series of requirements. we thought a little bit about positions of the buildings and how they are regulated in each block. there is a series of design guidelines standards that will limit the size of the building. you have a series of requirements like a maximum floor area, maximum diagonal, and one of the things we have found is that there needs to be another device or mechanism for further refining the shapes and portions of the building. any building shape, you could have a certain size, but either side of that building can be greater than a surge in dimension. what that gives us is an opportunity to actually, for

example, take a large building and require that it not only be articulated, but actually have it be divided to a much finer skill of building sovereignty. there are many good examples of this, various neighborhoods such as building at the foot of the bay bridge. in addition, to insure that the street wall is active, a certain amount of articulation and additional architectural detailing requiring active ground floor in certain locations, i mentioned to the dwelling unit has to have been directly from the outside. one of the things that really

helps people recognize residential buildings is when you see balcony's -- [inaudible] and the guideline for outdoor balcony. those are the buildings. the open space is the next broad category. i will go through this fairly quickly. the idea in general is that every resident is within a short walk of some open space. i am pretty sure there is not point in the project where you are not more than a block away from some form of open space. what we have done is try to take a series of spaces that are in roadways and roundabout circles to try to collect those left over spaces to gather them up with one concentrated area,

so that they become usable for people. it really isn't necessary where families -- will start to gather up spaces and create open spaces and it becomes the kind of place. there are six neighborhood commons. there are four on the west side. it becomes particularly important because it becomes places for residents to live a little bit further from the retail street. the requirement is about 0.35 acres. it can be designed for there to be a minimum size.

each one of these six, pretty much every resident is within two minutes of walking radius and it is quite large. they give identity to subareas -- many of the community meetings, people like to gather their and walk their dogs. we are keeping that space, but we are adding to it. actually a small pond, and it is the gathering point of a corridor that as part of the home system. i don't know if you recall that

all of the water is not being sent to the stores anymore and having to be treated. it is going to run across the surface. the beginning point is collecting a lot of the water and having it run through this pond. it is connected to an 18-acre series of open areas that include sports fields, organic farms, a stream corridor that flows out and it might be a little hard to see, but basically, on the right side of this image is where it starts. it cuts across and becomes parallel to gonzales at the lower half of the page. i mentioned the organic farm. this is something that is part of the sustainability aspect. it gives us the opportunity to

have some fresh stuff grown here. we have been speaking to a variety of nonprofit organizations as well as organizations that operate in a similar farm up in the headlines. a very similar climates. and then the corridor culminates in an overlooked. at the very extreme southwest corner of the community, where it connects, its position is such, and when we look at some of the historic photos, it is a wonderful vistas of the lake. you can't see it right now. the piece of program is actually a parking garage.

we want to open that up to the public. we want there to be scarce for people to come up directly from the intersection in terms of the residents back to the late, which is the regional point of origin. as the athletic fields in the south side of the neighborhood, this part of the city, there is a lot of residents in neighborhoods that are looking for recreation. we think it is an opportunity for soccer fields. one of the things we have been doing is talking to the presidents -- they are excited about the possibility of places for the teams to play and practice. away in the corner there, we

have a street connecting and we can have a pedestrian path to allow the sports teams and our neighbors to connect up to the playing fields. one of the smaller places, this is an important one. originally, we wanted to come further into the neighborhood so that it can access and run through the neighborhood retail street. in order to allow it to run more efficiently and give it to a dedicated right of way, it is now behind the retail street. it acts as a link between one of the stations and passes right by the grocery store.

get off in the evening and walk by the grocery store on the way home. you can see that the stock is at the right-hand side of the image. we see this as a very important part of the project because it is something that not only serves the neighborhood, but it is integral to the greater community. it takes what is currently a very overcrowded -- it is the busiest surfaced stock. it moves it out of the center of highway one. when the platform goes up, it becomes dangerous because people have to stand on the trackway or on the roadway. it moves that station onto a parcel that will be dedicated to

the transit stop. actually having the design standards and guidelines, magazines and newspapers can make it convenient for commuters. and also the opportunity to provide over had shelter or windbreaks making transit much more convenient. the residents or the people that use the san francisco on safe users will only have to cross nineteenth ave. the last piece is this a series of community gardens between the towers. at first, it might seem strange to locate the community gardens between the towers. it is almost 200 -- it is much wider than the buildings are tall.

