only to the neighborhoods and the city as a whole but the development community that it is time to come back into play and into the market. now i am going to add a footnote. i have now seen that some people are here to talk about their experiences with this developer. it is actually not this developer. metropolitan is 342 units, there are 14 plaintiff it is who have an action against the number of parties on the metropolitan. on april 5th we received a multimillion dollar demand for settlement.

don't believe it would be in your best interest to have disgruntled homeowners. you don't need to know what is going on here. it is outside the range. if you want to know, i am not happy to tell you because i think it is far afield. if you just look at the numbers, 14 out of 342, you know every major high rise construction that is residential ends up in multiple lawsuits. that is why we insure. that is why we have our contractors bond. and the legal process actually hardens people in their positions. i wish i could come up with a brilliant alternative to litigation. it is not the best anybody ever shows of themselves. i just want to see this system used to review planning and building policy. i appreciate your time. thank you.

>> i am a homeowner, business owner in the city of san francisco. it is not so much whether or not this project should go forward, because it is going forward. it is part of planning. it has been approved. it is a determination of the number of units inside the project.

i am for anything within reason that allows construction to occur in the city and county of san francisco. i am a construction business owner in the city. we have been kepressed in this city for, i would say two or two and a half years as far as construction work goes. we feel it does all of that. we would like to see the commission approve this project and approve the additional units in a timely basis. it is important for us to continue growing with construction in the city, in the areas that are most impacted now, not two or three or four years from now.

if the project is ready i do believe that it is in the best interest of everyone, including the people in the area, as long as it, again, meets what the e.i.r. states. moving in a timely manner. so, i am for the project. >> thank you. >> thank you commission for having me speak. i am a native san franciscoian. i am in favor of 45 lansing and also in favor of the i.s.d. are think the construction of this project will add value and workers for people who

currently do not have work. so, i want to make sure that you understand i am in favor of the project. i think that it is important they think we move forward with the project. the commission sees the project as a positive for the city and that it will open up other opportunities for the locals and for the fellow san franciscoians with respect to work. we are experiencing escalation in cost, a lot of materials are going up. a lot of materials it could conventionally possibly shelf the project because of the cost of construction rising.

i want you to keep that in mind in making your decision. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> good afternoon president and commissioners. first, i would like to thank you for your dedication for the city. my name is john wang. i am an electrical worker in local 6. here in front of you speaking in favor of this project. as you know, the construction is taking the hardest hit in this country. currently we have about over 30% of employment this job can put our skill, highly qualified members to work.

and i am urging you guys to move this project forward. and we are looking at this as we need to build 10 more towers like this to put everybody to work at our union hall. thank you. >> thank you. you can stand up from where you are sitting. >> thank you. good afternoon president and commissioners. i am a field representative with local 22. local 2, i have to say is definitely for this project. what i am hearing today, affordable housing. i am looking behind me. we have carpenters, retired carpenters, out of work carpenters, we do have working carpenters here. this is something that we can possibly with these studios maybe afford to move in.

we all want to live in san francisco. we all want to be close by. we are all members of the san francisco local. i think this is a good project. i would hope that you would too. we ask that you pass this. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is dan byer. contract's license number 92. i have been in the city since 1900. this project creates jobs, approximately 1 00 per week for the next 28-32 months. that is a boom to the economy. it creates a better living condition for people. it supports the b.m.r. of the city ask county of san francisco and supports a growing and viable area. i thank you for the time to talk to you.

i urge you to approve it. >> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners and madam chairman. i too am in favor of this project on behalf of our members. we ask you to move forward on this. it is a good project. it was previously approved by the planning department. what is to not like? you have affordable housing, a chance to put local contractors to work and local residents to work. and maybe give our members that live and work here an opportunity to buy affordable housing. please consider moving this forward. thanks very much. >> thank you.

i am owner at the metropolitan. on my card i actually am not opposed to the development. i have some serious issues with the developer. full disclosure, i am one of the owners that mr. atkinson talked about. there are 23 units at the metropolitan that are under litigation with the developer at crescent heights, to manage the metropolitan project they created to limit their exposure as is the norm. there are significant outstanding issues in our respect and our view. mr. atkinson started out by

talking about how the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose. he went on to say most developments have some sort of litigation. that is absolutely true in the case. they have developments all over the country that are currently in litigation. there is more down here. it is definitely their experience to find themselves in litigation. you know unfortunately i have to dive into one or two of the issues so that you can get an understanding. mr. atkinson used the term aggressive for this developer. that is a perfect adjective. in all respects they have

seriously aggressive and marketing strategies. basically they oversold these units. their glossy brochures, their word of mouth, their written -- i can site many things as to how my unit was sold to me as an 874 square foot unit. eight months to the day after i killed escrow they recorded with the city assessor as 795 square foot. that is 10% less than i bought. i think that is irrefuteable. so that is an issue of their integrity and aggressive selling tactics. so, construction defects. i don't know if you remember there was a scaffolding around the metropolitan for almost a year because the tile started to fall off.

