legislation that would help to improve and expand upon a very successful public art program that has been in place for over 25 years in the downtown area. at this point, the city currently requires all development over 25,000 square feet in the downtown district to pay a fee that is equal to 1% of costs to purchase on site are. in the middle of last year in june of 2010, we introduce this legislation that would provide the flexibility and eend the options for ways for this public art fee to be used. the planning commission voted unanimously to support this legislation with modifications that we will discuss today. under the legislative proposal if the project sponsor's wish to, they would have the option to contribute some or all of the portion of their feet to a newly created public artwork trust fund.

developers would have greater flexibility and money could be spent on a broader array of activities and installations by artists. this would include the installation and preservation and restoration of temporary and permanent public art. and performance and programming. a number of folks are here to help present. i would like to invite back up mr. elliott to say a few words from your perspective. >> thank you. mrs. legislation that the mayor's office and his office work together to introduce. it was led primarily on a staff level by the arts commission and much thanks to president of the art commission p.j. johnson. it started as an idea about how

to broaden the scope of what the 1% for the art fee could be used to do, are there better or more creative ways or a broader set of ways to spend this money in the downtown area to enrich that part of the city? what is before you with us -- the amendments that are forthcoming, represents a compromise that the mayor is comfortable with and supportive of. we met with members of the development community and arts community. the planning department, we went to the planning commission and received unanimous vote of approval -- a voter approval. today represents a compromise that will broaden the eligible uses of this stream of revenue and will enhance the downtown area. through the public art trust fund. >> thank you. mr. president, all members are present.

there are a number of commissioners who are here. commissioner miguel was instrumental in moving this forward. i would like to ask the planning department until -- to make a presentation and i understand there are a number of folks representing the arts commission. >> good evening. this requirement that is before you grew out of the downtown plan which was adopted in 1985. the assumption was there would be a significant downtown imprint -- employment and growth. this new commercial development would provide new revenue sources. programs were created at that time, this is an impact fee. and then there are also some

aesthetic requirements like open straight -- straight art. what do we have today? i would like to share what we have from this requirement. we have learned a lot. more than 25 years after the adoption we have seen a growth of a downtown gallery. it is an improvement for tourists and workers alike. the spirit of the 1% requirement is to ensure the public has access to high-quality in variety of art. and to increase awareness, our republic -- department developed an inventory. bob 25 pieces of art were in publicly accessible locations. there is one project missing the required part and we are pursuing our enforcement options. this inventory has shown a high

level of compliance with the requirement. someone said some of the pieces resulted from this requirement have been in the inaccessible areas like lobbies but that has not been borne out by the survey. our conclusion from raise it -- revealing their results is the requirement has improved the district and the provision of permanent monumental works of art. that said, the commission when they heard this item in the fall felt the time was right to reevaluate the requirements in light of the results in new circumstances in san francisco. we have seen growth expanded beyond the traditional downtown district for office and we have seen residential growth move into the c3 district. at a october 27 hearing, the commissioners supported the ordinance with modifications. they raised several issues. i wish to relate on their behalf their appreciation to the

amendments that will be made today. these address the commission's concerns that have been made subsequent to additional outrage which the commission requested. and they're concerned can be summarized into four issues which i will outline but not discuss in detail. first, ensuring the production of more of this continuous permanent monumental art and making sure it is balanced with the possibility of adding an ephemeral art. second they went to update their requirements so it applies to all large development, not just with any -- within the c3 district. also identified as truly public spaces with these works of art. finally, they were concerned over adding s that a review to our private property. the proposed amendment before you today -- can i ask, if i was

to go over the specific amendments? supervisor chiu: i am going to ask the committee to consider. why don't you go through them? >> art will be provideed up to the first three-quarters of a million dollars. they could choose whether to provide the rest on site or to pan to the fund. these buildings -- the have more midsize ground floor spaces between 1500 and 3000 square feet. they could choose what to do if their requirement or larger. they could choose in any case between on-site art or payment into the fee or any combination.

the requirement has been amended so the department may pursue enforcement which would allow us to apply administrative penalties for those who do not comply. and the requirement i believe is to be expanded so the affected districts would be larger. also, different from what the planning commission heard, it removed mandatory consultation. now with over 25 years since the adoption of a planned issue is ripe for revisiting. with amendments, this ordinance will provide up getting to ensure the city benefits from public are continuing today and into the future.

