scientific and mathematical aspects of the school, the second phase will be more involved around literary arts, and the dramatic arts, the project you are considering today will improve town school immensely for its students. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon f, my name is nancy, ! finance [inaudible] we are fortunate that our head of school had focused on maintaining good neighbor relations for the past 23 years, i want to provide a brief summary of outreach we have done with our neighbors. in 2011, we hosted three

meetings with our neighbors which were attended by about 40 neighbors in total, the purpose of two of the meetings was for mark miller our architect to explain our project and to answer questions, the other meeting was a response from our neighbors to reduce the congestion during the morning drop off of students, from the request of those neighbors, we applied and received an extension of our zone to have four more cars, in the spring of 2012, mark miller and i spoke individually with the 8 neighbors who are behind the playfield to discuss our plans to excavate, all of these neighbors have expressed support either in writing or verbally for our approach to them and for the project itself.

before the summer construction started, both the school and our general contractor wrote a letter to all of our neighbors within a two block radius to have school explaining what would be happening with the summer construction project and if they had any concerns, our construction superintendent was on site daily by 6 a.m., and they sent them away prior to 7 a.m. to minimize many noise on the street. i have as mary woods mentioned 8 letters from neighbors that i can read for the commission and thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> you can leave them on the bench. >> thank you. >> any additional public comment? seeing none, the public comment is closed. commissioner moore.

>> i'm in support of this project, we've seen a lot of schools come before us where they've had to go beyond their footprint to expand and we've had issues of lost housing, i know it's never easy. the neighbor on scott street, i know the construction hours do start at 7 a.m., i have a project across the street from me, they start before 7 a.m., the noise is not supposed to happen before 7 a.m., they are out there, i wake up super early because they are already doing work and the 7, 7, 7 days a week, so you know, i believe -- if they can figure out a way to work with the neighbors, but i know it's the policy and it's a catch 22, if you shorten the hours, the construction takes longer and more months of dealing with the noise versus them having them do longer

hours, i do want the project sponsor to address the issue about the sidewalk washing and ask, near the project where i'm here, they're spraying water to reduce the dust. >> first, i'll deal with the noise issue. this summer which was in the -- it was a fair comment, it was an aggressive 64 day very large interior project, that is not the intent of intensity or drawing that we were looking for, we have from a school year end to the start of the year after beginning, which is for us is more gracious, so you have a little more time and saturday's not going to be in the plan except major things

that need to happen when traffic's very low with cranes, the dust is something we're conscious of, especially because of phase going forward because of there's lots of excavation, we're doing one way traffic through the sites, for noise primarily because of -- to not have backing up of trucks so working diligently on that, we have to work on other streets, we're cautious of that, for cleaning up on the sidewalk, those are the types of things you mentioned, both our superintendent is out every day, those things should be improved and shouldn't happen, so we will work on that, that is something we could contain,

the general dirt, water spraying, fencing, we're talking with neighbors, my neighbors because there's a combination of view blockage, we're starting to have those conversations, it's a priority on an individual basis, but hoeing -- hosing down is a priority. it has been primarily about dirt and trucks, and the city team has been good and on top of that. >> are you the resource or i guess -- from the school as the resource to make sure that they have this information and maybe to the extent that you're planning not to work on saturdays, give them a heads-up on the schedule, if you will be working on saturday to let them

know. >> our contact information is always posted on the building, once construction startser, we have a superintendent always on site before construction starts and after it terminates for the day so there is a responsible party for them to go to even for short term. especially when the excavation is starting. >> it's a very reasonable comment. >> great, other than that, i'll move to approve the conditions. >> second. >> i'm supportive of the project, i wanted to just acknowledge and thank the [inaudible] zone of anticipating the movements, in terms of startup of time,

perhaps the page on the town school website can be set up with construction alerts if there's major movements or things out of the ordinary, i'm not supportive of changing the hours, this is something that has to happen within the context of school hours, i'm glad to see the student body is still at 400 and i think those were my comments and again i'm in support of. commissioner antonini. >> i think it's a great project, being the father that went to other private schools in san francisco and going through the same building process and seeing the difference after the new facilities are available, particularly recreationally but also academically, it's utilizing the land to its best use and of course land is precious in san francisco, it looks like a very well thought

out plan and i'm supportive of the facade changes, the school is designed at a time that perhaps was not the highlight of architecture when it was first built but i think the new facades look like they're going to be contemporary and maximize light into the school in a much better way than before, so very supportive. >> commissioner 1$úky8m?osugaya. >> yes. >> we weren't given the preliminary neg dec on this, this was not described as a historic resource. >> no. >> can you tell me why? >> that's something i was not involved in, but i didn't know it was not considered a resource. i do have copies of the document if you would like it,

