criteria any more than they set ours. this is the wrong venue. what annoys me most is 50 hours of staff time. as to the liberty hill historic district, i have a very, very good friend who has lived there for quite some time, done renovations, restored, in fact, a magnificent piece of property, i know that district fairly well, i understand your situation with trying to get garbage enclosures that will fit into a historic neighborhood and i also realize having seen the regulations from d.p.w. that they're pretty loose. pretty general. in certain instances. perhaps have a meeting with them and discuss what they think can be done within the liberty hill

historic district. in fact, i would suggest you do that. as far as this is concerned, it's not a planning commission issue to me. >> commissioner sugaya? commissioner sugaya: i agree, but i think it would be wise to have discussions within the neighborhood, mr. barbee, you can take this back to the association with respect to having treasure enclosures and other things within the front yard setback. i know that currently there aren't any regulations but perhaps also the planning staff could begin to take a look at that. especially in historic residential districts. not to add more regulations on top of other ones but i can see where it can end up being a problem. although, as i understand the issue, since i don't live in a neighborhood that has trash on the outside, since all my trash is picked up inside the

building because it's a condominium, even if there were secure trash enlow sures, let's say, on the outside, somewhere, whether in the front yard setback, along the side of building, whatever, it's my understanding that obviously you have to take those trash containers out of there anyway and stick them toward the street because the garbage people don't have keys, well, at least, in this situation, to unlock all the enclosures and take the garbage out and put them back. they're going to get rifled through anyway, i assume and are being rifled through anyway. so from that standpoint, i suppose it would prevent some amount of problems if there was some kind of top and a lock as commissioner antonini was suggesting but in the long run it seems like a larger issue and so from that standpoint,

and it's an issue that obviously that part is not even within our jurisdiction. but if somewhere along the line, the h.p.c. an staff could take a look at the issue of what really can be put in the front yard setback, that would be great. >> commissioner moore? commissioner moore: taking what commissioner sugaya said one step farther, since we have changed how we pick up trash there is in this situation obviously the green pickup, which is very difficult, even in an enclosed building location, has created a whole set of new problems. the stuff stands around for three quarters of a week and then the composting bin, it's in the a composting bin, put that on the sidewalk, it raises

another issue. i do think just to help the discussion, that will make a difference what we say today, we might have to talk to historic preservation commission and d.b.r. and we might have to reinvent some of the ways how it's done. in the end, i think it will be of benefit for everybody, aside from the early morning noise when people throw the glass out into some truck. i think it's a reasonable request for us to take for that. >> commissioners, the motion on the floor is to not take deform r. and to approve the project. i haven't heard any change to that motion. on that motion, commissioner antonini. thank you commissioners, that motion passed unanimously. the pronl has been approved as

proposed. commissioners you are now on item number 15. case number 2009.0906c, 34 to 36 pleasant street. >> i need to ask to recuse, i live within the distance that does not allow me. >> move to recuse. >> i second. >> on the motion to recuse. [votes taken]. commissioner moore is recused. >> i'm rick crawford of department staff. this is a request for conditional use authorization for a building over 40 feet tall in a residential district. it would add two floors to the existing three-story dwelling creating a 45-foot, two-inch tall building where the height limit is 65 feet.

it will increase the number of dwelling units from two to three. the project is within the r.m. 3 and 65a districts. they are reconsidering the plans to better meet light an air requirements. the project sponsor has changed the project, including removing a deck on the third floor of the back so there's no need for the variance previously allowed. he's increased the front setback on the fifth floor, reduced the overall proposal and the neighbors are not happy with the project, it appears they mainly want to have the fifth floor removed and it

appears to staff that their concern has something to do with views. the sponsor has modified the project to improve light and air to maybes but wants to keep the fifth floor to provide a dwelling unit that is in the size range with the dwellings on the two lower floors of the building. the department recommends that the commission approve the project as the project adds one new dwelling unit to the city's housing stock and the project no longer requires a variance and complies with planning code. i am available for any questions. thank you very much. >> thank you. project sponsor? >> thank you for your time and consideration regarding our project. my name is alfonzo fostino, jr. and my family and i own the property in discussion. my sister and i bought the property for our mother to show our appreciation for all she's

