waterfront. the city center of an effort with no government funding, a shoestring budget, real participation took less than a year for an incredibly thorough and substantive provision for the waterfront. the city can do it least as good. [chime] president olague: thank you. thanks. >> good afternoon, commissioners. we want to add our enthusiastic thumbs up to the neighborhood community plan. i'm kathleen dooley. we feel the pain of having all of those visitors coming in not knowing how to get to our lovely commercial district. we were very active with this

community development plan and are kind of creating the new corridors that would bring not only tourists, people from the terminals, and our neighborhood has a real lack of recreation. we would love to be able to find a way to get our neighborhood people to come down and more easily utilize the waterfront. we just want to add our enthusiastic support. we do reflect a large, broad groups of people and the northeast waterfront. >> i don't want to waste time talking about my background, but

i was around the waterfront before some of these people were born. one thing that i want to focus a bit more on today, that is the unfinished business following the demolition of the freeway. that being traffic, transit, and parking. there have been numerous failed attempts over the years to produce a comprehensive study of these issues along with a plan to resolve them. that task force project was originally started in 2006 by a group of us. i was one of the four primary people that started. it is the strategic analysis report initiated by our tax

supervisor when he was on the board of supervisors. the topic is the waterfront transportation issue. there is concern at the time that there would not be follow up to that. we have a very crafted a group of interdepartmental task forces. the initial organizing meeting was held in the city. it was swamped with personnel. it was more or less treated like second-class citizens and it was difficult to participate. we never were included in committee meetings. the whole thing just kind of fell apart. but not with the transit and traffic issues. we desperately need to resuscitate this with a more inclusive format.

neither of the studies reference to the report or a follow up. funding was critical to get rid of the freeway. to compensate for the loss of the freeway, broadway is designated freeway level routes leading to today's congestion. but equally environmentally unfriendly. how could you promote the northeast waterfront as the weekend excursion destination when it is dominated by vehicular congestion. i learned long ago that pedestrian management is the key to successful urban planning and a healthy living environment. whether it is an elevated freeway, the impact is the same. [chime] thank you very much. president olague: thank you.

>> my name is jennifer, i am the president of san francisco tomorrow. i want to emphasize my support for this plan and remind you that the best planning efforts that we have seen have been community driven. this is the next iteration of it. for many decades has and myself since 1984, i have worked on the northern waterfront for almost 20 years. transition before and after the freeway, the change of sure rooms, it is such a unique neighborhood. we really need to think of it as

a whole. the of the parking lots and the historic area. how do we bring that together? i think this is a good first step in addressing that. commissioner fong here will give you some expert advice. it will try to make this a plan that the city can move forward and support. >> i would like to commend them for the excellent vision plan to have put before you. they're deeply experienced and they know what they're doing. it is very thoughtful inappropriate except in one

particular instance. i would say that in spite of all the grand pronouncements and the dramatic visuals, what is before you is really about a couple very simple land-use questions. should the law be preserved as a surface parking lot? and the second question is, should the city of san francisco realize the value of this extraordinary land? or should the city provided economic subsidy for neighbors who oppose the lot for being used for anything other than a surface parking lot? the community vision plan is flawed. we should not be confused that this vision plan is a community plan when compared to the planning department's own excellent study that they produced at great cost in terms of 18 months and endless meetings and public notices in which they incurred in no small

amount of hostility for their work. what is interesting is that there is really not that much conflict between the planning department study and his vision plan. the proposed division statement as had no public scrutiny or opportunity for anyone except local folks to weigh in on it. we were not favored with the reply. the folks that commissioned the study and pay for it get to determine its outcome. but on a central question, the central question that this is really about is the future use of the sea wall lot. it appears that the plan is that instead of a surface parking lot for cars, it should be a surface parking lot for bicycles. the idea of bicycle centers,

