for only a couple of hours a day. most of the time, they're fairly vacant that traffic use and starting with the redevelopment plan for the residential neighborhoods, we saw the opportunity to take a significant portion of the rights of way and convert them into parks that connect from market street to the residential neighborhoods and offer various amenities. this street was built just a few years ago by an adjacent developer. it is a beautiful addition to the downtown environment and augments the more formal parks system and offers green connections between the various open spaces and residences. lastly, oscar park -- these are adjacent spaces being designed right now, being led by the

successor agency to the redevelopment agency. combined, it is about 4 acres. most of this space is owned by caltrans and the redevelopment agency ender the existing free e ramps that connect the transit center to the bay bridge. but there are some challenges to making it a desirable part but there is an excellent design team and robust process that has created a comprehensive vision that features many active and passive the amenities. that includes children's play areas and cafes. you can see an image up there. the southern of leg south of folsom street will feature a dog run and and other landscaped areas to really link the

residential neighborhoods to the transit center. >> i know we have one more item on the council -- on the calendar and i bumped your item. on the revenue side, we may want to skip that portion and go to the shadow issue just to prop us for what is coming down the line. >> i could make a couple of points on the funding. the plan has a substantial funding program, one is a new set of impact fees and the other is a new set of taxes which would generate close to $600 million over 25 years for public infrastructure. that includes a new and open space fee which new buildings would pay. the open space portion of the program is very comprehensive.

there is $160 million going to fund all the open spaces. coming from a mix of news open spaces, and partly there is $18.5 million which this plan is a generating for open spaces outside the planning area. an additional $6 million would be generated by the existing downtown park fund but this is is essentially new money that would not be generated under the zoning. that money would be available to improve open spaces outside the plant area. in terms of shadows, this is a critical issue to consider. now that the plan and zoning are

approved, this is the next step before they can move forward and provide the benefits for open space and other amenities. there are no open spaces in the plant area. a handful of the major buildings will be quite tall as we discussed, and you have the chance to add some modest shadows quite some distance from the area. the closest open space is about 1,200 feet from the nearest building. most of the open spaces are half a mile or more. spaces like union square. you can see the potential buildings located in their, concentrated in the plant area. the adoption of the plan provided a comprehensive and

conservative analysis of the shading and that these new buildings might add. just to highlight some of the findings -- the most important is the shadows -- potential shadows from some of these plant buildings would sweep quickly through these open spaces. there are only limited times of year verse -- a time of year is generally before 9:00 when shadows from these buildings might line up with these open spaces. these potential new shadows last for limited amounts of time. some as few as five minutes, some as much as an hour, it's a limited time and only for a few weeks a year, depending on which open space you are talking about. something that is not captured in the quantitative analysis but something that we know empirically is that these

buildings are some distance from the open spaces. they are tall but in relation to the open spaces they might shade, they take up a relatively small slice of the sky. the sun shines around them and the shadows, a quality of the shadows will be much different than of these buildings were adjacent to the open spaces. we know just from looking on the streets that some of these shadows will be defused. you will not notice them the same way you would notice a shadow of a block away from the open space. this is information we will have to grapple with together. we look forward to getting into the details park by park and building by building in a comprehensive way at upcoming hearings. in the very near future so we

can move this plan at forward for adoption. this plan as open space as one of its very core components. the plan area open spaces this plan would create as well as the $18 million for improvements in the neighborhoods adjacent to the planned area and downtown as well as the major benefits the plant produces. we're happy to answer any questions. >> thank you very much. >> i noticed in your presentation, very well, indeed, thank you, there are other departments also involved in the maintenance and operations of these various parks. for me, it would be more appropriate rec and park would be more involved and i would like to see that conversation take place. >> thank you.

i think we had some ongoing conversations with fed -- with the tjpa. it is something that very important to us as well and we would ask that day and the successor redevelopment agency as it continues to serve and a coordinating role that we be at table for those discussions as they proceed. >> if i can add to that, the tjpa is going to issue an rp ane department to respond to that. >> thank you. i do think the identification of park opportunities -- i'm not

sure if mission square is a park opportunity, but that should be clarified -- it's just an informational hearing. i apologize. to clarify what that means to the department and what role the department would be playing, and my short tenure of the commission, i have learned nothing happens quickly and if there is an intention to make it part of the department parks, that should be clarified as it comes back to us. regarding the shadows, this is he going to be a much longer conversation that i would like to see information on existing shadow, to see an entire shadow