done for us. presently my mother and sister live there and after construction is completed i will join them. as a result from our previous hearing with you and our face-to-face meetings with the neighbors at their homes, we considerably scaled down our project by way of height, length, and width. our project falls within the guidelines set by the city and conforms to a consistent look and feel for the neighborhood. before meeting with the neighbors at their homes, we put up the first set of story poles. after meeting with tim cullen an jennifer solomon at their respective rooftops and after meeting with the neighbors residing in the apartment builting on clay street, we modified our design and updated the story poles to reflect the new reductions in height, length, an width. in order to get to these new reductions, we eliminated my mother's senior citizen elevator, roof garden, and a variety of other design

features to adhere to your recommendations and the recommendations of our neighbors. these adjustments are reasonable compromise that benefit my family and the neighborhood because jennifer solomon's investment rental property next to our property still has her view and tim cullen's apartment unit across the street still has the majority of his view as photos will show. further mor, the present design minimizes impact to the property behind us on clay street my a techs will go through the design and technical details of the project and from a fiscal point of view, our project will create jobs within san francisco as we will be hiring workers in the san francisco area, who will be contributing to the city's revenue stream through increased property taxes and our project will increase the property value in the neighborhood. we hope that you will support our new design which has been created through our reasonable compromises based on your

feedback and the feedback of our neighbors. thank you and i'm available for any questions. >> thank you. >> president olague an chigsers, my name is mahad omazed, i'm the project architect for 34-36 pleasant street. i -- alfonzo has done a great job, he's doing all my talking for me but i'll tell you what we've done with the design with the neighbors since our -- since the last time we were here and my staff and others are here available to answer any questions. you asked us to come back withbility a project that had made reductions so what we first did was we removed the roof deck, we lowered the build big seven inches, which is what we could do by getting eight-foot ceilings and

shortening the structure to the shortest we possibly could. we lowered the two sides by another foot and a half. and then eput up some story poles because one of the neighbors brilliantly suggest wed put up some story poles that you could take a look at. then we called the neighbors. we got together with the neighbors and you can see, i really would much rather have the photograph closer to you but i'd like everybody to see it as well. this is a composite of a photo taken from tim cullen's rooftop and tim lives directly across the street from our building at 34 and 36 pleasant street and you can see the story poles, i'll point them out to you in a second. this is our story poles. and our addition.

we had a conversation with the large amount of neighbors on tim's roof, then we moved to jennifer solomon's roof, the neighbor to the left of ours at 40 pleasant and her roof deck is directly next to our project. we from there moved to, and i don't have any photographs because i couldn't take any from her roof but she may have brought some of her own. then we went to see the folks at clay street. the neighbors that i met, some of them just wanted to see peace in the neighborhood and that is just great and we'll do whatever we can do. the clay street neighbors have a tight-knit block an their light and ventilation should be considered because they're the ones affected by this. for the others, we look for good neighbor gestures. we went back and reduced and removed again. i do argue that we made good

neighbor gestures. we took off the portion of the addition that is closest to ms. solomon's penthouse on the left. we took it out. we lowered the -- we lowered the rest of the left side addition to conform with the slope of the steps. and we lowered the rooftop on the right-hand side even though tim who is on the -- who is in the brick building on the right side really has no view or even light issues. but most important, we took three and a half feet off of the back of the building. we took a -- we took 3'2" off both floors, took the back balcony off we had on the third floor and in that way, i think we got a great deal of additional light and ventilation. we had a shadow study done. it shows for eight months of the year there's no impact on

the back neighbors. for the other four months there's a slight impact on the back wall during a few hours in the day, it goes from november 21 to february 21, it foes from zero to impact -- from zero to impact to zero again. i have the shadow study for your review, i brought a copy for everyone and i can answer questions. we sent emails to neighbors to comment, i suspect -- i know they're here to speak out. as tim said, there's no -- at no point did -- despite the fact that we tried to call the folks on clay street their didn't return our calls. we have a project without an elevator, with eight-foot ceilings, without a roof deck, we made our gestures. i asked you -- i ask you to

