>> thank you. >> >> mark graeny again. >> commissioner joseph, you are absolutely right there is nothing in the code that will allow this community out reach and it is really one of the most important things that they can do. they have had conversations about how do you make the industry stronger because they are constantly being bombarded with tax and craziness and labor issues and labor boards and on and on and on and why is it important? everybody who has an entertainment license, i would say that 99 percent of them have a liquor license and it is not in the code to make the community out reach, but how much money is that person going to save by going at the beginning and talking to the alliance for better district six, talking to jane kim and getting everybody on their side before they start putting in the protests for the abc because what does that cost them?

they get lousy conditions and they have to hire me and spend a bunch of money or somebody to deal with that and maybe they are going to pay the rent for 6 months and then what happens? now they are going into the business weekend and what do they do? >> they start taking chances and book parties that they should not take and bring in promoters and then the police have a problem. you know, in one sense, it is not good to spoon feed them, but in another sense, you got to help these people. because they have so much coming at them and you got to keep them stronger and i think that community out reach is absolutely right there. get them out there talking to people and making friends in the community, and realizing that they are part of a greater community. and help them. because if you don't, you end up with lousy operators and the people that we see up here, because you know i am always here. the people that you see that don't do the community out reach, they come back and they are shootings and there is craziness and they don't give a damn, and it is like, you know? and so i think that it is important to help them right from the beginning, this is

important and this is who you ought to be talking to and get them out there doing it so they don't get the protests on the liquor license >> thank you, any other public comment? >> public comment is closed. >> commissioners i want to thank, commissioner hyde because our bedazzled gavel is so entertainment commission, it is so cool. all right? >> that was from the harvey milk from for my birthday made last year, by dee lightener. naoe. i am bringing it to be here in the office because other than cracking my roommate over the head i have no use for it at home. >> all right. any items for the next agenda? >> seeing none, i move to adjourn.

>> good morning. i will call this meeting of the san francisco board of supervisors land use and economic development committee to order. i am scott wiener the chairman of the committee and to my left is supervisor david chiu, member of the committee and madame clerk, are there any announcements? >> please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices, and documents included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted uponed to will apea

on the march 5th board of supervisors' agendas unless otherwise stated. >> i want to acknowledge and thank sfgovtv, who are broadcasting today's meeting. before we start i want for anyone who is here watching in terms of what is i think going to happen today. this meeting was noticed for 10:00 a.m. however there are two items, excuse me, there are five items, items 2-6 that we will take up at 1:30 p.m. so we will be calling item no. 1 now, and at the request of the lead author of the legislation, supervisor farrell will be entertaining a motion to continue the item, about the condominium conversion to continue that item to march 11th, but we'll be allowing public comment on that. madame clerk could you call item no. 1. >> item no. 1 is an ordinance amending the suck division code

for buildings participating in the 2012 and 2013 condo conversion lotteries. >> okay. >> colleagues by way of background the last time this item was at land use, the topic of the proposal around tic conversions, i requested of the legislative sponsor and both sides of this matter representing tenants on the one side and tic owners and real estate interest on the other to enter into a negotiation which supervisor farrell and i have convened in recent weeks. there have been several topics on the topics that have been substantive and ongoing, but as supervisor wiener pointed out i would like to make a motion, which is also at the request of the legislative sponsor supervisor farrell that we continue this to march 11th.

>> i will open the item up for public comment either on merits of the measure or the motion to continue and just to be clear, there will be a full hearing on this on march 11th. but the public is welcome to comment today s. this any member of the public who wishes to comment on item no. 1? if so please come forward to the lectern and public comment will be for two minutes. >> [ inaudible ] >> hi my name is chris fallis and i live in the western edition and kind of a dilapidated building, the kind of building that would be really atractive to a developer who wishes to convert to a tic or condo and the history of the west is of massive evictions, and i feel like i'm in the group that might be getting replaced now. and i would like to stay as a worker in san francisco.

i would like to be able to continue renting in the building that i live or another building somewhere in the city that is is affordable to me. >> thank you. >> my name is kristen henry and i have lived as a renter for 12 years and owner for the past three years and i support this plan because as a owner of a tic we face high interest rates. my interest rate is 7%, given the current market of 3.5% you can see that is really high. i have a pre-payment penalty, so i can't refinance my property to get the current interest rates and even if i could, there are only two banks

it that will give you money. i have two children and i live in the city and i don't want to move from the city, but if i could refinance and we couldond convert i could refinance my property. i am sending money out-of-state to a bank in michigan for interest payments. so i support the measure. >> thank you very much. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. [ gavel ] president chiu, i will say that sometimes we have many hours of public comment on an issue and sometimes having two members of the public comment can pretty perfectly encapsulates the quandary that we're facing in terms of very articulately and succinctly presenting the two sides of the coin and i want to

thank president chiu for working with supervisor farrell to come up with a compromise that achieves awful all of our goals for tenants, as well as owners and make sure that the city can continue to be diverse and embrace all of our residents. president chiu without objection can we take the motion to continue this item to march 11th. that will be the order. >> mr. chair, the march 11th is the regular meeting time of 1:30? >> that will be at 1:30. president chiu, did you intend anything else? >> i believe that is correct. >> 1:30 on march 11th. at this point as i mentioned we'll be hearing the remaining items on the agenda at 1:30. so supervisor chiu, can we have a motion to go into recess

until 1:30 p.m.? >> i will make that motion. >> we will take >> welcome back to the san francisco board of supervisors land use and economic development committee committee. i am scott wiener the chairman of the committee. to my left is supervisor david chiu, a member of the committee and vice-chair supervisor jane kim will be joining us momentarily. we did convene at 10:00 a.m. this morning and heard item no. 1, which we continued and then went into recess until now. so madame clerk, would you please call item no. 2.

