the request before you today is for several actions regarding the transit bay tower project which would construct a new 61 story building which would be 9 12 feet with a record of crown reaching a height of approximately 10,0 70 feet containing 1.73 million office space, 10,000 square feet of retail space, 20,000 square feet of open space and 39,000 square feet of [speaker not understood] in the parking area. touch-tone located in the transit center district plan. [speaker not understood]. the plan addresses issues of reasonable sustainability and focusing on job growth in an area supported by abundant existing and transit plan services as well as retail and service amenities. the project is located immediately adjacent to the future transit center which will accommodate local and inner city bus service as well as caltrain and california high-speed rail service. the roof of the transit center

will also feature a 5.4 acre public park city park. other goals of the plan include sculpting of the downtown skyline, investing a substantial transportation infrastructure, and improvements to streets and open spaces and expanding protection of historic resources. adoption of the plan included hybrid classification of numerous parcels in the area to increase height limits including the landmark tower site, with a height limit of 1,000 feet as well as other several sites -- i'm sorry, as well as other nearby sites with heights ranging from 600 to 850 feet. as the largest and tallest development within the plan area, the towers [speaker not understood] an integral component to the goals of the plan with respect to regional growth, urban form and the development of a robust transportation infrastructure. project sponsor will give a detailed presentation regarding the design of the project, but i would like to highlight a number of the specifics, policy and regulatory issues.

the first is the issue of shadows. funding code section requires that the planning commission consider whether shadow impacts cast by new development on the public parks would be adverse to the use of those parks. * 295 i am joined with the rec and park commission last week they strongly adopted amendments tox cumulative shadow limit that had been adopted for certain parks in the greater downtown area and the recreation and park commission recommended to this commission that the shadow cast by the tower would not be adverse to the use of eight open spaces affected by the project. specifically, these properties are union square, st. mary's square, portsmouth square, justin herman plaza, maritime plaza, [speaker not understood] park, chinese recreation center, and [speaker not understood] park. the amount and nature of the shadow cast by the project is described in greater detail in section 295 motion. to summarize, however, it should be noted that the new shadow generally occur in the

morning hours during periods of low park usage for limited amount of time on any given day and limited discrete period of the year which would vary depending on the specific park. the second issue is regarding exceptions being requested under the planning code section 309. the planning code allows the project to seek exceptions from strict compliance from certain sectionses of the code provided that this commission makes specific findings. this project requests exceptionses from the regulations in the area of street wall bays, separation of towers, reduction of ground level 1 currency, general standards for off-street parking and loading to create the curb cut on first street that is proposed here. you can see on the left-hand side of the exhibit. and unoccupied building height that would allow the decorative lattice crown at the top of the tower. consigns [speaker not understood] for each exception is described in the draft section 309 motion but i would be happy to discuss any of these specific items in greater detail. it should be noted that in the case of the items for street wall bays, separation of towers and unoccupied building height,

the zoning legislation to implement the plan specifically created these processes to allow for greater design variation and discretion by this commission. finally, i would like to describe the public open space features of the project. the project would include a new public plaza known as mission square shown here, measuring approximately 24,000 square feet located immediately to the east of the tower on the right-hand side of this exhibit. the space will feature enhanced paving, seating areas, and a redwood grove. the project also features the new vertical circulation elements allowing the public to access the fewv city park that would be developed on top of the transit center. an inclined elevator located to the fremont side of mission square will carry visitors to the square and city park and elevator separate lobby within the tower would serve as an additional means of access. in addition, the fifth floor of the tower would include a retail space that will help to

enliven and activate city park. this retail space and the public elevator and the tower will be connected to city park via live publicly accessible porch that serves both as a physical bridge between the tower and city park as well as an extension of the park contain seating and landscaping. providing clear and convenient opportunities for the residents to access the park, throughout the staff review process and the project sponsor has responded by incorporating these important amenities. i should note that the transbay joint towers authority has given preliminary approval for the design of the bridge pending further engineering and design details and this preliminary approval allows the bridge to be counted toward the required open space for the project. so, in order for the party to proceed today, the commission must take four actions. number one adopt findings under the california environmental equality act, number two, adopt findings that the new shadow cast by the project on eight open spaces won be adverse to the use of those spaces and to allocate allow shadow budget

