to 84 feet. the findings were the view impact on the slopes of the hill. there was not one mention of coit tower. significant adverse impact was found by this planning commission based on those findings and those corridors, which are not even discussed, let alone made findings. the city has made a finding, and there has been no intervening change, but that -- that there are significant adverse impacts on views towards the ferry building across this site. after golden gateway was built, golden gate we started on 83- series -- a series of three attempts to build on this site. this is the maps from the redevelopment agency. we did not color this in. this is their colors. this says recreation facilities.

all the green is recreation and open space. this is the redevelopment plan for this area. when the first three projects came through, redevelopment controlled this block. their jurisdiction extended. the redevelopment staff and the redevelopment commission kept shooting down proposals to develop this site because it was not consistent with the redevelopment plan that called for open space and recreation facilities. mayor feinstein said letters as the mayor. she said another one as the senator. the fourth attempt to approve the site was in 2002, to develop what was supposed to be just what to 01 -- lot 201, but they found at the intruded in the area of the block to the north.

this is a specific attempt. every one of these is involved, golden gateway, because they own the land. you are being asked to approve a project that you have incredibly sketchy information on. you have a lot of fancy drawings, and they look really nice, but look for two things -- where do you see how this project -- a really good rendering, the visual from sue bierman park, a huge part that is the southern boundary of this site -- there is not one visual that is a real rendering that would be expected on a project with a plan unit development. that part boundary is an incredibly important boundary because you see the water, you see the day, you have no renderings that showed the garage openings. on both drum street and on washington street, which is why they did not do these renderings. this is a 400-car garage topped

by very high-and condos. you do not see accurate diagrams that show you how shadowed the open spaces on this block are. they are creating green spaces around the periphery. jackson commons is going to be in shadow in the middle of summer from noon on. they are not looking at the fact that there will be no sun along the embarcadero because this project is shadowing it. thank you very much. >> members of the commission, i want to talk about a couple of reasons you are being given for why this is a justified act. one is that this is high-density residential, and the other is that it is housing helping the city meet its housing needs. is it really high-density?

your staff says no. in a preliminary project assessment last year, pointed out that not 600 units as you heard a minute ago, the 693 units were allowed as of right on this site. that is more than four times what you have before you today. staff said increase the number of units, and what did the developer do? went from 165 to 145 to now 134, taking an already low density for this site and made it 20% lower. does this really help the city's housing needs? the answer is no, and it is in your housing element. the city housing element lists what areas we need more housing in. i will not bore you with the chart, but for market-rate housing, which this is at the high end, we are at 153% of our goal. every other goal is between 12% and 80%. the lowest is moderate-income housing. we only reached 12%, which is what is in the golden gate way

now. all that is left of the 29 inclusion air units, but there is a problem -- they are not building those units. they are just writing a check to pay for part of them. several commissioners point out -- why pay the same inclusion very fee for a $6 million condo for -- that he paid for a $600,000 condo? the way things are done, you will write a check, and it will be many years before the gatt bill. why? people do not build 29-year project anymore. we would have to wait for a number of these checks to stack up before you could build anything. the biggest reason, the biggest problem is the golden gate way. i want to put down on the chart so you can see what role they play in the spirit they own 80% of the site. on this side, if you approve this project, was in peak right here, the golden gate we still owns in the end. this is where the residents of

development goes on. why is this important? it is a major beneficiary of the project. they are converting hundreds of red-controlled apartments. -- rent-controlled apartments. if you approve the project, you are giving the activity of blessing of sorts and providing the owners the cash to innovate more of these units to rent out as hotel rooms. the other problem is, as you read, i handed in a while back the article about how they are using a loophole in proposition 13 to avoid having to record the sale of this and underpaid taxes by quite a bit. this is not illegal. it is wrong. it is mindboggling. it is not illegal. the test before you today is not whether it is illegal or not, but whether it is necessary and desirable. how do you make a finding that it is necessary and desirable to build housing for 0.5%?