concludes my presentation. supervisor wiener: can you give us some idea of how large are those projects? >> if you think about the standard san francisco lot is 25 feet by 100 feet. that would be to thousand 500 square feet. and -- supervisor wiener: it would be like filling one building. one block building, that is 10 stories high as about 25,000 square feet? roughly? >> roughly. supervisor wiener: that is held for for me to know. >> a would-be and if you add another zero. 10 more, 10 of those 2500

square-foot lots or a 10 story lot on a standard lot. >> will have opportunity for folks to explain what their understanding is. nitthat is what we currently state as the size of a project in the area that would be relevant for this. ok? any of the questions? there are a number of folks from the arts commission i would like to recognize. is mr. johnson here? >> he was here earlier. >> we have to other individuals -- two other individuals. the deputy and directors. would you like to go first? want to thank you and your staff

for the work you have been doing for the better part of the year to get this done. >> same back to you. good afternoon. is it -- is a pleasure to be here to speak today about the legislation. it is the culmination of many uighurs work with the office. during the process of developing the amendments, the arts commission consulted with organizations such as san francisco beautiful, board members from the american institute of the aia, the urban land institute, business office and management associates, the mayor's office of workforce development along with numerous individual artists and organizations. the general consensus was that these organizations and individuals are in support of the legislation. based on the belief that a robust and dynamic art

environment can activate and enliven downtown and contribute to the population of the popularity of the area as a destination day and night. it is well-documented that the arts are highly cost-effective of driving economic revitalization in urban areas and we hope to see this complement our efforts to activate the mid-market area. we consulted with land-use attorneys on the effects of this legislation and as it is written, we have their support. this proposed change to section 429 will give developers more options. it will allow for greater flexibility and [unintelligible] enliven downtown. it will not result in any increase o fthe -- of the 1% fee. this is consistent with the recommendations put forth by the our task force and it

achieves many of the objectives of the arts college of the city's general plan which i believe was written over 10 or 15 years ago. the goals and objectives are to reflect the belief that the arts are an essential component of city life and contribute $1.40 billion to the city as reflected in the board supervisorresolution. to enlighten, activate, and animate the downtown with our work and cultural facilities, to celebrate the vibrant diversity of san francisco, to a balance the arts as a hot -- cost effective way of driving revitalization, to preserve and protect san francisco's cultural heritage, to create new cultural destinations through city

planning, to utilize existing funding sources for the arts in a new way and you complement the efforts to develop the market area. there will be an inclusive public process orchestrated by their commission to establish guidelines for the use of the trust. it will identify places where public is involved and in the case of capital improvements to cultural facilities will specify what kind of facilities half are eligible for capital improvement and what the funds may be used for. last thing, concluding, the proposed trust and its uses are more consistent with the original intent of using the our requirement to establish a downtown art gallery than previous legislative amendments

that allowed for the art money to be used for the building of the city hall dome or the architectural design of the men. thank you for your consideration. thank you for your support. supervisor chiu: when they talked about the administrative expenses there was a 20% cap on cost and that was taken out of the draft and is referred to as reasonable expenses. do you expect that will be greater than 20%? >> we would try to keep our costs in line with what the city's 2% mandates. leelanwe would track our time bn hours and expenses. it would not be our policy to

create all level of these structures. >> does it matter if we put that back in? >> i have no objection. i don't think the commission would. it is consistent with the art enrichment ordinance that is over 40 years old. >supervisor chiu: i would add that. >> the art director will say some -- some words. >> thank you. this is my first day as director of cultural affairs so i am catching up to speed with the legislation. i do know we work closely with the planning department and community partners to vet the amendment so we could keep in the spirit of the legislation by providing additional flexibility but not adding additional burden

to developers. i am -- in the spirit of the amendment would increase the flexibility to benefit local artists and enhance expanding the benefit. also by increasing the area of the benefit district. i also wanted to relay on behalf p.j. johnson, he expresses his support to the supervisors for consideration of the proposal. thank you. supervisor chiu: before we go to public comment, what i would like to do is summarize the amendments i would like us to consider, some of which were summarized by ms. rogers. the first page of the three page document i sent ism -- an amended on page 5 which would address the current requirement that right now, non-residential

projects with -- there are required to provide a million dollars in public art. we had a number of meetings with stakeholders and what we decided would be appropriate is if we reduced that number to $750,000 but for slightly smaller open spaces between 1500 and 3000 square feet we would require the spaces to spend at least half a million dollars on public art. the second amendment and that first amendment was non- substantive. the second is as well. building inspection was asked for language to specify that as the arts commission has the right to a charge for a minister of costs. this is the third technical amendment to cap the amount of administrative expenses, not to exceed 21% of the cost for any one project. the one policy decision we have is in the third page of this

discussion, which is the planning commission recommended that this 1% fee began to be implemented citywide. put differently, the requirement is on the c3 and extending that citywide. we got a little bit of concerns for developers outside the area. what i would like to recommend is this 1% fee requirement be applied citywide to all buildings over 75,000 square feet and this requirement has a date for projects whose first to middle dates or after january 1, 2013. giving the community some opportunity to build this into place but for projects are under way to not enter an additional requirement. the planning department suggested the fee not only be allowed to be spent in any -- in

