issue and that is another area that i was particularly excited to see. there was something else. and in all, it is great work and i look forward to in 20 years and looking at those numbers is scary and i can't imagine what the rent will be and in the new economic reality and will be affordable, but what the phasing and for various aspects and i don't know if we know that. >> the fagz of public improvements?

>> i wanted to see that because it would be interesting. >> we are proposing to bring you the draft e.i.r. in september with an october hearing. it seems to me and just given your comments, my suggestion is that perhaps we had two future hearings on specific items. in the areas of topic one is open guidelines and shadow and open space and obviously park shadows we will have to look at carefully and the second topic area has to do with transportation infrastructure and the whole range of public improvements and freezing rain

structure as the second -- and infrastructure at the second topic area. we can talk about that more in the future if we have the two good places to start. as we have mentioned before, this is a 25 to 30 year build-up and there are currently economic realities that probably won't support a building of 1.5 million square feet, but this is a 30-year looking at the long-term future of the city and particularly around job growth. and i will say that we have done some become work in the department recently looking at growth and because of the city zoning that does not allow growth in any other part of downtown and the dynamics of the regional growth and job growth, it does seem to me that there is a much stronger interest in

focussing jobs in core areas much more than there has been in the past. so while it may not be in the next five years, i think there will be demand for space in the next 30 years and i think it's something that obviously we can't foresee the future, but that this is a trend that we are closely tracking and the latest sit does make sense for a 30-year plan. >> commissioner sugaya. commissioner sugaya: a quick question on housing units. you are saying that there are 1300 housing units projected, but none of those are in the t.g.a. building, correct? >> correct.

>> and you are talking about the interim strategies because there are a lot of vacant sites and if you drive through the area with the determinal completely gone and almost like a tornado has gone through and while it is great to stand in the open spaces, that is not sustainable 30-year condition. what are your thoughts on that? >> on attracting development or what? >> and let's say it will be a 10-year horizon to have that kind of building and urban agriculture? >> the terminal is set for construction and is set for construction, but the other site is important to continue with the recent discussions that we have had here from you is that the sites haven't be left fallow

and be left in a condition that is atrafktive, green, whatever it might be. -- that will be attractive, green, whatever it might be. none of us want a hole in the ground. that is something we will be including. >> which would kind of tag into commissioner borden's idea of interim phasing and if you see markets that are not all va kapt but what is an interim strategy and to complete the skyline and to whatever it might be and what the objectives are and to create that strategy. >> thank you for your work. and the other thing that i guess commissioners moore and borden covered and tom question -- and

i guess the question is they will be part of the presentation, one of the two presentations. >> and we can make it part of one of the two presentations. don't have a firm date, but should be -- >> and i was wondering, how are you gathering information from certain interest groups like the disability, disabled community, and seniors? >> regarding? >> the public realm. the pedestrian concerns. >> well, we had a series of public workshops leading up to the publication of the plan. and we've been taking comments and gotten comments from various groups over time. we haven't done much direct public outreach in a while since the plan has been out, but we are closely tracking the better streets plan and we all work

collaboratively and other districts in the city. and we had conversations about this particular neighborhood. but i should say that following presumably adoption of the plan, in order to implement the street changes and there's still a road to go down and there is a number of steps that have to be taken before any of the streetscape changes would be implemented and another series of more refined discussions about the nitty-gritty once we get to that point. we are establishing the more high level policy framework and analyzing everything from a high level and when we get down to the designing mission, there will be a whole other more detailed series of conversations. >> i hear concerns raiseded

about concerns about the sidewalks. >> and with the mid block crossings and wider sidewalks because of the various issues. president olague: and sometimes the way muni interfaces with bicycles along market, at least i guess it sort of raises a lot of concerns for me. and there is obvious public transportation is necessary for a lot of us who choose not to ride our bikes to work and yet it is loik they are competing with cyclists on the bike lanes, right? and it seemses like a trepidati trepidation, daily experience and puts a lot of pressure on the driver to have to kind of manipulate and i know that is not really -- that's not really dealing with the plan. >> we did work closely with m.t.a. throughout this process

and communities work with them and look at all the issues in terms of the different streets and balance and allocate this and making sure that in the downtown, we need more dedicated bicycles and other parts of the city to make sure people aren't riding on the sidewalk and pedestrians have all the spaces they need. president olague: exactly. that is what i am trying to get at. >> and i should add again that the plan itself has fairly high level recommendations in terms of the streets when you see the draft raishgs, there will be a detailed description and everything from the sidewalk and where the facilities are and so forth. there will be more detail in the draft e.i.r. than in the plan. president olague: thanks again. a really excellent presentation. i think we're having the m.t.a. come here, right?

