part of the background growth, which is included in the project impact analysis. on parking impacts, both of those projects are outside the study area. what happens to the parking there does not change the information or the analysis presented in the eir. it was not part of the survey area. the issue was raised with regard to the golden gateway eir from the 1970's. we did not address those in our eir and we did not believe that is relevant information. this eir is obligated to report on the impacts of this proposed project. the 8 washington street proposal on the current setting. the 1972 and 1960 -- 76 eirs

were looking at a different setting. that information is not relevant to what this eir needs to present in terms of the physical and tax of the 8 washington street project. >> that was an interesting comment you just made. they did involve project on the same site, a high-rise condos on that location. it is surprising to hear you suggest that it should not have been considered. >> my point is that we are looking at one project of 130 feet. we have looked at this project. what that eir found about four high-rise towers on this site, we believe it was not relevant

to the impact of this project. president chiu: that's eir concluded that those buildings had a pretty significant impact, right? the conclusion they drew was very different than the conclusion that you are drawn today. >> the conclusion was different. i was intending to address that as well. those projects were higher. at 25 stories, those projects were taller. another thing that has changed since the 1970's, if you read that eir, it's fine significant impact on the views. -- it finds significant impacts on views. it talks about the impacts to and from the residential properties on telegraph hill. that may have been the standard 40 years ago, but since 1983, when i began doing this for the

city, significant view impacts in the city are adverse impacts on publicly accessible scenic views. we would not call the blockage from a residential property is significant impact today. president chiu: could you tell us where we could see a view -- of towards the northeast waterfront? there is nothing in the eir that clearly lays out what that view looks like. >> there is actually. i was looking to remind myself and that comment was raised. if you'll excuse me for one second. is the clock running? president chiu: we will pause your time for this. >> thank you. in the eir a, --

>> can you speak into the microphone? we are struggling to hear you. >> the draft eir at page 4b8 is a view from the park looking north over the project sites showing the before and after. president chiu: there are half a dozen folks who have looked at that issue. i do not have that in front of me. >> ifrom the park, but there wan extensive amount of the graphic imagery, including the video,

which was shown earlier, which was a small portion of fixeit. many of the other ones, we did not describe and it does talked about a guy. -- talk about that. that was not described in the eir. >> let me ask you about height. you concluded this was not a significant impact. in what would it take for it to be a significant impact?

>> we did not specifically say 60% change in height was not an impact. we look at what ever building the height is proposed. we look at shadow impact. goowe look at visual impact, not just on the basis of height, but of building, a physical change related to that, and when we looked at that, for the reasons described in the er, the reasons were found to be very minimal on the northwest edges at the end of the dave. >> 84 feet is what is currently

at. what height would be significant? >> without knowing the exact height, it would cause substantial view impact to the rigors of -- view impact. and we would call that significant impact your good -- impact. >> this does feel like spot increase triggered -- increase. it is not the subject of litigation.

>> the eir does not consider whether it is spot zoning. that is not our issue. >> i would add to that and also referred to the city attorney, but my understanding is it is a legal term that refers june higher height, and i would defer to the city attorney hearing good -- city attorney.

>> we are talking about spot zoning. what are we talking about in a particular point that goes up? >> you can call it whatever you wanted. >> what would you call it? >> it would be wel however you choose to hear it. >> i appreciate that word. let me go to your definition. under section 6 it says under no circumstances shall there be any height limits.

it seems you cannot do height reclassification, what ever you are talking about. can you explain? >> it is difficult to understand, but a planned unit development can have certain exceptions. that is why you would have a later ordinance that would change the height limit. the board would also approve the height limitation, and if you feel it is not appropriate to approve height limit, they would

need to redesign of a building, so it is dependent on this body changing height limit, but it cannot be specifically authorized. >> that is my reading, but it seems we cannot approve a conditional use today unless that is later approved by the board. >> it would be contingent upon your later approval. >> we cannot approve the cu today. >> i believe your approval is contingent upon a later approval for reclassification. >> one of you continue. >> the next issue i was going to address is an issue we have already written about in the material we sent you, and it is

here today. it has to do with how we could define less than significant impact with losses of tennis courts and in why we did not have to send that issue around for further comment. good i want to be very quick. the eir lays out very clearly as the project modified over time the draft eir and project variants. the swimming pool moved through the roof, and it created an additional open spaces. all but is very clear.

i do not think there is dispute about that. your >> right now the document refers to the march 22, 2012 plans. as you know, there are no plans from that date. the only plans refer to november and december. give the plants kept changing -- plans kept changing. the public has a right to actually comment on a fix project, and when the developer decided to remove all the tennis courts after the final responses were published, to me that suggested someone does not understand how this project was changing. >> the draft eir talks about what constitutes a significant impact under ceqa with regard to

recreational resources, if the project would cause substantial degradation of recreational resources. >> for the people here to suggest going from five tennis courts to four tennis courts down to zero tennis court would be severe and degradation. good >> there is disagreement about that, but the ceqa threshold for significant impact is not close or convenient access. it is whether or not it is going to result in substantial degradation. they talk about how many tennis courts a city should have to serve its public.