in the shadow analysis, where there are plenty of times when the shadows don't come anywhere near the community gardens. in fact, there is a set of community gardens that what we had envisioned was expanding. this comprises a total of about 1 acres of open space. one of the things that we heard a loud and clear was how much they love the courtyard fabric. one of the things he wanted to ensure is that the majority of the blocks have a provision and a requirement for open space that is not on top of an elevator raj and would be accessible to all of the residents of that bloc.

and we have created opportunities for that open space to be visible from the street. there are actually pedestrian paths that will let you see when and walk into some of these courtyards. much like what you see out there today. on the northwest corner, there is some open space associated with the towers. this is one of the first blocks that would be built. you see the buildings on the southwest and northeast corner is. what is currently a surface parking lot would actually be reduced to a simple street with a minimum parking spaces that are something that we needed to obtain in order to honor the leases for those residents. that concludes my presentation.

commissioner miguel: before we continue, do you have any questions on this section? commissioner antonini: this was really good. let me gather my thoughts here. when you pointed out the densities in the area, you focused on the dense parts of western san francisco. that is, at the old side, it is much less dense and the extension, not that it matters, but the area's most closely aligned are the least dense. those are not put in here, but just as a matter of analysis.

in rendering of the towers is really early. they seemed a little glassy, and i am not sure if that is conjectural -- contextual. that design can be held as we move along to try to fit into the architecture to the west of western san francisco. the open space issues, the organic farm looks awfully big. it seems like an awful lot of space and i am not sure how many people are going to be tending to vegetables or whatever you are going to try to grow. it is nice to have son when you grow things like that. i think you have to really look and make sure that you don't allot more space that is

practical. you have it aligned in a situation where you get as much as possible. the neighborhood commons look fine, keep them as simple as possible. and letting as much sun through as possible. you want trees that are not blocking too much sun and are more ornamental than shade trees. most of the rest of the stuff i thought was really good. i think with some of the courtyards, they were a little complicated. i think the lawn is really a good idea and it works well. not many complicated plantings, people want places where they can relax and it is a lot more maintenance as you keep putting

different elements in there. anyway, that is my view on what you have presented so far. commissioner moore: i personally have difficulty using other parts of the city has a density comparison because neighborhoods like north beach and others are older established neighborhoods that rely completely on mixed use. from the very beginning, they fall unto [unintelligible] buildings and streets interact in a way that high-density is supportable. when i compared to what we are doing, we are retrofitting even if it is a suburban

neighborhood. from a low density of 21 dwellings to 59, it is a transition from low density to high density which i have slide problems with, partially because it tries to make a recall on the suburban notion that are counter to basic principles of identification. i am wondering why you would not have tried to develop a diagram to completely read developed the east side of the site in a manner that would take on contemporary forms of neighborhoods with conventional streets and blocks that don't have to work around the awkward geometries.

i think we are getting into a conflict here. while the west side is generally quite convincing to generate a smaller block, i find the design on the east side somewhat unconvincing. for me, that is where the largest amount of problems lie. >> that was a subject that was one of the issues and challenges, something that we had a great deal of frustration for us early on in the project because we wanted to do exactly that. we wanted to take away this remnant of a 4 in san francisco geometry is tried to make something that was much more a part of san francisco. when we got to the specifics of analyzing how this would

happen, we had to deal with the fact that this is a living community. there are residents that live here every day. they made this commitment that they would only have to move once. the streets are all city streets with infrastructure on them or underneath them. we could not find a way to simply wipe the table clean. in the implementation of this, we have to work block by block. yet prevented us from being able to do this. one of the things that we really try to do is to take that streak that can be quite disorienting. actually, if we can get -- the hexagonal st., in its current form a kind of and suddenly.

