had five people. we had -- i don't know how many and we have 45% of hers were in the neighborhood and 98% of ours were in this neighborhood of immediately adjacent. we are increasingly active neighborhood deeply rooted in the san francisco community -- >> thank you. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> you can submit that on the rail there. next speaker please. >> hi. my name is jeff hoses. i live at 1131 lawsuiton. i am a san francisco native. i have lived the same home. i have seen neighborhoods change almost unrecognizable and my neighborhood has remained the same and this addition of the

additional floor would definitely change the character in the neighborhood . i am passionate about the sunset and golden gate heights. in my neighborhood i'm the spirit leader for the community. we gather monthly to together and we celebrate the great san francisco, so being interested in preserving the character of the city and character of my neighborhood this shows that i'm not just some guy that says "oh it doesn't look good .". we're passionate about keeping things in a relatively uniform manner for the years that i lived here and many years before that and someone else mentioned the parking problem -- if we add additional story means additional people and parking in the neighborhood is horrible enough as it is. i sometimes have to block three blocks away

because there are people in front of my house and mother in laws or whoever joining us in the neighborhood and additional approved story would ad more people it would make it even worse. plus when i look out my window i can see the beautiful sunset talking about sun sets that house will difficult impact the sunset as the sun is in the northern setting. obviously the southern isn't so bad but it impacts the visual possibilities that we v thank you very much. i hope that you will not approve this project. >> any additional speakers? >> i apologize that my voice

isn't very good but i have a trache as you can see. i object to this addition because it would change the architectural style of our neighborhood. in addition, [inaudible] the date. more parking in an area that is already very crowded. i need to be able to park in front of my house or i can't get up the stairs to get in. if this third story adds two more cars that means somebody is going to come and park in front of my house and then i'm in trouble. there are many other options for accommodation for these people. while family needs can change

over time additions that don't fit into a neighborhood will remain forever blighted. thank you. please vote not to do this to us. >> next speaker please. okay. project sponsor. >> good evening commissioners. john kevlin here on behalf of the project sponsor. i would like to hand it overbroad to the project. >> >> sponsor to speak about the goals of the project. >> good evening. i am elaine woo and the property over of 1587 18th avenue. i am proposing this addition to the home so my husband and my two daughters can move back into this neighborhood. as the oldest in my family it is my responsibility and privilege to take care of my parents. in addition we have a mother in

law who would like to be closer to her grandkids. this supports my handicap parents and handicap mother in law as well and my immediate family. to provide for our parents we included an elevator so the family can live in the home with ease. we would live on the third floor and parents would be on the main floor. i grew up in this neighborhood attending jefferson, hoover and lowell and my parents are here in support. i know this is a great place to grow up and my husband and i want our daughters to have the same experience. we also want them to be near their grandparents and watching them grow. we believe this remodel is the best way to meet the needs of our growing and

extended family. we worked closely with the planning department and the residential design team to be in compliance and reached out to neighbors generating letters of support you have in the file. we have been through mediation and i actually flew in from florida to attend that and my attention is to move back to san francisco next month. i want to point out i asked the architect specifically when designing the building keep it within the residential guidelines and within the neighborhood character. that was really, really important to me. i didn't want to put a box on top of a house. that's why it's set back the way it is. in conclusion i wanted to apologize the dr had to occur and i believe we did everything we could to placate the dr requester. i hope you support

this project and allow us to raise our family together in this neighborhood. thank you. >> thank you commissioners. i would like to speak to a couple technical points here. ms. woo has the goal of bringing the family under one roof to have the three generation family under one roof take care of the parents and kids. unfortunately there is no way to take care of all of the family. they can't do internal remodel and the parents would be at the garage level sharing the level with cars and limited air access and concrete slab and no extension to the back because it would go into the rear yard and greater impact with the neighbors. this is consistent with the residential guidelines that says a building larger can be compatible with smaller buildings in the area and be

compatible with the existing building scale at the street and this project does that. it's incorporated the setback and sloping roof line and considering the this the project is increasing the height by five and a half to seven and a half feet and as a result the additions almost not visible from the street. if we could get sfgtv to put that up. this is corner of 18th and lawton across the street, very small effect. this is across the street. again it's about the same height as the existing one. middle of the street 18th and lawton barely visible and here you can barely see it so again the guidelines are intended to protect the character of the neighborhood experienced at the street so to allow the guidelines to challenge the --

