chair maxwell: read the next item please. the clerk: item number 5. institutes of arts master plan and environmental review. chair maxwell: thank you. colleagues, this committee previously expressed a desire to receive quarterly updates on the city's enforcement efforts related to the academy of art university. today's hearing is the next

session in that conversation. first fwirs we will hear -- first we will hear from the planning department and then we will hear questions that i hope representatives of a.a.u. can answer and if not today, then at our next session. so why don't we hear from the planning department. >> thank you, supervisor. john ram with the planning department. i'm just going to give you a brief summary of activities for the past few months with respect to the art academy, and then i will ask christine hobbs to give you more detail on that. in summary, the planning department september a letter to the planning department on february 8 of this year that outlined very specifically the concerns of the commission, of this committee, and the board and staff on the compliance issues with the university.

that letter detailed a specific enforcement activity for the e.i.r. which has been something that's been an ongoing need for the university to complete with us. we were also informed that the department may issue notices the of violation with respect to properties, and in current use and in those identified in the i.m. p. so just briefly what's happened since then, the letter was sent, the department has convened a coordinated interdevelopmental task force. i jeffrey -- i just need to give christine credit for thfment they have visited all academy properties and all the code violations -- not just about the planning code but the city's code with respect to building code and fire code and all that. they have a detailed report on that.

all outstanding environmental information has been transferred to us. we now have sufficient information to proceed twt e.i. r. we expect in the nex few months we will have the notice and scoping period for the e.i.r. to proceed. i know you have had concerns about housing. the housing that is within three different types of use classifications for the code. one is tourist hotels and then there are residential hotels. a third are regular apartment buildings.

we think the housing concerns are being addressed. we are looking into that to see whether there are changes that should be made to address that concept. and as you will hear from chris, there are a number of issues with respect to signage. there are many properties on the academy's -- signs on the academy's property that are not legally -- have not been legally permitted, and about 35 of those have been removed, and there are others that are coming into compliance as well. so in general, we think we are making progress with the academy. there is still a ways to go, obviously.

obviously, it is because of the number of properties that we're talking about, the e.i.r. is going to be quite extensive and will likely take another 18 months to complete. >> i have a question regarding for-profit educational institutions. do we have a category like this and does it follow our codes? now we're looking at kind of having to put them some place in a box. they can't just go on forever. is that the case? or -- >> the planning code would classify them as an institution. the code does not differentiate whether it is a for-profit or nonprofit institution. but it is more about the type of activities that are used there. chair maxwell: and whether or not it is educational?

>> i believe, and staff can correct me if i'm wrong, it would be an institution. so a medical institution or educational institution, both are required to submit master plans and go through that process. chair maxwell: ok. thank you. >> and i will ask christine to come up and talk to you about our more recent opportunities. >> good afternoon. we have made substantial progress toward compliance in the planning code of the academy of art. when we heard the concerns of the planning commission and as well as your land use committee, one of the things we first started out doing was to essentially convene a coordinated interdepartmental task force. this is actually pretty much unheard of.

although the city attorney does have a bit of a model they use in very, very few cases. but they wound up getting cases from the fire department, the department of health, the city attorney, and actually the department of building as well. in the department of building inspection, it covered representatives from code enforcement, from electrical, from plumbing, as well as from housing pertaining to the residential properties. >> well, is this -- if this follows in the institutions, why haven't we done this before? there haven't been any other institutions that have housing or have bought buildings? why is this special? i mean, you seem special in that you have not had a task force like this before. >> in the past, the departments did not see a reason to necessarily work together. but i think one of the problems that we had is that none of the departments had really a handle on the violations of the academy

of art. so what we did do is we d started by convening the -- so what we did do is we started by convening the interdepartmental task force. we started upon a schedule. >> so maybe there hadn't been an institution that acted this way before. because we certainly have had the u.c. who has housing. so we haven't had an institution that acted like this. >> not to my knowledge. >> thank you. >> so the representatives got together, we wound upsetting up a time frame. this is an extremely large commitment of time and staffing by the respective departments. we were able to get together with a schedule, with a cooperation of the academy of arts. we inspected all 37 buildings, that includes aack congressmenic buildings, administrative buildings, as well as the residential buildings. we would go into the buildings, and we would meet, and we would start at the top, and we would go floor by floor.

