>> we have a motion from commissioner hurtado to up hold the permit. >> do you care to stay a basis for your position? >> on the basis that the notice given was adequate, that there is no like food within the radius required by law. and that the dpw exercises its discretion without any abuse of discretion. >> okay. so on that motion, to up hold the permit on the basises that are stated. commissioner fung? >> no. >> and president hwang? >> aye. >> vice president lazarus?

>> no. >> commissioner honda. >> no. >> thank you. >> the vote is 2-3 to up hold the permit, the motion fails however the charter requires four out of five to over turn or modify any departmental action and so unless there is another motion, this permit would be upheld by default. >> okay. no motion, so the permit is upheld by permit. thank you. >> thank you. >> i will ask you to leave the room quietly as we call the next item we appreciate that, that is item number 7, appeal number 1 3-001, geraldine rosen verses the department of building inspection with the plan department approval. the property at 1041 shrader street protesting the insurance you ans on december 20, 2012 to laura and dave brown of a permit to alter a building and add crickets to the rear of the house for the proper roof

drainage this is application, no 2:singer 012/12/20/6664. and we will hear from the appellant's attorney. >> mr. patterson, you have seven minutes. >> maybe if you want to hold up one minute. >> actually, commissioner fung returns. >> yeah.

>> sorry. >> that is okay. >> okay. we are ready, thank you. >> good evening, president hwang and commissioners, (inaudible) appellant. and i report that (inaudible) the appellant and they were able to resolve their services regarding the property (inaudible) and therefore, we are withdrawing our appeal. >> okay. >> he will provide you with a form that we will ask you to fill out and i don't know if the permit holder is here and wants to speak or are you just

here to represent and be done with it? >> i think that i am the last one remaining tonight. >> okay. >> thank you. >> all right. since we called the item i think that we should call for public comment, in case there is anyone who wants to speak on it here. >> okay. >> all right. then we will move on. >> all right. >> we are calling item number 8, appeal, number 12-159 steven williams verses the department of building inspection, the property is at 125 crown terrace, protesting the issuance on november 28, 2012 to crown ter ans llc of the permit to alter a building, horizontal and vertical addition, this is application no, 2011/10/60/6315 s. and it is on for the hearing today and we will begin with the appellant, mr. williams.

>> i am steve williams and i represent the (inaudible) and the plans are still incorrect. you know, they said that they have had (inaudible) and the window locations (inaudible) there. >> objectively incorrect. and if you look at the building is three stories above grade. and at crown court and it is actually two stories above grade and here is a photograph that i took off of the internet this afternoon. here is the building and it is two stories and so, in numerous respects the plans are still incorrect and that the exist f shows three floors. and so this is confirmed that, incorrect and there is a design

issue with this building as well. all of the buildings up there have openings decks and etc. on one side. this building breaks that pattern and breaks that concern. we went and laid out all of the things that occurred along with this permit. all of the fixes are after the fact. >> so if you have the question about the environmental review after the permit was issued. >> it is not the way that it is supposed to work. it has been afile for a while and managed to straighten the items out as they went along. what this really is about for us, is this is an illegal demolition, and the destruction

of the affordable housing in the city is one of the primary policies in the plan and something that this board should be concerned about. the manner in which the section, 317 is applied and interpreted, by the planning department, is simply incorrect. you have a letter from former president of the board of supervisors ann peskin who is one of the chief sponsors of this legislation as well as former supervisor jake mgoldric is here and he was the chief sponsor and the author of this legislation and they are both saying that the interpretation given to this section by the department is incorrect. and the department tries to explain it, we attached as to our brief that this was attempted to be explained to commissioners sagaya at the planning commission and that

section of the back and forth is attached as exhibit 20. if you look at the newspaper article that we attached as exhibit 17. the project designer confirms that is what is going on here. mr. gardener is quoted in that article as saying, yeah we got the permit and tried to get around it by dismantling the building piece meal and so what we are really dealing with is the demolition, if you look at their plans. first of all these are incorrect, this building is on stilts, this does not exist down here, this building is up on stilts. and the way that we came up with our graphic is we transpose that over the top of the new building. so this does not exist here because the building is on a stilt. the building according to the assess or is 863 square feet

