all the different aspects. pedestrian improvements, pedestrian safety came through loud and clear as something people wanted improved. in terms of the transportation projects, people are interested in the transportation projects, supported the bigger ones, but wanted to see smaller, near term projects. people are tired of waiting. this has been going on since 2003. this is something we are putting an eye towards as we prioritize these community improvement. nobody had anything to say about parking in glen park. that is one of the biggest issues there. the fear of removal of additional on street parking, fear of removal of available public parking. these are things that people are very concerned about, and the plan speaks to different opportunities we have to maximize street parking. the other piece is the park parking lot, which is a lightning rod for this project,

as we discussed already. islais creek. and there are some folks that live along the creek path who are very concerned about what the effects might be if something was day lighting, flooding, mosquitos, and those are great questions. the plant just says that this is an opportunity in glen park and says it stays open. the other thing i wanted to mention was how this plan affects surrounding neighborhoods. neighborhoods use the glen park village and transit of there is pretty spotty. some of those folks are older and are not able to get down. the importance of driving and parking available to them in order for them to access is important. the vernal heights neighbors are very involved in the san jose avenue project. they have been motivated about

that, have been meeting with the mta and caltrans, supporting these long-term visions we also talked about. overall, our time line for moving forward, we are here with you today at this briefing. over the next couple of months, we will be refining the plants and more, working with mta to develop a method for getting these transportation projects internally and bringing them back out of the community to hear their thoughts and what they want to prioritize so that we can hone in on a package of improvements we can tie to funding to move forward once the plan is adopted. we expect to have a revised plan package some time may be in the spring or summer, associated workshops with that. we are looking with our eyes on the prize, adopting the plan probably in the fall. the eir is scheduled to be released i think the 17th of

march. then the comment period for that will begin. staff will be here in april to discuss the eir with you at that time. with its planned plan adoption and certification to take place, both around fall. i think that is all i had to say about the overview of the planning process. i would be happy to answer questions. >> public comment and then we will go through the commissioners. is there any public comment on this item? >> my name is vicki, a glen park resident. i have attended a number of these meetings. i think john's summary of the reaction by the neighbors is pretty good, except that he sort of glossed over some of the parking problems and objections

to the housing development. this glen park transit zone is a nebulous little thing where the density and number of housing units is not specified. it makes an assumption that everybody moving into these units would not have a car, would not need parking space. i think this is pretty unrealistic. parts of the plan are great, parts that deal with traffic, possible improvements to the bart station. those are desperately needed. it is getting really dangerous there. the intersection at rush hour are terrible. the new zoning, i cannot say that it is really needed. what it does is opens up a way

to tear down the building that are already there, stuff more people into a district that is basically a little flat areas surrounded by hills on all sides with freeways on the other side. there is no place to expand. the parking is so terrible by the commuters coming in, people have to walk way up the hills. i cannot tell you the number of people i see pulling up in front of my house, getting out with a suitcase to go down to bart to leave on a two-week trip. i know there are neighborhood parking zones where you can get a special sticker, but 50% of the neighbors have to agree to a $100 a year cost. so our block does not have this,

and this is one of the first one people use as a long-term parking lot. so i do not see what is to be gained by changing this. they will be able to stuff a few more people into housing units of new retail, but we are going to lose -- no matter how sensitive the design -- we are going to lose the character. you have seen what the store fronts look like. to get these extra few people in their. -- in there. the sidewalks are only so wide, and that space is taken up by trees and trash cans. people cannot even pass each other if they are walking. thank you very much.

>> good morning, commissioners. vice-president of the glen park association. we wanted to make a few comments for the record. first of all, the glen park association represents residents and home owners in the quaint village of glen park. gpa has not taken an official position on the plan but we are interested and involved. we are very happy the process the planning department's that has developed for working with the community. gpa has also been hosting working meetings with the community, gathered input and sending it on to the planning staff. certain issues are still being heard and considered. a few of those issues are addressing the mcp zoning height, expanding commercial

areas, and development of the bart parking lot. thank you very much. commissioner antonini: thank you. >> thank you. >> i am the chairman of the glen park association. i agree entirely with what karen said, but i want to thank john and john to help us engage with the community to generate, i hope, better and useful, more considerate input from the community. i see that came from mta is also here. i wanted to thank her for the pedestrian crossing we had been asking for. it just appeared recently. i wanted to thank her for that work. thank you.