for the proswore of six open spaces which have budgets. number three, allocate office space under the annual office development limitation program. and number four, determine that the project complies with planning code section 309. in conclusion, staff recommends support of the project because the project meets the goals and objective of the transit center district plan to concentrate office development near the future transit center and other high-level transit service with an intense walkable urban context. the project will generate substantial revenues that will contribute to the development of transportation infrastructure including the transit center and the downtown rail extension as well as other improvements envisioned by the plan. the height and stature of the tower seen in this exhibit, the height and stature of this tower is proposed as was envisioned in the plan that seeks to establish a building at this site as the crown of the downtown skyline. the project includes significant new open space and retail amenities that will

provide recreation space and will act v-8 and enliven the surrounding air i can't tellv the project meets all applicable requirements of the planning code aside from the exceptions pursuant to planning code section 309 and staff recommends the commission make findings to allow these exceptions. quickly i would like to note a few typographical errors in the motionses that will be corrected in the final versions. first of all the conditions of approval for the section 309 motion include impeding references the five-year or five month performance period. the approval period should be for five years. second, the first page is a draft office allocation motion incorrectly to the project site address as 350 mission street instead of the actual site address. so, both of those would be corrected should the commission approve these motions today. thank you very much and i'm available for any questions. >> before we go on with the presentation by the project sponsor, i neglected to read all of the item into the record. so, if i may, item number 11

for 101 first street, the transit tower is for consideration of adoption of c-e-q-a findings or findings under the california environmental quality act. item 12 a, all for 101 first street transbay tower, 12 a is for adopting findings that shadow is not adverse. 12 b is requests for allocation of square footage for the annual office development limitation program. and 12 c is for request for determination of compliance pursuant to planning code section 309. with that, project sponsor can -- >> project sponsor. >> thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. paul parody with the project sponsor. the transbay tower has a five-year history and there have been many important contributors to the project.

over that time. i'd like to start by recognizing a few of them. we'd like to thank the tjpa for their outstanding leadership in advancing the transit center and the new neighborhood and for patiently working with us over those five years to get to this hearing today. i'd like to thank director graham for his team and the planning department for their excellent guyctiontion through this whole process and in particular for their significant design input which really made the project substantially better. so, thank you. and finally i'd like to thank and thank our world class architectural team in particular, pelly, clark pelly, pwp landscape architects who designed mission square. all of us at heinz are tremendously enthusiastic about the transbay tower and we feel fortunate to be able to deliver a project like this to this great city of ours.

so, at this time i'd like to introduce fred clark, a founding principal of pelly clark pelly and he will present the transbay tower project to you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is fred clark. i am a senior design principal with pelly clark pelly in new haven, connecticut and i also want to thank you for all the time and attention you spent with us and in particular the planning staff and director ram as paul just said, the project has gotten better. the details have been worked out in extraordinary level, particularly at this early phase. and we feel quite proud of the product that you will be seeing today. i am going to go very briefly first of all to set the context just in case anyone needs reminding, we're adjacent to the transbay transit center park as you can see in the slide on the right and add a

viewpoint to the position of the tower. the the tower is just about in the center of the park. you'll see it a few minutes at one of the most important and critical functional areas of the park where restaurants, vertical circulation, zones of activity all come together and the tower is there to really support and embrace that kind of activity. here you see a more simplified version, the transit center park of course is the green line across the bottom. mission street on the north side of the site, first street on the west, fremont on the east and mission square is the space between transit center tower and fremont. i'm going to go into detail about the tower and detail about the ground plane and the park level. a great amount of what i would call transformative refinement has been undertaken in both instances. and even though the tower remains essentially the same as it was proposed during the

competition some five years ago, there have been an enormous amount of very, very critical changes and updates. i will say also this is the architect -- sorry about that. the proportions in your screen are making it look short and squat and it really is not short and squat and because of that we decided to bring this model. and i think you can see -- and i'll turn it for you because it's very important in a building like this to look at it not only head on, but in diagonal direction because that of course how it become the widest. and i think you will agree this is one of the most elegant and icon i can forms that one might imagine in this very, very important building in the city of san francisco. the ground plane is very important to us and very

important to the city. in may you heard pete walker present mission square to you. i'll show you some refinements in the tower that responded to issues in mission square. let's start at the very top. there is an important bus drop off along mission street that runs along the north face of the tower. in addition to that, there needs to be a 20-foot sidewalk between that bus drop off and the face of the tower. the north facade has been flattened. there is not the curb that you see on east and west. that flattened facade extends upwards to about 30 feet in the face of the tower. that flattened facade not only allows the 20 foot setback, but it also allows a continuous view into the lobby and activity on the inside of the building, enlivening the mission street frontage and we think significantly improving the pedestrian experience. * curve on the east side, a great deal more retail has been added in the ground floor of the building. this is the result of a good

