choose the least environmentally harmful alternative. regarding sequa, i would highlight the prevention is getting the people we opportunity attract to our cities. the historic buildings are assets and not liabilities. the developer widely recognized value added qualities of historic and orlede buildings respect the history of our community and contributions of those who came before them. forbe those who choose to demolish historic buildings, sequa is intended to challenge those constructions. it is wasteful and requires trucking and new materials and supports an economy predicated on unlimited distraction. this is not the motto we should be promoting. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisor wiener. i will try to stick to my

minutes. i'm pretty sure the question before you is one you already answered. it's not a good faith inquiry about preservation development. it's more of a cross between political show trial, witch-hunt and fishing exposition. i think you're throwing mud at the h.p.c., which was established fair and square by the voters. god bless preservation. thanks for the two minutes -- or one minute. >> that was more like 30 seconds. >> good afternoon. i'm anthony beercamp, 18-year resident and homeowner. city by the john s. and james l. knight foundation called the sole of the community project supports my belief far from actings a barrier of progress historic preservation is fundamental to our city's social, culture and economic life in a way that's not widely appreciated. the soul of the community focuses on what it calls community attachment. it turns out residents'

perception on public policy concerns like job, economy and safety show little correlation about how attached residents are 0 their communities. rather people consistently give higher ratings for ratings that relate to quality day-to-day life. the three main quality that's attach people to place are areas of physical beauties, opportunities for socializing and community's openness to all people. across all 26 communities studied, there's consistent anomaly while perceptions of the local economy do not play a significant factor in driving community attachment, those communities with the highest attachment also have the highest rates of economic growth. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> supervisor james green. i'm resident of the city and participated in the design construction of single family homes and i'm responsible for creation in 1991 as the city's first historical land mark referred to earlier, park emergency hospital building. clearly i believe in the value

of maintaining the architectural character of our diverse neighborhoods as well as individually and meritorious and private buildings. however, i also believe if someone owns a home or lot, they should be able to build their dream home. in this way neighborhoods evolve, renew themselves, speak physically, esthetically, economically and culturally to the particular moment in time in which they're built. the same sentiment must be extended to the city government. the city has a duty to provide for changing needs and demands of its citizenry. while i do not advocate san francisco abandon or turns back on historical or architectural past, the city must have the ability and flexibility to decide that some sacrifices must be made. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> hello, i'm courtney clarkson. in the 1990's i was on the board of directors of one of the large neighborhood organizations in san francisco. not the telegraph dwellers, by

the way. we were very interested in historic preservation. i spent a lot of time at city hall before various commissions, including the landmarks board. the landmarks board was pretty worthless as far as i can tell in those days. the so-called preservation expert on the board was the person that the developers hired to say an historic building was not historic. i think it is finally time after too many years that the pendulum starts to swing the other way. a lot of us thought long and hard for a real commission with real teeth and historic preservation was not just the grand buildings, the golden gate bridge, grand houses. the preservation is the buildings that make up san francisco. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> linda chapman.

there's no more grim practice than reusing historic buildings and nothing better for affordable housing than saving the affordable rental housing that we have that is under rent control. in the '70's and '80's, knob hill neighbors saved thousands of rental buildings from the high-rise developers who wanted to tear them down because they were essentially historic district. but the condo developer that you heard, who wants to tear down the methodist church, he sounded pathetic, didn't he? the methodist church wanted to build affordable housing. we can't. tndc is ready, david baker, mayor's office of housing and so on but he stands in the way. instead of appealing the denial of his plan to you, he sued you, mind you. the methodist church actually wanted to bailed forwardability housing. we have the ability to do that and reuse the church and have a community facility there. often it's a choice. the city of paris, for example, was torn down but retailers

wanted to use it, they wanted to reuse it. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> my name is richard zelman, member of the eternal alliance and longtime member of the san francisco heritage and the other organizations. we are the hands-on past historic preservation in san francisco, who live in, work on and love our historic buildings. the major focus of my adult life and that of my life share has been the reservation and preservation of our vic torrian apartments. with that background i'm almost the poster boy of what has gone wrong with historic preservation in san francisco. in 1994 we bought our land mark house at 280 dizzderio street. behind it a dilapidated carriage house. we submitted plans and the planning department said we could not bill anything which that could be mistaken for historic but remodel like a barn, which it never was. five expensive produced one that

