palm avenue, on the palm avenue frontage of the block are a mix of single family houses, two-unit buildings and small apartment buildings. the two-story over raised basement single family subject house currently features a one story over raised basement extension that extends almost 30 feet from the building's main rear wall and occupies approximately half the lot width. the project would remove the rear most 20 feet of the extension's first floor and replace it with a deck approximately 6'6" above the rear yard. the project also includes an approximately 10-foot, one story over a raised basement extension from the building's main rear wall with a deck proposed above this at the second story. the d.r. requester is gregory leon, son of the owner of 50 palm avenue, a three-story, five-unit apartment building located immediately to the rear of the subject property.

the d.r. requieter's certain is the effect of the project's second story deck on privacy in three of the apartment building's unit. the new deck would be 45 feet away from the rear property line and the apartment building's rear wall is 15 feet away from its rear property line so a total of 60 feet between the two buildings. the residential design team reviewed the project and concluded that the project appropriately reduces the building's existing massing at the rear. the rdt found the project would not adversely affect the d.r. requester's rear yard in terms of privacy. the recommendation that the project be approved as proposed. president fong: g.r. requester, you have five minutes. >> good afternoon. i'm greg leon, the landlord's

son and i'm a concerned individual and i also have tenants up in arms and concerned about their privacy into their bedrooms, more specifically, from 55 jordan's second floor deck. i called the architect, yakov askew and he made it clear he didn't want to talk to me about the project and made it clear that he didn't want to put me in touch with his clients. when the plans were originally submitted, there was a large tree on the property abutting the property line. that was blown down in a recent windstorm. it screened both our properties. a few photos. first photo is a vantage point from the third floor bedroom. second photo is from the first floor bedroom.

and this last photo is from the ground floor bedroom. bedrooms on the second floor, first floor and ground floor will lose their privacy to this deck as well as a rear yard. we have a postage size yard 12 feet deep roughly and planting a tall tree to screen first and second floors is not feasible. i am simply suggesting that the proposed three to four-foot solid handrail be added, tempered opaque glass screen above it a total of seven feet so they maintain their privacy and our tenants maintain theirs. thank you. president fong: are there any speakers in support of the d.r. requester? seeing none, project sponsor?

>> good afternoon, commissioners, i'm yako askew, architect representing our client, taylor walker, jane timberlake and their three children hoping to relocate to this residence. i'd like to thank you guys for agreeing to hear this tonight as i know you are trying to continue most of these items. i'd like to turn your attention to the first couple of pages in the booklet we've prepared for you. we have letters of support from both adjacent neighbors. we worked with both of them and met with both of them at several meetings to talk about concerns with privacy because we are proposing to do a deck on the -- above the first floor, which is -- goes beyond most adjacent properties so we wanted to make sure any privacy issues were being mitigated with the neighbors. they're both supportive of our

proposals and we've included those letters in there. i think -- how do i get this to turn on? >> it's on. >> i think this speaks volumes to what the -- what the lack of concern, i believe, is, for the merits of this d.r. requester. the deck we are proposing, as mr. lindsey pointed out, is 45 feet from the rear property line. our proposal is to reduce the overall mass of our building. the d.r. requester's building is the largest building on the block. it's the largest building within the immediate context and has a rear yard of only 15 feet. if there's a building providing privacy concerns, i think it's that building at 50 palm, not at

55 jordan. this is a photograph from the rear yard of 55 jordan with the invasive privacy that my client has to live with. but just to address it numerically, as well, this is the existing elevation of the building where we're actually showing about 115 square feet of window openings on the floor that the d.r. requester is concerned with, and on the following page, we're actually showing that with the new guardrail we're proposing, up to 42 inches, we're reducing the amount of glazing that is visible from 50 palm to our building at 55 jordan. and i'm available for any questions if you have any. thanks very much. president fong: thank you. are there any speakers in support of the project sponsor?

