of parcels to no one than 100 feet of frontage. there are not many parcels less than that width in the townson zone -- moo zone but there are a few and i think it's a lost opportunity to not allow those smaller ones to consolidate with those adjacent with them, and we would like to propose is a change or a minor exception to the provisions in 121.7 regarding consolidation that would authorize the commission to approve projects with lot consolidations with limit of 200 feet of frontage along the street. within the wmo zone provides the project meets the guidelines and goals and intent of the plan. that's all i have. thank you.

>> thank you. next speaker. let me call some more names. (calling speakers). >> good afternoon commissioners, president fong. i am john gold man and i presented at your two previous meetings and i am here again. presented ideas of grandfathering in certain projects. we are the architects and we designed to the building to reflect the concerns and there are studio apartments along 11th and the two bedrooms

are away from 11th and we designed the building to meet a kooftic requirements so there is no sound transfer so i am here to reiterate again with proper design and unit mix and arrangement and acoustic design and i like the idea of it on 11th as long as you can do that and the night time times are great and our project which has been in submittal for seven years and we didn't proceed because we wanted to piggyback on the eir that was approved today after seven years ago.

there was never reason for me to do that and get my own project going so what i want to emphasize here and cory teague and presented today and do no harm. that's fundamentally under mined this process for the last seven years. if you don't grandfather in the project it would definitely do harm to my client at the last minute and one more thing commissioner hillis had a question last week about the unit mix which i can answer now. there is eight small studios, 400 square feet each and six small one bedrooms along 11th that are 580 square feet. the two bedrooms are at the back and i am happy to answer any questions you have about the project.

>> thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is mark dimanteau and a licensed architect here in california. my firm is in western soma along 11th and harrison. i am here because i found out about the new sally zoning and that clearly restricts any architecture or design professionals to move from where they are right now and especially people that want to move into western soma. it's ideal because we're close to the building department. my business has been there for nine years. i'm a local enterprise and agency company so i think if you -- you must allow architects and design professionals to be part of the sally zoning. it would total exclude us. i am here because i am a resident

are harrison and 11th street corner which has that zoning issue that was just talked about. we were not notified of any redeveloping where they wouldn't allow residential until last month and we read it on jim meeko's blog on november 12. we tried to attend a november 15 meeting. we would love, love to have more residents in the neighborhood. i am also the architect for the businesses that recently closed down on 12th and howard and 12th and folsom. they were bars and had licenses. they closed. i know the owners and there weren't enough people on a regular basis beyond friday or saturday night. if there was you would see that the club there would be easily rented out. there should be more

residents along 11th street and to exclude a whole street for moore residents -- we can coexist. we always have. i am the president of the hoa and nobody reached out to us to coexisting. other neighborhoods do it. we can do it. we are happy to meet with anyone that wants residential there and we coexist happily so again i am here for two issues and allow us architects and design professionals are part of that sally zoning. thank you so much. >> good afternoon commissioners. i am chris shaffer and i am a 40 year resident of san francisco. i am the manager for the community outreach program and what we do is specialize in

helping to facilitate and design community input through having large meetings facilitated by people who are neutral but experts at getting input from others so i don't have a position on any one of these specific issues. i have a position only about assuring you of the community process that is taken place throughout the development of the western soma community plan. part of what we did is work with the design of three very large meetings that included over 200 people and our role was to allow the citizens, and the businesses and residents to be heard. i think it's heard as i listen and observe the comments today when there is not a lack of out reach, a lack of information, a sense of being able to participate in the decisions or even having information as it does along that begins to be the place

that is thorny. what i saw happened in the community process is that the input from those meetings actually went from those large meetings went to the four standing communities that western soma had as well as into their monthly task force meeting. now i realize an individual had commented on the fact there were hundreds of meetings and yes indeed there were, but those were the places where the individual issues were hammered out and yes they're all public meetings so there was notification, so i would like to say also even as you hear that a blog was a way for people having information the whole point whether or not it was the planning department sending 1100 -- how many ever postcards to

-- and i can certainly say that western soma citizen's planning task force has done what they can in coordination with the task force and neighbors to achieve what it says. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners. tim colin on behalf of the housing association and i want to echo what was said and when citizens worked this long and it's a good thing to move forward. a lot of good people put a lot of people into this. with that being said we have some concerns and i expressed

them to you before. one of the fundamental premises is the plan should do no harm and should be more expandively than we're used to hearing and one of the premises was to accommodate growth and we're not convinced this is the plan to make it happen. in particular we heard from members who are architects and says that the western soma has lots of rules written into it and particularly with yards and open space, roof tops that are more likely to impede growth or harm production of housing than we're used to seeing. the second thing is i don't know if you recall but a couple of weeks ago planning staff made a presentation and this will

accommodate this -- that looks like a missed opportunity and finally sitting in the wings is the very strange and perhaps legally questionable community stabilization plan. we don't know what the status of it, what it has, but at a minimum i strongly urge you to consider the language that was presented and asking to you take a regional approach to this and move it forward but we are looking to see if some of the rough edges can be worked on. >> thank you. next speaker.

