next. in the body of the tower as we mentioned in may, the corners are curved glass. very beautiful, very refined, very contextual contemporary skin. but that's been augmented with a depth and density of metal work so that the building will have our very light and very kind of glow in an ambient way. the color for the metal work is intended to be a slight iridescent pearl pink. you can imagine that this is a building that really will shine on the skylight. next, and at the very top -- and this is new from the last time you saw it, we've

introduced four vertical facetses of about 150 feet in length. these vertical facets also are a response to observationses by the planning staff that the building needs to end in a very grand and icon i can way. this is a very simple, very straightforward idea. we think it's an idea that will last over time quite well. it's also allows us to introduce a lighting element. next. at the very top that is, again, very simple, very powerful icon ic and operates at the urban scale. it is a gesture one will see at a great distance. and i think you can also see it will be a wonderful companion to the transamerica tower. next. going back down now to mission square, next, charlie, these are images that pete walker showed you in may. but just to reinforce once again the effect of a grove of 20 mature redwood trees, on day one these trees will be about

40 feet in height. but in five to eight years they could be as much as 70 feet in height. tim hawkins' sculpture is in the foregroundand the funicular that leads to the park. and one of the interesting things that t. walker and his firm are doing is making a visual and physical connection between the park level and mission square so that you see smaller redwoods at the edge of the parka above, mature redwoods on the ground. so, it's as if the building and the transit center are really sitting in this very, very lovely urban, but at the same time treed environment. next. * park above you are now standing next to the transit center. the funicular is just above you. in the distance you can see the elevator to city park. again, very prominent, very well signed and actually quite large. next. we're now at the park level itself. you see mission square below.

the concentration of activity just outside the bridge connection from the transit center, it's where a majority of people will come by escalator and elevator up to the park level. there is a large skylight that brings light deeply into the transit center itself. there are restaurants, festival plazas, points of activity. so, this is a real nexus of concentration of human activity at the park level. next. and if you go up to the park, standing back looking back towards what we're characterizing as the porch, it's the canopy and the connection from the tower to the transit center, very generous, very visible and again it operates on an urban scale. it is a bold and welcoming gesture. next. if you move a bit more closely you see the canopy above you. this canopy has several functions. it will obviously shelter you from sun and rain, but also it helps mitigate the flow of wind on the face of the tower as does the depth of the metal

work on the tower facade itself. so, this should be a very calm and a very inviting place to be. and you see the elevator from mission square at that location. a few views of the tower from the bay bridge, i apologize for how washed out it is in your screen here. needless to say this is going to be a powerful presence in the skyline. if you squint in the material we gave you, you'll see that the vertical facet, the 150-foot vertical facet itself is very visible. again, rather serene as a gesture. it's not an overpowering gesture and we think it is a gesture that will last the test of time. but it certainly marks this high point in the city skyline. next. and the view from potrero hill. next. and dolores park. thank you very much. >> thank you.

okay. opening it up to public comment. >> and as the speakers come forward [speaker not understood], i neglected to remind all of us to turn off or silence our cell phones. thank you. >> i'm going to call a couple names that i have. david snyder. [speaker not understood] costello, pamela butlery. it's been a great pleasure to live in san francisco. >> your name, sorry. my name is david snyder and it's been a great pleasure to live in this city for over 30 or 40 years. and i have particular respect

for julia morgan [speaker not understood]. but one time i wrote a piece that i guess through the force of karma appeared in the chronicle, i forget which, from the hurst papers. i've got a number of pieces. it was called between the bridges of the sun and of the moon. and it was inspired by ching yee who wrote a book called the silent traveler in san francisco. i wonder if ching yee could come back and see now a building that as the prior speaker said, quote, will dominate the skyline. it will be the height of twin