we tried to unravel its soviet reforms and neighborhood boulevard. and you have this large open spaces of that you can orient yourself. although we have this radiating geometry of what was there, i think what we have done is try to take that can turn it into creating a single street that runs through the neighborhood and ties it together to become a way for residents and visitors to become oriented and access smaller, individual streets where people might be living. commissioner moore: let me ask you a question if i may. what determined the density of the project for you? we do want to create a higher density near transit, but the distance of your showing in one of your diagrams, this one by

far exceeds the established distances by which people walk to transit. we have studies throughout the united states from the introduction of the red line and green line in washington d.c. where we are trying to retrofit suburbia more closely to downtown washington, it is used as a criteria that people did not walk much further than five minutes. if the normal expectation is 3 minutes, the actual expectation will be beyond five minutes. in the existing established neighborhoods, like north beach in the downtown neighborhoods, you are probably walking a little bit further. more than just about 50% of the units lie beyond the walking

distance. how do you resolve that many people living as far away from transit as they do? >> the bus that comes through the neighborhood, there will be a neighborhood shuttle. if you go back to -- [no audio] if you look at the diagram, there is a red line that moves through the neighborhood that is

kind of like a keyhole shape. the neighborhood shuttle would allow residents to easily access all of the transit and it would also serve directly to the daily city. during non-peak hours, we would use it for the residents to have access to west lake as sort of regional shopping in the area. commissioner moore: you believe that a shuttle system will ultimately encourage people to use transit even if the shuttle is a more on demand type thing? >> it will be a scheduled shuttle. the way m thatuni -- way that muni is setting up the system is

a transit line the other buses can come into the neighborhood and feed into. the shuttle becomes a parallel component to that strategy. commissioner moore: could you explain to us the densities? it is very high density given that people live in a completely different building type except for the towers that are existing. >> what we were looking at most importantly was, what is going to take the kind -- to make the kind of community for support and service and amenities that everyone in the neighborhood were asking for? one of the things that we thought of, from the land area,

it covers about 152 acres, which is comparable to some of the neighborhoods in san and disco. some of the neighborhoods actually have the kind of service and effort to have the access to transit that we think this neighborhood should have. we worked with the ownership group to see what kind of population we would need in order to support the kind of services everybody was asking for. including the grocery store that is almost nonexistent. commissioner moore: thank you. commissioner miguel: commissioners, i will continue with commissioner questions on this subject, but afterwards, i

was going to ask whether or not you want us to -- it will keep us here wonder this evening. think about that. -- longer this evening. think about that. commissioner sugaya: one observation, or question, or something. it is interesting to me that the transit line comes in as a diagonal and continues to the south east through another diagonal streets. i guess it seems that without seeing something rendering lies, it seems like a diagonal

and is organizing or something in my mind. and yet, we have transit of violating a whole segment with that. it seems like a strange way to do it, i guess. for lack of technical terms. just an observation. when it gets down to the end of the southeast corner, and to the cars just a turnaround and go back up? i did not quite understand that. >> this was one of the goals of the mta. so that muni was not in traffic to help their travel time. the second goal was to make sure

that the plan that we had would accommodate the effect of this plan the future that would possibly bring home the j-line -- bring the j-line to this end. another thing that was important was the amount of writer ship is quite large. so starting with san francisco state, the writer should drop off dramatically. if you gave mta the possibility of running more trains to serve that a heavier population and having the appropriate level of service from the community to the east, they were very excited about the dead end.

it gives them a place to pull a disabled train out of the way. in the future, they can extend this line and set it up to allow extensions for daily city work. commissioner sugaya: it just seems strange that it is right in the middle of a diagonal streets that would be some kind of way to organize this thing. unless you're going to completely -- if you have already used in the open space to the southwest and i know that going the other direction to the northwest is kind of short. it is just something that hit me. commissioner moore: i would like to ask something about building placement without steppingon