and they have it at 1300 square feet and so all of the calculations are incorrect. they are also something new that was added to the plans after the fact and those were turned in and here is what we are talking about right here is the planning department has 0 removal of the floor. and 0 removal. and the question that we have been asking, over and over again, is how do you take the existing foundations which are made of 80-year-old concrete, and how do you insert those between the new first and second floors? this is concrete foundation here? how do these peers go into and there is a peer underground right here and how does that go into the building of like material not being moved? >> i am going to give part of my time to the engineer

retained by miss albright and pat who is going to address this issue, the code is misinterpreted and i tried to go over it in detail in my brief. make them explain what they are doing. >> good evening, commissioners, my name is pat buscovich i was brought in the past to help to deal with the retaining issues at raccoon court which is on this hillside. i agreed to participate as long as i could offer a construction criticism. i have three issues. i have reached out to the engineer, i won't speak for him and i think that we have had good discussions. the three points are they need to clarify the scope of the work. the current scope says vertical and hor sonal addition, it is silent if they are excavating into the hill and it is massive and clarify if they are doing it and an evaluation if they

are doing it, if not they will have to file a separate building permit, i think that it is a form 6 for excavation and if they are saying that they are doing it in this clean upper , permit and they can clean up the scope. and there is a code section that was done after knock ash and i was involved in the land side and when it said that you are on a site doing more than 1,000 square foot of roof area and their own application says that they are adding 14,048 of a floor and a floor is a floor not a deck if it has a roof. so by the code they are supposed to be doing a peer review and i made that section to mr. santos and i am sure that he is going to discuss it. i think that it is a smart thing to do. last, there are two criterias for demolition, there is a dba and a planning criteria, they are different. they are really different. dba, you don't include the foundation, you don't include

the roof. planning has different thresholds and also have a (inaudible) but i am not going to speak to but they need to be looking at both criteria and i could not find the second criteria and they need to clarify that and move on. >> thank you commissioners >> thank you, we can hear from the permit holder now. >> anyone here representing the permit holder? >> does the board wish to have this picture of mr. williams left up here of the appellant's property, or should i give it back to you. >> it is not in our packet. >> is this in the back packet? >> it is not.

>> good evening, commissioners, for the permit holder, if i could have the audio and visual i would like to review the real issues here and not the kind of made up issues. this has been scrutinized by all of the department and in process for over six years and so i just want to give you a sense of the context and why and who is opposing this project. this is an aerial of the site and includes the one story home and this is mona albright who owns a 9-unit building, and apparently vacant, but miss bendeos and terry woods. the opposition is they don't want to see any change that is in essence what they are after

is just to keep the status quo, you can see that the surrounding buildings that claim that the proposed project is too big and out of scale and that is not the case. again this is miss albright's building, 127 crown terrace and she has a garage and this goes from crown court to gray stone terrace and it has a garage that approaches the property line and this is the property line and the proposed project and you can see that this will be a 20-foot separation between what is proposed and an existing building here, and it extends almost to 40 feet and you start to look at angles when this is set back and the open space between the buildings is quite substantial and that is one of the concerns that miss albright has. miss yost, this is her property, she actually go right to the property lines for about

15 feet, what the proposed project does is match the three foot rail in this area and there is a rail along maintaining the open space between the two homes and even though they comes to the property line and the third person in this project miss terry woods is she is diagonally offset from this property and yet, this view of obstruction and that is the primary concern and she has been driving this opposition because of the loss of view. people say that the project is out of scale and this is the elevation of the building on crown terrace and this is the albright building and this is a line that connects the albright building to yost's home and you can see at this new home that is right within this line in terms of scale and height, this rectangle is what the planning code would allow and so this is

