i am with the homeowners association. mr. crawford referred to us having approved this. that's not quite correct. ten months ago we talked to him and the conditional use was for a bar and they wanted to extend the hours and they were for the bar to operate as it was and not extending the hours. we oppose the extension of hours for liquor establishmentos polk street. with that being said this hearing is not about how nice the bar is, how nice the owners are, or who comes up here and talks. it's about a establishment that has been running seven years disregarding the conditional use. they were supposed to be i wine store with tasting. they have been operating as a bar for seven years. if they get this conditional use why would any business in san francisco adhere to the conditions? they would

ignore them and get rewarded for ignoring them seven years later. even the wording, the legalization, implies it's ln illegal for seven years. i urge you not to pass it. make the conditional use process mean something in this city. thank you. >> >> i am david and i have known william for for three years and i am a small businessman myself owning retail stores and in my opinion a conditional use permit allows exactly for what is going on there. if you're allowed to buy a bottle of wine or taste it before you purchase it that's exactly what is going on there. it's a casual environment compared to some of the clubos polk street and having lived in the area i really like the environment of it. i think it's a great use of it, and i think

it really does clean up a lot of what is going on down there, and i think he's doing the neighborhood a great service by toning it down because if you ever stepped there on a friday or saturday night it's scary and that's a nice quiet place and it does feel like your living room and i feel he's using it like it's proposed. you can try the wine before you buy a bottle and you don't have to worry about getting run over in the street so i am in favor of it. >> thank you. >> hi there. i am -- [inaudible]. i am a semi new resident of san francisco. let's been almost a year now but since i of living here on moving one of the first places i met a friend after work was at the poor house, and it was

intimidating coming into the big city but i found this place it's very comfortable. i felt -- i mean -- i frequent there about twice a month and meet up with girlfriends and me and my friends feel comfortable there. it's relaxed atmosphere. we are not approached by someone who might be extremely intoxicated and unsafe for walking outside for any reason, and recently since i have been going there the improvements made me more comfortable and, i feel like it would be a disservice to many young professionals like myself who do enjoy the atmosphere of that location. >> thank you. >> hi. i am gladys black and i live a block from the bar, the

poor house, and i am a nurse, and i am a regular customer of the bar, and after work i go to this bar with my friends, and i can totally say that this bar is a very nice and quiet place to go and have a glass of wine with my friends, and it is also a safe place to go and hang out with friends, so i hope you help him move forward with his business. thank you. >> thank you. tom and linda chapman i have a card from you. >> hi. i am lynn tom and i moved from new york city and moved here may of 2010. i love the neighborhood. i have no problems with the poor house being a business, but the problem with them is they have the windows wide open at night

where the noise travels. i live directly across the street. i have called numerous times complaining about them. i emailed captain anne man ox and didn't hear of the complaints until i addressed them to her. like i said i have no problem. they can do their business. they can stay alive. it doesn't matter. i want my rest. i want my peace and quiet. i moved from a big city to this wonderful city. i love it here but i want to live in harmony with them. i want my peace and quiet. i want to sleep at night and when they do have live entertainment oh my god i wish you were in my living room and hear the noise. that's all i have to say but thank you very much for listening. >> thank you. ms. chapman.

>> okay. i will say what frank and if you vote for this, to approve this, to legalize it call the university back and you're going to legalize them because when i went to their hearings for the scoping of the eir and there were numerous people that came from schools and all the wonderful things that they do and contribute but nevertheless they were doing illegal things and i heard anger from this commission about it. what is happening here? what is the department doing? why is the staff giving you misleading information in this case? i mentioned before in the army they said the generals were being treated like mushrooms, you know, kept in the dark and stuff shoveled at them. what about my things? asking for enforcement that never happened.