>> good afternoon commissioners and i live on polk street and have been working with negotiating for the neighborhood. what i think is great about this plan is the developers were involved -- were at the table and developing a lot of the criteria and that many sticking points that we've had have been anticipated here in part by making design guidelines into design standards, and to sort of clean up a lot of vague language about mitigation, so i think this will speed up development and the amount of time that committees and developers spend talking back and forth and i think it's a very good thing. thank you. >> thank you.

>> good afternoon commissioners. peter cohen. i just wanted to offer a few thoughts and i have been involved in this plan i guess from a few vantage point. i was here on the presentation and former work i was doing and we were a technical consultant or assistant resources for the western soma task force so along with my team i worked on a number of these elements as it went through the technical stages and i also work on housing policy city wide so we have been looking at this plan, looking at the kind of ideas it's coming up with, and how it responds to housing needs and housing affordability needs and lastly as a committee i was watching it from a process standpoint and involved with market octavia and from a reference point and how this western soma differs so there

is a lot of good things that came out of this and from a process stand point i think it's a fine attempt to do process at a level never attempted before in san francisco, and i will say to one previous speaker i don't think any area plan process has been swiftd. eastern neighborhoods was something in the order of seven, eight years. market octavia was nine years so western soma is on average and they're long and boring processes. a couple thoughts on the history. i think it's important to know that western soma and planning for soma in general wasn't simply about creating more growth. it came out of the mid-90's to the 2000 and instability created through the market cycle in terms of impact on small businesses as well as existing resident populations and we had a variety of displacement and turmoil and

recognized that the controls were antiquated and not having a clear path way and depending whether you're a resident or service provider you will have different perspective, but the point was to bring logic and stability to the way the neighborhood was planned for its future opposed to the wild west, so i think sustainablity and predictability were the goals and look at the businesses of the future as well as there and create sustainablity in that environment. look at housing needs and market rate and affordability and design and treat soma and western soma as a neighborhood and not just a place to develop so in that sense i think the goals were achieved. whether it creates a panacea and high density is another question but i don't think if that was the goal of the task force at the out set. thank you.

>> thank you. has john calins been called? >> good afternoon commissioners. i am encouraged by your conversation last week regarding the historic use controls and wanted to provide additional information but i wanted to first echo what tim just said. we get up here and talk about the things we want to see different in the plans but that is not to take away from the work and effort and time that folks from the community put into the plans and i want to acknowledge that and these comments are not to suggest that to take away from that enormous effort so what we have been talking about is potential maintain the current eligibility classes for historic buildings that can take advantage of these historic use controls. as cory mentioned this is a relatively limited number of buildings in western soma so it's a good start but we think there is a

need to expand beyond just the existing controls. you know the key here is that in western soma there are these zoning districts that do have restrictions on non residential uses and that makes sense because the idea here is encourage residential development and a lot of cases over ground retail but obviously we need to take into account the historic existing buildings and something has to happen with them and they're there. one of the problems as we designate these buildings historic through the surveys it makes extremely difficult to transition the and this is the crux of the whole issue. i'm glad that the department has taken the time this week and time to look at some of the other options. i

did want to comment on a couple of them. we still feel like it makes sense to expand this to the degree that is in the eastern neighborhoods now and in the historic surveys for western soma there are a number of buildings designated historic but only because they are contributors to an eligible california register district, so to limit this just buildings that are actually listed on the register we have already created the ceqa issue with the buildings because they're deemed eligible so to go through the process and get them on the register through the state doesn't seem to me to have a lot of purpose with it and limited to buildings just deemed individually eligible for the california register. again most of the these buildings are eligible as contributors to a

historic california register eligible district, so again you're going to lose a lot of buildings there and again these are buildings there is not a lot of uses allowed and we need to find something to be use them for. thank you very much. >> thank you. i have abigail fits ger old and scott kiter. >> good afternoon. i am abbey. i am not in real estate. i don't own a business. i am just a resident. i have never been to one of these meetings and joining late in the game and while i commend the task force these developments are being made and i am only now hearing about them. i live in the area. i don't think the neighbors know how long about what is going on. i don't think the residents in the neighborhood are pretty aware and i am active in the community and i am embarrassed