the standard of was incorporated into the recreational parks department was one tennis court for 500 residents. the present project with nine tennis courts, the ratio is one tennis court to roughly 3500 residents. >> so now we are going down to zero. >> yes, and that would change through 3700. there is still an adequate supply of tennis courts so we do not expect degradation, but people who use these corp. said have close access to them are

upset about it. they consider it a hardship, and it er -- the eir this closes the. -- discloses that, including our explanation that it is not a significant threshold for significant impact. we believe we have disclosed that, including the disagreement, and explain why this would not amount to see what impact -- ceqa impact, while we have revealed it is not helpful to people who would lose access to tennis. the obligation is not to say whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but to inform you

about that. >> of the project have d not been initially introduced that would be one thing, but the public did not have our right to comment on that. did they change it after the final comments were due. >> what they are talking about is recirculating the eir. the guidelines specifically addressed the issue of recirculation. that means you have a round of comments. you have responded, and you need to recirculate for further comments. ceqa guidelines have a strict standard for when that needs to occur.

when there is a serious increase in environmental impact that has already been reported, or is the draft eir was so insignificant. we do not believe that was reached. the public clearly has an opportunity to talk about the loss of tennis courts, and we believe that is conveyed through the draft. >> can we talk about alternatives you did or did not lay out some of this was not a project that -- or did not lay out? this was a project and still

retain half of the tennis courts, and what we have is a very different projects with major height and reclassifications, and one thing that is clear to me that there did not seem to been a component address whether this would actually meet the goals of the city. >> there are two alternatives. alternatives b and e, which develops only the washington site, so those are in the eir. it is an esoteric issue, but

they are supposed to derive alternatives to the address and respond to significant impacts of the project. we did not identify specific impacts, so these were their tune present region because of regulatory requirements -- these were there to present the region because of regulatory requirements, we looked at alternatives that address regulatory approvals of look that different permutations that would not need those, but we did look at different alternatives have the 84-foot high. >> those were arguments that were fairly easy to explain why they would not be particularly interesting, but there are plenty of other alternatives

that would have met the needs of the neighborhood without massive exceptions we are being asked to look at today. >> can i ask how much time we have left? >> you have 12 minutes. >> i am going to try to be pretty quick. impact of sea level rise are specifically addressed. they project a potential 55 inch rise in sea level, and the are concludes -- the eir concludes that is a significant impact.

we did try to think about whether there was an alternative, and the department considered raising it, but that became desirable in terms of aesthetics, and it did not alleviate the impact. it is subject to inundation, no matter what you do, if you are attracting people to the site of inundation, you still have the same impact. traffic impacts are raised. we did a pretty rigorous traffic analysis, construction impacts,

operational impact. we looked at the impact over a long time. that was analyzed. >> can you talk about what kind of impact that amount mosof dump trucks would have? that is one every few minutes, and they concluded that is not significant, so i asked what would be significant? >> what would be significant is if the intersections went from level d to e. >> what does the mean in english? >> d is poorly operating, but

traffic still moves with an acceptable soleil. -- delay. e is no longer functioning. >> when you look at alternatives, you have a three- level garage in a part of town right next to the water, which is going to be impacted over the next couple of decades. it seemed curios you did not look into alternatives about a smaller parking garage. we all have questions about why you need 400 cars, and we also know it is expensive to dig the equivalent of a reverse the

bathtub, and it is going to create an enormous impact. can you address the alternatives? >> alternatives are mostly driven by significant impacts. we did not need to find one that reduces the impact. >> how many trucks do we need to have a significant impact? >> i do not know without doing analysis. i do not dknow of the top of my head. >> anyone else answer that question? >> i do not know if it can be answered in abstract.

i do not know if someone can answer that off the top of my head. >> let me ask you if a dump truck every two minutes feel significant? >> what they do is they multiplied it by two, and you double the number of truck trips, and that turns into a vehicle equivalence. we were not satisfied with that, so we look at tripling it, and we still found that converted into vehicle trips, and that became comparable to the number of trips in the future, and those remained at the level of service.

>> it seems like a smarter solution would be to have a parking garage. you do not have to worry about sea level rise. you do not have to worry about a dump truck every two minutes. >> they are not making recommendations. i think my time is about up. this question was raised about outdated data. gooweekday afternoons are typicl peak periods, and that is corroborated in virtually every document, since information

from 2007 was updated in 2011 and by looking at other eirs, and we found that traffic and parking has improved, so if anything, the analysis is conservative. good >> if i could ask a couple of questions, you take wednesday evenings in 2007, and farmers market is tuesday and saturday, and that was five years ago as opposed to today when we have seen a sharp increase, and is based on staffing you assume from reading it on that day you assume from 2000. can you address the adequacy of the data and the analysis?

>> i know it was raised in our comments and addressed in our response. our traffic consultant did respond, and i believe they indicated that was the best information available at a time the eir is done. we have found the conditions are improved relative to what we have reported. we believe we have invited the most conservative analysis. wednesday afternoon was picked at a time there was only a tuesday farmers' market, so our transportation staffs as well as a consultant working with us to believe it was not