instead of the enforcement and goes back to february of this year and maybe before. i went into my email and recovered what i could and i checked with abc when he began expanding. he got an entertainment license and people were complaining it was running after the 10:00 p.m. and the noise and people ask what is up stairs? a senior project. and why did the conditional use permit say it won't be a bar and emphasized that. perhaps the commissioner who was here at this time of the discussion unfortunately left for a while but maybe some of the you here. why does it say over and over? maybe it was a senior housing project and put in a retail wine shop and not harmful and you figure those that were here figured it would be harmful to have a bar in a senior housing project so the fact it's there and making them awake and

making them suffer for seven years and the neighbors in the condos suffer for seven years is supposed to make it right. i got the abc application at the time and told they couldn't be a bar and has a check list and what are you applying for? retail store, bar -- applying for bar and then when they checked with the department and ran into the issue with lod and yeah it's approved bar and of course we knew and you said over and over again it can't be a bar. the managers in the senior housing they're not going to talk about it. they're not supposed to influence people or whatever but they filed 40 protest -- not against this one but on polk and they were driven by the noise up and down the street and they didn't want another bar and abc dismissed

them all and they're old people that speak chinese and don't go to the hearings. you have to protect the people. it's like the mafia in this neighborhood. >> thank you. >> hello i don't speak good english but i will try. i am hear to support william's bar and i have been in this country for 12 years -- >> can you state your name? >> [inaudible] and profession work for condominiums and construction and the cc&r's and how they can be confusing. i am not here to support this or running the bar, but i will say this that neighborhood for the last 12 years has improved. if you walk down the street and see many bars that have hard liquor sales. they make much more noise than this bar. it's very

comfortable. it made many social network friends and today i am married with a young girl rose anna who moved from minnesota and we met in the bar and as a financial controller would like to encourage a warlike this and successful and in this economic situation we shouldn't be discouraging this but to run the business successfully. thank you. >> thank you. >> my name is gary neverland and i lived in san francisco since 1980 and i have seen a lot of bars and this place is not -- there's no other place around. this rarely would be considered a bar in comparison. it's a place to go buy a bottle of wine, try it, and take it and

leave it. it's really more akin to the living room and lounge where people can talk. i didn't move on polk street and expect a lot of quiet. but when i first came to polk street it was scary. it was nothing like it is now. liam's place since he open today have really contributed to the place being more much enjoyable. i never used to go to polk street. i would just go through it, but now it's the nicest place around. it's really calm. it's quiet. they rarely have music. they do but not often enough that i of able to participate very much. he's such a nice guy. the lady that complained that the doors were open. if she went and closed the windows i know he would do it in a minute. he wants to be nice

and help people and contract. he's a fantastic guy. >> >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker please. >> good afternoon. i am steven cornell and i own a hardware store two and a half blocks where this place is. what bothers me as a business person and there for seven years and got a permit and maybe they're not doing what they're supposed to but nobody stopped them after all this time and putting money into the business and doing different stuff and possibly closed for something that is going on that nobody ever called them on that's pretty tough after making all that kind of investment. i have been on the street. i actually went to elementary school a block and a half from there so if we're going to talk about longevity i have quite a bit of it. the

street has changed a lot and to the better but the idea of closing a business or changing a business and letting it run for seven years that's not fair to any business. thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners. i steffen and for the last nine months i have been helping liam in his outreach to the community instructing him individually to knock on doors, talk to all relevant significant people in the neighborhood, all relevant bodies, engage and come up with one question. what's the best possible outcome that we can here that the community experience? and there was almost hundred letters of response and collectively, individually and i find it odd in the last 24 hours at the midnight hour a few people sent

in -- rescinding some of the support for the project. i don't believe that is good outreach on behalf of the oh organizations too. good outreach is when it's early and often and on going. we don't have a problem unless we want to create one. he takes accountability for opening the wine bar and wine retail and now asking to evolve into a wine bar and almost the same experience, slightly different in this regard. you're still pooring the wine into the glass and the customers may make a purchase off the rack. the place is so comfortable neighbors got together, they have a conversation, and instead of purchasing the bottle they want another glass and that's what the experience changes, and that's what makes it. it's a

