12th with that, with the extension of lafayette, [speaker not understood], kipling on the next block. so, 12th and 11th. you have the big regional serving streets, 10th and ninth. i think the idea with those they'll carry large volumes of traffic, but they will need to be high-speed and high volume because that's really the killer. that's the thing that drives commerce away. that's at the high speeds. dangerous for pedestrians, other users of the street. could you accommodate large flows of traffic, but at a saner pace? could we add things like pedestrian improvements, crosswalks, corner build outs, greater visibility for caracas? things that improve the safety, easier to cross, less barriers for the neighborhood. then you have 8th street. that's one of the streets you wanted to reclaim for neighborhood serving uses, transit street as well. 7th street you see in the plan. and then coming from north to south mission street, just out of our plan area but that is a important commercial street and transit street as well.

howard and folsom which i talked about. and on the next street down is harrison and bryant. these are freeway fronting streets. and, so, what we tried to do was concentrate the residential uses and actually intensify the amount of residential that's permitted. but did that north of harrison street. so, the idea is harrison and bryant will be carrying large volumes of traffic from the freeway through the neighborhood. also front on the freeway, the freeway itself is a blighting influence on the neighborhood. so, could we concentrate residential uses north of that and leave that more for the pdr uses, commercial uses, nighttime entertainment, that type of thing. all the residential enclaves in that part of the area. it's hard to see on this map, but many of the alley ways will run through and stop. arterial streets interrupt them. we wanted to create connectionses between those biggar tierial streets.

these little alley way neighborhoods begin to connect to one another so you don't have to walk several hundred feet to a major intersection and then back in order to go from one of these alley ways to another. you see quite a number on folsom street, streets like rausch and so on that we wanted to connect across the freeway bridge. so, here's our plan. as i said, the devil is in the details in terms of implementation. implementing this is going to require cooperation of a lot of city agencies, mta, planning department, transportation and so on. we've had great cooperation with transportation authority as jim mentioned working with chester fong. they extended this kind of idea of reclaiming alley ways that was first pioneered in the eastern soma area, the som pac area, developing it as part of that. we are definitely going to need more planning work to

realize this plan. i think if we do realize this plan, we'll allow this to serve the city-wide transit phoenixes we do now, and be a livable neighborhood and stainable neighborhood. unless you have any questions, i'll let you see the rest of the presentation. thank you for your time today. >> thank you. * >> i've lived in south of market since 1977, so, i guess that's 35 years. to john [speaker not understood], i'm the new kid. john has lived and worked in our neighborhood for i don't know how long, many years. he is a nonprofit housing developer, developed his land use skills, being a key person involved in the original south of market plan, and in the redevelopment agency's. and this afternoon john would like to speak about some of the key outcomes of this process.

john elderling. >> thank you, jim. and good afternoon, commissioners. actually, jim has one year on me. i got there in '78. when i took the job at top coat. and i've only lived there since '96 actually physically. what i want to address is what to expect the actual real life results to be over the next two decades given the enactment of this plan. what actually will happen, what are the key outcomes. and the first thing i want to draw your attention to is that the plan is a substantial up zoning in terms of residential development in particular compared to the 1990 zoning that is in place today. what we expect to come from that -- and, of course, it

depends on the economics of the housing market over the next 20 years and the business cycles, but it's reasonable to expect several thousand housing units and perhaps 10,000 new residents. that would be more than double the existing population. so, you could say the population will double at least in west soma based on this plan. of course, that has -- and what we did in terms of that up zoning was do what we can in terms of the rules, the height limits, the various things that govern individual lot development. to try to focus most of it on the larger sites, the sites over a half acre in size. the reasoning for that is we didn't want a wall of buildings on a block face or, you know, one big lumpy high density area somewhere in the neighborhood. what makes -- once of the things that makes of the south of market what it is today is that you have sosuch a wide mixture of building sizes and heights and ages and types and,

of course uses residential and businesses * right next to each other all over the place. the neighborhood is real hodgepodge. physically and economically and socially. and we wanted to keep that character. and, so, the method that we identified to work towards that end is because the large lots are scattered at random throughout the district to focus as much of the new development on them. it's also of course easier to have design guidelines and that also produced good results on the larger properties. we did increase the number of residential enclave districts that exist now on the alleys throughout the district. the alleys are a special place with a special, very typically low-rise character, low-intensity character. and everybody in the community wanted to maintain that pattern as well. thanks to the double population