>> is there additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. did you want to address us at all? if you are sticking around, we may have some questions for you. now that you have been addeoute. commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: thank you for an excellent report. a lot of it is about the historical connections, how glen park connected to areas further to the east, alemany, mission, and it is now separated by the freeway and san jose avenues. i like a lot of the things you are proposing as far as the roundabout, connecting the church and bart, making it easier to get between the two. perhaps the end of san jose could become a city street, as

is the case with octavia, king, dolores. that would slow the traffic down as people come through theire. i think that is really important. another thing, as we move forward with transit ideas, i think we need to be cognizant of the fact, with our light rail system, the way it exists today, we do not have a connection to the east from the j, k, or l linbe. the t line now ends at visitation valley. we need to look at a connection perhaps at geneva, and glen park moving through those neighborhoods to be able to connect. most of the people i've talked about this concept are very receptive to that, i am not saying right through glen park,

but where j is now, moving through areas of the excelsior to connect. the transit now has to grow around in a circle to get back to the bart from the t. while it may not affect your plans directly, i think we have to view these in view of the future. >> that is an interesting idea. perhaps kim and i could talk about that further. >> i have a couple of other things i wanted to add, too, but if we could look at that. maybe more of a concept, like balboa park. i think we have to think about both areas and decide where the eastern connection should occur. and then i wanted to add a couple of more things. i agree with the neighbors about

their concerns about the nct zoning. i think we do not want to just provide more housing, but housing that is appropriate for that area. there are some intel sites, and i think you talked about kern straighstreet. there are currently some empty lots in the village that could be looked at. i think it has to have the same basic zoning, as we currently have, in terms of height, also in terms of density. this is basically a single- family neighborhood. there are some multiples, but largely single-family. i think we have to continue that type of thing, particularly, with the available sites we have. so i would tend to be against an indeterminate density, but

rather have a density that determines exactly how many residents you are going to have in a particular site, or as we have had in the past, if it is an rc, rh-1, not just putting as much into the zoning as you can. >> you can see on this zoning map we have here, that potential infill site on kern -- it is the yellow space, zoned rh-2. the proposal is keeping the proposal along bronson ave. the only change would be for those parcels facing diamond straighstreet. for any potential infill, it

would be a combination of rh and nct. just to make that clear. >> i understand you are making a distinction between that, along bosworth itself, but we need to make sure that what we do, we speak with the community to make sure is appropriate. the bart parking lot is an interesting concept. it is important we do not lose any of the existing parking we have. i was on the commission when the market came forth, and it has been successful, but an issue of contention was that it was not providing any parking. i think it has worked out well, is a great market. i think that that lot serves as a lot of purposes. we need to figure out how to use it in the best way, to serve the neighborhood at that as possible. you are going to have to work

with part, of course, to see if they want to do something above grade, add additional levels, what the solution is. day lighting of the stream, if it works out, great. it would be nice to have a stream flowing through there, but all those things would have to be worked out. that is a year around. >> it is a semi seasonal creek, so there are some design features. we could also speak with the puc for ways to add additional water to it coming from other sources nearby. these are some of the engineer conversations. >> so it is not a year around. it is almost seasonal. the water drains when it is the rainy season, but otherwise,

very little. ok, thank you very much. >> commissioner miguel? commissioner miguel: i would like to complement you. i had the pleasure of being at, maybe, three of your public meetings. going to public meetings around town, those are amazingly well attended. people are very much up on what you are doing. they are not all yes, yes, yes, as you know, but it is an excellent example of public process. you are starting a presentation with the history of the electric car coming out. it is an interesting example of the fact that reasonable transit proceeds development.

we should keep that in mind, to an extent. although not totally undeveloped, like areas like hunter's point, we need to look at that. it is a good example of that. and an example the other way, of course, is the ridiculous section of san jose. i say that because i do not think anyone will disagree with me on that. it was a failed concept, as far as the mission freeway is concerned. it should have been corrected immediately. it has not been. to me, that is one of the major situations that you have there. if money is going to flow anywhere in to the general area, in my mind, that should be

the first objective, to do that correctly and a lot of the rest will follow. i am totally disappointed with bart as far as their failure to come forward, other than inching, and they are still inching along. they have not come into my mind, done their job with land use as regards to that station, parking lot, and everything else. it should not serve the purpose it was originally intended to, never done correctly. i look forward to being at your next meeting, if i can possibly be there. it will be interesting to hear the public comment on it.