the document was about an inch thick and since we're including the monetary and mitigation report program, you know, so that was available. >> alright, thank you. that's the only question i had. perhaps i'm reminded that a week or two ago, we took actions that contradicted construction times and prohibited them on saturdays. >> actually, i think you did. >> i know, and i'm just -- >> they had said their intent was to stop at a particular time anyway, so we deferred to

the time they said and the issue that was different was they had performances and they were a theatre and it was little different -- there were events that were happening that we were trying to protect. >> commissioner moore? >> i think this is an early 60s building which makes it mid century, and i don't think its architecture is that noteworthy that it could fall in historic preservation. this building i think doesn't meet the mark, however, i think the modernization which is what it is is a very good step forward, particularly in a neighborhood that is characterized with large homes, i think if you were able to win that battle, it is wonderful and it is a good model for a school and i think it's

remarkable that within the envelope, you can make as many modifications and adjustments to a contemporary curriculum at energy performances without doing major changes to the building. i think they are like micro surgery and they're skillful and i am definitely in support of it. there is an issue ant -- about this building, i would like to ask the department to consult with labor with construction hours, by union standards or certain blocks of time and numbers of hours in each work day, and i think i am not aware what the rules are but i would rather have advisory from a labor council or union to make recommendation of what are in the rules. >> commissioner sugaya. >> i want to respectfully

disagree and i would say this extends into the 40's, not into the 60, and to have historic significance, at least four or five or six of them including north beach, that's why i asked the question. i fully understand that this may not have risen to that level, but not having seen the report, it would have been interesting to see what the staff analysis was on that. >> commissioner antonini? >> i think whatever is in the motion now is fine with me because not only are you dealing with the school hours which you have to accommodate but then you also have the changing hours of day and that makes it more difficult if you

have the days get shorter and your hours, you have to start as early as you can with the time change, so i'm fine with the way it's stated right now. >> could you call the question please. >> commissioner, there's a motion on the floor as approval at currently proposed. commissioner antonini? >> aye. .ing commissioner moore? >> aye. >> commissioner wu? >> aye. >> commissioner fong? . inger thank you, commissioners, the item passed unanimously. >> mike's going to take a five minute break, we're going to keep going. commissioners, you are now on item number 16, 2012 .0206c, 2299 market street.

>> good afternoon, president fong, michael smith, planning department staff, you have before you a conditional use request for formula retail use and financial use for a bank at 2299 market street showing business as bank of the west, this would be their first branch in the upper market neighborhood and they would be offering normal banking services in the neighborhood, it is locating in a new store front of a building on the corner of market and 16th street and noe, there are 15 existing banks including sterling bank, wills fargo, there were 9 ground floor

vacancies within the commercial district and [inaudible] within the district. the project originally scheduled for june, but was continued indefinitely to allow the sponsor to address neighborhood concerns. the department struggled with the project for the same reasons. the sponsor has reach -- reach add compromise, the agreement would add two conditions, there are two letters from the two neighborhood associations in the area, i just received it this week so they're not included in your packet, is third page are the two additional conditions, the project sponsor is amenable to

these conditions, they would be fronting on noe street, it calls for no formula retail uses within these three spaces for a period of five years and it has to do with the signage for the bank as well. once again, the project sponsor is amenable to these conditions being added to the motion before you. at this time, the department is supporting the project, and we are recommending approval with conditions, it would not dislocate neighborhood use, we did get compliments with the mixed of use in the neighborhood and would result in three small store fronts and please note that the department's recommendation does not include support of the conditional use authorization

for use size, this recommendation was made before the agreement was in place earlier this week, so if you should decide to grant this for use size, we can make an intent and the motion would have to come before you at a later date. this concludes my presentation and i'm available for any questions or comments. >> thank you. project sponsor. >> good afternoon, president fong, members of the commission, i'm jim ruben and we're representing bank of the west. the project as you have already learned is a bank of the west branch to go in a building that is under construction now probably to be completed siem -- sometime in the first quarter, the hearing on this was originally scheduled to be june, this june, and now there have been multiple meetings between bank of the west, personnel directly, i was not

involved in them and the neighborhood groups, they are here, i assume that they'll be speaking, those series of discussions culminated in a meeting that was held last week, it wasn't the first one but it was the final out. we did hammer out what i think is an agreement, there is one issue that i will address in a minute. because it took so long, we're also now as you heard subject to the finance services conditional use so what we need is a conditional use for a retail location over 3 thousand feet, we need a conditional use for the financial services and we need a formula retail, so what i would like to do since the staff recommendation may have been moderated right now but the staff recommendation was not to allow the larger size, i think what i heard is maybe they're okay with it but nevertheless, i think i would like to show you what that