approve the project as it stands. this is like dancing scorpions, i really like that comment in a horrible way. i have the chateau studies and in my two minutes and 30 seconds i'd like to use to rebut. >> we may have questions afterwards. at this point, i don't think we do. so that being said, we'll open it up for public comment. is there any public comment on this item? you have to come to the mike. i don't have any speaker cards so. >> yes you do. sorry. >> we're amateurs at this. i have two handouts if i may give them to you, please. >> we did just get the speaker cards here, i apologize for that. >> no problem.

i'm tim, i live across the street. i don't live on a rooftop, i live on a unit below, i don't have that great view he just showed you. i'm handing out to you two copies. last time we had 27 neighbors voice opposition to the project. one of them wrote additional letters in addition to the ones i've handed out before. you have a pact of letters from seven to 10 of our neighbors in unanimous on sigs an a copy of a letter i emailed you all the other day. it adds one page at the end >> first of all at the last hearing, i want to be very clear about this, the neighborhood stood united opposition because it had an extra floor that we thought it was out of character and it severely compromised the backyard which was already

compromised. commissioner sugaya commented it was too high. to add more bulk on top of that was a bad idea. and these penthouses that were being used as resident setting had no floor at all. and it seeped agrejouse to add -- seemed agrejouse to add another floor. they put a rubber stamp. number one, this is a very narrow and short street, one block long. number two, this is a very narrow lot, 20 feet wide only. 93% of this buildings except the ones facing jones and sacramento are two to three stories on the garage. they are not tiny little lots like this one.

finally, very importantly, the rear yard have very substandard. it goes to within if four feet and to add more -- the four feet and to add more it sense. they didn't touch the fourth floor. absolutely ignored what commissioner sugaya said and what the neighborhood said. more importantly they pulled back by 15 feet and they act that it takes care of it because a pedestrian walking by can't see it. i'd like you to look at two pictures that i put in the letter i sent. one is a very nice picture of a plen did san francisco street, mason street just two blocks showing a nice step down, the way a street ought to look. here's our street with their story polled. and i've outlined in dark black what it would do to break the continuity of the street. you can't see it because it's

almost vanished. i'd like to point out what it does to the rear neighbors. ahmad told you he did this to open up all the light and everything. take a look at this picture taken by ms. carol lowes and ask yourself how you would like to live looking at this all day long. it is not the pedestrians that have a stock. there are scores of neighbors who have windows, who look out these windows all the time. and is this what you want them to see? do you want it to be something like mason street which is a perfect example of what can be done. we are willing to compromise. you can put one story in this building and you'll have an additional unit. then everybody will be happy. >> thank you. elsa dickson, milly lom, jennifer sullivan followed by

ellen barryingham. >> i'm elsa dickson. i live there for more than 20 years. knot hill is a famous historic district that attracts tourists from all over the world to its beauty. i see people outside my building looking opposite the beautiful flowers that we have. and we work very hard on our building ry to keep it to its original forum. we've gone to old photographs to try to replicate how it looked when it was built after the 1906 earthquake. i do believe that putting -- doing the work that the neighbors are requesting would compromise or even ruin the skyline of knot hill. it's -- it's such a beautiful,

historic neighborhood and it would break my heart to see that and also on a personal level, i have to say that i'm a writer. i'm not a hobbyist. i've had several new york time best-sellers. having construction very disrup to my work. i know it's a secondary issue but i do want to mention it. i do believe that adding to this building -- and i've gone on many times and looked at it. the beautiful progression of the roof top down the street would really be compromised. so i do respectfully ask that you do not permit these requested changes and i thank you very much. >> thank you. >> my name's milly lom. i represent a property that's on clay street, the back faces