the village itself works very well. i am disappointed in the fact that general parking enforcement cannot be done in a better manner. you do need parking. you are in very hilly areas. you take a look at normal transit maps, and they show you the eighth mile, quarter mile, half mile radius, but as i said before, that is two dimensions on geography. in san francisco, you need three-dimensional geography in order to see what is actually necessary. those walking distances are a bit off, in normal situations. i am very disappointed to hear that there are long-term commuter parking going on so

that they can take bart to the airport. there are enforcement provisions for cars that are parked on the straight for two weeks. there are police codes and parking code violations that should be looked at in that regard. >> i just wanted to say thank you for attending our meetings. it has been nice to have representation. >> commissioner morore? commissioner moore: i agree with what commissioner antonini and miguel said. it is a good plan for the city of san francisco. the physical configuration of this particular area stands on its own. it has developed its own voice and demand on planning, and the steps, it is a competent piece of work.

i like the description of your interaction with the public. you cannot do it without them. having such a large amount of people show up for such a small area speaks to the dynamics not only of the village, but of the dynamics of the city. i am impressed about your time to push back to bart. unfortunately, their site is inefficient and you almost want to do valet parking in order to get the right numbers of cars. not that i am suggesting that, but to hold down and come to a place where this can be planned, and then when we come back to mark, i think that is what we need. i would support that attitude. it is not just a piece of real estate.

you tell them what works and hopefully they will come to the table to work with you and deliver. i would share the concerns about the zoning, partially because of the dna of this area lies in its small parcels and its block size, and everything else that comes with it. zoning encourages the aggregation of parcels, which will not maintain the quality of what is there. i hope historic preservation will be strongly with you to really bring meaning to what we do here. i do not think you can done without having historic preservation look at the village as a place, not just building by building. i think that is where the next lesson of how we progress comes

from. the type of buildings we do with additional heights, mostly are too expensive to afford the type of retail and interaction people cherish. i think that is where we need to listen and learn. i hope that you will find a lot more time to come to a conclusion. we are required to do form-based zoning, which would also look at the context of the board law, which any other infill project would occur. i do like the idea of taming the infrastructure of san jose. i hope that we can draw on defining what type of space configuration for that street is correct this overpass, i hope it

is something that can happen soon. whenever i drive under the thing, i wonder what is out there. i would feel insecure walking over it because it is pretty threatening. it is the worst example of what a pedestrian bridge should be. it is scary. i thought commissioner antonini's comment about more comprehensive looking at transportation connections in the big picture in the future we are good. i did not hear him say it needs to be resolved in glen park, but creating discussion would be very fruitful and healthy to

avoid short-term thinking, which many of the previous decisions in this area were. you have the ability to look into the future. this is a great piece of work. i will try to attend one of the meetings to hear where you are going next. >> if i might, commissioner moore. to respond to your questions and concerns about the density. we entirely agree with your sentiments and recognize this area and plan is different than many of our plan where we were looking at areas with housing opportunities, growth opportunities on the back of transportation infrastructure. we are basically looking at how can we best foster this village, which has organically produced itself and succeeded? the historic buildings in question are really just a few,

and they are not the one that you may think, on diamond and bosworth. the character-giving buildings here in glen park are not historic preservation, in a sense, but they are very important for the qualities that people value. our concept is to capitalize on the benefits of nct, not for introducing new density or growth, but for the issues of decoupling from parking requirements, which introduces conflicts with store front for utilizing what building space is there now more efficiently and creatively, if it is decouple from parking or density control, where that makes sense. we are still working on some of the particular is here, but one of the aspects is the height in the area. that was mentioned by the commissioners. on my most of our plans -- unlike most of our plans, these

sidewalks are narrow, just a couple of blocks. we are recognizing there is a pretty predominance of more less 30-foot strip malls. we have not gone down to the community with this discussion yet, but we are considering whether reductions in heights on these key, or blocks, to preserve that village character, might be appropriate, in conjunction with nct. our intention is not to induce redevelopment within glen park, incentivize those buildings that are character-giving and forced density. there is a diagram in the planning department that shows our area plants, growth projections in those plans. glen park, we have 100, maybe.

this is not a housing production issue in glen park. we will come back to you with more information on that. i think we are sensitized to the issues of scale that the commissioners mentioned. that is our perspective. i think that mirrors what we're hearing from the community as well, if that makes sense. >> when you were describing nct as it relates to glen park, i heard something differently with how the commission is react. i think you are pretty much keeping in mind some of the issues, especially the ones that commissioner moore raised. when i am looking through the housing element, of course, a lot of emphasis now on character of neighborhoods, scale, those types of issues. i think that the streets are

narrow in glen park, as some of you mentioned, sidewalks are narrow, and there had been some recent developments there that does not seem in character with glen park. i wish i could remember -- i will mention some of the streets. maybe if we could avoid those types of developments in the future. densely-packed -- i will get the street names. maybe we can have a discussion about that. it just seems completely out of character with a lot of what is there. also, i think parking is sort of an issue, but public transportation is one of the main issues. someone mentioned there lama park.