they require enormous amounts of subsidies. who pays? where does that come from? i would urge the commission to consider preserving surface parking lots on public land along the waterfront represents the past and not the future. thank you. >> this is a perfect lead in to what i was going to say, that this is about the development feasibility of all of the sea wall lots. what i want to do is to do that. if you start off not with a process, but you have to have revenue generating users on these lots, and you want to have active recreation and open space and others, where does it make

most sense to do the development? you'll be amazed at how smoothly the development process will go. a big the planning director said it best. these are two different kinds of studies. the planning department's was an urban design plan. ours is with the next step would have been. these are in the right sequence. i wish they happened closer together, but they are in the right sequence. what we did after we completed the consensus on where the development should go, they say that if you stay with these uses and stay with the public trust, does it make sense to develop the community? the answer is yes.

hotels are viable at the locations even in this economy. the conversation about the hotel that is doing very well. i am told it is one of the most successful in the city because he not only did business travelers, but you get people from the bay area. my wife and i go there for a wed to have fun in the city. there is a strong demand during the week and on the weekends. the developers willing to build within the 65-foot range, and that would pay a lot of money to do this. a number of these were developed on sunday. we did a total for 66 years based on the average.

the comes to a significant amount of money. you have the built-in support of all the groups that spoke here today. they show where the development of to go in their neighborhood. this was the attempt of octavia and the ballot proposal. >> thank you. >> i want to follow up his comments. when we have the chinatown residents and seniors, we ask them how you get down to the waterfront. we say that you take the 15 with a 30 bus.

chinatown, you never go east. they have the buses to go to fisherman's wharf. it is so boring to go. i practically cry listening to the seniors who had no concept of walking down washington because this was so dead. and an old man who takes his kids to fisherman's wharf talks about how there is no place to set and there is a long walk. it is easy going down but going up may be a problem. and you listen to people saying that there is nothing for them. we need to have something that is not boring so we can sit down as we are walking down from senior housing on broadway.

it is like we have this enormous water from resource and this is cut off from the people who live close to it, who have no access to this. the freeway ramps really cut people off. they're good at moving a lot of people in cars. if we do not use time in the next year to change this right now, we are blowing an opportunity. we have to take seriously the improvements that we are talking about on broadway, and on washington in particular. there is no excuse for having this everywhere except this area. we also need to get the parking solutions now.

the farmers' market cannot function with a dysfunctional parking system where there are nine different garages close to the farmers' market. they need a uniform validation system from last year that allows people to go to the farmers' market, and park in three and four. these are both very close. using this and not having people use the parking meters on the street. this is an abomination. thank you. >> and is there additional public comment? this is closed. commissioner? >> i appreciate all of the input from the group, and i remember the discussions before the

approval of the northeast waterfront plan, and it contains a lot of the same elements. there was talk about opening the streets, specifically to the waterfront which is a good point. and also, the idea that the heights godown as you move north and then step up as you move away from the water. there was mention of a situation similar to south beach. the heights are high until you get south of bryant, and then they will step down. you can replicate on the north side what you did on the south side. these of the discussions that we had a year ago, when we spoke about the plan for the northeast neighborhood. a couple of other reflections,

the idea about parking is important because a lot of people will not walk very far, if they can't park closely. this is something where we have to figure out what to do, and noticing this is a good thing, because if we have new parking in, having as visible and accessible for people, people visiting from elsewhere and asking them to use transportation -- and a lot of people have new experiences and they won't go somewhere, and there will patronize the business if they cannot be nearby. i have noticed these are jammed up a lot of the time. and if we exercise the plan to extend through the tunnel, we will have even more demand. we'll have to find out a way to

run more cars. maybe some supplemental transit may have to be put in. this is an efficient way to move from downtown to the fisherman's wharf area. this is a good one. it is interesting that there is discussion about a hotel coming up. there was a hotel that was not approved and this was not appropriate for whatever reason. there was a plan on broadway and the embarcadero. maybe there is more interest in this. i appreciate all the input. >> commissioner fong? >> it is nice to see thoseç0nf