bit of discussion with planning staff and we think it's a very, very good addition to the way the building is going to function. outside of the retail we are imagining cafe tables, points of activity, the growth of 20 mature redwoods also will become a very important urban destination. to the south of that retail is a new addition and that is a public lobby that counts as part of our open space designation and off of that public lobby is a very generous elevator up to the transit center park. and that elevator you'll see in a few minutes itself has been designed and signed in such a way that it's highly visible and very apparent from the pedestrians passing by. as you heard in may there is also the inclined elevator that takes you from mission square up to the park. there is the tim hawk ins on sculpture in the corner. we are imagining a very beautiful, lively and i think

quite san franciscan environment in the future. at the park level, remind you you're some 70 feet in the air, the ration it center tower connects with the park with a 128-foot-long porch, the center of which is a 30-foot wide bridge connection that gets you directly from the tower to the park and vice versa. the elevator from mission square up to park level is very prominently located. it's an attachment to the tower. it's not subsumed in the tower so you'll see it very, very clearly. next. i'm going to go just very quickly through a few typical floors. these are really only relevant in two significant ways. one is this building is being designed to be at the forefront of safety and of the new codes that are being written for high-rise construction. for instance, there are three exit stairses in this tower court. this is the first contemporary building that will contain three exit stairs. the structure is being designed

with all the kinds of issues in mind that one needs to be concerned with in urban settings these days. next. but at the same time the tower tapers in a very elegant way from the bottom to the top to the extent that the ground floor surface area is approximately 27,000 square feet. the surface area on the last occupiable floor, need to go to the next one, is about 18,000 square feet. so, it's a very significant reduction in area, very significant taper. next. and you see that taper in this section. the taper falwell within and we're quite proud to say this, well within the bulk limitations being written in the district plan. * and this is one subject that's undergone an enormous amount of scrutiny as a resulted in a very elegant tower that is going to be an extremely good neighbor to its new neighborhood. next.

what i'll do now is take you from the ground to the middle to the top of the building to talk to you about refinements first of all in the exterior wall. there was a concern with the planning staff that the tower had a transition from the top to the bottom. this is a very, very valid concern. it's a big building. it sits in the middle of the city. it needs to nestle and settle into its context carefully. of course it is adjacent to the transit center. the transit center has a park 70 feet in the air. there are all kinds of contextual clues that we keyed into. what you can see here is the metal work from about 84 feet down and much more prevalent in the lower portion of the tower, so, we're transitioning from a relatively light metal work in the base of the tower or to much heavier metal work in the base of the tower. this has a number of attributes, a number of

positive attributes. first of all, we're quite concerned about the effect of the building on the bird population. and for a building like this, zoned from the street level up to about 90 feet is critical in how birds approach and interact with the building. that depth of metal and the density of metal is going to help significantly in that regard. there is also, of course we're fortunate to have the new park on the top of the transit center which itself will attract birds. which means that another 30 to 50 feet in the building above that also is critical in how birds are interacting with our building. we're looking at dense metal work, ceramic foot patterns on the glass. so, we're very mindful of how the building will settle again once again into its native habitat. next. in the body of the tower as we mentioned in may, the corners are curved glass. very beautiful, very refined,

very contextual contemporary skin. but that's been augmented with a depth and density of metal work so that the building will have our very light and very kind of glow in an ambient way. the color for the metal work is intended to be a slight iridescent pearl pink. you can imagine that this is a building that really will shine on the skylight. next, and at the very top -- and this is new from the last time you saw it, we've introduced four vertical facetses of about 150 feet in length. these vertical facets also are a response to observationses by the planning staff that the building needs to end in a very

grand and icon i can way. this is a very simple, very straightforward idea. we think it's an idea that will last over time quite well. it's also allows us to introduce a lighting element. next. at the very top that is, again, very simple, very powerful icon ic and operates at the urban scale. it is a gesture one will see at a great distance. and i think you can also see it will be a wonderful companion to the transamerica tower. next. going back down now to mission square, next, charlie, these are images that pete walker showed you in may. but just to reinforce once again the effect of a grove of 20 mature redwood trees, on day one these trees will be about 40 feet in height. but in five to eight years they could be as much as 70 feet in height. tim hawkins' sculpture is in

