the 1960's. san francisco was saved from the worst ravages of economic depression owing to the fact that businesses and residents moved out of the central cities. we had areas such as central market which had been victim of that. if the changes are dramatic, not just in new york city, but if you go to minneapolis and indianapolis and chicago, and a lot of other cities i have visited recently, some of the areas that were the worst in the midst of their cities have become some of the most vital areas. the big changes in philadelphia from 2000 through 2005, big changes their in an area that was not very pleasant in 2000. best practices. let's talk to these cities and see what they did and see how they handle areas. it does not mean they have to do what they did but there seems to be a formula out there that seems to be working in a lot of

other cities. the other people you should talk to is businesses that left san francisco in that area. i am talking about aaa and to a large degree, workers' comp. their headquarters is still there but many of their employees are not in san francisco. there are many factors in these moves by would like you to find out what part of this was the conditions around their businesses. that deteriorated from the time there were first there to the time they left and was that a factor in the relocation of much of their work force or in the case of aaa, the entire company out of san francisco. that is important to find out what we can ameliorate to keep businesses there. >> thank you. if there is nothing else, we will move forward on your

calendar to item 10. this is an informational update on the central corridor plan. >> could leave to noon -- good afternoon. i am joined here today by several members of our centra t.

we were last year before you with an update on the central corridor planned at the beginning of november. the central area is bounded by market street on the north, second and sixth streets on the east and west, two blocks near the central subway that is under construction. as we said to before, the impetus for this plan is central -- subway construction. and the need to reevaluate our land-use patterns in that context. at the tail end of the eastern neighborhoods planning process which did rezone much of this area, certain parts were deferred to planning processes. this is based service and light industrial district south of paris and street. that was the first -- deferred to a process that would include

those parcels and that is why we're here today. this plan has been -- we have been underway for year and a half. we started in february of last year for about six months. we're engaged in what we call idf gathering -- an idea gathering listening process. we met with countless community groups who have interest in the project area. we have on-line surveys and try to gather information in every way we possibly could about people's issues and concerns and ideas for the future growth of this area. over last summer into the fall, we develop some draft concepts based on everything we heard in our analysis and after we were last year before you at the end of november, we held our first major public workshop. and had a very good turnout. we presented that workshop the

initial concepts for land use and urban form for that area. in march, we held another public workshop on public realm, streets and open spaces as well as ideas for eco-districts in the area. last week we held our third and final public major workshop in the face of the project and we went back to the committee and presented our refined ideas for those topics and -- based on what we heard since we presented them as well as additional analysis. we were at the historic preservation commission giving them an update and these are our current proposals and concepts as we move into the environmental review phase of the plan. we are ready to issue an rfp for environmental review for the plan and the concepts we're presenting will be the core of the project description that

will be analyzed. the eir will take 18 to 24 months. in 2014, we hope to be back before you with a draft d.r. and moving forward toward adoption -- eir and moving forward toward adoption. we in november presented a series of land use and urban form principles. ducouer objectives for the plan have not changed. -- the core objectives for the plan have not changed. we're supporting growth in this area, this is an important resource for the city. up and down the corridor to market street. it is an appropriate place for the city to grow in terms of jobs and housing. secondarily -- the other major objective is to create complete communities. it means ensuring that the

growth builds on the important factor south of market in a diverse mix of uses. supporting infrastructure to go along with growth. to orient you in terms of zoning for the plan area, at the northern end of the corridor is the downtown in yerba buena. there is some of the eastern neighborhoods ounce of mixed use residential in that southwest part and south of the freeway, those are the service light industrial areas as well as the area that overlaps with the western soma planning process where the proposal is to me modify the service light industrial parts and light industrial zone. that is the general lee of the land -- lay of the land.

what we have heard today after represented in november and an ongoing dialogue with the committee, there is general support for increased developmental capacity southeast of the freeway. that has been held in low intensity of industrial uses. people agree that is an appropriate place to grow. we also heard general support for focusing on commercial development, on job space and office space. in the plan area and the southern part, particularly as a natural area to grow the south of market job and the tech economy which is booming in that part of the city and is a driving sector of the economy. also general support for increasing housing opportunity and ensuring we build a mixed use community. there is general support that we need to allow a diversity of uses that we should not be creating single use zones as