>> good afternoon, commissioners, my name is taylor walker. my wife and i own the property at 55 jordan that we are trying to remodel. i just wanted to amplify what our architect said. we've worked very hard with the neighbors to ensure that the massing in scale of what we are trying to do in our rear yard is appropriate and neighbor-friendly. quite contrary to what the d.r. requester said, he called us with an ultimatum the day before he was going out of town for two weeks and said that if we didn't agree to raise the wall from approximately four feet up to nine feet, he would file a petition. so there was no effort on his part to make any sort of outreach to us. we, in effect, were threatened with this process.

we believe, if you take a look at the notes, that we are reducing the glazing and also the footprint of the house and we hope to live in this house for many years and to be good neighbors to all around us. thank you very much. president fong: d.r. requester, is there any other public comment in favor of the project sponsor? seeing none, d.r. requester, you have rebuttal of two minutes. >> this was no threat that was made to this gentleman. i was going out of town and i suggested that we talk and the architect did not put me in touch with them so i said i would file a petition and there i did. thank you. president fong: project sponsor? you have a rebuttal opportunity.

hearing is closed. commissioners? commissioner moore? commissioner moore: i find the proposed alteration completely within means that is modest and does not raise even a discussion in the scope. i think it is, what do we say, not exception nor extraordinary. i find it actually commendable because i feel since the architect is respecting the largeness of the other building and responds to it by retracting. we hear that hardly ever and i find the response appropriate and move to approve. >> second. president fong: commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: i had the occasion to go by there last sunday night. i have a relative in the general vicinity and after visiting her i thought i might as well go see it and it happened that the next door neighbors at 47 jordan were

out in front and they showed me and i could see exactly see what was happening and because these homes were built around 1914 or in that period, there weren't too many rear yard assurances that were in place during a long period of time after they were built and as a result, some of the houses extend quite a ways out and actually by cutting the second floor of an extension that goes not too far into the rear yard but they actually bring this back and open up the space for the neighbors on both sides, so i think it's a commendable change and i think the distance away from the palm street properties is quite aways and i can't see where a privacy issue would be involved here so i don't see anything extraordinary or unusual in this case. president fong: commissioner sugaya? commissioner sugaya: i have a quick question for the d.r. requester if you could come to

the mic. did i hear you right in your testimony that you said the concern was with the second floor deck? >> correct. commissioner sugaya: ok. thank you. i thought that was the case. just an observation, i guess. that deck comes off the master bedroom so i think it would be used mainly for family affairs and possibly even just the owners of the house and it isn't the deck that would -- wouldn't be a deck that would be used for things like parties and things, i don't imagine. so -- secretary: commissioners, the motion on the floor is to not take discretionary review and approve the project. [roll call vote was taken] secretary: thank you, commissioners, that motion passed unanimously. we'll return to item no. 5 on your calendar. the informational presentation on the eastern neighborhoods

transportation implementation planning study. >> good afternoon, commissioners. secretary: i can turn that one on. hold on just a moment. >> good afternoon, commissioners, tim pappendrao, deputy director of planning and streets. i'm giving you a note on where we are with the eastern neighborhoods en trips project and next steps, as well, moving forward. so where we are right now is we just went through the fairly lengthy process of trying to

coordinate and prioritize transportation corridors for literally what comes to a third of the city. i think this was a very large endeavor, a very ambitious effort by the city to take this on. nevertheless, the eastern neighborhoods area plan came up with its recommendations and the m.t.a. was tasked to develop the transportation supporting measures to underpin the decisions approved by this commission a little while back. we went through this process of going through the existing conditions and future conditions looking at the land use growth assumptions that were approved by this commission and the regional growth that would be happening in the background and then really took a look at what could happen in these corridors and how we could move forward in a way that was meeting the majority of our goals in the city. this two-year process included extensive community outreach and community feedback. there was a lot of opinions on what could happen on these

corridors and on these streets and which streets should go first and which should go second. we went through an extensionive prioritization process where we narrowed down three major corridors of focus and those three corridors are 16th street, folom street and howard street considered as a pair and seventh and eighth street considered as a pair, as well. i'll walk through those right now. so in the orange, the second corridor of 2012, we finished the report and we're at the process now of defining the projects for the next phase which would be the environmental phase. one of the projects which i'll go into is 16th street. we were very opportunistic working with the transit effectiveness project to fold that project description into the t.p. environmental so that's already out of the gate as we say. it's out of the gate. so the three project areas were

the folsom howard pair from 5th street to 11th street. we chose this segment because from our analysis this was a segment that needed a lot of work and it also had the most similarities in terms of its characteristics on the corridor. we also chose the seventh and eighth street couplet from market street harrison, having very similar issues there, and then 16th street we looked at basically from church street to third street. the initial segment was from patrarra to seventh but we realized we had to extend it further out. on the transportation street scape improvements for 16th street, we looked at nine alternatives. looking at different ways we could move the people movement through that corridor. what obviously popped out which we all knew is that this is a transit street and needs to act like a transit street and within the t.e.p., it's a rapid, rapid

