whether this project meets the policy, planning policies that were laid down with the eastern neighborhood's rezoning and whether increasing the height five feet to add retail space, removing the density limitation to allow a more free expression of density and also removing the parking requirement was worthwhile. what i think the neighbors actually are asking for is tantamount to a spot down zoning of this lot. we are not in a situation where they would like to adjust as in the previous dr, a setback by one or two feet. the reason the project sponsor has not compromised is that the neighbors have been unilaterally proposing a different project. it is a retro grade project, it removes the zoning that is in place and goes back to prior zoning or of zoning that never

was in place, three storey building with 49 units is not a comparable situation to any brand new build on valencia street. as far as the historic issue as to whether this building is compatible or not, the example i bring to the commission to consider is something like where bush street intersects grant at the chinatown gate, there's a clear distinction of a boundary there and we need to address this situation in the same way. one thing that impressed me more than about how preservation works, it's a rigorous process, the liberty hill boundary was created deliberately and with a lot of thought. this boundary is exactly one lot away from the project site, this site is not influenced by or directly impacting the two storey houses that were shown. what was not shown in the

lovely photos of the in tact victorians is the five storey victorian that is within the historic building that is the multiunit building that takes out the entire block and takes up the entire yard, i think i'll have mark show it, we're trading off here, but this shot shows, i'm sorry there, the view downhill street which is a very lovely tree line street, it's a very wide street and the new building peaks up about that one storey. i can go through the whole plans with the commission. it has been very difficult working with the neighbors because they have not been cooperative. the accusations to the private

sponsor and to me is we have not responded, there has been nothing to respond to except do not do the project we're proposing and do the project we like. i'm appealing to the commission really, it's either support the zoning that this commission and department took years to develop or see that this site is so extraordinary that it should be down-zoned. thank you. >> good evening, commissioner, mr. president, my name's mark rat ford, i'm the project sponsor, i would like to first address the issues of the marsh, we stand ready to work with the marsh at any time, wi eve had a couple of meetings with their board, we've offered to offer a sound engineer to find out if there truly is a problem, we offered to bound a sound wall behind it, if

there's property issues, there's neighbor issues that are addressed in due course when you're building a building, it's nothing out of the ordinary, nobody's going to be shut down. this is the building we're replacing, it's a different color now, it has different tenants in it now but this is it, the marsh co-existed with this for more than a decade. where the "party decks" are going to go, there was a fast food late parking lot back there and they survived that, for the historical neighborhood, it was inaugurated historical neighborhood with this on the corner so nothing's going to get worse than this. i have a few factual things to address, if we have time.

the dr requester says the project's at least two storeys taller than anything on hill street, that's not true. there is a four storey building up on the corner, it's taller than anything in the neighborhood, that's not true, there's a five storey building across the street, there's a 7 storey building 300 feet away right on the edge of the liberty hill neighborhood, it's comparable to ours, they say the project is at least double the units of any building on hill street, that's not true. number 8 hill street right next door to the requesters property has 9 units, number 12 hill street on the other side of her property has 7 units, and in their backyard over there, they have 12 units on 21st street.

there's 13 units, that's one unit more than we're putting in on the corner of hill and gorero, so the dr request is full of misstatements and down-right specious allegations and objections and i hope you have a chance to read it. thank you. >> is there any speakers in support of the project sponsor? >> good evening, commissioners, my name is kimberly con l*i , we are few and far between in support of this, just here in person today, but i felt it was important to come because there is quite a bit of support for this development in the

neighborhood. as a young professional who originally moved to the mission because it is transit-rich, i feel i was discouraged at the time, at the lack of small apartments and places to live. i think that the representation here today with all due respect to my neighbors is mostly fro people who have live ined the neighborhood for a very long time, they've done a wonderful time of maintaining their beautiful large victorian homes but part of what the neighborhood really needs is more density, more accessible apartments and places for people to live. i live without a car, i get around entirely by bike and by bus and by bart and i think that this is exactly the neighborhood where that's possible and i just wanted to make sure that that perspective was represented here. thank you.

