completed. additional engagement around historic preservation issues incurred additional library d.p.w. and architectural and staffing cost. and these did in fact result in delays to the park, ortega and merced branch capital projects. with regard to the north beach library project, the library commission was not in agreement with h.p.c.'s recommendation to landmark that library and it was compleezed the board of supervisors ultimately rejected the recommendation. the historic resource review was fully examined as part of the comprehensive environmental impact report for the north beach library joan dimaggio playground project. which was recently approved unanimously by the planning commission. i do appreciate the efforts of the historic preservation commission but as the administrator of the largest capital improvement program in san francisco's library history, i feel i also have the responsibility and obligation to deliver library buildings on

time and on budget to the public. another layer of reviews that require more meetings, costly presentations that delay the opening of our branch library is not a good use of taxpayer dollars. thank you. >> thank you very much. any questions? thank you. next we will hear from mr. ginsburg of the recreation and parks department. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm going to jump in where my colleagues left off and suggest that, that the launching point for the conversation really, truly is about balance. the san francisco recreation and park department oversees 220 parks and playgrounds in the city, including two properties outside the city, park sharp and

pacifica and camp up in the see auras. we oversee several iconic park destinations such as the palace of fine arts and golden gate park. we imagine smaller neighborhoods parks and plazas in the city including portsmouth square, herman plaza, lincoln park, and upper douglas ca dog park. overall we have over 4,000 acres of recreation and open space we manage. we have an arena. i mentioned our 220 specific neighborhood parks but they include 179 playgrounds and play areas, 150 tennis courts and 82 recreation centers and clubhouses. soccer fields, ball fields, 35 community gardens, 27 off-leash dog areas, nine swimming pools, civil golf courses and three stadiums, vast inventory of open spaces and recreational assets. so as the steward of all of these various type of properties, it's our job to

balance the many and often competing uses of our open space, from picnicers to ball players, from stolers to skateboarders, from naturalists to concert and entertainment lovers, our parks have been described as both the lungs and playgrounds of the city. they served everyone. we take our responsibility to steward, our historic assets and the character of the city's parks very seriously. we understand the importance of protecting these historic assets. our park system is over 150 years old and it truly reflects our past, our present and our future. our current landmarks include point tower, the palace of fine arts, sunnyside conservatory, washington square park and numerous individual landmarks specifically such as mcclaire lodge, conservatory of flowers, the lawn mowing club, share of arts studio and music concourse. so we actually appreciate with landmarks already.

the recreation parks department and historic preservation commission actually do collaborate quite well together and their staff and we work well together when preservation is, frankly, the most obvious or important priority. we have a number of project that's are under way or have been recently completed that -- that required extreme sensitivity to the historic character of the asset and it did require a certificate of appropriateness. those recent projects include renovating the music concourse fountains. our complete renovation of sunnyside conservatory. the south murray wind mill is a project currently under way which required healthy collaboration with historic preservation demigs and his staff. our park aid application. in these occasions the park was the beneficiary of the experience and expertise of preserving the integrity of these particular assets. however, where the concept of parks and historic preservation

gets more challenging is when preservation is one of completing park management priorities that requires conversations about balancing competing uses, interests and tradeoffs. land marking a building is very different than landmarking a park. you can change what happens inside the four walls of the building without changing its historic integrity. parks, however, are living organisms which grow, they breathe, they evolve and they adapt. we must have the ability and flexibility to meet evolving recreational needs within the park. for example, adding picnic tables in a meadow. a new trail for mountain bikers and evolving sports, or a new soccer field for young kids. indeed, golden gate park was originally created 140 years ago in part because in the words of park historians, adult men deserved a playground to refresh

and relieve themselves from all of the pressures of their business. early 19th century golden gate park included a casino and a bar. and it offered archery and croquet as the primarily male-dominated forms of recreation. we've come a long way since then and all of our prarks, particularly golden gate park, must be given thing room to continue to involve to meet the modern day era of those who use it. some of those needs are quite similar to what they were 140 years ago. we still picnic, we still stroll, we still need and appreciate nature. however today golden gate park is much more diverse than it once was and it must meet the needs of over 15 million visitors a year, tourists and families for whom the ability to play in golden gate park is sometimes the difference, literally, between visiting and living in the city or going

