seloma committee plan. the not like to bring in the chair of the task force to talk about the community stabilization policy and make some closing comments. again, the next time that you will probably see a presentation on this subject will be during the adoption hearings, and other first thing that you would see would be the eir and hearings on the certification of an er the -- eir that we're getting much closer to having a draft ready for public review and comment. with that introduction, i would like to come up before i leave the podium and come back if you have any questions, i would like to think the vast array of consultants, everybody from asian neighborhood design to sifel consulting, the hundreds

of hours the community have spent in the representatives on the task force that have spent tireless hours working and meeting and discussing the issues through the process. finally, there have been numerous people on the planning department's staff, including a tremendous amount of support from the director on this planning process. and it has been pretty extraordinary. i hope not a one-off process in terms of involving the community in this level of participation in crafting plans for their neighborhoods and community. but it has been a long and winding road, an extraordinary process, and people have put untold numbers of hours into this process. with that, i would like to introduce bernadette peters to will be followed by gail, then toby, and then the others.

>> we may take a break at two o'clock if the presentation is not completed at that time. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is burnett, the executive director of the filipino american development foundation and the biennium community center on sixth street in south of market. since 1999, our organization has focused on the community's development of filipino immigrants living and working in san francisco's soma neighborhood. this was part of our ground work in establishing the biennium community center, we have a cultural specialists and historian who identified and compiled a list of filipino cultural assets in the neighborhood that a part of the history of his fellow filipinos who settled there since the 1920's. over the last decade, we have provided tourists, students, visitors, and employee groups who wanted to know and

experience the history of the immigrants from their own culture. the filipino family is living among these neighborhood icons in soma continue to celebrate their rich cultural history, especially during october, a filipino-american history month. the carmichael filipino education center and middle school playground at the corner of harrison and fourth street, a committee process lead to the design of an 80-foot mural that is being painted right now depending upon the filipino cultural values. in 2005, there was the cultural committee in western soma, and they worked to develop the filipino sold several -- social heritage district. i would like to share this short video about soma phillipines -- filipinos.

>> is there sound? oh, good. >> [inaudible] >> we should definitely have the i.t. help us with this. so maybe we will take a couple of minutes to try to resolve it. all we need to do is figure out

the volume part. >> activate that microphone, and it might work better. >> and we will start from the beginning, of course, so we can hear it. i am not sure that the microphone will resolve the issue. it may not pick up the audio. >> these are the streets -- [inaudible] buildings, churches, parks where they once lived. living, learning, playing, worshiping, worshiping. now my ancestors are gone. families left behind, some moved

on, some stayed through time. but the buildings remain in the western side south of market. and these busy snoops -- busy streets, old and worn, but strong and proud. standing proud. silent witnesses telling stories of a legacy passed for my generation to other generations. testaments of my culture. visible, strong, dynamic, alive, alive. a committee that pulsates with art, celebrations, and the festivities, throbbing, breathing, reemerging. collaborate for recognition, protection, commemoration. these are the traits and of my streets. these are my streets now in the streets and leave behind for my children tomorrow. my legacy, our legacy. these are the streets of south of market.

beating, breathing, my heritage. beating, beating with the heart of the filipino. ♪ >> [inaudible] and working closely with us and the community in developing the social heritage district proposal and providing direct assistance to u.s. and educating residents and the broader community about this process. for reaffirmation tables with the literature at our neighborhood affairs. our work together with san francisco planning continues as we prepare to get a community challenge grant for appropriate cultural pieces to be integrated into the design. last, we have a citizens

committee which was established in june 2010 with eight members. thank you. >> thank you. is that all you have? that was great, thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners, members of the public. my name is gail ruben, and i am here to talk about how south of market became so of important for san francisco's lgbtq population data since the 1916, the well-known gay areas have been in san francisco. earlier day concentrations were located elsewhere. mostly in the lower commercial areas near but not in the central business district. primarily north beach along the old waterfront or embarcadero, the tenderloin, and lower market, both north and south. until the 1960's, gaze out the market was mostly the southern