the c3 district. this was raised when it came to the conversation around parkmerced or the hunters point project. it would be nice of these larger projects had an arts requirement. the idea is to capture future projects, not the specific projects but projects might involve the public arts. >> if you could clarify the definition of a c3 district. >> that is the downtown district. this was placed on downtown buildings and projects that were over 25 dozen square feet. the thinking at the time was most of the big buildings in the city would be built in downtown. we found over time is we have some large developments that are being built outside of the area which was the reason why the planning commission decided unanimously, they want it for

this 1% fee to be applied equally to all projects throughout the city. over 25,000 square feet. what my recommendation is is for projects outside the c3, we require the fee but for larger projects we do not keep this into place for year and that would be only for those projects whose dates or after january 1, 2013. not to catch anyone who is under way with their project planning with this new requirement. with that, why do we hear from public comment? -- why don't we hear from public comment? commissioner miguel, i did not see that you had submitted a car but i wanted to give you an opportunity. >> boey be hearing from the mayor's office on the city wide?

>> we have discussed briefly and you have not had a chance to discuss it with the mayor. we have tried to offer something we think is summer in lil but one of her public comments -- >> thank you. i'm here as primarily the president of the san francisco arts and credit club and the past chair of the san francisco arts task force created by the board of supervisors. the report we issued and -- in response to your request to look at our infrastructure included in a strong recommendation that the error be expanded citywide. what we did that is when you look at a map of the arts opportunities in each our districts, they are focused in district 6 and district 3 in district 9. district 10, district 5, all the west side district have very little arts activity.

there isis for after-school programs, no cultural experience within our neighborhoods for our use and for our families to experience in their neighborhood. it is part of our general plan that there is a part in every district in the city. every neighborhood, people need to have access to a cultural experience to enrich their lives and in order to provide opportunities for our use. on the task force recommended this be expanded citywide. i appreciate the work and the efforts of president chiu in putting this forward. i was speaking with someone in the audience and we have built out c3. we're experiencing large scale projects south of market and on the west side, parkmerced, a treasure island, hunters point.

if we do not catch up with this development, wearing to lose out on our community to create these spaces and cultural experiences in our neighborhood. i support community -- the community supports it. i appreciate the compromise that was given to give time in order to work this into their projects. i appreciate your consideration. any questions, i am happy to answer. thank you. supervisor chiu: think you -- thank you. >> thank you for moving this. just as the previous item on the agenda but scott wiener was talking about, this was the first of its type of legislation, with the inference we would see how it goes and we

can work with the -- this. the city changes and what was done in the district, i think everyone and certainly at the planning commission which pushed this agreed should go citywide. this is something less should be citywide. the different districts of san francisco deserve this type of our situation. i was going to come here to argue for the three amendments that were crushed. -- pushed. waiting a year until projects came on line is logical. it cannot push things too far. things have to go in stages.

i appreciate capping of the administrative fee. it gives people more confidence on how things will be handled. this gives the leeway on how things are done. it is my belief this legislation has a great deal of support. it will bother some people as all legislation does. another hurdle. i do not think it is an impediment. there is the end result, even

more benefit. i really appreciate it. anything i can do of assistance, please let me know. >> let me ask if there are other members of the public who can speak. is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this? quex good afternoon. happy new year. thank you for helping me today and i would like to thank supervisor david chiu for working on this legislation. we're in support of this legislation with hopes of the community arts planning will include a community organization to ensure the funds are distributed to nonprofit groups

and artists that reflects the community that is going to serve. i and the south of market there is a huge population of latinos, southeast asians, and filipinos. we want to make sure that the arts reflect the ethnicity and the culture of our community. we hope that the arts commission will incorporate community groups in their decisions. we thank you and hope that you would support this legislation as well. thank you. supervisor chiu: thank you. >> i am speaking in strong support at of the legislation as amended. a couple of opportunities here in particular with this legislation are, one is it expands the definition of what the -- the support so it is not specific our work on site.

also the public trust fund. in helping communities bases and art spaces. that is great, too. we found there was an eroding level of support for our spaces. the neighborhood arts program which predates all of you was one of the largest recipients of tax funding in the 1980's and it was erased. we have the -- a few cultural centers left and that is the only remnant of the neighborhood arts program. that has been proven to be one of the effective ways of improving the economy. we have not been able to support that as well as we could. the other opportunity is that i and south of market and district 10, we have a larger building that is coming in the next 10 or 15 years. there will be taer