construction. with a lot of work we saved land mark and historic gardens to adapt or reuse as retirement facility twofment-thirds of the residential project was also completed so the city got the benefit of both kinds of much-needed development. within a few years there are able to save the conservatory of music, which was originally an infant shelter, for the adapt ability and use. these efforts have highlighted the importance of working together with project sponsors, planners and community members right from the smart. >> thank you very much. >> good afternoon, greg miller, i'm supporting the district in golden gate park f anybody has any doubts about what's historic about landscape design and character of the park, they should read the nomination for national register for historical places, which golden gate park is part of. i suggest we need h.p.c. involved in looking at historic issues about golden gate park so

we have a productive and proactive dialogue rather than forcing activists like myself to hire a lawyer and sue or something like that, be better and more productive all together to have a process who had a dialogue in our city agencies who take into historics. my own experience has been rec and park has many balls it juggles and often drops historic ball. for example, music concourse before it was a landmark. initial proposal was rip out trees and put gay rath between two museums. we would not have a music concourse if that had gone forward. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> katherine howard, golden gate park preservation alliance. golden gate park has attracted those who view it as open land available for their my favorite developmental projects. the effort to stem the flood of

development in rec and park in 1998 they developed golden gate park master plan. huffer, this plan is not really followed by the department, new develop projects are constantly being proposed. we need golden gate park to be a historic district. now there's a discussion as to whether or not this is a good idea. to this i ask, what what is planned for golden gate park. what new project destructive to the park are in the pipeline we do not know about because the very idea of protecting golden gate park is under attack. there will be a program about threats to golden gate park on the commonwealth club on may 11. encourage everyone to come, ask questions and learn about the future threats to golden gate park. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm the vice president of the preservation commission but i'm not representing the commission in my comments. i have two -- i hope --

>> my apologies. i would have called you earlier on had i realized. my bad. >> there are two points i want to make. one is my family and i live in district two. i have two children in a local public school. we own historic home, one of the oldest in the neighborhood. my husband and i committed our children's college fund to the seismic retrofit of our house. and we also added solar panels, redid the heating in order to give this historic home a long life. it was more expensive than we anticipated and it took three times as long as we anticipated but we're very pleased with it. historic nature of the home had nothing to do with the cost and the length of time it took to do the project. the other point i would like to make is to he iterate what jon

stewart said about the clarity of the process. >> please finish your comment. >> and i would -- i think the clarity of a process is critical to how well historic preservation works in the city. all the more reason for the board of supervisors to look closely at the work that went into reviving articles 10 and 11 between historic preservation commission, planning department, spur and the community who all came together to revise articles 10 and 11. i encourage you to support these efforts. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> i might add patagonia is also -- the patagonia store in north point is also a garage -- was a garage. >> great. next speaker -- >> my name is june osterburg. i'm dismayed at the importance historic preservation is being challenged.

i have lived in san francisco more than 50 years and have seen this city transformed from a paradise for residents to a developer's paradise. to my despair. i was here when the most historic place of all, portsmouth square, which is where san francisco started, went from an emerald green floor to a cold, hard, concrete pave over, which it is today. there were no defenses against unfortunate projects than that resulted in the loss of so many worthy historic buildings or parks. please do not diminish the importance of what's left of san francisco that makes this city unique and liveable. >> thank you very much. although my friends in the

mission deloris neighborhood association would dispute what the first neighborhood was in san francisco, i think they like to -- we can have a discussion about that. commissioner sugaya, thank you for coming out? >> yes, it's almost good evening time. i would like to offer perspective based on my tenure as member of the landmarks preservation advisory board at that time. back in the '80's, board of appeals member and now the planning commission. several suggestions continuing on from this meeting. i don't have too many things to say about preservation per se. but one thing you should consider is all of the talk of the surveys going on, perhaps it's time for the commissioner to look at having public agencies survey their own properties to see exactly what

they have so we don't get into this discussion about, well, we didn't know this and we didn't know that. parks and rec -- rec parks credit they're doing survey work on clubhouses these days. so that's an advance i think of doing work on those particular buildings. secondly in terms of balance, i'd suggest in order to have a really true balance and have the supervisor planning commission -- >> you can finish your thought. >> weigh the various policy issues between transportation, open space, et cetera, that you should consider adapting historic preservation element to the general plan, which has been in the works for many years and has not been completed. and then lastly, to the supervisor maher, in terms of culture preservation, not quite historic preservation, there's been work going on as you probably know in japan town and also in western soma. perhaps some time we can have a discussion about that too.

>> thank you very much. i have chris yrki, if i'm pronouncing that and finally, don't know if this is for treasure island or historic preservation, but claire, who may have spoken already. i'm not sure. >> thank you. it's been stated by a few people i know what a landmark looks like. i would say i don't and none of us do but we're learning. we share the city with different social and culture groups and they're introducing what a landmark is to us every year and that's the exciting park about san francisco. but unfortunately, sometimes people are focusing on the city as a play of profit, of money making and not as a resident.

i think the question raised in north beach question is interesting in illustrating. by voting to go ahead with a proposed library, you opened up other preservation questions, the view corridor, baseball field. what are you going to do about those? these are new issues. if perhaps you listened to the h.p.c., you wouldn't have these two. solve one problem maybe but have two new problems ma may come back to haunt you. >> thank you. now it's time to sing. >> i have graphics too, please. ♪ what happened to the city we knew when you were landing and dealing in the item like you do iester you,iester city me

yesterday where did it go that preservation glow when you were going to fix it up so good , you would,iester me,iester you, yesterday now it seems the city dreams were going to fix it up history and save it like in the use all your tools, yester you are, yester city day, yesterday. yester you, yester me, yesterday. >> thank you. next speaker. >> mary ann miller. i'm not on your list but thought i would step up.