you i have not seen in a while. and is important for this area, in the area of san francisco. and we're talking about circulation and this was done back in the day. this is an important part of the series. we have the potential opportunity before us. this is not that easy. this is the exploratory and,

they started to come to this -- these uses start to have more of a fabric. >> the but the study together and i appreciate them, and they noticed the difference between the department study, and this was before us right now. they do follow one into the other. i was amused by the former commissioner and his comments, because i had an office just on the other side of market street. the changes are unbelievably

enormous. there are times and we have had before this commission comments on the bay trail, on the continuation of recreation areas, or use our with a major development. and these are spaced out. if anything can be spaced out, this is along the waterfront. you have fisherman's wharf at one end, and south beach at the other end of the area. we are talking about the ferry building in the center. hopefully we will get the new cruise ship terminals -- terminals, but unfortunately, we had to visit the old cruise ship

terminals because of my business for many years. i was ashamed that this is how the visitors are introduced to san francisco. i appreciate the comments on the financial feasibility. these kinds of studies often did not take this into consideration. i still have a lot of questions regarding this. the comparisons to the city, such as the central freeway octavia boulevard, study and development, we do not have 13 years. we have the america's cup coming, with billions of visitors coming to the city. but this concerns itself with certain neighborhoods, much more

than they did the entire city, even though this was a major drop. this is not just a neighborhood, this is a jewel of san francisco and the city. we have to look at this a little bit differently in my mind and a little bit more seriously. it is major in that aspect. what we do with this will be around with us for the next hundred years. they have mentioned to the transportation which is absolutely important. this is a failure, in my estimation. it does not work. i have not been an expert on transportation and i am and not about to tell them how to fix this. at the moment, transportation is

not working. we are at the farmers' market 7:30 every saturday morning. they have elevated the parking but the underpinning is so bad that it has become this dangerous. that has been this way for a couple of years. validation in the parking lot and information about their availability, that is about it. the coordination is extremely poor. i do not know if the courts should take this over or the farmers' market or the neighborhood and make a raja operator, but someone has to be able to coordinate this. with the information systems are available to us regarding the availability of parking spaces, this should not be a difficult situation to put into effect.

i look forward to the continuation. this is a plan that is agreed upon in a very short time. >> you are on item number eight, the 34th america's cup. the informational hearing.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. i am joined by the planning staff. the item before you is the informational presentation on the proposed america's cup event, at the cruise terminal on the northeast whorf plaza project. joining me today representing the sponsors are michael martin, the project director from the mayor's office of economic and work-force development, diane from the port of san francisco. and also with me is atom from the mayor's office, but the economic development office. the america's cup event authority, the aerial underwriter, and also with me,

from the staff is chris kerns and peter albert. the project's sponsors will give you an overview of the project for your inflammation and answer any questions about the project and the descriptions. this is not a hearing on the sequel of argument. this will be available on monday, july 11. public comment will be heard before this commission on august 11, 2011, closing the public hearing on august 25. this will return to the commission for certification sometime in the fall. i will hand things over to michael martin from the mayor's office.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. i am from the office of economic and work-force development. just getting the power poinsettia up. i am giving you an informational presentation about the america's cup, and the plans for the cruise ship terminal. generally speaking, to give you an overview on what we are doing today, i will run through the event and the organizational structure that we have worked with under the host and the new agreement, with the cooperation with other public agencies to plan for what is coming. this is a big effort to make certain that everything comes off without a hitch.

we will look into the implementation plans being developed with a different subject areas, and do a quick overview of the upcoming milestones with aspects of the project description coming out along with the environmental impact report. so first, we will start with the venue agreement, which was signed on december 21 of 2010, with san francisco as the host city. the parties to the event of the america's cup authority, who are called the project sponsor. they have all the offshore activities. the sister agency is in charge of the portion of the water. and when you look at these sorts of -- putting on the competitive events, managing the water space.