>> good evening, my name is elizabeth shepperd and i'm here in support of the project. this isn't some big greedy developer building a high rise, this is a gentleman building one project. he spent nearly four yearser going through the planning process building a project [inaudible] requirement, he reduced the number of units down by 25% and i believe that he deserves to have his project approved. i think it would be a better -- while i respect the neighbor's request, rather than going against what's already code compliant, i would recommend they focus their energies on changing the zoning of their neighborhood if it's not pleasing, so i would request you support the staff's recommendation to approve this project. thank you.

>> good evening, commissioners, tim on behalf of the san francisco action coalition on whaf of our members, we strongly supported this project and in particular the 20% on site bmr, the no parking that it has, by definition, that is not luxury housing, it's housing that's designed to be more accessible to people who are non-wealthy. i guess the real reason i'm here is to ask you to stand for the integrity of the eastern neighbor's plan which took ten years to prepare, hundreds and hundreds of meetings across the city, and after it was done, this is the city saying these are the rules we would like to see followed in this area which this project does. i'm sympathetic to the neighbor who is are shocked at the change that's occurring in san francisco but it seems their objection is really within w the eastern neighborhood plan

itself and not this project which says we're following the rules, we ran an article in our newsletter and said two-thirds of housing in portland has no parking in it, what do they know that we don't know. this is a way to get housing more affordable to the folks that we want to live here. i think if anything, i would ask that you say yes, we got it right with the eastern neighbors plan, five storeys in this neighborhood is not a towering, it is not looming, it's a modestly scoped project, it's set away from the historic district, it cannot be said that it can affect the value of the historic field, it's a kfc vacant +vright now. you have it in your breach to say we will stand with the eastern neighborhood plan, we

want to see the city provide more affordable housing, it's on site there, we want to see less emphasis on cars, private auto use, this project does it. they did everything that the city says it wants through its eastern neighborhoods plan, it's up to you to stand forth. >> any other speakers that support the project sponsor? dr requester, you have a two minute rebuttal. >> commissioners, as i think you probably understand by now, the neighbors, merchants and artists near this project feel passionately about the naibtd and strongly oppose this project, i think the fact that we're able to gather over 400

signatures in opposition speaks volumes, they were not able to work or xropz with the neighbors and it is not because we are asking for a down-zoning, we are merely asking that the poll sis of the mission area plan, of the eastern neighbors plan be respected here. i find it interesting that the sponsor point to the kentucky fried chicken. the fact is that this area is largely two and three storey buildings, the fact is that not only is hill street historic but many of the buildings along valencia street are historic, the sponsor overlooks that. and certainly you can find a tall building here or a tall building there but cherry picking a particular building does not tell you about the character of the neighborhood, this is a low rise residential

neighborhood with a great number of historic buildings and putting a five storey modern building in that space would detract from that space and is not compatible with the neighborhood. this is not about being for or about the eastern neighbor's plan, we support that, and as i went through in my presentation, this is not compatible with the policies that were enunciated in that plan, whether it's historic preservation, whether it is compatibility with the historic residence. >> project sponsor, you have a two minute rebuttal. >> i do not waunbacker want to down play the concerns the marsh has about the construction next door, but i do want to express my disappointment with the marsh in particular for how it has not responded to the public

sponsor, there was a long letter written by mark router ford, we met with them three times, we offered to build a sound wall, we eliminated the entire deck above, it would have to delete the requirement for open space to satisfy their request for no open space. we offered to position a loud boom box or device on the roof and have a sound engineer test it. we've assured them that construction will take place during normal hours of construction and the project sponsor will gladly accommodate any accommodations for daytime events, the majority of their events are in the evening and would not be disturbed by construction, but all these offers have been met with a deaf ear, they have not responded at all, they have only opposed the project in total.