the planning department looks at you. since 24 of the buildings that are owned by the academy, 24 of the 37, had use issues, the planning department was concerned about use. so we want to know what activities are taking place in the building. other departments have other concerns. they are looking at respective codes. we had a schedule to essentially finish the inspection of all the buildings by the end of summer. we wanted to do that because we were being very mindful in trying to minimize disruption to the depents students. what we did is that we actually wound up finishing ahead of schedule, which is great. we had to often inspect as many as six buildings in one day, so we wound up doing that. however, now that we've gotten all the inspections completed, the work is just beginning. we had a meeting with the academy on thursday, and we asked them the status of the permits and the status of the

buildings in terms of the outstanding code violations. in the buildings we found varying degrees of noncompliance. of course, if i mention to you we have significant use issues in many of the buildings, and some of the buildings there could be very significant exiting issues. there could be significant noncompliance with walls, not knowing the exiting pattern which is quite dangerous if you are in a building and you don't know how to get out of the building. we found moveable partitions where in -- movable partitions where in many ways they are problem matic. -- they are problematic. what we have done is we have been able to approve permits for life safety only. those include some of the permits i just mentioned and

some of those violations. we are not able to approve permits when it pertains to use. we are starting the process. we are holding their feet to the fire, and roughly there will be well over 175 to 100 permits that are starting to come in. i do want to emphasize that on many of the permits they do involve use. we cannot approve the ones on use, but we will approve the ones for life safety. chair maxwell: give us an example of a building. >> one was a building formerly occupied by the gap. it had parking -- a parking garage on the upper floor. that building was purchased by the art institute.

when we inspected it, it was still being used by art students. but the upper floor had been used for classrooms. that building is -- that building's upper floor cannot be legalized for classrooms. there are use sites in the north beach area that would affect that. we cannot legalize that. we cannot address those issues. chair maxwell: is that information public? could, say, if they wanted to, could they have found out about that if they purchased the building or after they purchased the building to make sure it was being legally used? could they have done that? >> i don't know when they purchased the building. the use sites are relatively knew. although, i believe they purchased the building prior to the use site's change.

but there are issues that we have. chair maxwell: well, do you update people? >> it is in the planning code. i believe that we were not informed of the situation in the building at the time. what we have done, we have gotten lots of the heavy lifting out of the way. it has been quite time consuming, but really our time has just begun there. we will continue working, we will continue to have periodic meetings with all the city departments, and what we will be doing is we will be essentially having these meetings to essentially identify the buildings that are -- have the most serious code violations, and to make certain that all the departments know what other departments are concerned about. this is, as i mentioned to you, quite unusual, but it is paying off yuffle wonderfully. we have great benefits.

we have great coordination, and the city team has been really terrific. chair maxwell: so the inspections have been finance ired by the planning department? >> by all of the departments. chair maxwell: the task force? >> yes. we finished them. we wanted to finish them before the end of summer, because classes start september 2, but we finished our last inspection july 13. we really kind of had to, too, because with the staffing problems we were seeing at the department we were losing a lot of staff so there was a commitment just to finish them all before we lost more staff in some of the other departments, particularly building, fire, that type of thing. >> do you remember if there were buildings that passed with is 100% that were ok? >> not to my knowledge. some of the buildings had

relatively minor violations. some of them did not have significant issues. some of the buildings had only things that were unpermitted work which they will have to file permits for. but to my knowledge i don't recall that. chair maxwell: are there any buildings that have been brought into compliance yet? >> not yet. they have taken out compliance on some of the early buildings we have inspected. we inspected the four that we had inspected. they are quite involved, actually. thank you. chair maxwell: thank you. >> when we met earlier, you had mentioned that mentioned all the

buildings had something wrong, but there were buildings with troubling code problems, and one in particular was 1800 vanness. could you talk about the buildings with the worst problems that astill have some work to do? >> well, 1849 vanness is the first building we inspected. that particular building is the home of the school of the industrial design. ds -- >> the particular building has use issues because it needs -- besides the fact that we need the e.i.r. and i.n.p. supreme courts have to have a permit as well, the building permit. of course that goes without saying. we have had concerns with the building because of the uses taking place on those upper

floors. since then the academy has filed a permit, and i believe the work has started in terms of taking care of the life safety only for that building. we should -- have been concerned about that building. >> i know the interdepartmental associations, i this is it monthly with mr. rom, that is significant to me since we started this process late last year. i know also that a lot of the housing and community reps that testified in last hearing, they were really concerned about what seems to be a process of a.u. buying significant amounts of property and a question of whether they have been stopped with acquiring more property until they clean up the -- until they comply with the notices of violation that were recorded in the last hearings. but my question is, has there

been other property that they acquired or are acquiring right now? i know that that was a concern for many, especially in the loss of rent-droled housing. >> part of the rent control effort that our office has completed is essentially treating the buildings that were purchased after the a.r. submital which is roughly around may 2008. chair maxwell: and a.r. submital? people may not know what that is. >> what we did, we essentially -- there were essentially a number of buildings that the academy and bart had site control over as far as whether they leased the buildings or they owned these buildings. what we did is we distinguished between the buildings that they had site control over at that time and buildings that were purchased after that point. when the e.i.r. application was