south the market is by its nature diverse. there has been some ongoing discussion about the role of entertainment, a formula retail in the area so we're continuing to grapple with those air -- issues. there is some dialogue about to what extent we need to preserve parts of this plan area adjacent to the central subway as a pdr projection area. we have done analysis on that and we feel that rezoning of portions of the area would be appropriate. in terms of the proposed scheme, it is this. the downtown portions of the area would remain unchanged. we're not proposing to rezone c3 or yerba buena. we feel the appropriate classification for the area north of the freeway and west of

yerba buena is muo. mur is a housing exclusive zone, more less. there has been a lot of housing built since the early days of yerba buena. that is to ensure the area remains mixed use in the future and retain the character that people want it to. we need to modify these zones to allow for commercial uses in small lots along with residential. that is north of the freeway. the southern part of the area from harrison street south in the areas that are industrial, we would propose to rezone as mixed use office. and the office -- and allows more office space and other mixed use zones. it is the most flexible of the eastern neighborhoods. it allows office space, housing, pd are -- pdr, it is most

appropriate to build the mixed use community that is appropriate. we do have a few proposed special use districts that would overlay this area. you can see the dark line around the southern half of the plan area from harrison street to south of bryant street. we are calling that the south's, -- the south soma sud. we are saying that new development would need to be primarily commercial or have a major commercial or office component. as we discussed, this is an important area to grow the job base. it is difficult in terms of visibility to build office

buildings on small lots. we feel that preserving the few larger lots there are is important to make sure we have space to grow. -- to grow the job base. that is the primary objective. the exact nuances of the triggers and requirements are to be worked out but that is the gist of it. the other area is an entertainment special use district between 4th street and sixth street. the key component of the west some a plan which is moving forward is to allow entertainment uses in this part of south of market is an expansionary or reservoir area to allow entertainment to grow in the city. we agree with that proposal and we think this is an appropriate place. the reason why there would be sud is the muo does not allow the entertainment.

this would allow nighttime entertainment in this area which is characterized by low intensity industrial uses. it would be more intensively developed with jobs and housing and there are some conflicts to be it -- worked out in terms of compatibility of entertainment. we continue to work on these and allowing entertainment is the right step. in terms of urban form -- forumm, we presented principals in the past typical of other areas. we have a focus on the urban form -- forum. as well -- in terms of height, we feel that concentrating the greatest height at the far northern end of the plan area toward market street and the southern and toward the train station are the appropriate places to concentrate the greatest heights. we need to ensure that the urban

form controls build on the fabric south of market and insure it livable place. we presented a number of height scenarios in november and got a lot of public feedback. we heard support for the higher heights south of townsend street couched with building buildings taller than 85 feet being really dominant. people prefer the landscape on townsend street eased 1/4 rear have some large and broad buildings that dominate the streetscape. that is a concern that we hope to address moving forward. also a general concern about potential loss of fabric of the district in terms of the mix of large and small buildings and there are some blocks in the plan area that have predominantly small buildings in small lots that have an interesting fabric. people are concerned about new developments under a rezoning

scenario kind of multiplying -- gobbling up smaller lots. in terms of our proposed height, the far northern parts of the plan area, the downtown portion again, we're not taking on changes. for the rest of the streets in the area, 85 and 65 feet is the appropriate base scale for streets of the great with skillh of market over 80 feet wide. the buildings of that scale create the right sense of comfort and intimacy. there will be more sensitive uses a, there might be key issues. and some key blocks south of the freeway. we are not proposing any height changes in the historic

district. the predominant height that you see from harrison street to the south and southwest is 130 feet. we feel that it is sort of an appropriate scale and the kinds of commercial buildings that are characteristic of the south of market and the mission bay down town, where we have the larger commercial buildings, that is the kind of building we think is appropriate. nor are we trying to replicate mission bay, but really create that particular to south of market. there are a few concentrated know that we would propose along the southern end of fourth street the both marked the

stations had a transition towards mission bay. we want it immediately opposite the train station. and bring down the 200 feet and lower. it is slightly higher heights in particularly southern parts of the planned area. the alternative is by and large, allowing a few additional side stability to hundred and 60 feet, particularly along the southern end of fifth street.

you can see on the maps, changes that are occurring. >> just speaking of fabric, there are a lot of key elements that we need to be particularly mindful of. the first is historic resources. the historic resources in the plan area, the south of market survey was completed in the last year or two and has done a very comprehensive job that surveying

almost all of the plan area. much of it overlaps with the district plan. there is a small area just to the west that has not yet been survey. the survey will be done to fill the remaining gaps. the preservation staff has done a pretty thorough path through the finding of the surveys and have identified where they feel are the top priority resources in the district that we have to focus our efforts on protecting. and the historic merit of of buildings were we have contemplated resounding might have development pressure cut on them by the reasoning put forward. what you see there, a number of parcels shaded and dark green. there are 14 scattered around the map.

