the fact that, in the testimony, both yerby and ubc have been patient during this process. part of it was held up for a while because of the approval process going to the access issues and other considerations as part of the hunters. and candlestick point approvals we had last year. we can really move forward. >> with that, comments will be accepted at the planning department office until the close of business on november 29, 2010. that includes the public hearing on the draft environmental impact report. president miguel: because there are only four commissioners, i will be forced to take a very short, 15-minute break. >> thank you.

>> the parkmerced development project. >> good evening, commissioners. tonight, we have the second in a series of informational hearings on the parkmerced mixed use the element project. the last time we were here on november 4, we gave you a recap overview of the basic components of the project in a broad sweep so you could be refreshed on the project itself. michael yarney gave you a brief primer on the development

agreement and its basic structure. continuing the series, if i could have those slides, please? continuing the series, we had its scheduled for you this evening. we have two primary topics. we have first the more detailed discussion of the urban design and open space program. then, as part of that, michael will get up and discuss how the development agreement deals with the public improvements in the plans, specifically the open spaces, and how it deals with improvements and maintenance agreements. secondly, we have scheduled a discussion of the sustainability plan. also as part of that discussion, we will talk about how the development agreement is incorporating key elements of that program, especially the

energy and water program. we have someone from the puc to address that as well. the next hearing is december 9. that will be at san francisco state and will focus on housing issues as well as transportation issues. we will have m.t.a. there to talk about transportation. the next hearing is december 16. we will talk about the -- present the findings from the economic feasibility, and we will cover other questions or issues that have arisen. there is also the initiation of the amendments necessary to move forward with the plan so you can consider them in future hearings. the hearing for action, the last time we were here, it was scheduled for the 20th. that was moved back to the 27th of january. it will be more than a month between the last informational

hearing and a hearing where you are asked to consider action. so, we will start with the urban design and open space discussion of the project. following a request, we will have the project architects make the presentation, going over the details of the urban design and open space program, and then michael will get up and talk about the development agreement and the open space component of that. i will turn it over to leo. >> commissioners, before they start, if i could take care of housekeeping. because your december 9 hearing is being held off site, it requires 15-day notice. your calendar for that hearing will go out next monday or tuesday. tuesday of next week.

that is the same time your calendar will go out for your meeting on december 2. just be aware that you will get two calendars. there are two separate meetings. that is just for the parkmerced meeting. you will have a regular meeting on december 9. it is a little confusing. i wanted to let everyone know that you will get two calendars next week, one for december 2, 1 december 4, 2009 for -- one for december 9 for parkmerced. >> we will have the regular meeting at 10:30 and we go to parkmerced at what time? >> it will start at 6:00. that has changed since the e- mails i said. we will need to adjourn here by 3:30.

>> ok. it does not take that long to get out there. [all talking at once] >> sfgtv needs to have time to set up. it may not take you that long to get there. ok. ok? thank you. >> before we begin, we have printouts of the slide show for the commissioners. >> good evening. i am with the architects and planners for the project. we are very excited to be before you this evening and have the opportunity to present to you.

the ideas for the project have been forming over quite a few years now. we have been working on the project for almost five years. we have had meetings with the community and neighborhoods, the agencies, and we will present you a collaborative effort that has involved the voices of many. for the most part, we still see it as a clever tape -- collaborative process, and we have gotten a great deal of recognition for it outside with in the community. i wanted to start by just, for a moment, the way we approached the project, we have a slide of an aerial of the area. one of the things we really wanted to put forward as one of our primary considerations when we started this project was what the surrounding neighborhood fabric is. when we think of the west side -- i'm sure you're familiar with

this -- is the way we think of our neighborhood on the west side of the city. what you can see is the adjacent neighborhoods to the east, on the right side of the image, are composed of single-family homes, what we think of as the west side. 19th avenue is very broad and forms a fairly significant seen in the northwest corner. it separates or creates a whole other band of fabric, which is very different. we have a series of developments that were built over the 1940's and 1950's that include san francisco state, the stone town shopping center, there are institutions including churches and a ymca, and on the west side of 19th avenue, we have large

scale developments, or large- block development. they completely change the fabric of the grid of the city. further up the boulevard is where we start to have a series of open space. there are more regional open spaces, including lake merced itself and the golf courses. it is an interesting part of the city where we have three separate kinds of grain coming up once again -- coming up against one another. the question for us from the beginning was how to make this development and its neighborhood a part of the city. it feels very isolated. we spoke to a lot of the neighbors and residents. what is parkmerced? sometimes i go there. many people did not know it was there. it has this -- you cannot quite see it on the screen. hopefully you can see it on the