parts of the gay waterfront and lower market. all that changed in 1962, when a gay leather bar colorado the tool box opens. that site is now the produce in bulk food session of the whole foods market. >> [laughter] >> in 1990 -- 1966, two gay bars opened on folsom st.. the stud quickly became a kind of hit the dance bar and is now located elsewhere, night and harrison. in 1968, the ramrod opened for the down folsom streets. then the place opened up called the in between, because it was in between the other two. that are was many incarnations, now powerhouse. in the late 1960's and through the 1970's, gay and other places started to multiplying in the

area. much of this happen because the neighborhood, once san francisco is a desk drawer power house and primary working residential district has been undergoing changes brought about by de industrialization to dr. oz work, ii, many facilities lead -- during world war ii, they let the neighborhood. the core function shifted to oakland and didn't -- and their real roads in the area began to be dismantled. you can still see remnants of some of those railroad tracks, particularly in the areas out of harrison street and into the base of potrero hills. most of the blue-collar residents of population also went with the postwar suburbs. these changes were further exacerbated by the redevelopment agency's activities, particularly two of its larger and earlier projects. one was the development of the golden gate way and the embarcadero center which drove the gay bars of the old waterfront.

then the project were the mosque on the center and the modern art museum and the luxury hotels are now and deceptive and old working-class neighborhood east of cluster zero on 34th street. as a result of these changes, a during the 1960's and 1970's, there was a lot of vacant property to rent or buy, and it was relatively inexpensive. old tenements and factories became sex clubs. old working-class lunch rooms and questions became gay bars. an old scale production must this -- facilities became leather shops, bars, and sex clubs. during the 1960's, south of market became one of the most important concentrations of gay business in san francisco. the kinds of gay uses that clustered south of market were mostly those that could take advantage either of the relatively inexpensive cost of land or those associated with traditional forms of south of market commerce. for example, south of market was once the printing and

publishing capital of the west coast. later, gay-on print shops and printers that served him a business is concentrated in the neighborhood. most of the important local gay publications at offices south of market. at one time or another, the bay area reporter, sentinel, a gay times, and others were also up of market. similarly, the organizational headquarters and needed cheap office space found south of market. this included the national weather association. it needed large spaces and relative privacy found in the abandoned factories south of market. also in a tenement apartment buildings. by the early 1980's, most of the city's gay beds and six clubs or south of market. south of market had become known as the couple will of the local gay leather committee. the gay population went

through changes in 1960's and 1970's, so the area began to develop different characteristics. this is a little oversimplified, but the polk became the major resident of concentration, and castro became a gay retail and residential and political center in the 1970's but a south of market was headquarters for sexual commerce in general. by the late 1970's, south of market housed one of the most largest and most visible concentrations of gay and leather institutions in social life in the world. almost at the point when it was at its maximum expansion, gaze south of market started to collapse, particularly in the mid-1980's. more than 20 gay and other related businesses and club said closed. some of this collapse was due to aids. but it was less a result of aids mortality as policies adopted

tucson's of the control the spread of the disease. one prime example was the closure of the san francisco bat houses in the mid-1980s. whether this was an effective public health information is a matter of debate. but what is not a matter of debate is that the closure effectively eviscerated the biggest enterprises in the neighborhood is the economy. the baths were among the most highly capitalized businesses, and they drew hundreds if not thousands of gay customers and to the neighborhood every night. there closure abruptly eliminated the capital invested in them and the retail traffic they drew. in addition, its redevelopment spread out from the mosconi center in the yerba buena gardens, much more expensive uses began to replace the old low rent and as for facilities and working-class housing. much of this has been replaced with very high end, high capital businesses, luxury towers, and