finally, it comes down to the decision you will make today is going to set a precedent one way or the other. if you approve the project, what you are saying is that we will grant the first hike increase on the northern waterfront in almost 50 years, for what? for housing 4.5%? all the good things in here you will see in a minute is the alternative. if you vote no, something better could happen. you saw that earlier. something that gives more access to the waterfront, more jobs and revenue to the city, more active recreation space and open space, more of everything that san franciscans really need. what they do not need is more vacation homes for millionaires. thank you. >> good morning, commissioners. i work with asian neighborhood design. we have worked on a series of community plans for

neighborhoods from visitation valley to chinatown. we always begin with the same starting point -- start with the people who live and work in the community. we have worked with various diverse communities, which means doing processes in multiple languages, getting communities to listen to each other, and understand development projects, their impact, their benefits, and the trade offs. in this project, we began by looking at the waterfront from the existing pattern interspersed with buildings that build up to the topography of san francisco. the vision created by the community that looks at all of the publicly-managed locks and crosstown connections. we believe that this is where the port should have begun with this process. i will talk about five major points of the vision that was created. what you have before you is a summary map of what the community came up with. these five points stand in stark

contrast to the point that is before you. first, it begins with a comprehensive development plan for the entire waterfront, not a plan driven by a single project, and looks at the development potential for the entire portfolio of seawall lots within the existing limits that were developed through years of community discussions and urban design for its, and the sizing projects that either meet the city's dire need for affordable housing, as was done by delancey street south of market, or that creates both construction and permanent jobs, such as the maritime-related hotel uses that the port really should be looking at in these small lots. they told us that they're ideal was to create an rfp process based on community consensus, as had been done in south beach. two, development projects, especially those that ask for exemptions or conditional uses, should demonstrate a substantial public benefit to both the city

and communities that live and work in the neighborhood where the project is located. this is best achieved through a comprehensive plan that acknowledges the interconnections and impacts of projects within the waterfront area. for example, you heard earlier about the $2.5 million in property taxes, but a little after, you heard that might be recaptured by the port and used on the site, and the city might not see any of it. brad talked about the affordable housing fees that cost -- the cost of one or two condos is with the city will get for affordable housing? third, when necessary public benefit of any development should be repairing the harm done by the former embarcadero freeway. in particular, repairing the urban fabric along washington's canyon of concrete walls, meaning looking further up then from st., and along the further blocks of connections to chinatd

major connections back to the city. fourth, development should provide resources to help create open space and recreation opportunities along the waterfront by not impacting the existing public parks, which includes not just shadows that we talked about, but the views to the sky, preserving existing resources such as the existing of the day with the serbs rent- control middle-class tenants, and bring resources to create new recreation stations along the small, triangular lots that are not developable. we have various conversations with folks in chinatown, with elders who told us they prefer to take the 30 bus to fisherman's wharf and walk down broadway street or washington street for much closer access because of the problems with access and, frankly, not having recreation opportunities along the waterfront. fifth, the development should be supported by a real plan for parking and pedestrian circulation that utilize the

existing underutilized building garages. one of the things presented earlier was something that set within a short walk, meaning immediately adjacent to the ferry building, parking is at 100%, but if you walk eight minutes away to embarcadero four, three, two, the alcoa building, those are virtually empty on week nights and weekends. we have based this on parking studies. finally, the eight washington project is before you. it asks you to give away public goods in the form of spot zoning, heightened use, as well as giving away public lands. what does the public debt in return? a massive underwater garage being touted as transit-oriented development? luxury condos at 1% that is touted as environmentally and socially sustainable?

with little or no public benefit to the community and virtually no community support, as you will hear in the comments that follow. instead of approving this, a better option might be to ask the court to do what they should have done in the first place -- begin with a comprehensive plan for the entire waterfront that builds from community consensus. thank you. [applause] >> ok, we will address that also. the applause actualu can just, - like at graduations, they ask you to hold your applause until everyone has spoken, and just going to ask you to not apply. if we could now -- to the court reporter's need a break? mr. president, if we could have a five-minute recess for the court reporters. thank you. the joint hearing of the san

francisco planning commission and recreation and park commission is back in session. before we start calling the names of the speakers, the president has, as. >> good morning. we do have over 60 cards i am in here. while we are the public process in san francisco, we're going to go ahead and allowed three minutes for each speaker. if you find yourself sharing the same opinion or, of the previous speaker, we would not discourage you from not using your full three minutes. president buell and i are going to call three names. we're going to call them in batches. as the commission secretary mentioned, if we could try to refrain from boos, hisses. calling the first batch of speakers. [reading names]

