take concrete actions to ensure the building is run properly. by adding the conditions of approval outlined in the d.r. filing. sam patel has said in the future you will -- he will run the building him ssm but within his rights to lease it to another company. then again the neighborhood could be in a position of having badly managed property on the block. which mr. patel doesn't take responsibility. so to guarantee that hotel is run safely and properly, i believe the approval of the project should be contingent on satisfying the conditions of approval outlined in the d.r. filing. thank you. president miguel: thank you. are there additional speakers in favor of the discretionary review applicant? if not, project sponsor. >> good evening, president miguel, commissioners, eileen dick for lebron and martell on behalf of the hotel -- vicas

hotel and sam patel. i want to start because i know our paper has very much responded to the concerns that the d.r. requesters and the neighbors have raised. i want to make very clear at the outset that we proposed the conditions that the d.r. requester has included in his packet. at least mr. solas' packet. he added another page of conditions but we were willing to engage in all the conditions we provided to you in our papers and we had worked on those at a larger building and smaller building where we came up with them. there was always an understanding the possibility that the city may not be able to enforce them. and appreciate the limitation on the zoning administrator. the had offered that we can file this but we can still talk and include the whole host of conditions. we never heard back and we left

it at that. we agreed that you take dr and continue with the conditions that have been recommended by staff. there are concerns in respect to security. there are many redundancies bill to those conditions and we think that they will be successful. the second point i want to make is that this has become personalizing in a way that attack set -- credibility and what happened to the ability for us to be frank? we are very frank in every meeting. we understand your frustration. a fire has happened in the intervening years and there has been an effort to upgrade.

we not only proposed the conditions but we installed a security lighting prior to any operation. we were making modifications to the interior to accommodate. what happened is that i am disappointed in today's e-mail which was a treat it that said and i will read a couple of tips which emphasized that this is a referendum on -- and that is not the way we want to approve the project. we understand the concerns. this is consistent -- we understand the concerns. we also need to look at the

bigger picture which is the hotel conversion ordinance which was passed in the 70's for the reason that we are here today. this is to preserve his that are in hotels and mixed residential hotels and insure that those units remain forever in the city housing stock. the benefit that this project poses is that they are providing an additional 23 units. these are not your traditional units, these are units that are at a hundred and 10 square feet. they will have a wash basin and will be fully furnished. something to toot our horn about is that we are doing and access of two q any questions. -- two community kitchens.

we are providing a 1450 square foot for open space. one of the significant things to keep in mind is that this is one of the open public spaces for property. we are strongly encouraging people to do this. we are providing high quality housing and the conditions that the city has proposed means all of the concerns with respect to safe and healthful operation. the last thing i want to state is in respect to some of the allegations that have made. they have 30 or more code violations. as a former to get the city attorney, i can tell you that the city would love to be part

of the hotels. >> two speaker cards in favor of the project sponsor. >> hello, everyone. this is south of market street. this issue went through the community. we approved this. quite simply, the reality is that we had two options. we use the building or this remains vacant. there are really no permanent residence. everyone has been there for three or four days a week.

if those other situations as we get through the behavior problems. outhis is better than it has be. we have to have a lawsuit. we had a lawsuit against the previous owners 15 years ago. this has improved and this is essentially a used building with people in it and it will be better for the neighborhood. i would encourage this project to --

>> good afternoon, commissioners. when i was young, i heard a statement from john kennedy who said "we are who we are today because of our yesterday." only by going 3 yesterday can we understand going to tomorrow. all of these for the most part have the same problem. it just happens that some of them are not at the neighborhood like you find on fifth street. most people avoid the area and they don't want to have any

accounting. we can define the area and improve the quality of life issues. when asked whether or not there are decent family housing, we said no. considering what could be done, this would not be in the best interests of families to share that space.

there is an increase of green space on the rooftop. they recognize there were problems in the past but they were willing to comeback. they have made it perfectly clear that they are more than willing to work with the labour association. i've heard the frustrations and nice share the same frustration. here we are today. what can we do to improve business? when you improve our subcommittee, you come out with a subcommittee. they scrutinized the process. there is an income by which you don't find a lot of the social services. i urge you to move ahead.

>> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. just a brief history. this is back before there was a popular jazz club back in the 80's. hawks after the earthquake was closed, it was rebuilt. the city came back and it was the telly. let me tell you, this was a very popular place. hi anyway, then the fire happened.

then the tourists would have a residential hotel in said. this building will make all of the building codes for off brand use. you can have on new fixtures throughout. you have furnished rooms and two kitchens. you have to have a committee room and they're not really required in the hotel's. it will have a lot of process to it. one of the other speakers mentioned instead of having people who are coming by spending two or three days and then leaving, you can have people living there it cannot

work out. i urge you to go ahead and approve this project. >> you each have two minutes for rebuttal. >> my main concern with what has been said is the forgiving of past transgressions. i believe all of those people who of spoken have been concerned about this. the concern is the actual situation that some provisions have teeth. some things are attached to this permit that we can hold up and say that you people have made this mistake again and hopefully it will not come to that.