in september, is it? that's the sustainability plan, though, i think. a little different. okay. thank you. secretary avery: commissioners, you can move to item 17, case 2010.0641m, the recreation and open space element update. it's an informational presentation.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. and i am back to give a more in-depth presentation and i was here a month ago and we initiated and will make the initial presentation today and another in october and proposing adoption for later october. this is a kind of timeline and a brief history of where we started in november of 2007 and produced the first draft in may of 2009. and we started that last year and produced a revised draft in june of this year. and now we're working through kind of the last bit of changes and expecting adoption in october. i want to tell you a little bit

about the community process we went through. we had a lot of help and neighborhood parks was a key partner and they produced the summary which you have now. i passed this stuff out. we started with the open space passport with 80 community members and a lot of interesting people and that started in november 2007 and then held over 22 neighborhood space community meetings throughout the city. and we had a number of focus groups as part of the task force ever to think about finance, policy, and visioning and the groups even continue up to today. we are working in offshoots of the groups and are still working with them. i met with parks and recreation open spaces advisory committee a number of times and met with them this week and will meet with them again and over the history of the document we have met with them five or six departments and been to the rec and park commission a few time and started with you guys in

october of 2008, again in may of 2009 and here we are again. i took a little bit of background in the policy process and the neighborhood planning process with a series of guiding principles and these start with the idea that everything should be integrated and multifunctional and open spaces should be is begrateded and serve many different purposes. they should have a sense of place and bill on all the great qualities with the natural and the cultural and intrinsic qualities of the city. there should be equity and accessibility. all the programs need to be equitably distributed for all the residents to enjoy. there should be connectivity and we think of the the element of how things connect to each other. health and safety should be a main consideration in our decisions. the ecological function and

integrity for the quantity and the quality of the natural system and how we engaged the community to maintain and expand and improve the plan. and with the policies and the help and through the community planning process. and something we talked about last time i was here and how are we doing as compared to other cities. and high density cities and i also put in some places to show that we are doing well on both fronts when you think about that. we are right behind new york and d.c. and ahead of boston, oakland, philadelphia in terms of the park area and that is the percent of the area that we have planned.

and now to go through all of the objectives and policies in the recreation and the first object sieve to insure a high-performing open space system. and so this is really thinking about the fact that we have a very vast network of open spaces but that we should make the most of these open spaces. and so we need to think about activa activating and programming our city and it doesn't mean every corner of every area needs to be programmed. there's natural area, and nature in the existing parks that serves the purpose, but sometimes places are neglected and so we mainly want to think about making sure do we make the most of all the places that we have. and another key policy and this is not a new policy. this is in the existing recreation open space element is the preservation of existing open space. and no new recreational serving buildings on park land per the

san francisco charter and nothing there is new. new and expanded recreational serving buildings must be completed and in office to show they are limited to size and all the revenues return to the park system and that alternative sites are assessed. that is all in the existing rows and we kept that language as it is but we added a new component. we said that if in this element if they have to meet all the criteria and we want to think about a few additional criteria that they might have to meet. even if they meet the criteria k we think about they may have to provide additional open space somewhere or they may have to put money into the open space fund, the acquisition subfund of the open space fund. so we're going to still work out details with our partners to make sure that this is really strong language because i don't think this came across as clearly in the element as i meant it to, but the idea is to really add another layer of kind of review onto what is there now to make sure that everybody

understands that the parks are not just free land. you can't just go into a park and build and even if it is a really good use and there should be a very thorough process to make sure we think through what process that is. and then just a little bit about this last time as well is how much open space should people have. and the national standard used to be 10 acres per 1,000 people. this is no longer used anywhere in the country. so thinking about what does that mean for san francisco in that previous element we had a goal of 5 1/2 acres per 1,000 people. we currently have 7 acres per 1,000 people, so we have improved and increased the amount of the base since the 1986 element was adopted and that was primarily because we acquired presidio. but even if we contracted out the ohs and just look at open spaces and considering that we

have improved or increased the amount, it is not always clear that is such a great thing because it's really over one part of the city and in our high needs areas, which i'm going to show you which those are in a minute, on the east side of the city, doesn't necessarily serve those. i have a few people and i am going to work with over the next few months to think about how do we make sure that the goal is still there and we want to increase and improve the open spaces and the standard isn't really work for us because we really want to focus on the tiny areas. let me walk you through that analysis and the kind of work we were doing right now. what i am going to show you is a series of maps on top of each other and the first map is population density. these are all using 2010 census data. here are the areas that are the densest in the city. and next you have income and areas with the lowest income in