substantially lower at 14 feet and 6 inches lower than the 25 feet at the planning code would allow. in terms of section, and in terms of what was done to accommodate neighborhood requests, again, this is an outline of 115 crown terrace, and that is yellow are the windows and the property line and windows and the side yard windows, the proposed project has basically transit window and rearranged windows so to maintain the privacy and to address her concerns. and again, here is just a picture that shows 115 crown terrace, and section of the building that is right along the property line, and the existing building to see and we get a sense of what that looks like. and then we have the 127 crown court which is miss albright's building and 9-unit building. these are all of the windows along the west property line,

that face the proposed project. it is very little... between the windows and as i said before this new home is a 20 foot separation and it is ironic that someone who has a 9-unit building is concerned that a one single family and you have nine families looking at one family and (inaudible) should be the concern. finally, this is the view from terry's home. from the second floor. excuse me, the absentee owner, the home is rented and this is the home from her terrace and it extends from corona heights to all of downtown and the bay extending south east. so this is what it would look like with the new home inserted. again, the major primary view of the corona heights downtown and the base is maintained and it is my contention that her view is improved. what this project will do is

basically add safety for the crown terrace because putting in a garage and a driving deck, it will allow the cars to make turns and come back out of crown terrace from the ambulance right now it is difficult to make a turn with this project it will make improved safety for that whole street. i would like to give my remaining time to mr. santos to address the engineering issues, thank you, commissionerers. >> good evening commissioners, i am the project engineer, and i would like to respond to the comments and as he mentioned to you all that we had a conversation and it was very (inaudible) conversation and he brought out three items, one he talked about the slope stability. of course, we are concerned about the slope. we have a report, and a slope investigation that told us what sort of parameters that we need to use to design the building, in addition to the fact that we

have a compliance letter, we actually welcome peer review that he is suggesting. we urge peer review on something that has an excavation of 25 feet. there are lawyers in the room. i am all for sharing the liability. we welcome that. so there is no issues with that. he brought out the question of evaluating the cost of the project. perhaps, we need to reassess that number. we have some costs related to shoring, and cost of excavation, we incorporated all of that and the work with dbi and make sure that we have the proper number that is going to be identified as a percentage that we need to pay and finally, we talked about the demolition or so-called, defacto, demolition and mr. williams brought out the fact that mr. peskin does not think that the numbers are quite correct. to say that the guidelines were

created for demolition and construction guidelines in 2003, when i was the president of the building inspection commission. >> he did not write the guidelines and we created the guidelines and we need not only the planning demolition guidelines and also meet the dbi guidelines. we meet both and we welcome the peer review and we will pay more if that is required. >> thank you. >> we do not want another permit. >> thank you, your time is up. >> mr. sanchez. >> thank you, scott sanchez, planning department. has noted the property at 125 crown terrace, located in a single family zoning district, the appellant's property is in a r1 zoning which higher density which explains why there is a apartment building. this is the latest incarnation that had filed a demolition and

construction in 2008. and abandoned that project and sought the alteration permit that is on appeal before you today. that was filed in october of 2011. and we performed section 322, neighborhood notification last summer and had to perform it a couple of times because there were issues in terms of accuracy of the plans and we did have accurate plans that we submitted for neighborhood notification and there was three discretionary view requests that were filed on the permit application and the planning commission considered this matter on october 25th of last year and upheld the building permit application seeking not to take the discretionary view and make changes to the project. i think that the key issue that has been raised is this is a defacton, demo and it has been raised on appeal. it is right hand 317 there are three ways that you can be considered a demolition, first is you are truly a demolition,

and dbi has you processed a permit for demolition, that is number one. number two, is that 50 percent of the front and rear facade and 50 percent of the walls are removed and that is measured at the feet at the foundation level and 50 percent of all vertical and horizontal surfaces measured as area and the project sponsor has provided calculations showing that they will retain enough of the building such that it is not considered a demolition under planning code 317. these concerns were raised at the planning commission hearing that this was a defacto demo and the planning commission did not feel that there were compelling arguments to consider that at the time. and we have not yet seen any arguments from the appellant that would find this to be a defacto demo, if they were able to exceed the scope of work and demolish more of the building