>> i came to speak about what seems to be ignored, left out, not responded to, not just by staff, but by new commissioners. maybe that is because ceqa and nepa were passed before there was an americans with disabilities act. the most egregious example is what happened right here today, and all of you commissioners sat there and did not respond. nobody turned up. nobody raised their head, nobody took notes. when staff said they were going to eliminate curved cuts, you were all motionless -- eliminate curb cuts.

nobody responded. worse, one was actually holding a smart phone below the desk, looking at that, not looking at the screen. you're sorry trying to point out, there is more than just ceqa and nepa involved. i'm going to give some examples because i question whether there was proper, full, responsiveness on planning meetings about this. there have been two recent instances where i had made complaints about notices i am planning. so far, i am two and 0. do you know for certain -- are you sure, are you sure you are sure that there was requirements in compliance that when there was a meeting notice, the people were told alternative format information would be available? that even for the blind, there could be a tactile map of some of this -- do you know that? with the language ordinance the

city has about material being available in spanish and chinese, was that part of the notice? i bring that up because with the heron's head block of green walks, that was not the case. i got the mayor's office of disability involved. they are training staff. things have changed. i just got the notice yesterday. similarly, when there was a concern some weeks ago about public open space in a private building and where did notice was posted, the newspaper story gave examples. down at knee height and small type. that does not comply, and nobody a planning thought about it until i pointed it out. those who oppose the project as well as those who sponsor it -- you're still going to ask you -- maybe we ought start talking about this. maybe we ought to go back because this was already cancelled and rescheduled once because of lack of notice. i bet there was not proper notice that included the disability access requirements

and maybe language access requirements. you may have to redo this. >> thank you for having us here. i had a master's degree in architecture, master's degree in urban and regional planning and have been practicing architecture in san francisco for the past 10 years. the top architectural firm with much talent and vast resources, but i did not believe that their skills can overcome two very problematic drivers of the plan. plain and simply, you cannot put lipstick on a pig. first, the pig. the planning department is pushing the idea of a hard edge along the west side of the

embarcadero. like chicago's miracle mile, as we see here. this is, sadly, a bad idea since, in reality, it will actually create something even less generous than king street near the ball park between second and fourth street. there is a hard edge on both sides, not exactly a stellar environment, and certainly not the rear while. in actuality -- the miracle mile. in actuality, the planning concept should be the opposite, and there should be a soft edge along the western side of the embarcadero. the existing recreation facility serves both this and other vital community needs. it is a perfect soft edge and a hidden jewel that should be kept. benefits far outweigh any of the -- and that the developer is marketing to you. asian neighborhood design has provided a wonderful example of

how this can be achieved. second, the developers' exporting of the planning department and us by running with this hard edge and pushing it to the limit. they are sure warning the project on to the side, asking for extreme height and bulgarians is, shall leniency co-op in public space, and requesting various other concessions. but what do we actually get in return? the proposal needs to be examined for the details. as it has been said, god or the devil is in the details. the developer speaks of widening sidewalks to 15 feet. the present condition at the port is 16 feet. they are widening this by -1 foot. finally, this is comparable to

the hills plaza, which is actually 15 feet. it is the only space that is 15 feet. everything else is greater. finally, i would like to talk about the various streetscapes and such that the open areas that they are proposing and that we need to examine the streetscape open space alternatives for the community before you buy into this trophy wife, you better look at the details. thank you. >> good morning. i live and work at front street at the pacific, just two blocks of the proposed site. and very concerned with a great deal of the developers'

proposal. i am concerned about the character of san francisco. people make of the city. friendships, relationships. i can honestly say that after living in san francisco for all my adult life, and would probably move out if this development went through. we have put up with high prices, foggy summers, congested downtown, but the joy of the neighborhood and the community it brings to everybody far outweighs the benefits to the neighborhood. the facility provides me and everyone else much-needed exercise, great friendships, a healthy social outlet, and it is a huge part of my life. i also love the fact that the center is open to not just members, tennis lessons, swim lessons, anyone who needs physical therapy are straining for an athletic event, anyone who wants to send their kids to kids can. anyone can come through.