safety issues, possibly. but in my particular unit, let me talk to that. when i bought the unit i couldn't get into see it because it was perfect timing on their behalf. things were selling brilliantly. they cited fire code as to why i couldn't get in. when i did get in eventually there was a carpet on the unit. what i didn't realize is that the carpet underlied an unfinished floor which did not meet the specification of greater than one inch of grade over 10 feet. when two years ago the carpet came out, this was revealed. >> thank you. is there any additional public comment? >> i didn't realize i had a time limitation. probably good. but there is another side to the story. >> everyone has three minutes. thank you, sir. >> good afternoon.

i am jamie whitaker. i am president of the neighborhood association. hopefully you received the letter supporting 45 lansing street project. this is one step forward for the neighborhood to potentially get some of the infrastructure improvements that are badly needed by existing residents. and get a little closer to becoming the most densely populated portion of the city of san francisco which would restore bus service and everything else needed. please approve this project. thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioners i will be very brief. this project we have been waiting for for a long time. we have had folks out of work for a long time. it could start as early as the end of this year and the beginning of next. good god, let this work.

>> good afternoon commissioners. my name is javier flores. i am here to support the project. as you know, you probably hear many opinions. but we are really suffering. i am not talking about our members. i am talking about people that will be involved in this project. please, support this project. it is one of the good things that you guy consist do. today is a good day. tomorrow will be another better day. >> i don't know if you want to ask if any of your other members are here if they want to stand up at this time. stand up to show their support. >> thank you. >> uh-huh. thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners.

local 377 here in san francisco. i am speaking on behalf of my members. we really need this work. we thank the commission for their diligence on this and we are very much supportive. thank you. i am a member of local 22. and also a resident and property owner in san francisco. i want to speak in support of this project. the san francisco government, the state government and the federal government, we hear about the deficits and shortages. part of what is driving that is unemployment at high wage jobs like our construction jobs. and that means nothing is getting paid in to the tax

coffers. i think we need to move forward on this project. you know, inspect it as carefully as you want. i think i can speak for all of us in the building trades we really need to move forward on this. thank you. >> i want to make this brief. i'm a journeyman carpenter. been out of work for a long time, two months. almost a year or two. staying in public housing. i don't know too much about this project, but i know it gives me something to look forward to. it's something to strive for. by me staying in public housing, it's something to strive for. maybe one day qualify to stay in one of these units. president olague: thank you. additional public comment? >> i'm from local 34

carpenter's, local 22. we are supporting this project. we want to be there forever for you guys. president olague: thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. andrew brooks from the rincon neighborhood jorks. in the past we supported this project. it was to our chagrin earlier this month. we originally supported this project based upon a three-unit matrix of the plan. as you can see before you, it has been changed. i've talked to you at great lengths many times before about the issue of family housing, the ability to expand a growing family or a family need within rincon hill, which has not been available. i have talked to the project sponsor about this need. he has talked at great length about his concerns, meeting our

concerns in the community, and feels that his re-incorporation, his re-matrixing of the unit will in fact support family housing. and you heard from his representative, his attorney today, that they are going to go out in front of this project at the sell point and promote family housing, promote people buying one unit, two units, combining units before the building is even occupied. they have blueprints and plans that i have seen that we hope will allow for easy incorporation of the units. where you can easily combine a unit and create a family unit. it's very important to us. what we don't need in rincon hill is more 500, 300-square-foot studio apartments. studio apartments create absentee landlords and a dearth

of livable housing in the area. this project sponsor for the first time that we've been working on this plan came before you today and said they are going to work to encourage family and workforce housing, and this is critical in rincon hill. it's critical all over san francisco. now, family and workforce housing in rincon hill is not necessarily the affordability index they may want to see in the mission, but it certainly is family and workforce housing nonetheless. it's needed. we are going to hold the project sponsor's feet to the coal on this one and make sure the sponsor follows through. we're glad to see that the project sponsor is -- president olague: thank you, thank you. any additional public comment?