peaks. i verified that with joshua right before i spoke to you. and that's without the funicular. with it it's even taller. * than twin peaks. is that the right size and scale for san francisco? or would that building be more appropriate in manhattan? i would like to request that this project be killed and not seen the light of day on behalf of the citizens of san francisco who have been here for years and who do not wish to see, as i've read some of the reports, that the views of the east bay and other parts of

the city will be blocked by this building, the height of twin peaks. thank you very much. between the bridges of the sun and the moon and something that dominates the skyline. good afternoon, commissioners and everyone in here in the room. my name is ignacio and i'm with laborerses local 261. we currently represent over 4,000 members here in the city and county of san francisco. and i am here on behalf of all those members and also a lot of community folks that are here as well in full support of this project.

and i hope that the commissioners will approve all the findings and approve this project. i also want to say that this will be a nice building. and i would like to be the first one to look at the skies once this is built. thank you. good afternoon. my name is pamela buttery, and i am probably the most proximate neighbor to the planned tower. i live at 301 mission street in the millennium building, and i would be greatly affected by shadow and the fact that 75% of my windows will be blocked from

the sun by the tower which will only be a few feet from me across fremont street. however, this is a planned development. i am kind of perturbed by the fact that i was a real estate developer and there are two problems i think with this building, and that is the approximation of two very, very tall tower. i think that the millennium billion is at the moment the second tallest building in san francisco. so, you are proposing in your -- i think it's 12 c, proposing an exception for the separation of towers. so, two very tall buildings to be this proximate i think is a problem and i have a problem

with the wind funnel that will be created for myself and 425 other residents of the building. but now i'm speaking as a taxpayer and a property owner in san francisco. and i believe that the tallest building in san francisco, which is bringing onto the market first class office space is in the wrong location. i build office buildings most recently in development. i stood before planning commission and i stood before redevelopment agencies. i build office buildings and most important aspect of any real estate development is location, location, location. and cited on the site of the transit center is not the most

desirable neighborhood. i'm going to live in that neighborhood, but it is not the locations for attorneys, banks, cpas and venture capitalists who pay the highest rents. this is a problem for the developers. it is also a problem for me, a taxpayer that my money is going into this and it's far too tall in the wrong place. thank you. >> next speaker i'm going to call one more time. come on up, sir. euronext, yep. -- you're next, yep. and next on deck is adrian simi. hello, commissioners my name is andrew dream. i live in the sunset. our city is about to be bombed, you're about to push the button. i'll remind you last time i looked, the san francisco planning department promotes the order of the harmonious use of land and improved quality of life for our diverse

communities and future generations. after the felling of the twin towers on september 11 we were supposed to become humble, slow down, reassess our good fortune and care for one another. as a member of the public overwhelmed with the daily responsibilities, i count on my civic representatives to recognize their responsibility to heighten their awareness with the positive possibilities of our times and yet in the midst of latent inferiority complexes and lack of inspired vision, you allow yourselves to descend into a quest to keep up with the shanghais, the due buys, the [speaker not understood] and in so doing you kill this beautiful city. i'm pro union, pro jobs, i'm pro construction, but people will do anything for jobs and money. are we supposed to stand before this monolith and say, thank you for the park and thank you? this is a shame.

it's even a shame to see mr. clark stand here before this because this company, they build a lot of good buildings, but this is just an opportunity to build the tallest building and to just use this city as a place to do that is so disrespectful and wrong. and i think that's pretty much all i have to say. it's just really saddening and just -- this building has absolutely no character. that's the really sad thing about this whole process. when the four projects came up for the competition, every one of them was just like, what the hell. i mean, is this a building people would go around the country -- around the world to come and see like other buildings around the world? we could do so much more. here's an example of -- this is agricultural, but this is a

tower which is -- it's a whole environment. in san francisco, what we were leaning towards as a city that we always stood out in the world for human rights, for environmentalism, we should be doing something like this, not just agricultural, but an environment. anyway, i'm not against architecture, i'm not against building. this is just wrong. another slip in the direction of disaster. anyway, thank you. thanks. good afternoon, president fong and commissioner. i'd like to present -- my name is adrian simi, field representative with carpenters local 22. i'd like to present some of my comrades and brothers and