>> an ordinance amending the planning code by adding section 249.70. >> thank you. and item no. 2, the author is supervisor david chiu. supervisor chiu. >> thank you, mr. chair and i want to thank you for scheduling today's consideration of a suded is at site of the pagato palace. the pagota theater site which has been a blighted site for almost two decades. by way of a little bit of background we have come a long way since this issue was first brought to our attention late last spring when hi office got a surprising call the same day

as the first community meeting to provide details about the proposed construction on columbus avenue. in 2008, the plan to extract the tunnel-boring machines in north beach was approached by the sfmta and the planning commission. between 2008 and this past may the sfmta did not do any outreach about the construction plans in north beach and when my constituents learned about this -- director reisk and many other staff from the mta met numerous times to hear concerns raised between last summer and the last few weeks. and to recap the sfmta began considering a number of alternatives to the columbus avenue extraction, that were raised by my office and the

community. and presented four options at a community meeting last november. the pagota optioned was welcomed by most attendees, as well as leaving the tbms in the ground north of the chinatown station. i want to thank the sfmta staff for studying the option we're looking at today and presenting it an alternative. the board directed its staff to pursue the pagota a option. first the pagota theater option is far less disruptive to the community. secondly, we will be tearing down a 15 plus-year blighted eyesore that the neighborhood has wanted to move forward for many, many years and thirdly, this is an option that leaves open the possibility of extending the central subway to

north beach and beyond. now part of the reason why we have had to move this item so quickly is the central subway construction timeline is extremely tight and if we slip on the timeline, able to result in significant cost increases to the project. the sfmta needs to begin demolition in early airplane. both the sfmta board and planning commission have approved different aspects of moving forward this particular proposal, with regards to north beach and the central subway. on february 19th, the mta board approved a two-year lease between the mta and the pagota palace a lease that includes 400,000 dollar and reimbursable costs such as attorneyfees and construction inflation, all of which need to be demonstrated by the owner. an additional cost up to $6 million for construction

changes will be paid for through the reserves the sfmta and i understand that the sfmta is seeking reimbursement from the federal transit administration. what we have in front of us is the sud legislation, to describe this briefly and then i will ask kevin guy from the planning department to go through the specific provisions. the owner of the pagota theater has had existing entitlements which would allow him to construct a mixed-use building on the site, essentially a ground floor restaurant, condos on top of that, and parking spaces below it. the lease agreement assumes that the owner retains his existing entitlement rights after the two years that the mta will spend on this site. specifically the sud will change the planning code to allow the pagota theater's owner proposed development project to move forward after the dem litigation of the building and after the sfmta uses the site for extraction. before this proposed extraction

relocation, the pogata theater owner had a fully entitled site. the fact it was technically a rehab, only a few roof trusses would remain, aloud him to build within the existing building envelope. the mta needs to demolish the building in order to boyd the boxes -- the planning commission approved both last thursday, the cu permit is contingent on what is in front of the this committee today. i would like to ask kevin guy from the planning commission to go through this. this sud specifically prohibits the height. i want to take a moment to thank the sfmta and other city staff members including the planning department and the city attorney's office who have worked extremely hard in the last couple of months to make this pagota option a reality. i want to thank director

reiskin and staff for leading the negotiations and keeping the overall process on track. and take a moment to say that it's a win-win for north beach, for the city and for the community and i have very much hope colleagues that you will be able to help move this forward with recommendation from this committee today to go to the full board tomorrow for approval. with that, mr. guy. >> thank you, supervisor. good afternoon, chairman wiener and members of the committee. my name is kevin guy with planning staff. before is for legislationing to reclassify the site from 40' to

55 height limit and adopt the central subway boring machine tract site sud on the property. the legislation is associated with the central subway's project, but specifically with the development proposal for the property that would demolish existing building and construct 18 dwelling units, restaurant and 27 off-street parking spaces. as was mentioned following demolition of the existing building the site would be used for the extraction of the tunnel-boring machine equipment and to recap on february 14th the planning commission did approve the conditional use. the sud is necessary to allow the construction of the project that was previously approved as rehabilitation, but to resolve areas of the conflict with planning code that would not allow the project to proceed as new construction. and to address several specific issues regarding the program of issues in the project.