i would once a city planner with the planning department and we didn't have the tools we had today. we have computers. we have people who understand the historic context. at one point we have the downtown plan with its historic context, unquestionable. because there were landmark buildings but we as a city were not like denver for my real terrible example, which tore down everything except the landmark and they tore out the context. once you remove the context, that thread of history that unites even meet ork buildings, it's true. with the historic buildings, you lost it and lost a sense of history. that's happened also in the neighborhoods where a four-story building pops up where there are just 1 1/2-story tiny vic torrians in the richmond, for example. and it's just a shocker when you see it. i don't know how you do the transitions but the context,

don't forget about the thread. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> is there any other speaker. >> thank you very much. i'm a san francisco general kshter and i specialize in historic restore anges preservation. as such i'm a person in an ideal position to be impacted by delays or feared negative effects of the planning department or procedures that we go through. i have found that the planning department is full of quite intelligence, very helpful people. they have done a great deal to help streamline the processes of getting c.f.a. and other things along the lines. most documents and relative items a person needs to know seem to be readily available on the website. all in all i think you should support restoration and preservation in the city.

it's vittal tour sense of community. it is title to us economically. not all of the benefits can be measured in terms of the tangible developers look at. i hope you give support to the historic preservation commission and would further thrike add to protests that it was not given more time to refute thing that's have been said here today. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. i just want to -- since you're the second person who raised that, we had i think three historic preservation commissioners testify and they all received more time than they would have as regular members of the public. so combined they received as much time for any of the departments except for planning. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. yes, i am going to be speaking for treasure island but i'm a native san franciscoan. and i just heard all of this been waiting here three hours.

i couldn't help but get into this different subject. garages. one of the most attractive and interesting aspect of the city -- of the orlede parts of the city which we all take for granted but tourists go gaga over should be definitely thought of very creatively. they are possible change of use to things like flower shops, assembly, poetry readings and art studios but even housing. example from sutter, from steiner to fillmore, there is such a place, garage was turned into a condo. but you go through this archway and it's all part of the garage. then behind it where you can't see it too well from the street, our housing and there's a beautiful courtyard there, wonderful use of it. i think we miss these garages. they give so. texture to the neighborhood. main thing is they were used -- my great grandmother used to

reminisce about the stable boy. they were stables in the 19th century. >> thank you. appreciate it. next speaker. >> my name is zack stewart. as americans we do real well with indulgences like -- like derivatives, automobiles, pensions and not so well with restraints, like not filling the bay. in my experience in williamsburg, stanford, university of california, mt. rainier national park and other places is projects that get studied thoroughly always come out better, the ones that are rushed through. historic preservation commission is absolutely essential to taking san francisco, which is

tiny and filtering out the developers who want to do something here which are big. we need h.p.c. badly to see we come out like harvard, yale and other area universities. thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> about afternoon. i'm peter worefield. i would like to make four points. the fairness of the hearing here is very much in question. i think the city needs more rather than less landmark review and more systematic review. i think the library has not always been a good stewart of its facilities and complexities of the process generally makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to participate or even know what's going on. with respect to the fairness of the hearing, you have given tons of time to departments, more

than an hour, three to five minutes you asked mr. bueller. the framing of the question is essentially a setup for what's wrong with preservation? how about a hearing on how preservation benefits the city? you might ask other questions like how does equal opportunity employment or earthquake strengthening hurt other goals of the city. we need more review, not less. ly not go into it. the planning department itself said the library wrecked the landmark worthiness or damaged it with respect -- >> thank you very much. >> may i speak as long as the others have? >> you had -- >> you have given other people about half a minute or 45 seconds additional. >> ten seconds. i will give you ten more seconds. >> the library according to the planning department has spoiled the landmark worthiness of some of its appleton and libraries through neglect and renovations that remove character defining features. the city itself has been the agent of destruction as cable cars, so double reviews and

landmarking procedures are very valuable and important. thank you. >> thank you very much. is there any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. i want to thank everyone for coming out today. i thought it was very thoughtful and helpful public comment regardless of what one's position was. it was very useful. i know -- i'm sure i'm speaking for my colleagues, it was helpful. so thank you. i don't know if any of the staff wants to make any brief final remarks? >> at the time i would thank everyone for coming out. i think it gave -- the testimony gave you a good flavor of kind of balancing that we try to achieve. there are a number of things we have to, and preservation -- >> please speak directly into the microphone. >> sorry. >> the issue of culture preservation and how we move

forward with that is an important aspect of this. also, i think we need to -- i think what i hear from many of the speakers and supervisors, it's not so much about whether we preserve historic buildings but process of changing those buildings and how we might streamline that. and i'm happy to have that conversation with you, supervisors and others. >> i would be very interested in that. time and cost is one of the big things. but the other thing would be the notification around the surveys. they're trying to find ways to engage more people who would be impacted by the surveys, who may love the surveys or not like them, what everyone's point of view, it's challenging. but trying to think outside the box there. so i appreciate it. great. any further comment? so i would move to continue the item to the call of the chair. >> let's close public comment.

and is there any objection to continuing to the call of the chair? seeing none, we will continue this and colleagues, i'm going to urge us to take a five-minute break and we're going to hear items 2 through 12, treasure island items. meeting is temporarily adjourned for five minutes.