issue is. here is -- let's do it like this, it's probably best. a ground floor plan of the building that is under construction and what you've got right here is market street that is diagonal, and the rest of this gray area including this right here is the store front. the neighborhood commercial district conditional use authorization that imposes the 3 thousand foot limitation is almost always i would say 99% of the time imposed on retail stores that are chalk a block down a block, they're rectangular spaces, there are clear spans where you can adequately and efficiently program the entire space and get 3 thousand usable feet. it doesn't take much to look at this space and realize that it is not a rectangular space, it

doesn't have clearer spans, these are structural elements that come straight down through the location, there's a dog lake in the back that makes it difficult to program and this space we recently agreed with the neighborhood organizations to set aside and i'll talk about that in a minute but it strikes me that if there is ever a justification for a conditional use, the 3 thousand foot limitation in a neighborhood commercial district, this is it, so -- and i hope that you will also see that. the rest of the detail is that we have agreed voluntarily, but we have agreed with the neighborhood organizations to set aside three spaces that are shown right here that are to be leased for retail use, although formula retail is already subject to a conditional use

authorization requirement, we've agreed to not seek a conditional use authorization for formula retail for five years and that's also a voluntary agreement, what we apparently don't have agreement is when the five years started. when we met in supervisor wiener's office, it was my feeling that those five years would start today if you approve our location because just like the bank of the west has already leased their location, we are going be out leasing as soon as we know that those spaces are available and that's going to start tomorrow, and we're going to do everything that we can to prelease to non-formula tenants, the neighborhood groups have suggested that the time should start at the conditional certificate of occupancy which will be sometime in the future, five years is a long time, five years from today is a long

time, it's not at the end of the five years that we're freed up to do whatever we want. we still have the conditional use requirement so they will be able to assuming they're not happy with the tenants we proposed to come here, so as opposed to the certificate of occupancy, there's many buildings in san francisco that never got a certificate of occupancy, you get a temporary certificate of occupancy, you can take occupancy of the building with a temporary certificate, there will be conditions and sometimes those conditions take another year to get the work done, so in fairness, and i think this is something that you're going to have to decide because i'm assuming you'll hear pr the neighborhood groups that they prefer to start later rather than sooner.

>> [inaudible] president of dtna and initially, dtna was opposed to this project based on the size request and through negotiations with the bank, they modified their plan to create three small spaces which can be used as two spaces if need be. so, we felt that these spaces would service the smaller business community as opposed to one big large space on the side of the building which they

had originally proposed, so we agree and support their request for the increased size to 3279 square feet if they comply with the conditions that we agreed to. those conditions mean the five year period of not seeking any formula retail in those spaces and that they would work with dtna and come back to the planning commission for oversight on external and internal signage. we asked that the five year period time start from the certificate of final occupancy and that's when it would be activated. in the event for whatever reason, construction is delayed, something happens, the

building is not finished for an unspecified time. we are stuck with an agreement that could be pushed out for an unlimited time, so that's why we are requesting the certificate of final occupancy be the day that this is activated. our concerns around the signage, if you consider that the upper market corridor is posed for 64 thousand square feet of new ground floor retail space in the next four years, we open ourselves for what i'm going to call the market street strip, we could have signage that becomes a billboard for formula retail that overshadows the residential and livability of the neighborhood. we want to make sure that we have a neighborhood where people want to come and visit,

people want to live and people that are interested in the neighborhood, therefore bank of the west has had some difficulty in finalizing their signage, what they initially proposed to us were two signs, 1-24 foot sign on 16th and another large sign at the corner of 16th market and noe. we felt that those signs they presented were not within the guidelines of the upper market design district and which are to promote moderate scale development and to contribute to the market design -- to contribute to market design and character of the neighborhood. we thought the signage was excessive, they agreed that they hadn't worked it out so we are asking that the commission put in the condition that an

agreement be reached between the neighborhood and the bank and that we come back for your oversight. thank you. >> so, i'm judith, i'm representing castro evna, i'm the chair of our planning committee. upper market is kind of a dividing line or a border between the neighborhood association with castro evna, neighborhood association, so we have an equal interest on what happens on upper market, but

dtna took the lead on this and we had agreed to support what the result of the negotiations were, so i would just like to address the question of when the -- so, originally, they were also very opposed to even having a bank on the corner there because of wanting to have a very active pedestrian activity area right on that corner which is a three-way intersection and a bank didn't seem to add very much to the mix there, but we agreed not to oppose and if a negotiation could result in an agreement. so, addressing the