specifically the sud would address requirements regarding rear yard, dwelling unit exposure, off-street parking, building height, ground floor ceiling heights, allowing of a restaurant use at this location, allowing a non-residential use which exceeds 4,000-square-feet and allowing the reconstruction of the existing sign. all of these provisions in the planning code would need to be addressed in order for new construction of the previously approved project to proceed. so i would be happy to address any of these in more specific detail for you. this concludes my presentation and i'm available for questions. >> does the sfmta have additional comments to make? mr. chair before we go to public comment, i want to mention one thing, which is i think if we had proceeded with

what had been the original proposal, it would have been incredibly disruptive. there are a handful of adjacent property video raised concerns about construction impacts to their businesss from the use of pagoda palace site and i want to reiterate that i know the mayor's office on workforce and economic development and my office, we're all committed to working through the life of this project. i know the mta has scheduled a meeting in the short-term to discuss construction plans, timing and approximate that being said, i think that the proposal we have in front of us is a far less disruptive project than what we were originally presented with and again, i want to thank the members of community city staff for coming up with what i believe is a win-win option for the community. mr. chair. >> thank you. so with that we

will open up public comment and if you have not filled out a card and you wish public comment, please do so. i know there are folks in the audience for the next item about the western soma plan and it makes sense for you to fill out a card now, so we can be prepared when we get to public comment during the item president chiu. >> we have a number of cards and i will call them. [ reading speakers' names ] in addition to that if anyone else would like to make comment on this, please submit cards and line up on the right-hand side of the chamber facing us. >> mr. chair, two or three minutes? >> two minutes.

>> may i begin? >> yes please. >> must name is tom lipy and i represent howard wong and save muni.com with respect to this project and i want to start by making sure that you have all the letters that i submitted both to the board of supervisors, also to the planning commission and to the mta. those are three letters dated february 5th, 14 and 19th and they attach letters from a geotechnical engineer larry carp. i noticed in your agenda packet you only have the february 5th letter. so i want to make sure you have all three of them and i will hand them to the clerk in a minute and have i a new letter dated today related to the appeal my client filed with the planning commission's approval of the conditional use authorization for the project.

so most of my comments on the substance of this project are set forth in the letter. letters. the new issue here is the appeal that my client filed last thursday. the clerk has rejected it this morning on the basis of a city attorney opinion. and i wanted to give this board the opportunity to reconsider that decision by the clerk. the city attorney opinion takes the position that because a planning commission decision to approve the conditional use authorization without first preparing a supplemental eir, as we believe is required, is not an appealable decision to the board of supervisors. we think that is wrong under public resources code second, 21151. the city attorney opinion does not address the primary question, which is what is the legislature's intent? as the supreme court has held

in a number of cases the legislature's intent is that ceqa provides that elected officials be responsible for the environmental decision-making of their jurisdictions. and so for the planning commission decision to proceed with the conditional use authorization without preparing a supplemental eir, for that to not be appealable shields the elected officials from stating on the record what their position is on the issue. and therefore, exempts them from this purpose of ceqa, which is to provide public accountability, so that the public and the voters can take action to change their elect officials, if the elected officials take action with what they disagree. so that is developed in more detail in my letter. the other issue here is that the municipal code once a proper appeal is filed does require a state of further consideration. i have addressed that in my require letter and ask you to

take a look at that. with respect to the ceqa issue, the guideline provides that a supplemental eir is required if the project changed in a way. >> thank you very much. >> take a look at my letters. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is lawrence b. carp and i'm a geotechnical engineer. i have been involved with construction in san francisco since the 1950's. i was asked to look at this site from a feasibility standpoint as to whether this extraction could take place

without damage to the adjacent buildings. based on the published and private consultants' geotechnic information, this site is mostly sand down to 40-45'. to bedrock. and it has a high water table, so the sand is saturated and loose and the current plan is building a box 40-60 or 50 or 70 piles that are drilled in place and they are intersecting and called secant piles. these are to be filled with concrete and steel beams every other one at least. and this is supposed to make it

so water is only comes from inside the excavation. if water gets into the inside of the excavation -- so if that occurs, then it will be dewatering under the buildings, most of them over 100 years old. and they have brick -- they all have brick foundations, so the buildings will be damaged. there is no two ways about it. it's a consideration that should be given before approving this project. thank you. >> next speaker. >> howard wong with savemuni.com. the pagoda theater is not the best option that avoids all adverse impacts on our north beach neighborhood. the pagoda theater still impacts several businesses, and

for all we know, others as well. as you know, tunneling and subway projects do have risks. in the original approved final eir in 2008, the north beach tunnel was capitalized the north beach construction tunnel variant. the base contract was the boring of the tunnel-boring machines in the chinatown area. we have learned since then, according to mta, that the northern tunnel will not be used in any way for conveying materials to the chinatown station. thus the northern tunnel has no construction use. thus, the north tunnel itself is no longer -- and it's rationale is no longer adhering

and there have no reason to be built. the pagoda theater $1.5 million is unnecessary. the tunnel construction of 2008 is unnecessary. we can save up to $80 million by burying or extracting machines in chinatown or burying them anywhere between chinatown and northern beach, as has been done in brisbane australia, which entombed them in concrete. the tunnel in the english channel did that. new york city's two subway and rail projects are entombing tbms. there are better solutions. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is -- and i'm homeowner in northern beach. i