the same behavior has been displayed by the neighbors, this has not been a cooperative venture, i have worked in the city for 25 years in every neighborhood, i have been able to work out compromises, this group has been unwilling to compromise. >> okay. the public hearing portion of this is closed, opening it up to commissioners for questions and comments. question ant -- antonini. >> i see a number of renderings here, and now we have pages 1a on here which give us sort of a lot of wood siding, appearing to be wood and it looks pretty well done to me. i'm not sure -- the date of h?hç

this actually was 12 -- 4/2/2012 which i would assume are the most recent renderings. because there are all sorts of color pictures that look a little bit different, but the sketches seem to be the ones that i'm looking at. yeah, i guess, well, those are the color pictures you have but you also had some sketches that -- there's a difference of what appears the square corner and then the rounded corner. is it now the rounded corner? >> yes. >> okay, it looked like the square corner looked better to me but that's just a question of where we are on that. i guess it seemed to be a little bit more compatible what you see typically of the victorians and other buildings of the area, you have a square corner. >> if i could address your

question, that was the initial proposal that went out for the 3/12, it didn't beat the code verbatim in terms of bay near the corner, so it needed to be revised and we collaborated to come up with a corner bay that looked like that, there was an angle bay option and the staff did not prefer that one. >> well, okay. i mean, it looks -- >> i would love to take time to rant on the whole bay ordinance but i think it's obsolete and it forces victorian copies to be made but i think we should be given for freedom with bays, okay, i'm done. >> i think you can make your bays more compatible with the areas, and that's part of it, that's a design thing, we can work on staff on that, but there's issues that seem to be more pressing about that.

it seems to be years ago, i know we sent it back for revisions, it appears you did xhaing a number of united, you had fewer units, i can't remember if we had park ining the earlier plan or not. >> we had parking in and taken it out. again, we put parking in to appease the neighbors, got no response, they were not happy with the whole building so it was too much of an effort to put three car stackers in there so we have one car now. >> there is one car? >> there is one space that is flexible enough to act as resident loading or maybe a zip car or something. >> there is a place you can do something? that's not too material. the other question i had was the actual hiekt, there's been a lot of talk aboutbacker about hiekt, did you bring this down

at all? >> the original project had a roof deck and it had quite a bit of additional height regarding the elevator tower and the screen that we put to block the sound from what has been referred to as the parking deck. >> there's this talk about party decks but it does not look like it has a deck. >> basically the rear yard, one storey above the sidewalk at the rear. >> this is actually on -- is that the hill street side? >> yes. >> okay, i see where that is but it's not at the very top which i think is a lot better because adding more stuff to the stop only emphasizes the height and makes it less desirable and, you know, i think that it's high enough already. i can sympathize with the neighbors of the responsibility of it being a floor lower but we've been down this road a long ways and you've taken the parking away which i think is going to cause a problem with

more cars competing, but that seems what staff wants and some of the neighbors realistically know that they're going to be competing with parking spaces with rez -- residents, but all in all, i don't think it's a bad project, i did want to talk maybe to the dr requester who can speak to the marsh in particular, i guess if you want to do it or whoever's representing the marsh, we had a lot of people from there. >> [inaudible]. >> sure, i had a couple of questions, you had a lot of speakers at the beginning, you brought up parking, you broukt up construction noise and the noise after they were occupied. i mean, i heard from project sponsor they would be willing to put some sound attenuation from your build tog test it to

see how loud it is and put in -- i think that's what i heard and i certainly would like to see that done as part of this because you have a performing facility and you can't perform if it's really noisy, particularly not the construction period but when people are in there, you have to have some quiet, so i think that's something we can remedy. i don't think we can do so much about the parking unless we send them back and have them redesign the project. >> i was talking at one point but not very much. i believe -- i'm the publicist from the marsh, from everything we have heard, we were unaware of everything that the architect just said. i know we would welcome that. our main concern is we cannot tolerate sound bleed and if you're in a highly dramatic moment and you hear something, the whole thing is spoiled,

we're concerned about that and we're concerned about potential costs that we would do to our building as a result of the construction of theirs, they have money, they can exist without us but we may not be able to exist if we -- we're a non-profit, we survive the best we can, so we're very concerned about those two things so we're happy about sound issues and if they can be dealt with, that would be a huge help. >> we could as conditions of approval, we could ask them to do some kind of sound attenuation to a level that would be acceptable, however, in terms of what may be needed to do to your building as far as shoring or other things, that would be a dbi issue that would have to be taken up, there is an issue if a building is right beside another one, if it has impacts on a building because something done to another it, they have to have preventive measures from