printout in front of you. it has this street pattern that is a typical for san francisco. it is a nouvea arts plan. how do you connect this to the adjacent fabric? we addressed what we found to be a large block scale. we have typical square blocks. this is four times the size of a neighborhood compared to a san francisco block. it was made to focus on how car moves. -- on how cars move. we have a series of new shared public ways, alleys where pedestrians can share the movement. we cut all of the blocks in half in that direction. we introduced a series of east-

west pedestrian walks to further cut down the blocks. each of the regional blocs has now been cut down to four sub- part. it creates a finer grain, a more public network for people to move through, both by car, by pedestrian. all of this has been codified in our design standards and guidelines, which you received a copy of already. as you can see in the diagram, it indicates the locations for each of these new alleys, shared a public ways. and these were oriented north- south. that allows for more sunlight to penetrate into the neighborhood, and also to help make sure they are not aligned with the strong westerly wind we get off the oceans, so we don't get winded tunnels coming through.

these have offsets to knock down the wind tunnel. the next question became, when we introduced the street grid, how do we introduce an urban forum into this fabric? one of the things that was important to us when we started to think about this was that it is different from other projects that one might think of as a neighborhood plan, in that it was not a skyline project. it was not about creating a recognizable skyline from a distance. this was more of a neighborhood where it was a finer grain, were you would start to fill in at a lower height. you would recognize a generally urban fabric, but not necessarily a large place markers associated with it. how we did that was, basically, we created two zones of base height, the general height of the fabric of the neighborhood.

on the west side, this was generally 45 feet. lower height, lower density on the west side. lake merced boulevard is to the west. to the east side of the neighborhood, 65 feet. this allows us to have more density associated with the muni alignment that we introduced on the east side. you have greater density at the transit level, in the transit zone. now, with those two height jumps, there are 11 mid rises that are going to remain. they're basically in two clusters. there are six to the west and five in the southeast corner. they create two low amounts of height, if you will. for us, one of the things that

we really worked with the community to talk about was that the views from ingleside terrace and the neighborhoods to the east should be protected. they do have a view quarters out to the ocean. this diagram illustrates the view shadows. these are existing mid rises that are there now. they create a certain amount of view blockage. what we did was, with the tallest buildings, the ones that are in the 145-foot category, there would -- they generally sit in the new shadows. they are not blocking any additional view for the

neighbors. only two exceptions to that region there is one in the middle that you can see. that one was meant to mark the interception -- intersection and create a special place in the neighborhood. there are two to the southeast. it was really to address people entering san francisco, and to create a more welcoming gateway into the city. within that, we start to add additional height to achieve the density. the way we did this was on the east side, there are buildings that can go up to 85 feet high. the way we think of this height is creating a variety for the six-story zone. these will be eight-story buildings. you have the fabric of these buildings. it is great interest at the pedestrian levels. it keeps the neighborhood from having the look of a hedge.

on the west side, we introduced the eight-story buildings as well. now they are slightly taller than the underlying fabric. we think of them as marking important places in the fabric. they are adjacent to the park. they can have a small piece of retail. there will be the bank's share pods. there will be community rooms. it is meant to mark d. important social node within the fabric of the community -- mark the social noted with in the fabric of the community. corners are often anchored by a slightly taller building, adding to the variety of fabric of is mentioning. lastly, the 11-story buildings

are added to the site. there are just about four or five on the west side, the remainder being on the east side, again, to anchor important districts in the neighborhood, and to really help mark specific corners and intersections. one of the things we found is that when you look at this, from an aerial perspective, it looks like a continuous fabric. the reality is that as you move around the neighborhood, it is actually a fairly confusing street fabric because of the tax agonal street pattern. by placing towers that can be different at each of those intersections and turns, you start to have the means to help orient you as you move through the neighborhood. the scale of this is an example of a view of a neighborhood

shared street, shared alley, which might have three stories. the smaller streets would have the smaller-scale buildings. one of the questions last time was about the fabric of the types of buildings we are introducing. this is an opportunity for town houses, along these shared public ways. you see one of the interesting towers in the background. the view of the courtyard, three stories on the neighborhood alley side, and four stories on the public street side. so, when you start to look at what is its overall density it creates, one of the important things is the transit. you must make sure there is density focused around the transit centers.