that is what staff feels are the primary resources and we can give you more information at a later date if you are interested. we would also be proposing an expansion of the south and historic district. adjacent to the existing south and district which seems more to include in that district. in terms of encouraging preservation, we started to talk about expanding the transfer of development rights program to this area. it seems like the right approach. in terms of the logistics of how much it could be bought and sold, we think is appropriate technique to apply to this area. maybe some of the historic buildings are lower in scale

than the heights otherwise might suggest. allowing it to be sold seems like an appropriate path forward. there was also concern about the consolidation of small lots and consolidating the existing fabric. we look forward to some controls that would encourage or prevent -- we have identified a number of bloc places where it will be particularly relevant and to propose their be a conditional use in certain design criteria and what can be consolidated in the future so that we continue to have a mix of larger, smaller, and medium-sized buildings where we don't end up with a situation where the fabric is lost in the future. they can be broken up in smaller increments.

as i mentioned, 85 feet is the general street wall high in this area. where we think that through, working with many prototypes and other examples, buildings of this scale the feature upper stories set backs and sensitively incorporate buildings. through a series of setbacks and other performance requirements, buildings of that scale can fit in the context nicely. we are continuing to analyze and go over the details of these controls and resources issues and other aspects of the regulatory controls. in the fall, will be publishing a standards document that will address both the design

guidelines for sites that are adjacent to transit stops had deserved a focused luck. additions to existing buildings, there are his third buildings as well as those that are borderline historic. they ought to be preserved and if we can set some guidelines to what can be added, we hope to have guidelines along those lines. and really nail down the design controls and standards. between the combination of land use and height changes, there is potential for substantial growth. existing in the planned area, they are in the northern half of the largely built around a downtown. office space or other states -- space, there is growth potential under existing zoning.

this would be largely in the northern half of the plan area, about 6600 housing units. the changes we would be proposing would add potential for an additional 6000 housing units and space for an additional 30,000 jobs in the southern part of the planned area. we do have to address the public realm in terms of streets and open space. we did a lot of analysis of existing sidewalks, we adopted the better street plan. those are sub-standard sidewalk with. the better streets plan would say that 15 is the preferred the sidewalk with. there are a lot of and the sexes

with close crosswalks, so there are some major pedestrian challenges, particularly around the freeway that we need to address to make this a walkable district. there is a lack of open space. there is essentially no public open space west of south park in the area we are looking at rezoning and accommodating substantial growth. it has been identified as the eastern neighborhoods plans. earlier, leading up to the march workshop, we put together a framework and identified a few key areas that we would focus conceptual design efforts on. we did find areas to focus on. aside from the open space opportunities, one of the core

principles is to make sure that all of the streets -- a plan for better standards for and best -- a pedestrian environment. we have support for these ideas from the community. one of the things they asked us to focus on was more pedestrian crossings, and to look at the bicycle that worked to find a way to our event had a bicycle work in this area that is quite sparse when you look at the map. people feel that it needs to be augmented. the plan would move forward and review a number of situations industry changes. they are streets that -- like many other streets, they are also dominated and have many

sidewalks. they play a very important regional role in that system. we're proposing that they analyze a widening the sidewalk incrementally by removing on- street parking and not analyze capacity changes. we're working with the mta to analyze the circulation system to see what changes we will be able to look at in the future to further address the capacity of those streets. their streets that we're looking at it much more detail. brandon street would have a complete street treatment, widened sidewalks, bicycle facilities, at some reconfiguration of two lanes in each direction. third and forestry as well, the plan will look at capacity reduction in order to widen the sidewalks.

as well as adding facilities and improving on-street transit networks or the mta thinks it is warranted. including all the way west to eleventh street, there are already proposals for full sun and howard street. there are two-way options and 1- way auctions. -- options. and the full length of south of market from second all the way to eleventh, we need a little bit of funding analysis. we hope to secure the rest of that funding and keep it in the scope.

in terms of open space, there are a number of open space opportunities in the planned area we're looking at. the one i will talk about a second is the potential part we think is possible by bryant and brandon. we're also advancing in the plan the number of community generated ideas that came out of the community benefit the district streetlight plan that they put out how believe about a year ago. there are a number of open space opportunities that we are incorporating in our plan and will include in the environment to review that includes open spaces on any street that is an alley of mission street that includes industrialization of the valley and the park site that we think is really an exciting opportunity on this block