>> i'm a business rep for ironworkers local 377. we appreciate if you move this project forward. all the building trades, as mike theriot said, need this project to move forward. president olague: can you state your name for the record? >> ed reyes. president olague: thank you. >> sue hefter. when the staff reports shifted, some clarity got lost. and it's not just this one, it's been for several years of the it's really hard to follow the open space, and i was really trying. you can look at the table on the front page. it has shrunk. and you go to the summary of open space on page four and it talks about how they are doing their required on-site open space offsite on lansing street. and then as you change to pages eight, nine and 10, there are

little bits of discussion. it should be really clear how they are meeting their code requirement, which is their obligation and their responsibility and doesn't get shifted on to a public benefit package or anything else. the open space requirement is part of the project, and i'm concerned that you can get into double counting things. double counting open space as part of public benefits, rather than part of what the project is required to do, because the flow of an explanation of how open space is being created and what obligation it meets is muddled. . i think i can read these things and i had a hard time following it through. so the staff should put a chart

together, just like they do -- a good project will have a chart, so they know all the exceptions. but the open space, because it's kind of a mixed bag of public benefits and on-site -- and it's the same space and it can't be counted twice. the open space drove me crazy trying to trace it. thank you. president olague: additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini. commissioner antonini: thank you. maybe i can ask mr. -- the planner for this. sorry. just answer that last speaker, about -- i'm looking at this page about provision of open spails. off and on-site.

apparently this is the way -- the way it's structured is allowable. maybe you can explain the way this open space is being done. >> as was just pointed out, i was not the original planner on this project, but i will do my best. my understanding is that they are not providing the full amount of open space on the site for all the units as required by the code, which is what is triggering the exception that was originally granted. but the concept is that they would use the public open space, which would be the working of lansing street, since it is directly adjacent to the protect, that that would act as open space and also open spaces available to the residents of the project. but that is not all that the planning code requires.

commissioner antonini: thank you. that's how i read it, too, but we are able to grant that exemption. and if we feel the benefits outweigh the exemptions, that's one of the things we could grant. i'm supportive of the project for a lot of the reasons that have already been stated. for those of you who may not have remembered, we approved this many years ago. i think it was 2006. it had the 265 units, 265 parking spaces and then it was revised with fewer units and fewer off-street parking spaces. now we've gone up to a new high in number of units at 320, but we've gone up to the original number of parking spaces that were allowed. i think we're getting a lot of benefits by doing this. we're going to get about $4 million additional into the housing fund because we have more unit and it's done by unit count and the number sold, and that's the competence sa tore

amount of money that has to go into the fund. i am even couraged by the fact that the project sponsor has spoken about flexibility, and it could end up that we approve up to 320 units. there could be fewer units, and that's within, you know, the approval. if some of these units were combined into three bedrooms by use ago studio with a two-bedroom or something along those lines, that would be good. there may be situations where families would want to look at this and would want to do that. so i think that flexibility is a very good flexibility to have. i'm encouraged with the other things that are going on and the fact that i hear a lot of mention of the fact that we could conceivably be seeing something starting as early as the ends of this year, early next year. and that's important, because the psychological benefit of a project that breaks ground and gets started is going to have a lot of assurances for other developers who already ven titlements in the area and seeing somebody go through is

going to have a good benefit. i think it's a good project. i'll wait and hear what the other commissioners have to say, but i'm going to make a motion after they're done to approve it. president olague: commissioner sugaya. commissioner sugaya: to touch on a couple of things. first, open space. i really don't like using public right-of-way to satisfy private open-space requirements. i understand that we've already approved the exception once. i didn't like it then. i don't like it now. if the commission wants to apry -- aprivate, i don't know which way to go. but i don't want to this set a precedent for future developments, where the sponsor comes in and says i'm going to use the spreet as my open space. i don't think that quite makes

it for me. anyway, be that as it may, i have a question for staff. if we approve the number of units that's being proposed, and let's say a year from now or two years from now the project is completed and units start to be sold and i look at one of the units and say, oh, this is a two-bedroom unit and i want to make it into a three-bedroom unit by merging it with a studio that's next door, isn't that a unit merger? wouldn't that have to come back to the commission? >> yes. if it's after construction and after the establishment of the units and you wanted to merge two units, such as a two-bedroom and a studio, that would qualify as a merger and would have to follow the planning code requirements for that, which is generally a public hearing and a discretionary review. if they modified the plans

before it was constructed and it was still in general conformity with what may be approved today, then that would be done before the units were actually established, and that would be ok. commissioner sugaya: just to clarify, what's the trigger point? at what point do -- >> would it be the occupancy permit or -- >> in terms of the establishment of the unit? commissioner sugaya: yeah. i mean, we have construction and then they could be showing mock-ups of the unit before the final trigger, which i assume could be the final occupancy permit. >> yes, there would be a certificate of occupancy, that would establish the legality. >> everything after that would trigger the merger, if they decided to change after that. commissioner sugaya: and then to follow up on commissioner antonini, since there are a lot of union people here who want to have jobs, perhaps the project sponsor could tell us whenhe