have to look at a very severe challenge of how do we ensure that those rent-controlled units will in fact be replaced in a way that's both fool-proof and permanent. it is good that the developers are starting at the sort of trinity model, and that's our starting point these days, but we need to move fwr there. that can't be good enough, especially because of the recent changes and law addressed in costa-hawkins. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. eric burks representing the green party and our city. as written we are opposed to this project. sorry, i left my muzzle at home. just start with transit and parking. one-to-one parking is a 20th century dinosaur.

it shouldn't be part of the project. the transit aspects of the project should be more robust. the m line to daly city should be guaranteed and not a possibility. i want to strongly agree with all the museum that spoke on the rent control issue. that's huge. we're not going to be able to guarantee that these units stay rent controled, and once the current 10 apts leave it will be -- once the current tenants leave it will be impossible. to dovetail on to that, something i haven't heard in response to e.i.r. or on this yet the carbon emigs factor needs to be -- emissions factor needs to be understood in all this demolition and reconstruction. you may have over time a carbon neutral project over several decades or over more than a century, but right now, as you know, i follow global warming very closely and the planet is

already reaching tipping points where we could get melting permafrost in the arctic and in siberia and have a very severe problem on our hands. if you do a lot of democrat in addition and construction on this project, you are adding to the burden of fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide uses. that's heading us toward odd tipping points. the units, we should try to receipt fit them. the components that can be receipt fitted, that's where you get an energy savings without having to do the reconstruction. it is not easy, but it is what needs to happen. another big factor, especially that the green party is concerned about is that we keep going forward with projects like this where a large segment of the community that the project is going into does not agree with it. we need more consensus on this

project it moves forward. overall for the whole thing, both for community consensus, for protecting rent control and for dealing with the c.o. 2rks budget that will be higher at the front if we don't go this better, as was said at the planning commissions, we need this not to be a 30-year monster, we need this to be phased in so development can be done in more sensible ways so we can save the rent control so we can avoid demolishing stuff so we can receipt fit it instead. so we can receipt fit it instead. -- so we can retrofit it instead. chair maxwell: next speaker. >> we have been following this project for a couple of years. we are very excited about what we have seen so far.

in particular, there are a few things that stand out, and that is increased use of land density on the web site. not something we are familiar with. we know there are strong cultural biases against this. on that basis alone we would like to see a project like this move forward. we've never had a project come to us and talk about net zero emissions and net zero twaumplet -- water. as a founding member of the lake merced task force, we saw this project back when, and we very much support what they are talking about with the old streams that have long since been covered over.

this, again, is a terrific idea. we have to admit, it is an enormous service. what was done with the traffic and transit studies are enormous service to this part of town to give us an understanding of what the situation was. i would suspect the neighborhoods on the west side will strongly advocate for parking. i would think that given the community's push for unit and bikes and ped and muni and all of that, we would love to have a project that is one to one. that would be a real landmark. something that would be a great example for the future. more broadly, we would like projects like this on the west side.

successful projects that you can look to, you can have a successful and desireable project, and it sets the bar higher and makes it possible to do more of them. we are excited about where this is going and we hope you will track it also. thank you. chair maxwell: public comment is closed. supervisor alford, do you have any closing comments? >> i would like to thank everyone for coming forward. i would like to particularly thank the committee for taking the time today to get the intro, get the beginning information, and i look forward to being back here over the next few months as we look to the project. chair maxwell: supervisor mar. supervisor mar: i did have a question about the impact to hawkins, expeaningspangs, demolition of rent-controlled units and how we hold the developer to its commitment to maintain those units.

hopefully indefinitely. and the second question i have came from a chronicle article that was reforwarded to many of us and it is regarding stellar management's reported details on defaults to loans. >> i think mr. johnson was quoted for speaking for stellar management, saying that it is common among give different lenders. is stellyr -- is stellar manage many on firm financial footing? >> i will let them address that, supervisor mar, but we are of course, on the city side, working closely with the city

attorney on the latest very wellments affecting rent control -- latest developments affecting rent control law. if you recall, the primary method for allowing rent control in new rental inclusion ri units was -- inclusionary units was through a rent controled community. the mechanism proposed would actually allow us to have rent controled units in perpetuity. that is the city's goal and we will monitor that situation. if there are developments we hear about, we will have to find an opponent way to talk about it. >> good question.

>> the ownership group reached out to park merced for a -- for help. we reached out to that servicer as a way to deal with our issues. we have loans coming due in october. we are working to extend those and work onward with the property. we expect we will be making positive steps in that respect. mark miller sed is different than any other community that stellar is involved in. chair maxwell: ok we will continue the items to the call

of the chair. we're going to take a five-minute break. 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