corridor, it's part of the rapid network so we chose an alternative that basically put the transit first, adhering to our city policy, and making sure the transit improvements really repeated underpinned by the efforts undertaken in this corridor. we also look at the opportunity for extending the bike facilities and looking at other opportunities there but the one recommendation we focused on was on the median, creating a median transit service similar to a b.r.t., bus rapid transit, project. this is what it would look like. we have the extensive report and will be uploading it on the planning city department's website very soon. we're tweaking some things so we haven't got the report to hand to you in a hard copy yet but what we have right here is the decision for each of these alternatives. they're in the conceptual phase right now. they need to be described to go into environmental. 16th street is the furthest

along where we describe the project. we would basically use the existing right-of-way to create a median center operating bus transit service and having transit boarding islands and various measures throughout the corridor. there would be elements where we would widen sidewalks on certain segments and put in bus bulbs and one of the key measures for pedestrian safety, would shorten the crossing distance on 16th street for the area and it's response to the growth that's going to be happening along the corridor. there will be parking removal. but in a limited right-of-way, there's only certain amount of things you can do. this is the recommended alternative going through the environmental analysis and we'll do the environmental assessment for that. the second corridor is folsom and howard streets. this was the -- i would say the most challenging one because there were so many opinions of

what we should and could do in this corridor. we looked at various improvements ranging from one-way options where we would widen the sidewalks and reduce the number of travel lanes, really trying to traffic. we heard a lot from the community. certain parts of the community wanted it two-way, other parts wanted widened sidewalks, some wanted protected bus facilities and some wanted bus lanes. within a limited right-of-way we had, we came up with nine potential opportunities. the one-way alternatives would have reduced travel speeds. the lights would be resynchronized to reduce travel speeds. they would have shortened crossing distances and meet the criteria of the better streets plan policies with wider sidewalks. the two-way alternative accommodates everybody's needs but it doesn't widen the sidewalks and it only creates spot improvements where there would be bus boarding islands or

the added crossing space from protected bicycle lanes. so these are the recommended concept and what it would do is for howard, it would create medians that would basically channelize the street creating two-way opportunities and for folsom street, there would be two lanes in one direction, one lane going in the other direction so we could keep that two-way concept that the community wants and then what that would do, it would allow for all of the transit to stay on one street, so for transit legibility purposes, this would score very well. a lot of the community wanted to have their transit in both directions on one street and this would achieve that. also, what this would do, it would create an opportunity for a cycle tracker, a protected bicycle facility, whether it's two-way or one-way, right now,

we're still defining it, because there are things that are new from a federal standard guideline that we haven't approved yet. what we're doing with folsom and howard, we're working with the city staff right now. all the city staff to help define this alternative a little bit more. this is the concept that came out from the project report. looking at ways we can include wider sidewalks, one-way cycle tracks so we're actually conforming to our existing comfort of innovation, let's put it that way. and then getting this ready for environmental clearance which is an opportunity we're looking at for these two corridors with the city staff. on folsom street on, transit services, this gave us an opportunity to work with the transit side of the m.t.a. and as part of the t.e.p., there is a proposal that we could actually realign the 27 service which runs on bryant and

harrison and move it up to folsom to improve more transit service because the community wanted more transit service and then renaming the 12 service right now that does a one-way couplet, to the 11, and meeting a lot of the needs that the community raised about right now the folsom service goes from one end to another end and doesn't connect anything and an opportunity we have is with introducing a new line, line 11 downtown connector, would connect the venice metro station along 10th street up folsom street and back to the montgomery street station. that makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons because there's a lot of movement through that area that would actually work that way. again, these would come in as part of the t.e.p. julie kirshbalm and julie weiss will come back to the commission to explain the framework of the

t.e.p. because these are just a few of the corridors we're looking at. on seventh and eighth street, seventh and eighth street has a characteristic that is really important to northwest travel in the city and it's something we heard from many people that was really important to keep. again, trying to balance all of the competing needs was a challenge for these two corridors but we found we could meet the better streets plan ideas and concepts by really looking at how we could create opportunities to widen the sidewalks to, have protected bicycle facilities, to transit that currently uses that street works fairly well, enhancing that transit experience would be beneficial, as well. so we looked at the alternative options three and four which was keeping them one-way, signalizing the lights so we can slow down the vehicle movement, doing a road diet down to less