[inaudible] at the street solely protecting views from second and third views from stories in private homes. to put it another way when we consider neighborhood character we're not talking about a block face diagram on one page because in essence that doesn't exist in real life. when someone is walking through the neighborhood they can barely perceive this and in essence maintaininglet character of the neighborhood. thank you. >> thank you. speakers in favor of the project. >> good evening. my name is tom buchanan and live in the neighborhood on kark ham street. elaine came to my house and knocked on my door and looking for support for the proposal. i looked at the plans. i don't see a problem with it. i think it looks fine. i think the

reason for her wanting to do this and bringing the extended family under one roof is important for the neighborhood as well, so i just came down to lend my support to her, and say that i am in favor of the project. thank you. >> additional speakers in support of of project? >> good afternoon commissioners. i amlet architect. i wanted to introduce myself and of course i am in support of the project and the scale is in proportion to the program presented to me and i am happy to answer any questions you may have. thank you. >> hello everybody. my name is connie lee and i live in 1556

18th avenue and across from the project and lived there for 25 years and i don't see any problem with this project at all and i don't see it will ruin the neighborhood at all. it might add more value to the neighborhood actually, and that's all i'm going to say but yeah just approve this. thank you. >> any additional speakers in support of the project sponsor? seeing none dr requester you have two minute rebuttal. >> thanks commissioners. as you can see there is overwhelming opposition from the diagram going around in the neighborhood. there's three points i want to make to rebut.

one is the scale from the street view. the diagrams that were computer generated and shown earlier by the attorney are computer generated and they are not to scale. that's number one. number two is the street view also includes lawtdon street. you can see the building from the side at lawton street and i haven't seen any representations of that. this is what it would look like from lawton street. in other words you have a long open wall with no windows in it setting atop a building along the skyline. i think you saw that before. the next point i want to make we believe it intrudes on scale along the other buildings in the cluster that the historic

committee identified. it's 50% higher than the structures at leave. it maybe 75% if we knew what the real height was. it disrespects the conformance of topography and all conform. it conflicts with the architectural and visual rhythms. it introduces disproportionate horizontal architect uremphasis on the front scale. it introduces horizontal architectural emphasis. it's non proportional to the other buildings and impedes a major public view from lawton street on the south side of the pedestrian walk way out to the fair lawns, out to.rays, the midlands, et cetera. thanks. >> project sponsor you have a two minute rebuttal. >> thank you commissioners. i would like to spend some time

speaking to the sort of mischaracteristics here. i don't think i have the time so i suggest if you have questions ask us because we're happy to respond to all of these. the mapping diagrams were based on the architect developed on the auto cad drawings for the project. so there is not much more to say about that. in term was public views there is in fact no public views here if we can get this image up. this is from lawton street as you head up the hill. the house is below the trees. another floor would barely be noticeable from that point of the street. as you head up the street -- >> [inaudible] >> excuse me. excuse me. you're out of order. >> as you go up the street -- as you move up -- once again this is the corner building here and barely able to see that from the middle of the street. as you

continue up from this point if there is exceedance over the existing building it's going to be blocking views of the tops of homes. you're not seeing ocean. you're not seeing views of marin and the same goes as you go all the way up. i have got these as well to hand out if the commission wants to see. until you get to the top here -- >> [inaudible] >> as you see from the top again you're looking at -- if there any blockages you're seeing the tops of buildings. the only other thing i wanted to mention if you give me another 15 seconds this neighborhood is rh1 district. this lot is less than 3,000 square foot. the planning code doesn't permit another unit here. this is unique situation and we have a

multi-generational family to move under one roof and thank you very much for your consideration. >> thank you very much. the public hearing is closed and that includes out bursts. open it up for questions. commissioner moore. >> you are showing this and the circular stair. what is the purpose? >> are you talking about the rear of the property? >> that's correct. >> that is a spiral stair case for egress. >> the fire department doesn't allow those for egress. is that an ornamental idea of yours -- >> perhaps we should ask

mr. washington about that and circular stairs are not permitted anymore. >> i'm not an expert on the -- >> we had that before and remember the instructions at that time and somebody else tried to do it -- >> do you know what year that was? was it this past year perhaps? because they do change the code. >> 2010 that the city ask county of san francisco adopted the universal business code and changed some of the local code requirements. >> i could not definitely say. however, i am concerned that the element adds something they am not comfortable. i have a question -- i have a question for mr. [inaudible]. would you please confirm that the

applicant owns both 1587 and 1589. >> thank you for asking that question. i didn't have a chance to speak to that. ms. woo doesn't own the building to the north. her folks own that now. the idea is get them under one roof. her sister's family will move to the building to the north. in considering how to get the family into one building they face the same issue and ms. woo and her husband and children and parents under one roof. they couldn't fit in two stories adequately for their health purposes for the parents. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioner antonini. >> well, i certainly am sympathetic to the neighbors and their arguments. there seems to be a lot of conformity to the