elsewhere. thus in the context of preserving golden gate park as historic district, we would have serious concerns with any form of landmarking in this park or others that restricts us from adapting to evolving recreation al needs or hampers our ability to maintain parks. we have some concerns about government under such a scenario. currently we have a commission responsible for overseeing the work of our department with a broad mandate to balance many and often competing interests. h.p.c. is a commission with a single mandate and while it plays an important and effective role in protecting our city's heritage, it is not necessarily charged with reconciling the complex policy priorities in our urban park system. it's worth noting the rec and park system has already adopted and guided by the golden gate park master plan, which has a

very detailed and thoughtful road map on how best to preserve, maintain and enhance golden gate park as the class urban park it is. golden gate park is currently on the national registrar of historic places. this means it is already identified as a historic resource and treated as such during the environmental review process, which you are previously discussing. so we understand the importance of treating golden gate park and all of our park system as a historic as s.e.t. and protecting its integrity. but from our perspective, we think the conversation needs to shift from one that is focused on preservation as the highest and most important goal, to how we balance historic character with the ever-changing recreational needs of our citizens. >> thank you. any questions for my colleagues? great. thank you, mr. ginsburg. much appreciate it. if i can also just remind those

who have not been here before that our board rules do not permit hissing, booing, applauding, cheering or anything like that so i would just ask people to respect that policy. there are a lot of strong opinions in this room going in different directions and that's actually terrific but i would just encourage people to really respect that rule. we're now going to hear from adam gutzer from the munitional transportation agency. >> good afternoon, supervisors, chairman and supervisor cohen and wiener. the m.t.a. sinetted on a different level than the previous agencys, is interested in being part of the dialogue to find the balance between the type of projects we review and/or work with in terms of dealing with the h.p.c. our goal is find an appropriate

balance between historic preservation and delivery of agency service, whether it's multimodal or access to transit or pedestrian safety, finding a balance to make sure we're able to deliver the key important features as well as provide our maintenance or our service and operations. many of the projects that we have are coming obviously different scales. we have large-scale capital improvement projects and also smaller scale spot improvement projects like pedestrian safety and track and intersection safety. a lot of our concern is how it relates to the public right away and what it potentially could do to our projects in terms of project delivery schedule, funding, and some of our projects are competitive based, grant applications and when discussing the effects of historic preservation, we want to make sure you're cognizant of any effects they may have on our ability to deliver those items. that's pretty much it. we would like it make sure

m.t.a. is part of the discussion going forward in terms of finding that balance, but -- obviously we have many historical features, not only cable cars or f line but as well as other stuff that works well, so we're happy to be part of this discussion. any questions? >> yes. i -- in talking to planning before we talked about transit shelters and i want to ask you about the muni transit shelter at 21st and chattanooga. are you familiar with that? >> yes, yes. >> do you have a picture of that? >> i don't have a picture on me actually. might be one. so this is a photo -- is that up on the screen? there we go. transit shelter at 21 and

chattanooga in my district. and it's currently boarded up. it was a thorn in the side of the neighborhood for a long time in terms of the on-and-off homeless encampment, syringes, it was just a real problem for a long time. i know muni eventually as a quote/unquote solution sealed it up so people riding the j church inbound at that location no longer have a transit shelter. has m.t.a. considered replacing shelter with one of those more modern standards? >> primarily, as you know, shelters are there to support the operation and delivery of our service. having them be functional and be at appropriate locations is the key to mandate. when it comes to features like this location, fwates more challenging because providing

maintenance and keeping them up is a funding issue as well as if they were to be made accessible, some of our challenges are do we spend the money to make them a.d.a. accessible if we're changing the route or ones that are high-activity areas. this location, the -- the shelters have been boarded up because of some of the concerns that were raised. but i think ultimately the desire for the agency in general in these sets of locations is to make them as accessible and as uner friendly as possible. with this example, it's a little bit more challenging because of the future, remote location as well as a number of other maintenance. >> muni's informed me it's historic resource. >> yes. i'm not sure what exactly the correct definition is but it has been -- it's a list of a number