the city. and on top of that, highest concentration of youth and the highest concentration of seniors. and next we thought about access. what does it mean? how far should you have to go to get to the open space? we used a half mile which is standard walking distance for more active and kind of passive things. and when we thought about playgrounds, those should be closer, about 1/4 of a miefl and this is all standard park walking distances. and al added on to the future growth areas and we added on where the plan areas are and where to see population growth and the proposal is that we put all of these together to get this map which the priority renovation and acquisition areas. and this is, again, the analysis is similar to what was done in

the 1986 element and added a few slight modifications but one of the things that we have changed is we have shaded these areas so there is a spectrum and in the previous element you could see areas that were maybe higher in need and it was sort of a yes or no and what you see here is you see where we circled which are the darkest areas that are the highest need areas. and just kind of various shapes of lighter and darker colors. and that kind of shows there is definitely a different need throughout the city. it is not that only in the downtown is there a need. that is where the priority areas and the priority renovation and acquisition dollars are focused and that's not some need throughout the city and other areas as well. and with this is kind of one of the key maps to how we will focus and are working closely with rec park and they are updating their acquisition policy and using the information as part of the acquisition policy. so this is to improve and this

is kind of one of the new components of this is really thinking about how do we connect people, how do we use the street network and green the street network to find a logical path between open spaces and to connect opens spaces. and thinking about some new trails and improving the existing trail networkses that are out there. and rec park submitted a grant proposal for this proposed crosstown trail that i talk about here and is a blurry line, but they submitted a grant to develop that into something else and one of the benefits is to have this be around and other things are starting to happen and that we are working on the green connector's grant to and

thinking about restoring and the happen at the wetlands and education and awareness and add on to all and expand and build upon our system not only with natural layers and which is a specific program and speaking about the city and nature throughout the city and not just the designated natural areas. and it focuses on engaging the community and we've heard a lot from community and a lot from all the agencies that have open space about the need to really have a sustaining community support system for our park and how important that is to maintain a park or open space and have a community steward. and this objective focuses on

helping and giving tools to improve those working relationships and reducing barriers the government has to improve that relationship. and this is not the objective we have in other elements and the open space task force was part of that and the group that wanted to focus on finance and there is a lot of thought about how to maintain the open spaces and a lot of times we go to communities and they say i don't want anymore facilities but to maintain what we have. this has been a lot of people ask and it sounds different, and why are you including all this stuff in an element and we sort of had a big outcry that this was key to maintaining our system. and there is a couple of different elements in there and

a citywide impact key and we talked about that briefly last time. and i think that we wrote that policy in 2009 and i didn't receive a single comment until we came to the commission in june and there is a lot more talk about what this means and what i am proposing is we work this through with a couple of groups to flesh out more criteria to what this could mean and so there is a lot of new information coming out and information that will refine this in mixed use language and is up to date and really responds to the current climate. this is in response to a couple of questions that you had last time and so first it was commissioner moore who asked about the healthy development

tool and how it might work with the public department staff. and megan is here. and previously we were working with jennifer mclaughlin and is working closely throughout the process to make sure that everything is coordinated and so to make sure that all the information and their work mixes with our work and we will be talking over the next few weeks to make sure that that work is done in synergy. and the next issue is the shadowing and there's a policy in the roads that basically the same as it was in the previous and is a direct quote of section 295 in the planning code. and there is a working group or

shadow task force appointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors task force and are working on changes from 1995 and the procedures for the potential shad dose and nothing in the road that proposes any changes in the existing code to make sure that is clear to be done through the shadow working group. and finally, i just wanted to sort of respond to commissioner sugaya last time who asked about the open space fund and a little bit about the history and where and what the story is with that and i wanted to see if rec park and our partner could give a couple sentences on what the story is with the fund. >> hello. karen with the rec park planning division and it is a great story and the open space up iffed and briefly give you a little bit of an overyou and in 1975 the open space acquisition and with the

portion of the annual tax revenue and 2.5 cents of each $100 in assessed valuation and i always have to repeat that, set aside there and approved pop situation c that extended and is updated and by the strategic and operational plan and the open space fund requires that not less than 5% of the monies are dedicated to the acquisition of real property and 3% allocation for reserve which is used and called a contingency fund is what we usually refer to that

as. and also that other portions have to be set aside and use d n a dedicated way and with the natural area and management programs and should be funded according to the ballot measure unless the programs are funded elsewhere. and i can give you more detail about that if you like and the area of funding and new park acquisitions and creations and i wanted to mention that since 1975 and with the interagency jurl transfer, which are sometimes free trooe, which is great, to have parkland at 63

different sites and it is not just presidio and we have been hard at work acquiring other park lands throughout the city and over 52 acres and $9 million was spent to acquire undeveloped open spaces as they are generally natural area typesetings and 41 acres and over properties and this year the acquisition fund portion of the open space fund is $1.8 million and we have a fund balance of $9 million we are using to review and acquire appropriate properties over time. and recently i can go over a couple of things that were acquired through