and also the make over of folsom street being planned, perhaps a two-way boulevard, as tom mentioned the increased muni service, we really envision folsom street becoming the neighborhood shopping retail street that re dents of south of market have wanted for decades. * residents we propose to zone it as an nct district, neighborhood commercial transit, and we have special zoning regulations where we're hoping to get two floors of commercial space, for example, in the new development sphere so that neighborhood retail and professional offices and others could locate there. we, of course, as mentioned earlier, would be for the neighborhood infrastructure needs, we have proposed all along to incorporate east neighborhoods community benefit

fee process which you are familiar. from the city-wide perspective of course as well as the major new housing supply, we wanted to accommodate substantial economic growth in western south of market * . for the tech industry in particular, we expanded the former sso district, now it will be known as west soma nuo, so that it reaches -- it will reach from caltrain to showplace square along townsend street. this is a substantial development opportunity. but perhaps more significant, throughout the whole area, in particular in the nct and the urban mixed use on th and 10th street, we have really relaxed the 1990 zonings limitations on business development. * ninth we allow most times any kind of office and any kind of business in those areas. we would expect to see dozens,

certainly, probably -- how can you predict, but a hundred or more new small businesses take advantage of this over the coming 20 years to open up. and that also is consistent with our vision of a genuine mixed use neighborhood with substantial small business activity as well as substantial residential neighborhood amenities. we also specifically maintain south of the freeway the commercial only district, the current sli from the 1990 zoning to become the service arts light industrial district, the sally district under our west soma plan. there is a real need for this district. that is the most auto accessible and auto impacted part of our neighborhood. there is need for substantial large scale retail.

we allow retail up to 25,000 square feet, which we call a mid box. it's not a big box. costco is 100,000 feet or something. it's not anywhere near that scale development, but it is large enough for a retail development that addresses the needs of central city residents rather than having to drive to a center to find something, they'll be able to find it in south of market. and we continue to allow pdr, the production distribution and repair uses almost anywhere? in our plan area. * of course, this historically, of course, a big issue in the eastern neighborhoods was very prevalent in south of market. the economics are diminishing it gradually, but we believe there will always be a demand for space for those pdr businesses what are called high value, they have high revenues

per square foot. and, so, they can pay more for their space or they can even afford to buy their building in order to remain there. and that would be especially true of any pdr business that has to be close to its customer base in the central city, in the central business district. and there are such. and, so, we expect them to remain and they're a very important part of the neighborhood and they add a lot of character and variety to it as well. for the community building aspects, we of course allow arts activities just about everywhere. there is strong support for the arts. we know that the economics of space is going to have a big impact on which arts organizations and activities can afford to remain here over the long term. but we make it possible. finally, we certainly expected there will be substantial amounts of affordable housing built, but the inclusionary

housing and the thousands of new market rate units and also a good number of nonprofit affordable housing developments. and those in particular, we would anticipate, as has been the practice for the last 10 years in many, to include social services space, child care and so on, within those projects. that is the long-term strategy to be sure that the nonprofit organizations that do provide services to our residents can afford to remain in the neighborhood even if rents go up in the open market. so, these are some of the major outcomes we anticipate over the long term. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon again. just wanted to briefly wrap up and summarize.

can we get the overhead again real quick? just to remind you again, the purpose of today, obviously you know by now, was to give -- really give you a good understanding of the process that the community and the task force went through to develop the plan, what are the big ideas coming out of the plan, where the potential impacts for the area. there are a lot of details that need to be discussed. and when you get your packets this afternoon for next week, you should have the initiation packets which will have a lot of detailed information about the proposed zoning, proposed heights, the proposed planning code changes, and general plan changes. and you'll be able to take a look at that, and on the 15th we'll be able to have a robust discussion on those specific details leading up to an adoption hearing on the sixth. but that concludes our

presentation and we're available for any questions you may have. >> thank you. is there any public comment on this item? good afternoon, commissioners. my name is paul warmer. i just want to point out what a beneficiary other parts of the city can be from the learning of this project. i speak from my experience working on the japantown activities. and how incredibly valuable a number of the concepts that came out of the western soma plan were to helping us. everything from establishing community goals and objectives that can be used as a touch stone to say, does this planning proposal meet the objectives? does it support the objectives or does it not? a very valuable tool that frequently isn't there and