than they are showing in the plans, then they would most likely be a defacto demo, because they are close to the limits as outlined in section 317. so those were the comments that i wanted to make and i am available for any questions that the board may have. thank you. >> i have a question. if somebody were to exceed what was in the plans in terms of demolition, to the point where the structure is gone, what is the penalty? what happens at that juncture? because they have some what... if that was the intent and they have accomplished it. what would be next? >> more serious problems than even the planning department could throw at them. because if they do exceed the scope and dbi, the building department determines that they are an unlawful demo and they could be prohibited to build anything larger on the site for five years, and duffy can speak more to the unlawful demo. and if they do something less

on 317 and they would file a revision permit and go through the process of having to go for a defacto hearing, at the planning commission. >> thank you. >> mr. duffy? >> good evening, commissioners. this permit has been issued as a site permit. from dbi and so we are still got a lot of review to do on it for a structural architectal and mechanical and fire and sprinklers that is all to come in yet for dbi and so we are in the early stages of the plan review. i did today speak with robert chung who was the engineer who reviewed the site permit drawings, which do not have anything on them structural or

not. but, he did approve them. and in the 2010, san francisco building code, we do have our administrative bulletin for site permit processing. and just one of the items i want to read rt as well. because i think that it is important in this case as much of a purpose of a site permit is to allow a review of preliminary conceptual and schematic designs of proposed construction, there is no detailed plan review of construction details required at the time of site permit review. such detailed review will be done at the time of an addendum review. i am available for any questions and i will be on the demolition if you want to know about that one. valuation will be dealt with by ddi, we do use the marshal swift cost evaluation which is

a nationwide analysis and i spoke with the engineer today. and he will look at that with the project sponsor, and get it proper valuation on the project. and on the demolition, do you want me to clarify that? >> in the san francisco building code, if all of the walls were taken down on a project, whenever they are supposed to remain that is what is known as an unlawful demolition and there are penalty and a hearing is held and usually what happens is that if it is found out to be unknown unlawful demo the site has to remain without any permits for five years. unless you want to put back the original square footage of the building which in this case is around less than 1,000 square feet maybe a little more so it is quite a severe penalty. i have seen it happen maybe twice in the last ten years. we don't like to see them.

so i think that the essence here is that they have to be very careful with the walls and the floor joists and the joints that are shown to remain and you have to work closely with dbi with the construction to insure that that elements do remain in place. i think that is... and i think that most of it in the city are really good at this. they kind of give us a heads out and sometimes there are walls that might encounter dry rot or we have a weather proofing issue which we generally work with them and we work closely with planning. when those do happen. >> thank you. >> so we will take public comment now, could i see a show of hands how many people plan to speak on this item? >> everybody is here for this case. >> okay. >> what i would ask you to do if you are willing is to fill out a speaker card and hand it to the... when you come up to

speak that helps us in the preparation of minutes and also if you would not mind it helps us also if you could line up against the wall on the far side of the room. so that we could move through the speakers more quickly, if you are able to stand. >> first speaker, can step forward. >> i just indicated that the speakers will be limited to two minutes each. >> given the numerousty. >> please have the first speaker step forward. >> someone has to start. >> who wants to be the first speaker? thank you. >> >> i did not get a chance to fill it out. >> if you have not filled out a card, come up to the podium and you can fill one out afterwards and hand it in. >> okay, my name is drake gardener. >> you are associated with the project,

>> right. >> your time to speak with the parties. >> okay. >> so public comment is for people who are not affiliated with any of the parties just to be clear. next speaker, please? >> if no one comes up to speak, we are going to close public comment. >> someone please come forward. >> just speak. >> i have not filled it out yet but i will. >> i'm brian (inaudible) and i am a neighbor. i live down the street from the project. and i just wanted to let the board know that we, the majority of the neighbors feel that speaking for myself and spoken with people that the project is out of scope with the neighborhood. most of the homes are around 2,000 to 3,000 square feet. that the average is 2,063 i believe and this is a 5,000