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. there are three pillars of the city's obligations to bring this to life. the first of them as environmental california quality, getting approval for this after this was completed earlier this year. there are also plans required to be completed, with different approaches to the subject matter as i have described. this is later in the presentation. and the federal and state -- to create a permanent infrastructure, to allow the use of the bay and the shoreline areas. and we will work with our federal and state partners. a quick overview of the timeline, initially, what will

happen is a series of events, call the america's cup world series. with the same teams. they have announced three cities for the remainder of this year. soon there will be announcing the dates for next year's locations. and we know we will have a couple of events in san francisco in this timeframe and each of them will be a one-off that is not related to the competitive ending of the america's cup itself. this'll be a taste of excitement of a little bit lower scale. we are looking for a helpful opportunity to test out the things that we want to do on a smaller scale before we get to the america's cup. when we get to 2013 in july, for

the first of september, we will have the challengers' series where everyone faces off to see who will challenge for the final period there is the defenders' series during this time, in case they want to compete to be the defender. it is not clear if this will happen. but this will be connected to the other races during that timeframe. and in september of 2013, we will have the america's cup final, the best of nine series. and a summary of what we have done in the six months, the six months since the agreement was signed. we had a great deal of public engagements which has helped us to understand what is important to san francisco. we have had over 35 public meetings and i would say that we are now over 40 since the last time that we presented this.

the engagement in community feedback, we have been appreciative of. we also have the partners web site, -- this is unfortunately very illegible, but put this out with the breadth of the planning effort. please do not strain your eyeballs. this is basically the committed passport and the committees with the partners that are going to different subject matter. i shows because the top box is the america's cup cord nation committee. they basically meet on a regular basis at this time, and over the prior month to talk about the

next steps so people do not realize with the other pieces are doing. it would take each half of that organization -- organizational structure, showing the inter- agency task force. these are the partners at all local and state level. and also the public safety agencies. you have local governments from the bay area, with the issues that would like to see addressed. we have the federal agency coronation team, the public safety team that includes law enforcement and fire, and emergency medical planning, and the transportation team as well as freight transportation agencies to develop a plan to move people around. part of the city that is obviously very beautiful but constricted with options for transportation. this has been a major