should be. the work of the community outreach and the work that chris schaeffer and the cop folks have done, again, something that carried over superbly. the means of engaging with planning staff and the way paul lord was able to educate us, just phenomenal. so, the benefits have come out of this, what they have done, really is far reaching and i encourage the planning department to take advantage of that as they look at other community planning and revisions to community plans going forward. thank you. >> thank you. any further public comment? good afternoon, commissioners. my name is bernadette [speaker not understood]. center located at the corner of sixth and mission. our organization has been around for 10 years in the neighborhood working very closely with the filipino residents in the neighborhood. and i just want to commend the

hard work of the staff and the other community members. it's a long time coming and we've been involved in the process. the residents have been involved. i particularly worked closely with the social heritage, the filipino social heritage district. and its formation. and the whole process allowed community to be involved. and myself not being a planner, i think it's very important for not only the leaders in the community leaders in the neighborhood, but also the residents to be brought on this journey, on this path to understand what the planning is, to be involved in the process. and i think this was done well. and give some overview, i just encourage you to support this plan. -- west soma plan. thank you. >> thank you. sue hester.

i want to follow-up with paul warmer's comments in particular. i give a large thank you to paul lord who is not here, but his presence is here as well as the members of the task force. if this is a one-off planning process, we will have failed. this process has involved the community at a level that is much deeper than i have seen in just about anything. i went through all the hearings on eastern neighborhoods and particularly paid attention to the mission because i have a stake in the mission. it is not top-down planning that you have today. you have bottom-up planning, and the planning department doesn't always have a friendly

relationship with that which comes from the community. the community keeps banging into doors and saying, hey, there are skill sets in the people in the community. it has been done in the tenderloin. it has been done in chinatown. and it is part of your planning code. but everyone pays a lot more attention to that which has come through the planning department staff. it's what you put in your general plan. you do not put community plan in the general plan unfortunately. there is no chinatown plan. it exists in the planning code. and i think i have learned a lot by my off and on participation in western soma. i don't go to anywhere near all of their meetings, just a little bit. and i learned a lot from today. and my brain has been thinking

about all the planning processes that i'm involved in already and things that came up today that are input that are really of value for other planning processes. there are imperfect planning processes all over the place and i ask the commission to start thinking and start analyzing and asking the questions of how we can -- as a planning department representatives, the planning commission can change the process to use the skills and what we have gone through on the western soma plan in every planning process. thank you. >> is there any additional public comment? okay. public comment portion is closed. commissioner antonini. >> thank you for an excellent presentation.

i have -- before my comments, i have a question which could either be answered by mr. yeager or mr. makko. this is for the benefit of the public, but the boundaries of the western soma could be confusing because a bow tie configuration. and briefly perhaps someone can come rise it. if not today, maybe for next week for the benefit of the public and benefit of all of us as to why, for example, people may ask there is an area south of market that is not part of western or eastern soma. * summarize and there are parts of showplace square and there are other boundaries, why the boundaries were drawn where they were and how the area was carved out in simple terms. >> sure, sure. our boundaries are basically determined by other existing planning processes that

surround us. it would be easiest to say that western soma begins at fourth street and extends more or less west 12, 13 to division street. and is essentially from mission street or just a scoach down to mission street and townsend street. the bow tie is because in the middle there you have the sixth street redevelopment project area, which no longer exists. but that was included as part of zoning goes as part of the eastern neighborhoods process. so, fourth street to division, mission to townsend, with the exception of the sixth street area. >> thank you, mr. makko. that explains it because that was already preempted being part of a redevelopment. i think this is a very desirable process because what i heard today is people getting together and deciding what

collectively might be the best thing rather than -- and i'm not being critical of the other processes, but oftentimes i hear situations, particularly in transportation planning, where, well, let's see what we can get funding for and it's done in piecemeal ways. and i'm hearing what i like to hear is, let's pick out what we feel would be the most ideal solutions. we may not be able to get it. the market will control to some degree. public funding will control it, but at least you have a blueprint. and that's always better to start with, what you most desire, and try to adapt the processes that are available, funding, or interest to what you have rather than sort of going in the other direction. i'm not saying that's always happened in the past, but sometimes that occurs. a few thoughts in reading some of these things over. and we'll talk about this more later. the cultural parts of it which