heights. however, i think looking at one of the pictures there is a building on the same side of the street that has a third floor already present and it doesn't seem to be too intuitive looking, at least from the view that was shown. they did as good a job as you can claiming it's five and a half to seven and a half feet taller than the others, and if that is correct then that's fairly well done, and they have -- >> (inaudible). >> i'm speaking. thank you. you know they kept the pitch roof which is very important and i am assume that is what we will see mr. kelvin as we look from a distance as your pictures show a pitch on the top of the roof, so it has a gaibl to it. it's not a flat roof. is that correct? >> andy can speak in more

detail. it's absolutely flat roof until you get there. >> both are recommended by the guidelines to reduce the massing as much as possible. >> there was the one view shown from a distance away that does -- the opponents put it as being boxy from other views but i'm not sure. depends on the height there. because it's true when they add another floor even when they are done tastefully they only have the partial pitch roof with the tileos them as you have designed to face the facade. everything else is usually flat. >> yeah. and i don't know if that image showed it accurately and there is a 5-foot setback at the rear as well. >> okay. thank you. there is a setback -- what is it 15-foot setback for that floor? >> 15 from the front building

wall and 18 feet from the front property line. >> yes. thank you. >> thank you. >> so i think they did a lot of good things. i hate to see the pattern broken but it looks like it's well done. we will see what the other commissioners have to say. >> commissioner sugaya. >> yeah, i think at least for some of us it's not an easy decision. it's certainly not particularly in character no matter how you look at it, or on how it's going to be designed. on the other hand the types of houses that were built in this neighborhood and long ago i think people are looking at in terms of extended families, and larger families we're trying to keep people in the city. you all live there. you're still in the city. i realize that, but

i think that we're continually seeing project proposals that come before us either dr or some other variances or conditional use reasons, and a lot of those are generated by larger families. they could be just one family, or in this case an extended family, and i think it's a difficult decision taking into consideration what the neighborhood is versus you know changes that are going to be occurring anyway i think. i mean -- i won't go into that part of it. in any case i'm supportive of the project, and i will make a motion to not take dr and approve. >> commissioner -- is there a second? >>i am concerned about the fire escape of adding an element that

might potentially be uncomfortable than people always at the moment. one i think it's out of character with the building type. two, i think it creates potentially inability for people to look at the rear of the property rather than the stair that stairs in the line of the building as typically stairs do as they are the normal type of stair, and in addition to that we had a project very similar i think in the marina, where people spoke about these things and mostly made out of steel and noisy. if there are children going up and down the stairs it becomes a nuisance and i find it from an elevation point of view out of character with the building and i would like to suggest that particular aspect of the building is re-examined including a verification with the fire department that this type of stair is permitted. the reason we were given, and i cannot tell if it was one year, two year,

three years ago and particularly for elderly coming with pizza shape stair on a circular stair that created an element of lack of safety because you're not fully stepping on the riser that is the reason why this city was not allowing circular stairs anymore, and i might have it completely wrong. we might have gone back to the uniform building code and allowing it again. at that time those were the instructions given to us and i thought they were reasonable so i would like a different solution to this for the bask the property. >> just to be clear that you ask staff to clarify whether the circular stairs are legal and if not explore a different option

and if they're legal they're code compliant. >> i would like staff to look into it particularly how you get to the stairs, who gets to the stairs? i think the stair goes up to the third floor, but do you have access from all rooms? i want the stairs to be reexamined. that's all i can say right now. >> i will second the motion unless somebody else did. >> there's a motion -- >> commissioner antonini. >> yeah, i will follow up on what commissioner moore is saying. if it's possible that stair case could be incorporated into the building as a more conventional, and it's a second means of egress i believe. there must be stairs inside the building. i am sure there are but even so i would like to see a design -- it's not part of the motion -- >> single family home though.

i'm not sure -- >> means of e egress. >> i don't think you need it. the stair is a deck rattive element and by code i don't think you need. >> it's not necessary by code. it's explained. it's also a convenience for a person that maybe in the rear to have access to the rear beyond. >> given the project has other issues i suggest that the stairs basically nixed. >> are we taking dr and eliminating -- >> (inaudible). >> i don't know. what's the desire of the commission? >> i don't think we should get into that. >> yeah. i don't think -- >> if it's illegal it's illegal and we will have staff verify but i don't think we should get into that material. >> the motion stands.

>> there say motion to not take dr and there is a second. shall i call the question? >> please. >> commissioner antonini. >> aye. >> commissioner hillis. >> aye. >> commissioner moore. >> no. >> commissioner sugaya. >> aye. >> commissioner president fong. >> aye. >> so moved commissioners four to one with commissioner moore against. that puts you under general public comment. i have no speaker cards. >> is there any general public comment? seeing none the meeting is adjourned.