we will go back to the planning commission, we will go back to enforcement. this is not about the usability. i have to work on this. hhennes i don't suppose that ths is a nice restaurant and this is a bit funny. also, my notes say that i did thus received any notice of this. i have been there for nearly 20 years and it seems like i'm just the sort of president that the project sponsor might be concerned to speak with and that did not happen. thank you. >> thank you. >> i would like to address the

allegation that i did not respond to any request for trying to reach some kind of settlement or agreement with the project sponsor. in fact, i've actually written about this so i would like to consider this possibility. the last e-mail exchange that i had is a discussion about this. this is an untruth characterization of the facts. one of the committee members actually chastise the project sponsor for not actually

attending a single one of the recommendations. this was three meetings that was for several months. i would like to bring of the fact the building has in fact been empty since at least 2007. when we are talking about the availability to the city, why are the project sponsors actually sitting on this. >> thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. i want to talk about support we

have gotten. we had the opportunity to increase the housing stock. this is a different type of tourist hotels. we did reach out but organizations. we felt this was most sufficient. >> we were truly unable to find a location in the tree. we really struggled with trying to find a place to do that.

there's something to be said again about the idea that while me all one-family houses, this use is really appropriate for this location. this is affordable by design. this is intended to be for working people. this is not being geared towards a traditional population. >> thank you. >> we have been falling this for a few months and this is a difficult issues. i am concerned with what i saw

with the neighborhood groups in terms of the web site. i forget your last name. what ended up coming out with something pretty positive. many of the neighbors became more concerned about the quality of life issues for the people who would ultimately be living in this hotel. i did not get the sense after the conversation with the neighbors that this was an issue of people just not wanting a stereotyped of a certain person who lives next to them. unfortunately, there is some constraints in the code and these rooms are 110 feet. there's something about the hotel conversion of ordinance.

i think that this probably would be the appropriate type of housing for families, unfortunately. because this is too small. along sixth street there is a project called families who live in sro's and to the issues that they deal with. this is a challenging living situation. the rooms are small, 110 square feet. again, it is good -- the code does not require that they have kitchens or bathrooms in each unit. part of the benefit of that is that then they become more affordable by design. but think that there needs to be some reform has far as this is

concerned. sometimes there are not enough bathrooms basis that are adequately cared for. as you know, the code relaxes the open space requirements. if you want a quality of life for people who live there, you should be providing space on each floor. there should be some open space required. that is what the project sponsor offered. there needs to be some reform in terms of how some of these are offered. i respected lot of what you have to say on this subject. the neighbors bring some interesting points but some are not able to be resolved. i thought that this was the

perfect idea for maybe a senior housing. not perfect for so many seniors are living in poverty in the city and on limited income. this would provide affordable by design living space. there are not elevators, i don't think, in this space. they are not required to provide those. then the master lease idea came up. i thought maybe we could have a supportive services site and the family there is not with city funding available. this might be a good idea for that. what we are left with is what we see here but i think they raised

some good concerns. so what i think that i'm willing to move ahead with approval with the conditions imposed but somehow i a would like to know that there is a report back to us and some kind of continued conversations with the neighbors to make sure that this is being managed well and there is some open communication.

some of the neighbors say they were not contacted by the project sponsor. and once this is an operation, we have some sense that the management is going well and there is a good neighborhood in place. we have seen a lot of push back from residents.

there was a project in the tenderloin recently where people protested against this sort of use. i think that there is some hope here that this would work better. there is some accountability of what has not occurred in the past. i will go ahead and move that we to prove his conversion but i want the city attorney to put some language in so that they are not sure how to do it or what to say. there are some commissioners to want to speak. i was stuck there and see where the conversation goes.

>> i think this is a microcosm of some of the problems. i'm not just talking about these, on talking about some of the motels. there are a number of them. there are activities that are unsafe and hazardous to the tenants there and criminal activities and somehow their license never gets full. this is a little alarming. i guess my point is that of like

to see this go forward because i would like this to be a win-win situation. while more maybe better, quality might be important to. they can have their own lease and possibly their own kitchens. if you start getting more people in there, having bathrooms and their makes more sense. maybe staff could let me know

about the conditions. i saw a list of conditions in our paper work. there were information about burglaries', drug offenses. are those part of our conditions. >> those are not what we have proposed. >> the project sponsor had not looked at the conditions. each of those applications have a list of conditions. we try to figure out which one we could actually in force and that is how the conditions that we had here came about. the other conditions that we did not include for those we could

not in force. >> this seems to be what the neighbor is interested. -- is interested in. are these not able to be enforced? >> i will defer to the zoning of administrator on that. >> thank you. the issue here, many of these are under the purview of the renter. that is probably under their jurisdiction in terms of occupancy. we feel that many of those would go beyond the authority of the planning department and we would be able to effectively implement those and we did not see the purpose of those and we could not implement that. >> is it possible to have recommendations for those conditions? >>