subtle difference, a technicality but in fact a difference, and that's he's here asking for permission to evolve into something that the neighbors have supported for almost seven years, so we can regress, go back, reconfigure the space. probably make the business unsustainable. probably another vacancy which is not good, or we can move forward and get in compliance and what we can do here is keep the community together. >> next speaker please. >> hi. i am ms. stewart and work as a accountant. i like poor house and it's female friendly and makes me very relax and i think the place is one of the safest place being the

night time on polk street, so do support the poor house. thank you. >> any additional public comment? okay. public comment portion is closed. commissioner antonini. >> mr. crawford just a couple of questions. i assume what this particular establishment has and will have is a type 42 and beer and wine only. >> that's correct. >> so that isn't changing and i guess the distinction and i remember 2005 and these are tricky and subtle. you have what i guess was a retail establishment accessory liquor sales. that is beer and wine sales and now we're saying we're moving it to a category of bar -- >> well, it

was approved to be bar and retail store and accessory of tasting but the motion recognizes that what they're asking for is a bar. that the cu that had to be granted under the planning code was the same as for a bar, but all through the motion the findings discussed the fact it's not a bar. it's a tasting room. that the commission is doing this exceptional granting of a permit for a bar because that's the only mechanism to allow tastings within the abc -- excuse me, the alcohol beverage commissioner's licensing scheme. the conditions of approval state that it's for tastings only, but that was the idea. it would be basically a retail wine shop. you could go in and saw a bottle of wine and liked it and have a

tasting or occasional tasting event and someone would come in and display wines for tasting but not drink glass after glass of the same bottle of wines what they didn't want to get into. >> for this time we have to call it a bar and only beer wine and primarily engaged with certain amount of retail sales. >> yes it is a bar. they are serving alcohol by the glass. it is just beer and wine. it's a wine bar. >> okay. thank you. i have some comments. >> thank you commissioner. >> i of following this for a while. i am surprised there is this late opposition to this particular establishment because i had this report for a while and aware this was coming up and yeah i am surprised that if there were these problems with noise or other issues that the neighborhood groups or those that were impacted by the

establishment had not brought something up during this time, and all of a sudden it's an issue now so that is interesting and the use is not changing from what it's been but the use is not technically what they have been asking for. they need the approval by us to have their use to conform to what we're doing as opposed to the previous cu which was more limited -- although the distinction sometimes is rather vague because we went through the same thing at westportal and the proprietor suffered a fire and not in business anymore but we went through conditions in that case had real specifications and you will only have so many chairs and strict conditions. i don't remember in 2005 -- there could be 20 people have a wine tasting at the same time under the approval of 2005. i can't

recall a specific limitation on the tasting going on, but with that being said there is a lot of local support for it. there are some people speaking against it again and there are a couple neighborhood groups just recently come out against it. they may not have been in support at any time but recently we're hearing they're opposing it, but you always have to make a distinction between the neighborhood groups and do a lot of good things and focus our attention on things but they don't represent all the people in the neighborhood and sound like there are a lot of merchants and residents that are in favor of this, and the other thing i like -- i too am familiar with the area and a few years back it was worse than it is now and my focus on activities such as crime and drug dealing and consumption and panhandling and other things that are disruptive and real

threats to somebody's safety. noise is important and it is important and if there are problems with this establishment and it's too noisy at times i am sure the project sponsor is amenable -- i haven't asked him -- to closing the windows at certain hours of the night to make it a little less of impact on the neighbors, but i'm kind of a believer that sometimes the good drives out the bad and i certainly think this neighborhood is improving rapidly and we have to look at the distinctions just between some sort of bar or establishment that serves alcoholic beverages that's a constand problem and those are the ones that we look at a little differently that of compliant. although it was not technically complying with the conditions of approval i think it has been operating and attribute to the neighborhood and that's why i am supportive. i have also heard that -- i'm

