in fact decide to have the hearing. that conclude my board report and i have a short note from the z a about the board of appeals. i will go with that. the board of appeals met last night and considered one item. this is an appeal for building permit that will allow a new 4 story building at 721 beach street in z 2 zoning district. the planning commission approved this. that concludes my report. are there any questions? >> questions? doesn't seem to be. thank you. >> there was no historic preservation yesterday. if there is nothing further we can go to public comment. with

respect to agenda items your opportunity to address the commission is afforded when the item is reached. i have no speaker cards. >> any general public comment? >> okay. seeing none. next item, please. >> this will place you under your regular calendar formula retail in the upper market ncd proposed planning commission policy that would establish a methodology for determining the concentration of formula retail and set the appropriate level of concentration for formula retail in the upper market neighborhood nct and ncd. preliminary recommendation: adoption >> good afternoon. we are really excited to bring this to you today commissioners before we dive in i do want to acknowledge regina, who is the executive director of the small business commission. she's been critical to these effort. she can't be with us this afternoon because earlier today she was selected to be on a jury. it's important to acknowledge the good work that she's done as

part of this. so commissioners as many of you do know of course, this commission members of this commission and members of the small business commission have been meeting informally and regularly for about a year now. looking at the fundamental question of how we can stream line the land review process for small businesses. the title on your screen if we can pull up the overhead please is kind of where we began. this next slide is where we wound up like many good planning initiatives. it's a pilot exploratory project and like most we have an acronym. s bchlt p p program. so, i think we into ed to address the question of why we single out small businesses in the first place. almost all of the city's

businesses are in fact small businesses. these businesses account for half of employment in this city. as most commission they company contribute in a very meaningful way to our neighborhood quality of life and fabric we have in our neighborhood district in particular. a little bit of background for how we are here today. staff do hear concerns from the small business community regarding the red tape and time and process that's associated with opening or expanding a small business. our general feeling and we think that you share this commissioners, is that process for this sake of process when it doesn't confer any additional value, is not good government and in the case of many small business approvals we feel there may be a little

bit of this going on. we did begin to host this series of informal discussions. you can see on the screen the names of those that participated. you of course no who you are commissioners. i want to call president steve adams is an executive for bay area focus bank looking to funding small businesses particularly and he's involves with small business groups and castro area, kathleen dully, a long time north beach small business owners, she's served as a business leader. lastly commissioner, luke o'brien has managed various areas in the economies including real estate and he's involved in

construction and civic affairs locally and further afield. so commissioners these informal discussions evolved into an effort to develop a protocol under which we can move small business project through the required land use approval process without undue delay. now this is a planning commission policies. it's not unlike what you did last week with your stimulus policy and not what you are going to consider next on your agenda with respect to formula retail in the upper market area. so did we get into this predicament. land use role has increased dramatically since 1987 when the neighborhood controls kicked in. we have

seen 80 amendments. with relative certainty on a counter basis. at a years ago, nearly all permits and neighborhood commercial districts were acted on over the counter. you can see on your screen and looking at an out of date figure in 2007 we had a substantial drop off. install businesses require some review from you for small

businesses. they require signing a lease and making payments before getting land use permits, these same businesses wind up making payments for months before they open for business. we have a situation where the expenditures for small business begins substantially ahead of any income being received. that's a many month long process and it can cost 10s of thousands of dollars. the irony of these regulations that cause delay, at least in part were intended to discourage formula retail businesses. yes formula retail businesses are the ones that are most financially equipped to deal with that delay. so we are looking at a procedure here, a policy that can invert a formula retail controls. lastly on this slide commissioners, backlogs,

commission calendars especially as the economy tends to heat back up. there is a timely constrain. specifically the comprehensive 20 plus page briefings that we prepare for every item on your calendar, they demand a good deal of time to prepare. for many small business applications we would argue that is probably not necessarily. here is a proposal we came up with. it's a policy that applied to conditional use applications the s p 4 p has 3 components. we get these applications to you within 90 days of application which is a month or more less. secondly, we would commit to placing every sp 4 case on the calendar. typically 3 quarters

of those items are acted on without being moved for discussion. the 3rd item, as i mentioned before we do prepare robust commission briefing package for every item and that takes time and time well spent when we are dealing with a major new building and any other project of scale. if we are dealing with routine small business application, we are not sure that a huge briefing document makes sense. so we are proposed a new 2 page document calling a project summary and motion. a type of document that is going to evidence compliance with applicable code requirements and we think it's a right level of analysis for these types of projects. to illustrate, this is what we are talking about on your screen on the left hand side we have thumb nails of the commission briefing packet for 900 square

