not every home in san francisco needs to grow. smaller homes provide more affordable housing opportunities in a very expensive city. when the building in question already sticks out like a sore thumb, the planning commission should not add insult to injury. please vote against the project. thank you very much. isabell. and thank you. >> my name is john justy. and i have a letter from robert schuman, 17 buena vista terrace. it begins with please allow this letter to serve as my written objection to the proposed construction of a third level at 611 buena vista west. the proposed addition of 611 buena vista is top-heavy and much too

close to the houses on all sides. the proposed glass box, the look of the current sign will have an extreme negative effect on surrounding properties. it is out of character with the neighborhood and will propose problems relating to loss of privacy and shadowing. please vote no. do not allow this project to continue. the house itself has primarily glass and metal. that does not absorb noise.ath

she also was involved in creation of national john steinbeck center. history and our heritage are so very important. our culture and our values are reflected in how we hand it down to our grandchildren and to their

grand children. residents 615 buena vista west, you can't help stopped -- stop admire the grace and beauty and wonderful surroundings we live in. you begin to understand there is something special about the people in san francisco and 100 years ago. future visitors to buena vista park should have this experience too. it belongs to these people in the yardss to come, as well as it does to us today. expanding 611 buena vista west will damage this flock, rob san francisco of something that it can never give back again. please, commissioners, do the right thing. >> thank you very much. >> stop this project. there should be no vertical addition. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> any additional speakers in favor of the d.r.

seeing none, project sponsor, you have five minutes. >> president fong, commissioners, tracy bucks on behalf of project sponsors. what i will do is give you a brief overview of the project as it stands now and key points we'd like you to consider. then i will yield the rest of the time to the project architect who will walk you through design considerations we think are important. primarily there are no exceptional or extraordinary circumstances warranting discretionary view. as such we ath

you can see here -- sorry this is so small. if you look around the neighborhood around buena vista park, it is a huge variation of buildings. there's modern ones, there's old ones, ones from every era, every size, every shape and every material. it is really one of the

most diverse places. there is a number of modern houses as well. our site is right here. sorry, as you can see, it is clumsy. but you can see a large diversity of buildings. that is good. that is what cities are about. they show evolution from old to new, show different sizes. one of the key things on a lot of the buildings is they are made of multiple pieces and parts. there's roofs, reset entrances, turrets, all these different things. when you look at that as a design style as part of what we will be talking about. right here, this is hard to do with two hands.

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>> you can read the analysis the planning staff has prepared which took far more work and time on the city side and it should have but i commend the planning staff for the patience they exercised and just would like to request approval of the project as endorsing the planning staff. thank you. >> president fong and commissioners, my nave is stephanie, i'm the girlfriend of martin shwarizon, and i have

enjoy add wonderful life with martin, in recent year, we have discussed raising a family and we don't want to raise a family anywhere else, our dream to take our home and to make it into a family home. what you see in the drawings today is a family home, it's created through the addition of a family home and it's been a long evolution to get to this point. it's been shaped to create beautiful architecture and to integrate the neighborhood and city feedback that we've received over this past year. we have made numerous changes to accommodate neighborhood and city requests and i believe that working and integrating these aspects created a better project that we had started off with, something that is balanced and beautiful and integrates seamlessly into the neighborhood, i base this not only my own belief but we have letters of support of the design as well as the fact that the city's department

recommends this project, the letters that support and the city analysis just documents the knowledge that we have from our neighborhood, from the day we contacted our architect is the day we acted our neighbors, we wanted them to know all along what was happening to get feedback and include them in the process. we have gone so far as to offer the neighbors to select exterior colors, repeatedly offering one on one meetings and accepting comments at any time. we have made adjustments and many, many, many people have been happy with the adjustments that we made, the only accommodation we haven't made is the one that was requested that if we want to raise a family in the city, we should sell our home and move. and in part, it's been impossible to meet all the demands of the neighborhoods because they've stated themselves in neighborhood

meetings, if we would create a victorian replica, we would fight this, we have not just been neighbors, but friends, pet sitting, going to their children's school performances, calling when house alarms go off when they're out of town and we've always done that, but we still love our neighborhood, we love our city, if you grant this, you would be granting us a second bathroom, a second bedroom, something that would make a bachelor pad a home, the effort and care we have put into this year-long process has created a structure that fits into the neighborhood, creates ak -- architecture into the neighborhood and there's an urban park across the street, as a biologist who does

restoration in the bay area, i'm happy to have a native habitat in my own root, please deny the dr and please accept this project as it is. thank you. >> any other speakers in support of the project sponsor? if not, dr requester, you have a two minute rebuttal. >> thank you, president fong, vice-president wu, i want to be really clear about this. there are three storeys of occupancy in the house now. it was converted to three

storeys in 2003, it's visible clearly when viewed from the rear. the neighbors are opposed to any expansion beyond the existing three storeys of occupancy, whether it's called a habitable basement or a storey of occupancy is a subtlety beyond the neighbors who are going to be impacted by this, the original 900 square foot house was over 1400 square feet were added, so we've gotten more than 2500 square feet were created in 2003, the idea that that's not adequate family housing just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. i raised my family in san francisco on a 1700 square foot house on a 25 foot lot. this is a 20 foot lot and you see from this picture, the

impact that a vertical addition and a roof deck and a stair penthouse is going to have to the historical roof lines here, this is really a mistake. it should not be permitted to proceed. this is going to be a historic district, it should already be a historic district. this portion of buena vista park regarding siting and balance in the neighborhood are clearly not complied with here. i would ask you to deny any vertical addition at this house. thank you. >> project sponsor, you have a two minute rebuttal. >> just a couple of things and i'm going to let mr. smith speak. again, there was no agreement in 2002, they can't produce one because there wasn't one, and if the third floor is so object

nabl, then why in the dr requests do they say that a solution to the issue is to limit the project to three floors, they completely backtracked and didn't address that issue at all, and just in general, if this project at this size in this space is so acceptable and extraordinary to warrant the dr, nothing can be built in the city, there are 20 foot wide lots throughout the city, this is not alamo square, this is a mixed architectural area. thank you. >> i'd like to add something, i know people are saying this is a mistake, this is how you develop project ins cities, look at am stam, paris, london, there are buildings about today versus about yesterday, you get a rhythm, you get a counter

point and you get honesty and various scales and all that, to rebut a couple of comments, i feel like i'm at the rnc listening to paul in fiction, the square foot added to the previous project was like 100 square feet. i don't know where 1400 square feet comes from, we've added about, i don't know, 50% to that with more one floor. i don't know where that square footage comes from, thank you very much. >> okay. public portion is closed. moving to commissioner comments, commission near antonini. >> well, thank you, i'm usually very sympathetic to families trying to expand their existing space to be able to accommodate their needs, however, i think in this case, we have an extraordinary exceptional situation and i'll tell you why. i think i remember 2002 when i was first on the commission, maybe it's a different project,

but i remember when i was first there, there was a project that had been proposed on and it was to go down the hill rather than to go up, i don't think it ever came before us, i think there was a compromise that was reached, that's the increase that occurred up to 2500 square feet so it's not a tiny house, it's 20 feet in width and i think it's all a question of proportion because we have to have diversity in san francisco, we can't have all 20 and 25 foot frontages, and the earlier, our ancestors even in the late part of the 19th century realized there did have to be wider lots to accommodate people who could afford to do that or had those needs or for whatever reason, maybe because it was higher on a hill and less accessible, they decided that we needed lots that e