tells the truth. the project won't have a negative effect on the environment or main house but planning still opposes it. dd >> please speak clearly into the mic, ma'am. >> we had neighbors on the historic assembly to testify before us for the h.p.c., and we were rejected and at the same time the board of appeals we were also rejected that made many people very upset and some people were concerned for their livelihoods. the appropriate application of the stand rds if not done for tax credits is that, quote, self-hiss torism or building

something new is acceptable and adaptable if done well. do hold otherwise is to attempt to free san francisco and will produce architectural white elephants. the worst spirits of the hands-on presidential community have been realized fog the passage of prop j. there's a new horror story nearly every month from some san francisco owner ha that has run into the planning department. >> thank you very much. let me call two more cards, our final batch of cards. for any children, regan and carol, judy west, mark duffettes , johanna streets, howard long, joe wood, katherine howard, marilyn cone, bradley weidmeyer,

june osterburg, jeremy paul, courtney damclogger, alice carey and that's it. i also have three cards that i -- i'm not sure if they're for treasure island or this so i'm going to call you just in case they're for this one. sergei severnov, zack stewart and john tamen. go ahead. >> thanks. my name is ellen dudley. it's ironic the following suggestion i have is already in my prepared remarks before we were limited to what is n. my opinion, a ludicrous one minute to collect a coherent thought to share with you. so i will proceed anyway. applicants should be allowed up to five minutes per speaker or up to one hour per application, with the possibility to petition for additional time if needed. and such petitions should not be

unreasonablely denied. commissions and boards should be under mandate to strongly consider the opinion of the majority of the neighbors of a project and every effort should be made to work with an applicant to reach a mutually acceptable solution. i also believe decisions of the board of appeals be based on the simple and not a super majority. you have a chance to be on the right side of history on all of these issues and i certainly wish you well in getting there. i would like to end with a final thought. i would be interested from hearing your points of view what the salient messages have come out of the public comment period might be. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> this is not a city that can somehow impair needed development. i would like to forward a proposal there is precedent in the county council that work

that provides endorsement and experience and provides foot prints of necessary regulations which they did through the national trust in terms of architectural heritage. it exists to stop the subterfuge to somehow fast track unnecessary development that would cost more for the city than we can afford. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> let's get on with treasure island. >> we will shortly. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm judy west. i have owned and renovated a number of potentially historic building in and around the northeast mission and showplace square and i have grave concerns about the unintended consequences of historic resource designation. especially as it pertains to the ability of property ornse to

perform seismic upgrades. unfortunately i think too many politicians ignore the fact that we are at ground zero for earthquake country. instead of encouraging the retrofit of historic buildings, sweem to add more and more road blocks and expenses to the process. when a property undergoes a change in use with increased density or activities owners require to make seismic and handicap upgrades. but historic resource designation has been used instead to land bank wide loss of land for future government housing is what i assume in the eastern neighborhoods. we have a serious responsible to enable and facilitate more seismic upgrades and relax the land uses, instead of restricting what one does with

an old industrial building or especially areas in liquid fashion zones. i think if you have legitimately historic resources in seismically prone areas, you need to provide some way for property owners to recoup that investment that is required and to incent size the seismic upgrades. by this i mean you don't lower the land use designation, you up zone. you allow a greater intensity of these historic buildings. and we took these and down zoned them and high-tech and housing and any of the things that have beautifully renovated noir historic warehouse districts. instead we down zoned our liquid fashion zones and it's going to come back to haunt us if we don't do something about this. historic -- it needs incentive

to upgrade. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak to you. my name is jeremy paul and i'm a permit consultant. i work in the residential neighborhoods so i'm going to confine my remarks to preservation activity in those neighborhoods. i would like to echo the speaker's comment and state the value that retaining our historic buildings, it needs to be able to be extracted in some ways by property owners by the seismic work they need to do to save these buildings. and i would like to make the point quite often things are saved for the sake of saving them. i think it's crushing the practice of architecture in our city. i think great architecture is done in the past continue can be