-- it's one of the number of shelters that were taken out of our current shelter contract that m.t.a. is spom for main -- is responsible for maintaining. there's about nine or ten of them. some are in continuous use. some are on the active routes or in kind of lesser used areas. >> muni's indicated to me one of the reasons it has not been replaced by one of the current versions, the accessible shementers is because of the cost that could be involved in terms of historic resource evaluation? >> yes, our current budget shortfalls and tightened environment for funding, this is just one of the projects that isn't one that can be funded to take on what it would need to do that at this location. >> i hope that muni will work with the planning department to be able to give this neighborhood a useable bus shelter.

thank you. >> ok. >> any other questions? ok. with that, before we get to public comment, i've invited mike bueller, executive director of san francisco architectural heritage. mr. bueller's been kind enough to sit down with me several times and we talked about a lot of these issues and i found this conversation to be very helpful. mr. bueller and we will -- if you could limit your comments to three to five minutes, that would be terrific. and then we will proceed with public comments directly after that. >> good afternoon, supervisor wiener and members of the committee on behalf of san francisco architectal heritage, threw are for this opportunity to discuss important role of historic preservation not only in the past but going forward. as heritage celebrates its 40th anniversary in the context of this hearing, i thought it would be helpful to briefly reflect on the origins of local

preservation movement, its progress and setbacks over the past four decades over the challenges that still lie ahead. i would like to start by noting the preservation community is not monolithic. to be sure you will hear from a variety of perspectives today, each with their own opinion. this range of opinion serves to underscore the diversity of the preservation community today. like many other cities across the country, san francisco's preservation movement emerged largely because of the building frenzy of the 1960's. entire neighborhoods were being leveled in the name of urban renewal. advocacy efforts were closely linked to other efforts of civic pride in san francisco such as the freeway revault. formed in 1971, san francisco heritage's first large-scale project was to rescue a dozen victorian slated for demolition.

the mass relocation effort remains the largest building moving project in the history of san francisco. i have a number of slides that are on an automatic slide show, which was not my intent so i will let them run while i go through my remarks. apologize for that. the first historic survey that was undertaken in san francisco was actually by the junior league of san francisco, who conducted the first survey of san francisco county roughly 200 buildings published in the book here today. that survey became first historic survey to be adopted by the board of supervisors in 1968. i note that because of the current scrutiny of ongoing regarding the city's ongoing survey work, just to show it's been a cornerstone, an integral part of the city's preservation program since the very outset. in the mid-1970's, san francisco was entering what would become the greatest downtown building

boon since the 1906 earthquake, with new development threatening many important historic structure churs. preservation battle over buildings that did not have landmark status were lost. most importantly the department store on union square, which we have a slide of here which despite a position signed by 60,000 people and four years of lawsuits was demolished. in 1975, heritage commissioned the first intensive architectural survey of downtown san francisco, in part in an effort to avoid the piecemeal loss of our historic structures downtown. it was one of the first such compilations in history. it would be adopted as 11 5 in the planning code. the downtown plan rated historic resources and created incentives for their protection, such as transferable development rights.

it mandated retention of 248 significant buildings and established six conservation districts to preserve the scale and character of significant groupings of historic structures. today historic resource surveys are wildly recognized by the american planning association, office of historic preservation and others as essential component to any local preservation program. cities across the country conduct historic surveys as a matter of course. with los angeles undertaking its own city-wide survey right now encompassing over 880,000 parcels. four decades after the adoption of the landmarks preservation ordinance and nearly 25 years since the adoption of the downtown plan, proposition j was approved by 57% of voters in november 2008. this ballot measure was intended to bring the city's preservation laws into 291st century by adopting best practices that have long been this place in other large city as cross the

country. the first step in implementing proposition j was to replace the former landmarks preservation advisory board with a seven-member historic preservation commission meeting minimum professional qualifications. since being sworn in n. january 2009, the commission approved all but one project that has come before it, miraculous approval rating of over 99%. in terms of unfinished business, the heart of proposition j remains unimplemented. over two years after the passage of prop j, articles 10 and 11 remain virtually unchanged since the time of their adoption. the planning department has been working with the h.p.c., planning commission, stakeholders and preservation, development and other communities to craft a balanced amendment to fully implement the changes mandated by proposition j. for our part, heritage worked alongside many in this room on all sides of this argument to reach agreement on key provisions in the amendments to articles 10 and 11.