a city government that cares so little from it -- for its residents that would take away this amazing facility is a city i would not want to live in. the gateway serves children, the retired, elderly. if the city goes, there is the help of so many people in the city. the gateway is a true community center. there are tennis events, barbecues, kids' birthday parties, and it unites san francisco in a way that a neighborhood can only do. i am also concerned with the fact that families are leaving the city in droves, as we have all seen recently in the paper. i live in a 67-unit building with three children all of the age of five, and i guarantee when those kids hit five, those families will leave the city. replacing the golden gateway facility with a double jim and a playground -- jungle gym and a playground -- these are the things that will help people in

the city -- we will already have those across the street. i have friends in a 30's and 40's, and nieces and nephews in the 20's and 30's who grew up in san francisco and went to the facility for a swim camp. i'm not trying to be dramatic, but this is what makes a city. please consider the hideous building that is now along the north of gear delhi square, the three buildings that go up and blocked a lot of the view. i'm sure the planning commission, if they could take back what they did to the area, they would take it back. i hope people will not look back if the facility goes away and asked how they could have let that happen. thank you so much. >> after these next two speakers, [reading names] >> good morning. i have been a member of the

golden gate way for 25 years. it is my home away from home. it said that we're here today talking about the potential demolition of a one-of-a-kind facility to replace it with yet another high end complex, adding to an already congested downtown location. on the proposed plan, narrowing from st. is a big concern because currently, as he's very sensitive to traffic disruption. at those intersections, the projection is that of another building were added, it would create gridlock at peak afternoon traffic since there are very few escape routes in the area. in addition, the proposed plan faces the building against property line, which would mean that the curve has been pushed further into the street, thus shrinking from street by 9 feet. currently, the gateway fence is set back from the property line, and there is a 10-foot side walk

from the property line to the curb. i am struggling to see that it is an improvement. another question relating to this -- has a developer thought about the gateway apartment maintenance vehicles that trail four or five wagons around the apartment building daily? these vehicles, along with the garbage pickup, always double parked outside the loading bay at various times, including peak periods. how will a narrower street cope with this? in addition, the proposal is greatly exaggerated. facts are that the width is 35 feet. the proposed with is 38 feet 9 inches to the new property line, resulting in a three-foot, 9- engine gain. as you can see from the photograph, the developer is projecting a much larger image and in reality. the photograph also shows access to the call, which would not be allowed by any management. the security phone would be

required for reliability, which would detract from the open, unembellished photograph that you see. the proposed development also offers the garage holding 400 spaces with valet service. currently, there are over 10 of street parking facilities with 10,000 self-part, + attendance spaces. do we need another garage, especially now, when we are trying to encourage people to use public transportation, and currently, the area has excellent transit service. it is not clear how the valet parking will work. will the cars be queuing on the street? where is the drop-off? where is the pickup? all of this is very unclear and will adversely affect the streets with all the new traffic. who will control the street? if the commission advocates to the developer, surely this means he will do what is best for his building. thank you.

>> hello. i would like to thank you for your time. i am and practicing architectural designer for 15 years and have some practical and it concerns. my concerns are from a neighbor and design standpoint. taking a look at the plans that were given to us, some of the access that i have concerns with are the good parking/planning. i'll be talking about the layout of the garage, the accessibility for persons in wheelchairs. mechanical room, the quality of spaces. i would also like to mention the

perspective is from a different standpoint. we listened earlier about sue bierman park and the perspective that was not really a concern on washington street. by looking at a good plan out -- and planning layout, in this particular three-levels of parking, i noticed that the last spot is a dead-end, which is unusable. a lot of these bases that they say are designed for the city and to give back are really not conclusive to the number of accounts that are realistic to the plan. additionally, the findings were columns in the aisles -- there are unrealistic seats of the ramps making the planning of this not for detailed accuracy.