done now in our neighborhoods but not if every old billing is saved simply because it's an old building. it's not necessarily worth saving just because it's not environmentally sound to keep an unenergy efficient building intact. thank you. >> thank you very much. mr. long? >> howard long, architect. practicing for 30 years as an architect, i worked on long commercial, institutional projects, remodelings, historic preservation. in all projects, we have building codes, planning codes, energy codes, americans with disabilities act, funding constraints, all designed professionals deal and balance any of these issues. some of the projects that we work on are historic resources and that's actually a fairly small percentage of the total project that the design

profession works on. but in those cases, obviously, there are equally important guidelines to the public good. preservationists i found are pretty nice people. they are pretty agreeable people but if you work with them, a plan checker or any number of inspectors, there are a lot of accommodating solution that's can be found. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon. thank you very much for calling this hearing. did you know what you were getting into when you did it? first of all, mr. ginsburg said the process was broken and i don't agree with that at all. process is working as it should. i think it's very inconvenient for the planning department and i want to thank supervisor cohen for talking about group that's may need to be a little

disenfranchised. native san franciscoans like myself and we remember the past. i think this city, people are representing their jobs basically and the preservationists like myself, we're representing the character of san francisco. and thraze good -- there's a good reason san francisco is one of the most popular destinations in the world. we basically stayed the same and that's what we like about it. i want to you think about that. thank you. >> thank you. although i would disagree about city staff, i think they're all incredibly committed to the city and a lot of them can be making a lot more money in the private sector and they're doing it because they love san francisco. i respectfully disagree with that comment. >> several or newcomers to san francisco also. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors, my name is marilyn cohen. i simply want to address what a

wonderful idea it is to turn golden gate park into an historic district. the current president of the rec and park commission has stated that parks are assets from which we must extract value. i think most san franciscoans would disagree with that. they don't see parks as capital from which business plans should be developed. the director of the rec and park commission has made numerous, misleading statements. one of which is that he's interested in protecting the integrity of the parks -- >> thank you very much. welcome.

>> thank you very much for focusing on this issue. there is passion around it. san francisco customer is a partner of the recreation and park project in protecting and preserving parks. i am here to talk about golden gate park today, since there's been discussion about making historic district and let you know right up front that we do not support that idea of landmarking it. at the same time we have worked very hard to protect and restore historic structures, raised millions of dollars to do that and, of course, feel strongly about it. ly skip over recreation because that's been well discussed today and how it's changed and evolved. i want to point out the way we garden and manage landscape was very different from the way it was done in the way of appearance appearance and significance. and supporting bird, butterfly and other species.

now is no longer a dune and scrub habitat. we have been working with golden gate partners on a project for habitat -- >> can you please finish that thought. >> yes. and some of species taking out exotic species put in during appeared of historic significance do not fit with our model of sustainability today. it's a very interesting challenge to figure out why you would want to landmark and make it impossible to take out exotic species and make those changes more difficult. we learned a lot. park is involving recreationly, environmentally and we ask that you consider that kind of stewardship as you go forward with this. i also want to say there's a golden gate park master plan and that should guide the park. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. next speaker. >> i believe that historic preservation impacts other city

policies by strengthening them. the process of historic preservation leads to informed decisions. for example, the palace of fine arts restoration project began with an historic preservation report. that report was used to make decisions concerning open space, animal and plant life, seismic safety and accessibility. it was used to require funds from private donors and ultimately led to the return of revenues as a popular wedding venue. historic preservation strengthens other city policies. but where it lies in the balance will always change, depending on the project. the board of supervisors must redetermine that balance of policies for each project. thank you.

>> thank you very much. i operate a very first property in san francisco and seeing that story and how people responded to it all convinced me of conserving and celebrating our history. i went on to rejoin a neighborhood organization called speak and became involved in a fight to prevent the old shriner's hospital from being demolished and make way for new construction of the -- 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.