built in -- one of them was built on van ness. if you inspected the property you would think it is one building. there is also the building at 2525 gerald as well as a building for 60 townsend which is almost next door to an existing building. because these buildings were purchased after, what we did is we sent out enforcement notifications as well as -- we have recently been informed by the academy of arts that they will vacate 930 to 950 vanness as well as 953 o'farrell. that is being used as part of their car storage as well as part of the school of design. that would complipe -- comply with our notice of violation,

because our notice asked them to cease and desift. the building there also houses their marketing division. when i toured that building, they had roughly a dozen staff that were in cubicles and they were the arm of the academy of art. we have received also a zoning administrator hearing. 460 townsend is almost next door to 466. 460 townsend actually houses the fine arts program. they have requested a zoning administrate i don't remember hearing. they have asked us to reconsider our notice of violation and penalty. that will be taking place on august 5th. so we have distinguished between the buildings that were purchased earlier and the buildings that were purchased after that time period.

are there new ones they are acquiring since that time? >> not to my knowledge. they could have, but we have not been made aware of buildings they have purchased since. we have been working with them on the signage. we have signage on that. we doo ask that every sign that comes down be veffed with the filing of a building permit. there still are quite a few left to go. there are many more signs that need to go. that is one thing that is significant as well, is our progress in the signed survey. as our director also stated, at the time of the last lapped use

hearing we had not received ad quailt information to proceed with the environmental review. at this time the environmental review is proceeding. we had received all the necessary environmental information as well as the transportation information that's needed to proceed. what we have now are plans to proceed. the notice to preparation mr. be taking place later on in the fall. the project projection will be preing as well. -- will be proceeding as well. the i.m.p. has not been updated, however the information that's in the project description will be used for the updated institution after plan that will be coming out fourth. we have been assured that will

form the basis of the updated institutional master plan. chair maxwell: with the use issue, is there han opportunity -- is there a place that they can, before they buy a building, can they come to you and ask if these uses are allowed in the area? >> of course they can, yes. we have our codes on line. and we have staff available to discuss what would be needed to essentially go through the process of legally establishing the use of building zoning in the district. chair maxwell: could they get the information beforehand? could they have come in and said, we want to do this in this building on van ness. is it permitted or what do we have to do to make it right? can thre do that beforehand?

>> yes, they can. anybody can see lentionly request a letter of -- anybody can essentially request a letter of determination. that is written by the zoning administrator that will pretty much tell them, the use is legal if you do x, x, x. what that does, it lays out a plan of what they have to do to establish use. chair maxwell: is that something developers usually take advantage of? >> yes. chair maxwell: thank you. and what's your time frame when you think you will be finished with some of the issues that are still outstanding? it is hart to say, but what are

you trying to go for? >> that's very hard to say. this is very complicated, because we have 37 properties. this is unfortunately, going to take quite some time. it is not something that's going to go away in six months or a year. it clearly won't. >> so they own -- this is including everything that they own there -- their office buildings and everything, the 37 properties. >> we were on the property list. if they want to inform us of that, we could inspect those as well. chair maxwell: if they come in, is there a red flag next to their name, watch these guys? >> we don't have any such flag, but i do think that we do have some areas that their

environmental consultants outline which are for potential acquisitions. but there are study areas that would encompass the possibility of purchasing a building in the area. chair maxwell: thank you. >> thank you. chair maxwell: do you have anymore presenters? >> no. chair maxwell: why don't we ask the university if they have any people here, and i have a number of questions, and i'm sure you have some. >> good afternoon. my name is david sincotta. i'm an attorney for the academy. i was not here at your last meeting about this issue, but i have been briefed on it and have been catching up in the last six months.

i talked to ms. stevens, who is not here today, i guess she wasn't able to make it, but she has been at every meeting we have had going through this process, and she's been at other meetings we've had with other specific issues since then. i do want to say the task force has been very productive. it is a system that has worked well for the department and we have enjoyed working with them. i want to emphasize that under that system the academy has voluntarily done that process. we didn't have to wait for city

attorneys or injunctions. we helped schedule the 37 items as quickly as possible. let me go back to the e.i.r. person. we think the e.i.r. materials that we've gotten everything in, as we've already said. we've already done a student survey of photographic and mode sleck as to how people get to work, get to school, get to their classes, and travel. so that survey has been done as well. i also want to address the number of bus lines. we have reduced the number and it makes us more efficient and fewer traffic on the streets for everyone. and we're doing that in

coordination with muni and the department. with the institutional master plan, we are, as i'm sure you know, the institutional mast per plan was submitted a couple years ago. it is time for it to be updated and it is updating as we are doing now. we expect to have the institutional master plan finalized is what they are trying to do now is make it consistent with some of the materials that have already been submitted with regard to the e.i.r. and it should be submitted in september. but let me talk a little bit more about some of the code enforcement activities. i do want to point out that within weeks tillly right after inspection, the inspections came out, notice of violations were presented. presented. within weeks we had plans