foot expansion for a restaurant. that document is 32 pages. on the right hand side is a project for that motion. this is a sample of that same project, it's 2 pages. we think it's going save time and money for the city and applicants and we hope you find this type of briefing useful. die want to mention this is a sort of expand the pie solution. we are not trying to expand the project. we are trying to make it move through the process quickly. one more point on the overhead to drive this point home. there is no value added

solely by the virtue of the length of the document. on the left we have a 17-page motion for a restaurant expansion. i would like to ask you if you have any guesses for the project on the right. any set for that page on the right? 18 ballpark. we have a situation where a 42,000 feet baseball stadium was an approved with a 10 page motion and a 19 square foot expansion for a restaurant 27 pages. back to the s p 4, we are only opening up to conditional use applications. this is the most common

application type that requires a hearing. we are further limiting this proposal to further types of conditional use applications. we are really trying to target these projects. what type of proposals cannot participate. you can see shows on your screen now. no formula retail uses, no storefront consolidation, no outdoor activity at the rear of a property, no commercial parking. no removal of housing, no use sizes beyond as of right limits, no hours of operation beyond hours of right limits and no alcohol accepting beer and wine for bona fide restaurants and no massage establishments and tobacco paraphernalia and medical can bus dispensaries. the last one,

i apologize the image on the screen is not visible. the package is visible. this applies to areas where are both zoned neighborhood commercials and where the mayor's invest in the program area. the conflict of those two areas is visible on the screen in black right now. if you are not familiar with it, the neighborhood program is a departmental effort to strengthen and revitalize economic activity. these areas have dedicated staff from office of small business and work force development and we think there is a natural synergy between the sp 4 and the program. the last couple of issues you should beware of, if you do participate in the s p 4 we'll ensure that we have staff ready hee available to help you and

you will become aware of this program and we are asking the applicant to apply for these documents. the last slide, s p, this is an exploratory program. we are adopting to do through a policy. we can go back and adjust it. the ability to do that, we are also an allowing a bit of flexibility on a director who can -- disqualify a program that you do not approve or a type of project that really strikes us as being out of the ordinary or

particularly complex. the director can also modify the geographic eligibility for the program within the nc district and this is an effort so we don't get over enrollment and under enrollment. the small business commission conducted a hearing and recommend that you adopt you today which is what we are suggesting as well. we think it a policy that's going to stream line important projects for small businesses without adversely affecting further application. thank you for your time commissioners. i'm available to answer any questions. >> thank you, any public comment on this item? seeing none, commissioner antonini. >> thank you. i think this is

extremely well done. i do have some questions. the first is in regards to not an allowing this quicker approval for small business that had was providing a commercial parking place or which i would think would have less of an impact than one who didn't because presumably this is a new use. many of their patrons might be driving this. they would be parking on the street or they would be parking in provided places. it would seem as though that shouldn't be a disqualifier for this. that is my opinion. the second area i had concern over is that you are allowing a fast tracking for beer and wine. there are issues of the kind of impact of establishments can

serve alcohol but the type of alcohol really, especially if it's a full service restaurant already, they have to have over 50 percent food service. it shouldn't make any difference. the other thing i would want to include is discretion over appearance. abbreviated report is a great idea. i always thought our report said the same thing three different times. i think it's a great plan, if we are approving, we would like to see what it is. we want to see what it's going to look like and perhaps even a quick map of what the inside are going to look like too, although that's less of a concern. the other situation would be we may want to have a consideration on the

disallowing any formula retail for san francisco base companies particularly those that are just reaching the threshold or are fairly low number. i think the san francisco soup company is one example and there are a number of them that were originally not formula retail but they have now become that. we want to look at with some discretion on that. and you already answered my question about staff discretion because i understand the director and staff can pull out ones they feel do not fit into here. i think this is actually very good legislation and i would have time permitting loved to have participate with the other commissioners because i'm a small business owner and have been for 41 years and i think

of all the services, i think dentist and along with pod -- we have the usually small business issues but the medical issues where they would be able to send patients to hospitals and it has to be done in house. also the need for parking for a lot of businesses. >> commissioner wu? >> thanks. i would like to thank you. using the policy is a way to test ideas that we've had seeing what we did last week and now this week. and i think this is a targeted way to start to get at maybe issues of backlog which i assume we are going to be seeing more