as i think they, too, will attest the h.p.c. and planning staff worked diligently, cooperatively and transparently to develop the current set of recommendations. so what is the legacy of our historic preservation, protections and activism and advocacy over the past four decades? there are many and i don't have time to go over all of them today, but in terms of economic benefits, the city's largest industry, tourism, is one of the main beneficiaries. a new survey released last week by the san francisco travel association ranged historic buildings and architecture as the city's number one culture attribute among eight categories tested. seven of the top ten most interesting san francisco attractions are historic resources. the city's unparallels historic character play aid role in attracting the region's economy. we remember scores of apartment

buildings were converted to workable and living spaces for high-tech start-ups. the multimedia gulch remains a mega center in the city. i would like to briefly respond to some of the policy areas identified for discussion today, specifically two of the areas when discussed earlier by representatives of city agencies. in terms of affordable housing, it's worth noting that san francisco has the highest concentration of historic single room occupancy hotels in the country. the lower knob hill, national hotel registrar district and upper tenderloin district include over 700 historic contributing buildings. these districts were strongly saw ported -- supported by and introduced by the developers as a means to provide access to economic incentives including 20% federal rehabilitation tax credit, property tax relief

under the state program and code flexibility under the state historical building code. three affordable housing projects involving historic buildings are currently under way or recently approved, including 240 units that include veterans commons at 150 otis street, crescent manner at 467 turk street and central ymca at 228 golden avenue. two of thesetwo of these three e taking advantage of the federal rehabilitation tax credit. you received in your packet this afternoon, a letter from bob herman, an architect who has been developing in deciding affordable housing projects for over 40 years including five projects the gone through presentation reviewed in san francisco. it is interesting to note is that with regard to the street

that has been shown in one of the signs before you, it did not hamper that. there were also approved as compatible with the lower historic district. the historic preservation and not be a stumbling block for creating excellent affordable housing in severances go. as for parks, i appreciate his remarks. it is worth noting that the city does have several parts that are individually listed as local landmarks or are part of designated historical district. in addition to the examples, they're both a part of local historic districts. in the image of the golden gate park includes individual city landmarks. this is the topic that has been

the subject of much controversy. it is the heritage pose a belief that historic designation could be a valuable planning tool had informed decision making and going forward. by providing a comprehensive list of features, landmark status will guide decisions such as clarified where and where not to accommodate local development. we think it is useful to look to the experiences of other cities such as san diego, who york, and developing a model for the department of decision making that segregates projects as a major and minor while only requiring a review of major projects that affect historic features. this model has worked effectively and is a model that is being followed and loss angeles as well.

in 2009, notably designated all of the park which is four times the size of the park, a local cultural landmark. i'm hoping that the committee of the board of supervisors will consider the following points and considering areas to focus on for reform. it is important to distinguish between issues that are based on local ordinances vs. state and federal requirements. it does not have jurisdiction over. and filtering through before you, obviously that is the area to focus on. we look forward to continuing to engage in a fact based discussion as to what the issues might be. and looking elsewhere for best practices that have been used elsewhere to address those challenges. with respect to proposition j,

we're hoping that the board will exercise leadership in finally moving forward the amendments to implement the intent. likewise, with respect to incentives, more to be done to enhance the accessibility to incentives. it provides property tax relief of 50% or more. right now, very few contracts are emplace. it is worth noting that only a handful of contracts have been improved while hundreds of other contracts have been approved. this is a significant economic incentives. finally, with respect to supervisor cohen's remarks, we

provide more opportunities for residents to identify the places that matter to them. particularly, places that are not based on their architecture. supervisor mar: i just have one question regarding additional libraries. i understand what you're saying. and there are frequently pluses and minuses. is tehrn terms of the ability to effectively manage given away the plot is the aha -- law is

setup, recognizing the up side you have described? >> is important to have our eyes wide open. as we discussed previously, in terms of the ordinance, issues can be addressed proactively in determining what would be reviewed going forward in making sure the policy objectives and making sure there is flexibility to allow for that. supervisor