analysis and how the parts are impacted -- there should be an analysis of the cumulative impact of not a project by project basis so that we see the effect of all buildings proposed within the plan to see how that affects the parks not only in chinatown but other parks within the parks jurisdiction. i would also like to see information on how the impact fees are being generated and how the funds will be made available for open space improvements. are those funds coming all at once or is it over time? how could the department access funds to use those funds for future improvements? not only with the existing open possible future open space. >> thank you. i might add one comment on the of economics side -- while it is not exactly apples to apples, i would be interested to see what the land values are for the

public space in that area. i think the numbers will be astounding and it's got a fair comparison, but it is an interesting consideration. with that, we should open up to public comment. >> is there any public comment on this item? >> i'm sorry -- i am not paying attention. >> just to put this in perspective because your next item is a park renovation at glen canyon and that we have been focused on the park's bond , our largest park renovation has been in the $15 million to $20 billion range. i believe the project is $68 million. is enormous in scale and infrastructure costs, it is a

rooftop park obviously and i think it is important when you look at those incredible pictures, it's going to be a tremendous addition to our open space inventory. this is a project with scale that is somewhat unique. >> i had just heard during the report that there would be 1400 affordable housing units. i just want to be clear if those are going to be on site or offside? >> those are all on site units that will be built along a folsom st. on public parcels in that neighborhood. >> thank you. >> seeing no other commission questions call let's open it up to public comment. >> any public comment?

>> mr. president and commissioners, i have been on various committees involved with said transit center for several decades now and i want to give you some background on how we got here. in 2005, the joint powers agency announced it could only identify enough money to build a bus station. that announcement ups said the mayor and supervisor and other city officials who felt if the city had been involved in the examination of funding sources, there might be additional moneys made available. debonair and supervisor created a task force headed by the former planning commissioner who spent several months looking into this and made several recommendations. one of them was a bit of a gamble which we succeeded with and that is we've made an application and got federal

funds to build the underground transit terminals for the trains, $400 million. the other was the report that they made that is the item before us today, which is the day they analyzed and came to the conclusion that by rezoning and increasing the heights in that area, additional value would be captured. a bunch of it could be invested in building the train tunnel downtown. that is what you have before you. we've seen approximately $400 million will be an additional city contribution to improving the regional at long-range trends for san francisco. this is immensely important, a decision that has been supported by the voters in several

elections. when you are contemplating the issues you have to contemplate, i would urge you to take a balanced approach and remember this project is not being driven by developmental interests. it is being driven by the need to improve san francisco's transit systems and connections to the larger world. thank you very much. i hope you will support the matter. >> thank you. is there any other public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. we are now on item 8, the glen canyon park improvement construction contract. >> good morning. that was my previous opening. >> we want to keep it in the

morning. >> i'm going to try to go as quickly as i can and provide as much information as necessary. i am with the rec and park planning division and i'm pleased to have the opportunity to present the staff recommendation for the award of the glen canyon park project. much smaller than the last item but very important. this is an extremely special, the first large, eat -- extremely special, diverse, extremely large, this is the entire park. this is about a 70 acre park. the portion we are talking about is on the tail end, the

active recreation point of the park. this is a very large park, over 70 acres and what we try to do is find a way to have a great combination of the amenities and recreation we're trying to encourage. it's a challenge and opportunity to make this things better and the question before you today is whether to award the contract for the work on the playground, a tennis court and aspects of the recreation center as we move forward. a side note -- $12 million has been set aside in the upcoming bond proposal for the november 2012 ballot to give a complete renovation of the recreation center. we are trying to make sure we spend those funds diligently so in the event we have those funds in the future, we're not redoing work. it is a puzzle that we have to work toward.

i'm going to get a little context. this is the recommendation to award the contract for approximately $3.7 million. get a very competitive bid and we were also able to add the first alternate item for the heating system. has not been working for quite some time and is quite cold. during many of our meetings, it was quite cold. i just wanted to show you some of the various facilities in the park. the glen canyon rec center, the oldest recreation center in our system, it is a very special building. silver tree further into the

canyon and all of the trails that go back into acres and acres of the park. what we have done today is starting in 2010, we went through a community outreach project. they helped us with the overall planning. we went through a robust planning process for 2011 and in 2012, we have been doing the detailed design of the contract for you. i have given some of this presentation in the past, so i'm going to just mention we did a series of community meetings and other people may speak to that later. several meetings and workshops where we walked their trails and talked about the playgrounds and the different elements people would like to see there. we have a blog war i regularly post updates on the project.