sisters that work in construction here in san francisco and the east bay and south bay. what this project will do for us -- and i'll tell you, these brothers and sisters here, many of them right now are out of a job. they're looking for jobs. they're on an out of work list. they need a job. they're here on their own time. they're volunteering to come out here because what this project will do is create opportunity for them to go to work. it will create opportunity for local san franciscans through local hire to get on a job here in san francisco, to be productive citizens. what it does is it will create thousands of jobs, construction jobs, and from that tenant improvement jobs, jobs that will continue. i'll tell you, because i know, i'm a product of that. i got in the union in 1979 when

i was 19 years old. i worked for almost 28 years strictly in san francisco. and that was a time when most of the subcontractors and contractors were local. we started it, we grew up in san francisco. my friends worked for contractors, and we worked downtown. i worked almost 28 years solely downtown. now that i'm a field rep, i work -- i'm still downtown and i see that this can happen -- it can continue to happen in the future and it's jobs like this that grow san francisco, that put people into apprentice ships, people into good full-time jobs with benefits for their families, insurance benefits, pensions, these are exactly what we need. we feel that this is a great job and we'd like to see this project move ahead and i thank you for your time.

>> is there any additional public comment? good afternoon, commissioners. my name is jackie flynn. i'm the executive director of the [speaker not understood] institute, san francisco. our core mission is to support racial and economic justice and to advocate for economickally disadvantaged communities throughout san francisco. we're a nonprofit that serves all of san francisco, although we are located in bayview hunters point. we are originally created to engage communities of color, particularly the black community, to participate in the civic process, educating residents on voting, registering and getting out to vote through our outreach efforts. we've evolved to provide community services that support our advocacy efforts to educate and prepare san francisco re dents, especially for the work force. we work closely with our union brothers and sisters and pre-apprenticeship programs to

provide pathways and outlets to sustain families here in san francisco. we see this project as an opportunity to create jobs for union brothers and sisters, and we want to see this building move forward. it will continue to attract tourists as well as stimulate our economy. we stand in solidarity with our union family 261, carpenters local 22 and the building and construction trades council and we're in full support of this development. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is sue hester. i'm not going to repeat the comments i made last week about proposition k at the hearing, that was the other commission. it's interesting you started off the meeting by relating the

earthquake history and how this is a commemoration of it. and we have an anniversary of the loma-prieta earthquake coming up. the dixie cup tower that is over here, you are familiar with it. [speaker not understood] the flood building and our power went out for several days and it was hard for people to walk up 11 floors. how high are they going to have to walk up to this building? we are in earthquake country. what exactly is the record of this project? did you all have -- oh. all those presentation documents that were exposed on the screen, were they all made part of this record? i am a person who goes to

records that are really ancient with the planning department. what is the record on this project? is it -- you have no court reporter, you have no transcript, and you have a lot of presentations. and if the presentations are not put in the files, they are not in the record. has anyone gone to transamerica building in the recent time and sat in the red wood forest? i have a feeling that if you had, you would not be so quick to say planting redwoods is a good idea in an urban environment. it is dense. it is -- redwoods in their natural habitat are in a forest. and on the ground floor of the forest it's forest. and do we want to have that in a downtown setting?

with regard to what you have downtown around this area, you have an opportunity to open it up for the people or to close it off. i do not see that you are thinking through the myriad of issues. in prop k that is going to affect the shadows, it's very far away as well as the stack of dixie cups in an earthquake. thank you. >> is there any additional public comment? good afternoon, commissioner. my name is dick mill et. i live in potrero hill. i've lived in the city the last 60 years ever since i got out of college. i'm an architect. i am a big follower of city planning.