the foregroundand the funicular that leads to the park. and one of the interesting things that t. walker and his firm are doing is making a visual and physical connection between the park level and mission square so that you see smaller redwoods at the edge of the parka above, mature redwoods on the ground. so, it's as if the building and the transit center are really sitting in this very, very lovely urban, but at the same time treed environment. next. * park above you are now standing next to the transit center. the funicular is just above you. in the distance you can see the elevator to city park. again, very prominent, very well signed and actually quite large. next. we're now at the park level itself. you see mission square below. the concentration of activity just outside the bridge connection from the transit center, it's where a majority of people will come by escalator and elevator up to the park level. there is a large skylight that

brings light deeply into the transit center itself. there are restaurants, festival plazas, points of activity. so, this is a real nexus of concentration of human activity at the park level. next. and if you go up to the park, standing back looking back towards what we're characterizing as the porch, it's the canopy and the connection from the tower to the transit center, very generous, very visible and again it operates on an urban scale. it is a bold and welcoming gesture. next. if you move a bit more closely you see the canopy above you. this canopy has several functions. it will obviously shelter you from sun and rain, but also it helps mitigate the flow of wind on the face of the tower as does the depth of the metal work on the tower facade itself. so, this should be a very calm and a very inviting place to be. and you see the elevator from mission square at that location. a few views of the tower from

the bay bridge, i apologize for how washed out it is in your screen here. needless to say this is going to be a powerful presence in the skyline. if you squint in the material we gave you, you'll see that the vertical facet, the 150-foot vertical facet itself is very visible. again, rather serene as a gesture. it's not an overpowering gesture and we think it is a gesture that will last the test of time. but it certainly marks this high point in the city skyline. next. and the view from potrero hill. next. and dolores park. thank you very much. >> thank you. okay. opening it up to public comment. >> and as the speakers come forward [speaker not

understood], i neglected to remind all of us to turn off or silence our cell phones. thank you. >> i'm going to call a couple names that i have. david snyder. [speaker not understood] costello, pamela butlery. it's been a great pleasure to live in san francisco. >> your name, sorry. my name is david snyder and it's been a great pleasure to live in this city for over 30 or 40 years. and i have particular respect for julia morgan [speaker not understood].

but one time i wrote a piece that i guess through the force of karma appeared in the chronicle, i forget which, from the hurst papers. i've got a number of pieces. it was called between the bridges of the sun and of the moon. and it was inspired by ching yee who wrote a book called the silent traveler in san francisco. i wonder if ching yee could come back and see now a building that as the prior speaker said, quote, will dominate the skyline. it will be the height of twin peaks. i verified that with joshua right before i spoke to you. and that's without the

funicular. with it it's even taller. * than twin peaks. is that the right size and scale for san francisco? or would that building be more appropriate in manhattan? i would like to request that this project be killed and not seen the light of day on behalf of the citizens of san francisco who have been here for years and who do not wish to see, as i've read some of the reports, that the views of the east bay and other parts of the city will be blocked by this building, the height of twin peaks. thank you very much.

between the bridges of the sun and the moon and something that dominates the skyline. good afternoon, commissioners and everyone in here in the room. my name is ignacio and i'm with laborerses local 261. we currently represent over 4,000 members here in the city and county of san francisco. and i am here on behalf of all those members and also a lot of community folks that are here as well in full support of this project. and i hope that the commissioners will approve all the findings and approve this project. i also want to say that this will be a nice building.

and i would like to be the first one to look at the skies once this is built. thank you. good afternoon. my name is pamela buttery, and i am probably the most proximate neighbor to the planned tower. i live at 301 mission street in the millennium building, and i would be greatly affected by shadow and the fact that 75% of my windows will be blocked from the sun by the tower which will only be a few feet from me across fremont street. however, this is a planned development.

i am kind of perturbed by the fact that i was a real estate developer and there are two problems i think with this building, and that is the approximation of two very, very tall tower. i think that the millennium billion is at the moment the second tallest building in san francisco. so, you are proposing in your -- i think it's 12 c, proposing an exception for the separation of towers. so, two very tall buildings to be this proximate i think is a problem and i have a problem with the wind funnel that will be created for myself and 425 other residents of the building