melting or something but that's not something that comes before us but other improvements you have to make to your building that are already needed would not be something that they would have to do, so -- >> the other issue, if i may to say so is ventilation and light because it will block an entire wall of our building and the ventilation, there won't be any cross ventilation upstairs in our certain areas of our upstairs, the classroom where we teach drama, that whole wall will only have one window, also the backside of the building which is our dressing room area, that wall will no longer have a window with ventilation or light, that's another strong issue for us. we need some mitigating lentbacker ventilation, whether or not it comes in -- i'm not a designer, but from the top or some other direction, sky lights or smrg to cover that problem. >> i guess it's property line

windows, so that's something we could certainly think about, we'll see if the project sponsor is interested in putting a skylight in for you because trying to put a matching light all around that might be quite a redesign deal. okay, thank you, that gives me an idea of the two impacts i'm hearing the most of and then from staff, i just have a here have been representations about the height of the areas of the building and i know this is compliant with the plan, you know, the mission plan and the mission neighborhoods plan, but is it true that there are buildings up xw are fairly close by? >> that's correct, it's a pretty varied hiekt, primarily two and three storeys tall but there are definitely a range of buildings along valencia street. >> and this is 112 at the

highest point, as it goes uphill street, it drops down to around 70 or something, if i'm reading these renderings right. >> no, no, no. >> the hiekt is 55 feet. >> well, yeah, i'm surprised, okay, i'm not sure why these totals, this looks to me like 55 on here but somebody has 112, 97 on here, maybe it's in another direction, i'm not sure, these plans have two different height ts, we're dealing with 55 feet then. that makes more sense. okay, thank you. >> commissioner hillis? >> i think its concern is that the comments we heard from the marsh, from the project sponsor, we have this list of

mitigation and kind of what they'd like to see happen during construction and before construction, have you had a chance to look at this? >> commissioner, we've had a couple of meetings with them and we're over there with their operations manager and we told them now is the time to get started on this, is there a drainage issue, we actually suggested putting in an operable sky light to augment the one window they have back there. ventilation, they have a non-compliant ventilation system that goes down that drops down into their theatre that has no back holes or anything on it. they have a 7 inch hole in the wall, this is all easy to fix stuff and we've asked them to let us come in and evaluate what needs to be done now before we get started so that we're not busy on something else because these are easy fixes, not easy, easy, but it's

completely manageable and i understand their position being a non-profit, etc.. >> right, how about the construction, no construction after 3:30, you know, no construction on weekends, you know, which i would think is reasonable. >> this was all brought up at their board meetings and we let them know, let us know when there's something going on. >> so, you're amenable to that? >> we're amenable to that, it's astounding how quiet it is in there, there's a five space hallway that runs all the way up on the property line with our building so there's a five foot hall way, dead space, plus they have a utility closet there, then they have another room that they use for dressing so the theatres are completely isolate framed the property line, it's astounding how quiet it is up there.

>> it might be quiet now but it may not be quiet when construction is happening. >> i stood up there, you can't hear anything, we're completely willing to pitch in and get it done. there's no big -- i don't see any big obstacle there, we just have to go down there and do it. >> commissioner sugaya? >> i forget what i was going to say. >> do you want me to come back to you? >> no, i'll start off and think about it. i'm quite sympathetic to the marsh, i was a board member of women's will, so all women's shakespeare company that resided in various places around the bay area depending on where, here and there they used to live but they utilized all kind of business, i don't know if they performed at the marsh or not, and then we did

have last week or the week before an issue before us involving the sun dance theatre in japan town and there's a restaurant that wanted to have live entertainment and the demising wall between the theatre and the restaurant was not a structural wall so there was issues of sound bleed into the theatre space, so i think we recently have been confronted with sound transmission issues into theatre areas. i don't know what the vote will be, i'm in favor of most of the project. i think it's too big. i think that some design changes could be made. that could lessen the sort of bulk and scale of the building. it might be some height changes but i don't want to get into designing it