this is the realigned -- there are three stations, two new ones, one that is a you relocation out of the -- one that is relocated out of 19th avenue. there would be a bus transfer point so that buses to the 28, 29, and 17 could use it as a point transfer. we described a four-minute walking radius from each one of the stations. the area is colored in blue. that comprises half of the unit. half of the unit for this neighborhood is with then a four-minute walk for the transit boss we have introduced. the next one is about a seven- minute walk. 2/3 of the units are within a

seven-minute walk. all of the units are within a 10-minute walk of one of these transit stations. you might notice on the dwelling unit count, the countess highest near the transit. the middle band is slightly lower because of the open space at the heart of the process -- project. we wanted to make it easily accessible to all of the residents. to compare the two densities, last time there was a discussion about what other neighborhoods, what kind of density they have. what we did was we -- we have here a range of densities for different neighborhoods. there were three bands of density. it is actually quite interesting. you have the lower density

neighborhood, potrero hill, outer sunset, it does get up to about 30 per acre in richmond. they do have neighborhood commercial. they tend to be spread out much further. they need a greater area with a lower density for the number of residents to support that neighborhood commercial. at the other end, we have the tenderloin and mission bay. 114 dwelling units per acre. these are higher-density neighborhoods. in the middle are a whole range of neighborhoods. there is treasure island at 63 dwelling units per acre. what we're looking at there is the area that can be occupied by dwelling units. lower-paid, mission, these are -- lower haight, mission, these

are different. this provides a comparable density to other neighborhoods that have the level of serviceable amenities we heard of as being very important to residents and neighbors. one of the things that we mentioned, the view. the result of this is if you were to draw an imaginary line across the tops of all of the existing buildings, all of the new buildings will reside from that line and down. this is going to be thought of as not a skyline neighborhood. the view at the bottom, there's a park on top of the hill. from that vantage point, none of the buildings even break the horizon. you can see straight out to the

ocean still. how this is helping and how it helps the neighborhood fit into the fabric is that we are aided by typography in this location. if we were to cut a section from east to west, what we will find is there is a very dramatic grade change. it appears a subtle when you stand there, but when you start to move around, you notice it is quite dramatic. it is kind of a high point in the center along 19th ave. when you get to hell away and brotherhood, it starts to taper the -- to halloway and brotherhood, it starts to taper. the blue line is the level of 19th avenue. lake merced boulevard is on the left. there is an embankment in the

center of the site, which is where the existing retail store is located. that is about a 30-foot drop from 19th ave. by the time you get to the west side of the neighborhood, there is a total of about a 100-foot drop. it is quite dramatic. this is the existing tower. when you are out there on 19th avenue, you have the sense that you're looking at the tops of those towers. you basically are. you are up at about 100 feet. they are at about 145. >> the other thing that we took note of, the retail part that i mentioned his under ownership

-- it is owned by a separate owner. there are plans that we were noticing that the plans called for development on the block and it would create a four-story fabric up against nineteenth ave. what is interesting is that the 65-foot base that we are talking about, by the time you get up to nineteenth avenue, it will be about 35 feet above the high point. the towers that i mentioned in the southeast corner, the view coming in the san francisco right now, this is what you see coming out nineteenth avenue. what we wanted to do was replace the towers so that it would actually have a different kind of appearance, and not dated appearance from people coming

up so that we really update the southern entrance from what it is today. one thing to keep in mind from the standpoint of what the neighborhood is going to feel like, the way we have thought about the streets, they are really meant to be friendly to the pedestrian and friendly to cyclists. and friendly to residents of that when they have opportunities to open up their homes and engage with the public, part of it includes a series of setbacks. it will allow for and have ground-floor units that are required as part of the guidelines. all the units are required to have injuries from the adjacent public way. this setback gives us an

opportunity that ranges from about 6 20 feet. that setback is divided into two parts, one is a common set back his own for landscape, and unified neighborhood, and a portion of it and that is dedicated for use by the residents that would be opportunities for students and other kinds of private uses. all the buildings will be required to have about 18 feet of occupied the space against the public way. trying to make sure that we don't have long as blank walls that all of the front edges of the buildings are actively used and will actively engage the public realm. one thing that i think is also important, one of the things

that we have done is we have created a regulating plan that is folding into the guidelines. this actually codifies the lot of the very specific ways for each block. what you see here is one of the plans -- on the left-hand side of the page, what you see is the amount of footprint that is allowed for each category. even though we have a 45 foot high category, this block is limited to 72,000 square feet of coverage for 45 feet. there is a requirement of 17,200. that is our way of making sure that there is variety at each block both in terms of the scale and type of building, but in terms of the technologies that might be inserted.

each of those areas and types are signed with anything above 45 feet having a designated area. for example, there are areas for 85 feet or taller. you concede there is a total of 19,000 square feet to allow for buildings that are taller. it is done in such a way that you can't put that all in one place. it has to be divided up into smaller buildings. this is a way to make sure that this is a fabric that is appropriate to the scale of the neighborhood. as i mentioned, each of these buildings would have had set back from the public way. on top of