applications to the department in the next coming years. looking at the map it occurred to me that i do think we should keep it in these are nct's, but there are a number of mixed use districts that somewhat function like that, so soma, chinatown. i wouldn't suggest put ting it in this pilot but i do think looking forward if the pilot is successful we want to look at what other directs do have this heavy retail commercial corridor phenomenon. >> commissioner hillis? >> just a question on this definition of small business. how is that, i know it's a confusing definition watt small business commission but how is it defined? >> it's a good question. it's not defined. we approached the question as we have the question of what is pdr, in the

planning code we define what it is not instead of what it is. it's a criteria that makes something none knot eligible in the program. >> okay. i know formula retail is exempt, but formula retail can they come in and say it's otherwise, would it be kicked out? >> it's not included in the planning code. it a term of art. the office of small business has a working definition which involves a hundred employee threshold. as far as your policy is proposed it's really an element which is eligible to participate. we have named it a small business. we are saying what can't participate rather than what it is. >> okay. then i agree with

commissioner's wu's comments. do we know what applications would have been part of the policy in the last five years because it's limited to these. it's a lot more obviously in the cities. do we know how many of these, how many cu's have been filed in the district? >> we don't. that's part of the reason we are approaching this with a soft touch as we can to allow flexibility to expand and contract because of the way our information is structured, we can't pull those out without coming to each individual case file. we want to make sure the program isn't over subscribed or under subscribed. >> i won't if others can benefit from this. what we are giving people is a short process. things would come off the consent calendar. i agree we almost get too much information on some of these simpler items. so it's a good

policy. >> commissioner moore? >> i want to thank mr. side who has done an excellent job to put this together and guide us through it. i also want to mention for all planning commissioners that this is first time in my time in the commission for a model of grading policy, there are many other issues by which this commission could organize together with other commission to address policies on other issues, housing etc. in this particular case it's exciting and exhilarating time because working with three commissioners from the small business commission, their director and mr. cider create a high level of dialogue which is truly amazing. since there was not a lot of turnover, except for commissioner miguel, it created like a continuity which

allowed to really dig deep as far as quite a few of the commissioners of small business owners themselves, but it did not over step into areas where there was not really collective expertise. i personally wanted to take more time to find it very -- enriching as part of the scope. >> most of us remember john's cafe and i don't know that a lot of people would have been driving from somewhere else to go to that cafe where one would presume doggy day care might see a lot more traffic with people dropping their dogs off. i mean i know this was just something arbitrarily picked off but the kind of thing that

would need more attention. if it was an abbreviated report it would have to come before the commission and presumably the commissioners would read their consent calendars and pull off things that weren't appropriate. i wanted to point that out. was there a consideration given to a process that might involve a landmark building or contributing resource in a historic district? >> the thought wasn't given because the existing policies would continue to apply. >> i will make a motion to for the commission to adopt the resolution for the the small business priority processing pilot program. >> second. >> on that motion to

commissioner antonini, hillis, moore, sugaya, wu, fong? ayes. >> that motion passion 7-0. formula retail in the upper market ncd proposed planning commission policy that would establish a methodology for determining the concentration of formula retail and set the appropriate level of concentration for formula retail in the upper market neighborhood nct and ncd. preliminary recommendation: adoption the department would still evaluate on the applicable

criteria to the planning code on the deliberation and the commission would still retain it's discretion to approve. if it's based on the other applicable criteria and code and recommend approval and disapproval accordingly. the department worked very closely with the association to develop a proposed policy including the methodology including the concentration and setting the maximum concentration for the upper market neighborhood. upper market is going through transformation now. you can see a lot of construction cranes. there are in addition to thousands of square foot of retail under construction now. many of the commercial spaces will be located on prominent

corner lots. the neighborhood association had as well as the department was that these new retail spaces would be filled up by retail. and what the appropriate concentration is. this new policy would address both of these issues by sending a clear methodology. also one of the added benefits of the propose to other neighborhoods should it be successful here. on the overhead i have an example of how to policy would work. so the green lot is the subject lot and it currently contains a pete's coffee and eye glass store. what the store policy would do is create a 300 foot

buffer along the property and every property within that 300 buffer, would be included in the calculation. for example with the subject site it has 50 feet of frontage and 2 store fronts. to simplify the measuring process we would just take 50 feet and divide by 2. divide each parcel into formula retail store -- frontage and come to a concentration. if it exceeded 20 percent, staff would recommend disapproval. so, i do have 1 collection to policy and one just general correction. this policy was intended to apply to properties