lanes than there are right now and putting in protected bicycle facilities. we thought that would achieve the goals of the project. so this would be the more permanent design which would basically look at widening sidewalks, creating a buffet area for protected bicycle facilities, having transit boarding islands which would mean the transit wouldn't have to pull in and pull out and get moving. and then it would create a real opportunity for fairly extensive landscaping and while keeping the important north-south travel movements that we've been told and have heard from many people is very important. so that was the analysis out of the report. we also looked at the cost estimates and the rough order of magnitude of how we could actually get these projects done. so for folsom and howard streets, depending on the option

that we design, we're looking at up to $53 million of how much it would cost to redo these streets and this is using existing cost estimates we've had from our projects that we had on valencia street, on 2 a haight and 2 a hayes street projects. sidewalk widening is expensive and i know that this commission has looked -- has a development agreement, there's opportunities for funding to come out from these development agreements. we're going to need to explore that and more if we're going to have these kind of permanent projects. we're looking at a combination of options right now that may be included and trying to refine them to bring the costs down and get the project described for environmental clearance. on seventh and eighth street, the three lanes with the widened sidewalk of 15 feet and the protected cycle facility would

cost about $32 million, somewhere in the order of $32 million. again, we are looking at a -- an in-between measure which would be an initial lane reduction or road diet using striping and signage and signals and that would be more in the order of $500,000 to $800,000, which we could implement fairly soon. the last project is 16th street. that's the median transit way with the 17th street bike lanes. we'd have sidewalk widening up to 18 feet so it would really transform this corridor with all the new development heading along 16th street and there would be parking redistribution. we'd look at opportunities where the parking would have to come off the street to look at side street redistribution and figure out a way that is -- we can minimize the major loss of parking on those corridors. so next steps, we have put the project cost estimates into our

capital improvement plan with the m.t.a. we also -- that is the five-year work plan for capital that goes into the m.t.a.'s budget process and the city's budget process. we're looking at identifying funding opportunities because there's going to be a major gap even with the development contributions that come through the eastern neighborhoods project, there won't be enough to cover these project funds for the scale of street scape improvements. we're also looking at other opportunities that we can dove tail these projects with existing environmental processes or ones coming up. there's opportunities we could look at how we could put those into environmental processes that are coming up further down, further towards downtown, the redevelopment may be an opportunity. we have to figure that out. we're looking at is there a way to phase any of these things? can we do pilots or some sort of initial road diet treatments

that can get things out the door sooner than later, so, obviously, we're in an economic downcycle right now. these would dove tail with the next rebound and as the development occurs in the soma area, obviously, contributions will come forward so we can leverage those with these projects but we're looking at any opportunity we can to leverage these funds so i want to thank the city staff who have been working on this project. it's been very extensive work. redesigning one set of the city is never easy and focusing on eighth street corridor i think has been the best prioritization of our resources. so we'll come back to you periodically. i think once we develop the project descriptions for environmental analysis, this will be the commission that would approve these projects so that would be the opportunity that we would come back to you in the meantime and i'm happy to answer any questions about the report. thank you.

president fong: thank you. is there any public comment? commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: thank you for your report. a couple of things. i think the idea, wherever we can go two-way on some of these streets, particularly folsom, which is envisioned as a retail street and i think that makes it a lot more pedestrian friendly and certainly supports retail activity better if you've got that and the experiment with the completion of the two-way hayes, although it's only a couple of blocks, i think has really helped and i don't think it's impacted traffic that much. it seems to move through there pretty well. so on the 16th street, what i would encourage as you plan this, is, you know, try to plan it, do it once and do it right. i know light rail is expensive but the problem is the t. is, you go out on the t. and you go a long ways out and there's no connection. it has to come all the way back eventually to the central subway but for now it has to come

become to market street and to connect that up. so 16th street would be a perfect nice have a connector line from the church -- from church street and, you know, i think you'd have a lot more ridership because people would be able to not have to get on and get on to a bus. they'd be able to take the j church, called the h or whatever you want to call it and it would bring them from the castro area all the way to mission bay and with a lot of stops along the way and you'd have a connection with 16th street, i would expect you would get off and get on to tothat. i know that's in the range of $2 to $3 million. >> at least. >> what we're working on our san francisco transportation plan right now with the transportation authority. i recommend this commission put in its request