i strongly believe in it and i know that city planning is changing or at least city planning in san francisco is changing very much. i'm from the period when we had height limits. do we have -- but no one spoke of height limits. we spoke of heights, but we didn't speak of what the allowed height limit is this, or what's the new city planning term, exemption that this was going to get an exemption. this made in-house, to let it just -- any height goes. and not only that, [speaker not understood] 960 square foot high building with 160 feet of decorative cap on top of that, i don't have a problem with it. i don't think it's the best design high-rise. if we're going to compete with the high-rises that are going to be built in the world, this

is the best example. i don't get it. i also don't believe in doing the copy cat standard of building high-rises on the waterfront. the thing that make san francisco very nice we don't have many high-rises on the waterfront. if we do, who could afford to live there, you'd have to have a passport to be able to buy a place there. i have a big problem with doing the fancy big tall building. just like they said in oklahoma, as high as a building ought to go. i just think it's way too damn tall. i don't know how it fits into the planning code. no one's talked about that. it's too close to the water. what is it, an office building? damn, it's a mistake. thank you.

commissioners, my name is ruben santiago. i've come before you before. all i'm hearing is all this negativity against san francisco and that's what's kept san francisco from changing for the better. all these people complaining, complaining. why don't they clean the streets of the urine, the homeless lying there, all that. that's what they should be talking about. but going back to this tower, okay. when this came out in 2007, i saw this great 1200 foot 80-story skyscraper and boy did that knock me off my feet. it looks beautiful. it looked humongous. it was something a san francisco couldn't even dream about. but why did it change -- why did it get shrunk? maybe for the shadows, okay. i could live with that.

but there hasn't been that much opposition for this tower and i can't see why they had to reduce the tower because the tower at 1200 foot was going to cast shadows and if there was no opposition against the shadows, then why was that not looked into? but since it's not going to be built at 1200 feet and it's at 1,0 70 feet, couldn't the planning department and the heinz architects get together and maybe raise it 30 feet more, raise the crown a little bit and make it an even 1100 feet? you know. [laughter] i mean, is that too much to ask, you know? and looking at that rendering, the tower kind of looks like it shrunk a little bit more, you know. so, they have a whole year before they start working or breaking ground on it. why can't they get back and talk it over and see if they

can increase it just a little bit. you know, so, that's all i have to say and it's been a pleasure coming to you, you know, in front of you. thank you. >> thank you. good afternoon, commissioners, thank you for hearing this item today. my name is andrew cm stock, i'm with the construction employers association. we represent many of the general contractor unions that are building these type of projects in san francisco and i'm also here as a san francisco resident. what i'd like to talk about are three things, first, jobs. we need them. we need good paying union jobs. and this project will bring those. second is growth. this city needs the growth of this tower to stimulate the economy to bring more money into this downtown area, just in general keep things moving

forward and help to get us out of this recession. third is an attraction. this building will be a signature building. it will be an attraction. it will continue to spur tourism and again go back into the economy. so, i think that just in general i want to urge you to approve these items and adopt these measures so that this project go can go forward. thank you. >> thank you. * any additional public comment? seeing none, the public comment portion is closed. yes. [speaker not understood]. >> there are several new people in the audience who maybe don't have the history on the planning and zoning. it might be worth briefly going over kind of where we came from and how we got here. this project is the center piece of a planning effort that's been going on for

probably six years and it was the result of an effort to look at ways of solving really two major issues. one is creating a funding mechanism to help support the transit center, the transit terminal and the tunnel that would connect the north america tal to the fourth and king station, but also to solve an issue we're recognizing in the department to about increasing the capacity for new office space in the city. and that was created by a task force that was created in 2007, i believe, between the city and the transbay joint powers authority and the redevelopment agency. and it was very clear that there was a strong desire to create a very high density district around the terminal. that led to the larger planning process. that plan was adopted in may by this commission and adopted unanimously by the board this past summer. i think in support of the note that this plan -- this project and this tower has been contemplated as part of that