this project. and this building when you're standing in the back, there's a little porch stack and there's already not that much room between the back of that building or those buildings on pleasant as compared to clay. you can almost jump over the fence and be in their back porch. so it's very congested. you can't -- you feel like you can't breathe because there is already all these buildings and there's not enough circulation for air. the other thing is the impact would be light. the first floor of this building would be like living in a dungeon. so that's -- and then i look at it this way. for someone to add one more unit for their pleasure and disrupt everybody else that is so many units doesn't sound

feasible. and that's all i have to say at this time. >> thank you. >> hi. i'm jennifer. >> oh, are you ready for me? >> i'm jennifer solomon, i own the building up to -- on 44 pleasant street. there's a copy of my two-page letter. i appreciate the changes the applicants have made. it has improved over what it was. i know it's hard to not have something that you really want and to have to give up those things away it's like changes with paper cuts, small changes at a time. a lot of homeowners oppose it because it's going to block the

sun light. it will block my window. what i do object to is the fifth floor. my building related to the one up above which i did plan before is much lower so it's glass on the other two sides, doesn't block anybody. it would be disingenuous for me to object to their third floor. it won't have any negative impact to my building. i do have some photos, though, showing the view from -- with all the netting that they put up of my -- from my deck and my room that i would love to have you look at. i feel it's an precedent and an eyesore in the neighborhood. i also want to make sure that any permit approval they do issue contains some verbiage to come in later and add a deck so

that something like that can't be approved with neighborhood hearing. if you did approve that fifth floor and then they came with an overthe counter deck, then we would be back to where we started. i'm sorry. i'm very nervous. this is a big deal to me. it's a third floor unit. it's kept to one floor. it will be certainly smaller than it was. it will create affordable housing unit which is what the city is looking for. i ask ha the project be kept over to three floors over the garage. and that they don't lose that third parking space. really to add this extra bit on top, this whole extra -- it's nice. will really block the air into my lower units. the lights it will materially change the enjoyment of the improvements on the top of my property the terrace and the glass room in there.

while they've moved it away from the side, it's still the bulk of the building. yes, it's four feet over whatever they moved it away but it's still there at that height. austin was going to try to come. he had a meeting but he did enter into the record his objections. it affects him materially the down-slope neighbor. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> you have any questions? >> we may afterwards. >> hello, commissioners, my name is ellen bier mingham i'm here after waiting with an anxious of the drawings -- anticipation of the drawings. we're asking for the objection of the revision. what were the last points that were made at the last meeting?

pleasant street is a quaint little street. it's an alley. three stories of living space over this garage is consistent with the neighborhood and the neighborhood's character. there's a natural step down from each of the buildings. you can see from the drawing and i'll show you a picture here that the proposed roof line is not consistent with that. the lot is a substandard lot and it is very small. the architect and the project sponsor are asking you to supersize this project by doubling the number of stories. -- of living space. the developer offered up the deck because he could see things were not going their way. your instructions to the developer were to meet with the developers and come back with a proposal. so where are we now? after several reminders and prompting from mr. color, the architect finally met with the neighbors. this is the first and only

legitimate meeting where neighbors could choose to attend at a legitimate time. the architect had four months to revise the drawings. we got them a week and a half ago to review them. many of us have full-time jobs and cannot spend the time that we need to evaluate this. it may perhaps be another delay tactic by the developer. while they address small concerns, they do not reflect the major points that were made above. and at the first meeting the drawings are still inconsistent with the neighborhood. the proposed roof line does not step down as do other buildings in the neighborhood. if air and light of all adjacent neighbors are still negatively effected. none of them have continuous living space, "continuous" being the keyword.

it is not proportional to the sizes of the lot and building. given the fact that this is a small lot, it would be far more appropriate for them to by more lot. please reject this proposal. the architect and developer continue to waste not only your time but ours. this project will degrade the beauty of the neighborhood and affect our living. and here's the picture as it will come up on the screen. here's historicals that actually went up before the first hearing. they have -- here's the normal step line and here's the roof top that the developer is proposing. >> are there additional public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner ant -- antonini. >> i'm in favor of it for a few