not sure if this is true, but from the testimony this seems like it's more neighborhood serving. it's not the place that has bridge and tunnel crowd and if people come from outside the neighborhood they're mostly san francisco residents. i heard testimony about wine bars and probably true many times people feel more comfortable there because the atmosphere is not as threatening as it is in the traditional bar, and i've heard two or three people -- women in particular testify to that effect so i am fine with drafting this. i would like to hear if there are issues that need to be e milliated in our approval such as noise because i don't hear any other complaints about this other than it's in operation but it's continuous of existing use. it's not adding

any more uses to what is there. >> commissioner hillis. >> a couple of questions from staff. do you know when this moved from retail wine establishment to more of a wine bar? did that happen immediately or over time? >> it's my understanding it happened right away. it wasn't over a course of years. they started selling wine by the glass right away. >> do you know the hours? >> they're open until midnight and that was conditioned in their motion of approval. >> okay. and the music -- when did that come into play? because my issue is seems like -- it went clearly more retail wine bar with tasting to a wine bar, but seems there are

elements that are going beyond that and music and live music and loud music. is it a night club? is it more of a club at this point? do you know when that started? >> i would defer to the project sponsor for that one. >> okay. and the neighborhood associations who retracted the approval as well as the police department did they give you a reason to? >> the lower polk association did. they felt the project was misrepresented to them at the earlier meeting and felt there were noise problems there. >> okay. >> and the middle polk -- he spoke earlier and they didn't like the idea of them changing into a bar and they don't like the extended hours but the extended hours are not in front of you anymore. they deleted that from the request but they're concerned about it

becoming a full bar and the police department -- i tried to get a hold of them and haven't been successful in getting to the permit officer. he hasn't been returning my calls. >> maybe i can ask the sponsor. >> i have a limited live music permit and never goes beyond 10:00 p.m.. it's a secondary use. we have music maybe once a month. >> are there things that you are willing to do for the concerns of the neighbor and creeping more into a night blub? >> yeah. we had a speaker and moved that to the back of the facility and no music going out the windows right now. i met with them with the middle

neighborhoods and we had a glass of wine and chatted for 45 minutes. the consensus i wasn't in their area. they weren't going to contest me and i don't know why they're front and center now and i'm not even in that middle polk jurisdiction. >> okay. >> commissioner wu. >> thank you. so we do have the 2005 conditions in front of us and they fairly clearly state that the business shall be operating as retail store with wine tasting bar. i think it's really hard to support a business -- the business maybe doing well, or sort of a nice business owner, but it's hard to support that the original cu was not followed and i think it sends a bad message to other business owners that they don't necessarily have to follow the conditions of their approval, so i think it's possible for the

business to condition to run under the original cu so i don't support the one in front of us today. >> commissioner sugaya. >> yes, if you go on the internet i don't see retail sales and it's operating that way in violation of the original conditional use and seems to me that the argument presented because it's been operating for seven years illegally now it's okay because it's a nice place and the owner is a nice guy and everything else and i couldn't understand the argument because they didn't get caught because for some reason the city didn't catch them illegally, and so much time has passed that now it's okay to legalize the use.

>> i don't quite follow that logic, and therefore i'm not in support of the conditional use, and it reminds me of the piazza market in north beach. they have a conditional use to do retail grocery store. they never turned into a retail grocery store and i think the same thing is true -- again north beach example and covele's book store and to sell coffees and sell books and things and i think that has gone by the way side and turned into a minirestaurant now and this isn't the only example in the city where there are

conditional uses issued, and if i were the proprietor i would have said -- okay retail sales isn't driving it so much. let's go back to the city and ask for a conditional use at the time, a year after he opened or six months after he opened and i don't know. it just doesn't cut it for me. >> commissioner antonini. >> maybe i can ask project sponsor a little bit about the reason why the cu is before us. you probably realized that your use might have been out of compliance. is that how this came about? >> on my 2005 permit it does state -- it says "authorizing the establishment of retail wine store with wine tasting room defined as liquor store and bar" is what