middle-income complexes. the rising rents and upscale uses drugs and many businesses and residents. the heyday of soma leather from 1962 to 1982 to possess the neighborhood was being dismantled and rebuilt by urban renewal and says kent private development of the early faces broad gay sex and other commerce into the neighborhood. later developments drove those out. nonetheless, it remains in the neighborhood, especially western soma. to the major annual street fairs maintain their gay and other profile of the neighborhood. a professor of architectural history observed, festivals than parades' helped to define cultural identity in special terms by staking out routes and the urban cultural landscape. their presence is temporary, but they're highly effective in claiming their symbolic importance of place. i can think of no better

description of the central committee importance of the fair in july and september. the plan for an lgbtq social heritage district recognize the need -- recognizes the need of gay and other uses, to recognize the importance of the neighborhood to a population necker's people about it, and to memorialize the lgbtq past. much of the discussion is about how best to achieve these goals, which present unusual challenges. most historical preservation efforts have been about how to preserve architecturally significant buildings. however, poor and marginal populations tend to recycle buildings that have been built for the purposes. these are generally low cost sculptures that are distinguished architecture early. in her books, the power of place from a share titillated these issues, noting the difficulty is the preservation, using memories

rather than the architectural significance of individual buildings. she notes that these are particularly difficult challenges before at minorities, working-class population, and women. she comments, urban landscapes are storehouses for these social memories, because streets, buildings, and patterns of settlement frame the lives of many people and often out last many lifetimes. decades of urban renewal and redevelopment and the savage kind taught many committees that when the urban landscape is battered, employing collective memories are obliterated. the power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizens public memory to encompass shared time in the form of share it territory remains untapped for most working people's neighborhoods for most american cities and for most ethnic in most women's history. she suggests that preservation efforts, for them to be inclusive of generates from a class, and ethnicity, they must

claim the entire urban cultural landscape as an important part of american history, not just its architectural monuments. this means emphasizing the building types, such as tenement, actor, you call, but -- union hall, our church. this is a wonderfully useful framework that can be extended to articulate the specific challenges of preserving the sense of sexual space in the power of sexual places. thus, our proposal has not been focused on preserving buildings as such, but rather on the preservation of usage, information, and memory. the proposal includes many ideas for how to accomplish these goals. the details will need to be worked out with community input, but i sincerely hope that the principals will be adopted and included in the overall plan for the neighborhood. thank you very much. >> thank you. if you both are able to stay here for the entire hearing,

then i am sure we will have comments and questions for both of you. >> my name is toby, and i am here to talk about the mundane urban fabric. as we said before, the mission of the western soma citizens task force was to preserve and enhance the character and diversity of the neighborhood. we have tried to develop a design guidelines to enhance and preserve its character. as many of you know, south of market, western soma especially, has been deemed the sort of historic industrial warehouse district. we have had many extensive historical studies, and there is a collection of warehouses that were built throughout western soma that we wish to preserve, highlight, and in our uses, liberalized their uses, because

they maintain the character of western soma. in our guidelines, you'll find things that say no traditional bays on our major streets, because that is an architectural character that if left unchecked, would inherently challenge the warehouse industrial field of the harrison st., bryant, and brandon streets. although in some cases they might be rash and seem really extreme, they really are to try and keep a vocabulary that is alive, and we actually have in many cases elements of new buildings have they can make their massing and diversity and scale work within those claims. as we have mentioned before, there is another total different character for our alleyways.

they were developed for the more low scale residential use. many are turn-of-the-century but they do have the traditional bay. notice we lack decks south of market, because it was not part of our architectural vocabulary. but there was a lot of street life happening in the alleys that is not according to normal urban design guidelines that tell you to maintain the street frontage, that tells you to match everything that is next to it. what we have tried to do in our design guidelines is actually break them down towards district. acknowledge that there's a different architectural vocabulary for our major streets than our alleys. in our alleys, we have a mix of uses. we have resident or character. but we also have our small scale industrial buildings. i entered south of market style, they often include greenery and