the overall park improvement plan was developed through that process. we are just going to be giving a portion of the overall project. the last time we were before you in august, the commission approved the guest of the trust for public land outreach and provided a tent -- $400,000 to do the process that helped us decide all of these pieces, where the tennis courts would go, how much bigger it could get, how we could make these pieces work together. we were directed to proceed with the development of the design. we had to additional meetings that talked about the design of the playgrounds. this is the area we are focused on today. it is a limited area of the park.

it is probably the area you think of. there is a new entry pass, a larger play area, do tennis courts, a new access into the park. it is hard to get in right now. it's a canyon and those are the challenges we're working with. it is a complicated side and we're trying to provide good access. here is the design we arrived at through the detailed design. it includes the tennis courts and a playground that is double the size of the existing playground. right now, you can see the current interest. it is very confined and you can see the new tennis court. i wanted to mention a couple of

things that have come up that we continue to discuss. a lot of folks would like to see the playground be as big as possible. the same time, we want to maintain the tennis courts and keep the fields. these are the kinds of things everyone wants to have better but i'm excited to report we thought we could only have a 76% playground but we have a 97% increase. it's a big and will have more swings and a sand box which the community wanted to make sure this site had an icelandic is going to be really great. in addition, as we discussed in previous meetings, the tennis court relocation will require the removal and replacement of some of the trees in that area. overall, we will be planting 164

new trees, a net increase of 94 trees. that's a good plan to move forward and have additional trees in this very important part. the current area is very small. about 3700 square feet. this is information i provided on the web site which shows the tennis court in des new location what impact a small number of trees, but we did talk about it in that community meetings. is a trade-off if we want a bigger playground, this is something we discussed it to make sure this is something people wanted to do. these trees have had a difficult time as well. couple of them have fallen in the past. one fell across the street, one

fell across the tennis court and they are trees that are quite old. the next step is with the approval of the award, we would start construction in the project will last approximately 10 months and wrapped up in the spring. we're going to keep the recreation center open through january. we have to replace the heating and ventilation system and do a certain amount of asbestos work. we will have to work out a limited closure of the building and notify the community well in advance. that concludes my presentation. there are a couple of additional letters of support i have provided and the glen canyon park board association provided another a letter and i would like to provide that if i may.

thank you very much for your time. >> thank you very much. we will hear public comment and then get questions. >> [reading names] >> and here to speak on behalf of the san francisco [inaudible] we support this project and we would like to see a lot of these improvements being made in glen canyon. but having said that, we are very concerned and rather shocked by the number of trees that are going to be affected. i would like to say two things about this. one is the number of trees seems to be very high and secondly, the criteria for the removal seems not to be related to

whether they are hazardous are actually in the way of the project, but another criterion altogether which is a grab bag of various criteria. i would like to talk to the transparency of the process. a lot of community meetings were mentioned that they were held and people associated with our group were at many of them. the understanding we had was the trees that were just referred to would be the ones to go. let me put up a picture from the final report on the community meeting. the areas outlined in white are the trees referred to next to the tennis court which are likely to go. i will put up one other.

this was from the community meetings and it shows the projects that were discussed at the community meeting. this map is something our group has developed from sun shining report and all of those circles are trees that are going to be removed. the red circles are trees that would be removed because of poor suitability. there is one hazardous tree in this whole lot. the green circles are trees that will be removed because of the project impact. this is where our concern is. we don't know how many trees will be removed or the

cumulative impact will be when the plans are completed, the trails and natural areas program. it looks like it is going to impact hundreds of trees but we don't know how many despite the fact of try to dig into the data to the best of our abilities. we like the tree cutting portion to be suspended until it is reviewed and discussed the public. [tone] >> i would like to provide letters and maps. and this package, i would like to provide. >> we have two minutes to go. i'm a frequent visitor to many of the natural areas and i want to say congratulations to park

and iraq for the trail that was just built. it is a wonderful trail. there are many good and things being done by the natural areas that we are not opposed to those. you were talking about the kids in the park -- my favorite thing about going to glen canyon is the kids in the park and how much they love going to the natural areas in the park. i wish you guys would do something at mclaren because it deserves something just as much as plan canyon. the reason i'm here today is to add to what was just said. to the interest of the community process, if you look at the map and go to the web site, it's about removing trees specific to the recreation center construction everybody is in agreement with removing trees that are hazardous. i would encourage you to