenge of a steep hill. the activation of street scape in particular. don't wait a second. you should approve this project right away. >> thank you. >> i'm mark morris. i am a neighbor a few blocks away, 55 paige street, the haight. i also want to strongly support this project. i think you heard a lot of really compelling arguments to -- for john. the building i moved into about four and a half years ago was a new building. we were very much looking forward to the market octavia building out. it is exciting to see that

is about to happen. i think this is a great plan and at least for myself i really want to express my support for the project. >> thank you. any additional public comment? okay. the public comment portion is closed. opening up to commissioners. commissioner moore. >> i was probably the commissioner who asked the most questions. the paper presentation of this project that's been around a while left more questions for me than it answered. however, hearing the architect's presentation and seeing depth completely changes my understanding and perception of the project, which makes me think that next time you might want to add cd that we can listen to your presentation beforehand and better understand the depth

of what you are thinking. i think some of the prejudices i had, i'm going to repeat them, are completely unfounded when i hear of how you envision the project in the much larger context than the package we have, which is a rather flat one, allows us to understand. i greatly appreciate the presentation. you brought the building alive. i can clearly see this is an appropriate solution for the location that has been envisioned. i'm in support to all the move, which we struggle with, aside from architecture, which we don't always have a project like this. there are the issues of on-site affordable complying with market octavia and on and on. you addressed all of them. thank you. >> commissioner antonini. >> i think this is well-done. the double-high commercial is particularly striking

and is going to really bring that corner out and draw a lot of attention to it in the right way and will be a wonderful site for whatever ends up there, be it a restaurant and activity that is open to the evening hours i think to that light in there will be very welcoming. my only -- you know, in the architecture the only thing i would say is i like the idea you match the height of adjacent church across the street and kept it in profile with the same cornice line as is the case across the street. i would like to see -- you have a lot of verticality because of the elements going vertically. would be nice that there is an element at the top that defined the end, much as is the case between your commercial space and beginning of the glazing. you've got something there. i think it would be nice that there is something at the top that kind of ends

the top of the building. nothing dramatic but is the end of the building as opposed there are a few elements that are just standing up there. that is one comment. see what the other commissioners have to say about that. also i think there was a speaker that spoke about there being a need for a little different treatment on the corner of the building on market and octavia to try to differentiate that from the architecture of the rest of the building. that may be something to think about too. we won't hear the project. it's been continued. there is one that's created the flat iron -- not the flat iron but the corner, the number of degrees a little differently than the rest of the building. and then the changing colors on the louvers, it is an interesting concept. it will remain to be seen what kind of color

combinations we end up with as the residents are changing their windows, but i guess that is just going to be what happens and we will have to wait and see what we end up with as far as whether they are attractive or not. but it is something that hasn't been done before. i know there are some buildings build recently that reflect light differentlily at different times of day. they are interesting. we have a few different colors. be good if we can see this ahead of time as far as the various colors on the building. >> commissioner sugaya. >> yes. i guess just to start with something at the corner, i'm okay with the design. i think it projects out away from the facade along market. that seems to emphasize the corner enough at this point.

i have some issue with the market street elevation. i don't know if anybody has any issues but me. this is not a fair comparison but i will say it. it reminds me of the city of oakland jail, which you can see from the freeway with the vertical -- i don't know if those are windows. i think they are glazed. but they are vertical slits. i know this is a little different but maybe the staff can have the staff look at it and make it a little more friendly to market street, which i think also is the major thoroughfare in addition to octavia boulevard. i hate to forget about that elevation. even as slender and narrow as it is. maybe a little more thought could go into that aspect of the design. otherwise i think it is vertically fine. >> commissioner wu. >> i'm also generally supportive of the project.

in addition to on-site bmr and other items. i appreciate the context, understanding there is a high percentage of affordable housing in the octavia plan and this fits into that larger plan. as to the comment -- public comment about the bike and pedestrian safety, would just encourage the developer to put attention and thinking toward how to make that safer for all the different modes. >> i will chime in here for a second. i'm supportive of this project. i think it is an important piece. it is a landmark piece as a gatway coming off the freeway. in many cases this will be the first point where someone actually gets off the freeway and enters the city of san francisco. i think it is an important piece. the footprint is very challenging, it is very narrow. actually commend the work of your architect and developer to work this out and gain some height and find some retail uses