their own setbacks. would you will be seeing before you -- i want to say that we have this booklet that says it, but we have had some developers bring preliminary projects to us. we develop a checklist, so we could sort of check what we were asking for against their projects. it started from the larger scale, from the massing, to the details. we have modified our checklists so it could be decisive and a doable. to give you an idea of what we have been working with, and excuse my red lines because it has not been published yet, this is just the first page of the design standards for the residential enclave district. these are the districts that have mixed businesses and residential. we describe the district's. there will often contain a map showing where these districts are, so people will know which

jabar refers to which the districts. -- which chapter refers to which a district. then we go to the scale and mapping of telling people, we do not want you to match what is next door, but we actually want you to take a look and respected. and another very important part of things that we thought were south of market was actually be development, where yard development. some have those patterns and others do not. we also have, because the ones that do not have a lot of full coverage locked buildings. what we have also soared of said -- the community at large, it is giving someone a 15 foot of his liver in the backyard one is covered with buildings on all sides, may be letting them take 5 feet of that and put it in the front of the building, to give greenery to the street or the alley. that might be beneficial.

in some ways, we're sort of giving up, in some ways, those classical directives of saying to the street and only greenery in the backyard and giving like a five-foot zone in the front yard where we are encouraging this type of greenery and things that happen naturally in our alleys. last, we do go down to the details of garage doors, electrical to cabinets, and all those things that make our environment south of market last pedestrian-friendly. what you'll see is our comprehensive guide for neighborhood and a district where we are trying to give a clue to architects, developers, and planners of what we think our character defining elements are and hope that they will not adhere to it but they they will embrace it. and for those of you to look at something, we feel like we have

contributed to the success of, is on ninth and minnow. there is a brand new building which we feel embraces the field of -- embraces the feel of south of market. it does have a couple days, but it has testified facades, wide windows. it has a retail where it is supposed to. it has minimize the traffic on the alley, and those are the things we were looking for to try and invite development to the neighborhood but that would respect its architectural character. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon again, commissioners. my role in the western soma threat -- planning process has been to try to take all of everything that the task force and the committee wants out of the plan and make that happen in our code.

so that is an interesting task. luckily, you know, i am not doing that by myself. essentially, as you know, there is the western soma planning task force, but we also developed a smaller working group. we spend many meetings that toby's office, so we thank her for all that time and the lunches. but we spend a lot of time working out a lot of kings and how to make these things work in the planning code. we're not 100 years and there yet, but we have put in the lion's share of work. all the work we did at the working group level, we took what we came out of the group with and to get to the larger task force and presented it further sign off. one of the earliest results from that was our land use matrix or retook every new district that is going to be in western soma and every land-use again think

of, and we map did ala. what is permitted, what is not, the conditions, and so on. that is on the web site with the other information. basically what we're doing from a code from work concept is that, right now in western soma, all of the districts are soma mixed use districts. most of this will become eastern neighbor had mixed use districts. it did not go to the same planning process, but it is part of the neighborhoods. the new districts are kind of blend of the old soma districts and the new eastern neighborhood districts. they do not fit well enough to go to the straight districts. there's already mixed use general right now. but there will also be a western soma mixed use general. it is not the same.

we provided a comparison table, which i believe is comprehensive and readable, to show you of the new districts compared with the eastern neighborhood districts and how they lined up. most of the new districts are going to be eastern neighbor had mixed views districts. the western soma muo. there will be a big-time emphasis on cards. that is very much like a pdr district. a couple districts that will be a better neighborhood commercial districts. those would be the olson street ntc. folsom street is envisioned as the main street, so that will be an nct district. and then there will be the rcd,

regional commercial district, the traffic purpose the ninth and 10th street serves for the freeways and what kind of businesses and existing buildings that you have on those corridors. that is essentially the framework we are using. the good thing is that a lot of free code -- a lot of the code achievements we want already exist. that is great. that makes something easy. but of course there are some peculiarities, some specific things that western soma wants to achieve that is not captured there. there is already the western soma special use district, but it does not really say a lot currently. it is not that meaningful right now other than establishing what is in setting of the planning task force. we are proposing to expand the special use district to be more of a clearing house for