are going to be spoken about at greater length, and we must not forget the part of area that had a cultural background stemming from the 1850s to the end of world war ii or the 1950s or 1960s. slightly to the east of your area, but there was a large greek and atlantic community which is noted there. i don't know how much of that's in there. and of course the working population, mostly male, that occupied much of this area during the 18, 1900s and the first 50 or 60 years of the 20th century has to be included. and thenedth -- then the other thing that i think is essential is frying to preserve what we can where possible. one of the worst things is let's avoid knowledge, [speaker not understood] the western addition, and what remains and was not destroyed tends to be very sought after and very

desirable and is being developed and prospering in some of the areas which were created new in those areas are the areas where there's less desirable, they're harder to deal with and architecturally are inferior. so, i don't mean that anything that's new is going to be inferior, but we have to really -- these residential enclaves where they exist and all these other historic areas, if we can keep them, i think they have an appeal that will help funding for other things we want to do. and i like a lot of the things that were presented today, particularly in terms of humanizing the streets. mr. radulavich talked about doing what we can to traffic calm, and we can do that even on the streets we admit are going to be those streets that are feeders for the freeway and the bay bridge. but it's not impossible to, in some instances, make some

streets two ways. maybe not those streets, but even on those streets the lights may not always have to be completely synchronized to encourage quicker speeds. may slow traffic down a little, may back it up, but we just have to make that decision. and certainly on the other streets, i think folsom is a key street and i would encourage as much real transit as we can put on there, be it light rail or something in the future would be a great thing for folsom because i see three major, if you will, east-west corridors, market street being one and of course we've got lots of transit on there already. and 16th street eventually will be. and then folsom might be the middle street, which would be the one can bring transit and make great connections between the eastern part of the city and to the mission district and other areas that lay to the west. so, i think that's really

important to look at. and then, i think the task force, i was really impressed with the diversity and the number of people. the only thing missing on the task force, but certainly that may be our role as commissioners, is those of us who don't live or have businesses in the area, but -- or other parts of the city, we have to have some input also into what's there and making sure that it's important what residents and residential businesses say, but we all have a stake and we have to all have input in what happens in an area. i was really impressed with a lot of the things that were brought in about allowing more densification, more growth of residential, and particularly allowing -- relaxing business and office restraints to allow new businesses. i think given the proper emphasis in this, we can all benefit from those businesses coming into the appropriate sites. let me see if i had any other

notes here. yeah, there was talk about development on large sites only or emphasize it, but i think there will be plenty of small sites wherein fill might be appropriate. and i don't think we can completely roll that out. it just depends on what the development is, how large is it, how does it fit in with the fabric of the whole area. but it is easier to probably do it on a larger site, but maybe not exclusively. and those are my main comments so far, but i think this is really a good step in the right direction. i'm interested in seeing the next phase of it. >> commissioner mar. >> i would like to humbly commend everybody for an incredible piece of work. i think the most comprehensive bottom up piece of work i've seen for the first time in this city and i think it's exemplary.

hopefully for many other processes we will engage moving forward. what is important to me is every aspect of this project is so balanced and so well presented that there is nothing you can really say. you can acknowledge its strength and you hope that it will hold together. and the only thing i'll say, and i'm saying that to the planning department, i'm saying it to this commission as we move forward, i hope that the creation of the central corridor plan can proceed with an open dialogue, avoid conflict and contradiction, and indeed carefully balance in between. it's very difficult to develop a plan on something that has taken so many years, has so much detail and so much quality, it's again confronted with a plan which is the usual from the top-down planning.

we need to be comfortable using these words, not pitting them against each other. planning is typically done by the planning department. the city engages a very large number of people at very high cost to do the planning. but this process very clearly shows that we don't have hundreds of people in this room speaking about what hasn't been done. what has been done is the result of what is presented today. so, we are not in these 12-hour meetings discussing what doesn't work. this seems to come forward in a manner where things are working. and i'll say in short, i'd like to just basically say that what i expect for the creation of the central corridor plan, that we carefully balance wh