to say i wasn't involved earlier. where have been i been? i do have concerns not allowing residents to move into the neighborhood is not going to help the cause. i want it to be a plan that is a win-win, not a win-lose. i hope you grandfather in this gentleman's project. i don't want the street next to me just be night life and night activities and come to the neighborhood and party and ruin and go home at night and leave the residents to clean it up. i feel like we're a neighborhood that is -- i don't know, we're just getting going and i feel like there is room for growth and development but i worry this isn't the right plan. there are some things i agree with but others we strongly disagree with and i feel like the type of neighborhood we are we don't have a voice that is loud enough to be heard. i guess that's

all i have to say. i am nervous, so yeah, i don't know. let me just think for a minute if there is anything else i want to say. oh yeah, i worry about a big projects that want to go on the corner of eighth and horis son and 400 new residents without parking. we can't get parking stickers for the neighborhood. where are you going to park? the alley way is the only place to park. everything else is two hour restrictions and metered parking. it's just not viable and i hope that you do consider it and i have concerns and i am representing iceis street and bernice when i say that. >> thank you. >> hello commissioners, i am scott kieper and the

representative on the western soma task force on the last years. yes it's a long process. i am over joyed to see it at the conclusion and i try to keep up and there is are a lot of changes that have been introduced and i will touch on those and this came on the heels of the.com era and the changes in the neighborhood and the existing communities and outreach and activist lead by jim meeko so the community had a say what happened with this and we saw the recession and the lack of development, so we are now coming return of another boom cycle and hope that the controls that were under mined frankly from the task force still maintained in the wording of plan. in the heard was a proposal that is watered down

but this is maintaining affordability and opportunities for educated and blue collar jobs and that is the heart and we will advocate that policy is not lost as this plan moves forward. we're seeing changes having to do with entertainment. it's been on, certainly throughout the life of the plan, and ongoing with valid positions on either side of that and this is trying to rectify a horrible planning choice from the 1990 planning and we're trying to bring that back and the businesses have survived and many have thrived so reconsidering 11th street and that vital component to the entertainment area and the mou and what is being considered and i don't

know if that is carrying the heights on the ton sound corridor and -- good i am just hearing about some of the plans right now so certainly not losing the community stabilization plan and a lot of result of compromise. there are things i would have loved to see in the plan so it's not all at the expense of the other businesses and developers that want to see this happen. there is tremendous compromise up to this point. i would love to see the arts district in the plan and we have been here for years. we are at the return of a growth cycle and sees displacement in the lower income and most are going to oakland. hi a project with a theater and 80% had to relocate to oakland after i lost my lease and -- we got a twitter tax break and that's haduppic

effects on the community. >> thank you. any further public comment? please come to the mic. >> thank you. my name is tim quail and represent tcs architecture and the design professional community generally. i just want to say we're long time resident of the sally district in the western soma area, and as an advocate for design professionals and continued use in that area we have a historic presence. often we represent a sort of cross roads of other creative arts, graphic designers, artists, industrialists, fabricators, shops and all of them have a historic presence in the neighborhood that we wish to

continue growing. we represent a glue that keeps the creative community together and you would do yourself a favor to broaden the use at the sally designation to include design professionallings. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon vice chair wu and commissioners. i am jerry crawlly representing neighborhood network. i feel like a deb taunt tonight. i have been not been here for two years and this is an important occasion for me to say a few words. i didn't have prepared remarks but i was in the

audience thinking about my history and goes back to when i met jim meeko and meeting with mayor brown every friday and several neighborhood people and i recall we would talk about the issues and the mayor's chief of staff or some other person would write something down and that's the last we heard of it and you know those were the days the mayor was pro-development and antineighborhood and we formed the network and the first year was a director of san francisco public health and dr. batia and

we talked about planning and the perfect way to plan is go into a community and have input from the neighbors, the business people, the people that live and work there, what do they want? and i thought oh what a concept that is and it turned out anyone that studying planning is the concept gets the first year but they forget it when on the outside and influenced by other people is what i have been told. in any case it seems we had plang top down and certainly not bottom up until 2005 and my recollection is being at home and watching channel 26 and a meeting of the rules committee.

three members. i forget who they were but chris daly's district and interviewing more than 20 people for the task force. let me say i think this project is fabulous. i think it serves as a protocol for a neighborhoods all over the country, not just this city, and i think the planning department is to be congratulated as all those that participated and given input and i hope this can serve some more good purposes with japantown and projects in the pipeline. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hi commissioners. my name is barbara