>> thank you for including us in "culturewire." ♪ c transit take stone ridge 88. we are at mount davidson and it has the highest point of elevation in san francisco hitting a whopping 928 feet. mt. davidson provides a peaceful 30-acre owe ace and great hiking trails. the spectacular views offers a perfect place to watch the sunrise or suffer sun set with someone you louvre, wear sturdy shows to conquer the stone trails and denly inventory advantage gives you hikers the sensation of being in a rain forest it's quite a hike to the top here at mount davidson but the view

>> on december 28, 1912, san francisco mayor stared into a sea of 60,000 of constituents that gathered at geary. the berth of the first publicly owned transit system in the city, the san francisco municipal railway. >> this is a special meeting to continue the following items. items 1 a and b for 1084. items

2 a b and c for e h k r t s z to may 23, 2013. >> any public comment on this one item? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini? >> our session would have been at 10, but it says to be considered at noon. is there going to be an earlier session

at 10:00? on the continuances calendar we have a joint hearing. i'm with direct connection with the department chair. we won't reserving the board chambers for that maybe 23rd hearing. >> i will move to continue the items that were called to the may 23rd time to be determined. >> thank you. >> that was a second? thank you. >> on that motion to continue said items to may 23rd, commissioner antonini, hillis, moore, commissioner sugaya, commissioner wu a president fong. that motion passes unanimously 7-0 and for benefit

of the public on the same calendar section b are items of the recreation and parks commission. that is all for this special meeting. >> any public comments for this special meeting? if none, meeting is adjourned. >> commissioners because your regular calendar was notice to start about 12:15 we have about 3 minutes. >> all right. let's take a break.

>> planning commission. please silence any mobile devices. i would like to take roll at this time. commissioner president fong, antonini, borden, moore and sugaya. commissioners first on your calendar for consideration of item proposed

case no. 1. 2011.1369c. 3682 18th street - on the northeast corner of 18th street and dolores street, lot 027 in assessor's block 3578 - request for conditional use authorization under planning code sections 710.83 and 303 for a proposal to install a wireless telecommunications services facility operated by at & t mobility. the facility would consist of installing four panel antennas on the roof within faux vent pipes with equipment located within the basement. the facility is proposed on a location preference 6 site within a nc-1 neighborhood commercial cluster zoning district and 40-x height and bulk street . 2012.0822c. 1865 post street - south side between fillmore and webster streets, lot 002 in assessor's block 0701 - request for conditional use authorization under planning code sections 249.31, 303. and 712.48, to add a new use size in excess of 4,000 square feet as an "other entertainment" use to an existing restaurant d.b.a. pa ina lounge and restaurantt within a nc-3 neighborhood commercial, moderate-scalee zoning district, japan town special use district, and 50-x height and bulk district. the proposal would add live and amplified music during the restaurant's evening operating hours. >> is proposed for continuances for june 6. that's all i have under matters of continuances. >> is there any public comment for two items proposed for continuances? seeing none, commissioners. >> on that motion to continue, commissioner antonini, borden, hillis, moore, sugaya, wu and president fong aye. that places you under questions and matters. item 3 for questions and comments.

>> i read in the paper, golden gate park. i know the planning department was not involved. it was a cute article. i'm going to pass it around. he was a child who discovered like a hollow on the bottom of a tree and had his father who was a shipbuilder and he built him a door with hinges and knob with all of those things and installed it because there are people living at the bottom of the extremely. i want to pass this around. it's absolutely adorable. >> commissioner antonini? >> thank you. i want to mention that i attended a meeting last night at temple baptist church and i thought that it was a very good meeting for the residents of lakeside village which is where i reside and it

was a discussion for future planning for the m line which runs through lakeside and along 19th avenue which stops at san francisco state and circles back to balboa park station. they had some great input about great change of a line that goes under 19th avenue and that might allow pedestrians to travel under 19th without having to utilizing the station to get from one side to the other which is a great idea because it a very dangerous area. there are a lot of incidents every year with accidents involving pedestrians and by getting the munis and pedestrians off the street, it's going to calm the situation greatly there.

anyway, it has a long way to go. it was a very good meeting and had over 1 hundred people in attendance. >> borden? >> yeah. i want to make everyone aware that they are on the mayor's transportation task force and they are hoping to come up with recommendations by october on how we can make our transportation structure world class and what's unique is all the different agencies including planning and development are planning department and looking at things like long range planning and development are existing infrastructure. you can find the information about this task force and meetings on the website which is a great appropriate place to have that information since so many people visit that website. if you are interested, you can

find on the agendas and presentations related to the task force on that website. if you have questions that you want know bring up, please let me know. thanks. >> commissioners, directors report item 4 directors announcements. >> just two things. there was a question last week about the nature of the approval of the new japan town plan i can't remember the full name of this plan and what type of approval action might be needed. we are looking, it partly depends on the nature of the document. it's up to us, up to the commission if they want to incorporate it into general plan adopted as policy or as another form. we are really somewhat variable depending on how the commission chooses to go and what type of review

might be needed depending on the specification of that plan. it may not require an impact report. if it does, we don't know yet at this point. so as we get into more details of that plan we'll get back to you on more details on that as well. the other thing i wanted to mention is that i will be at the annual planning conference in chicago. i will be out of the office next thursday and campos will be in charge of my absence. the conference is in chicago where the apa office is located. the conference runs from saturday to wednesday of this year. and that concludes my report. thank you. >> just curious, at the conference are you speaking or presenting or anyone from the department speaking? >> there is a number of people speaking on various topics. i

will be speaking on saturday where i'm part of a group of directors that helps to train new planning directors, folks who are newly installed as directors and that's something i have been doing for 3 or 4 years. it a very interesting session. >> next item, please? >> item 5. review of the past weeks of board of appeals. >> good afternoon, department staff here to give you your weekly report. this week at the committee, the majority of public comment and hearing was focused on supervisor wiener's local procedures. on march 14, and hpc considered the proposal on march 20th. both commission recommended two modification. no. 1, the appeal for all type of appeals be extended to 30 days and no. 2 that we provide

clarity for the process where the board acts as decision body. he made the following amendments: first clarification about what the approval action would be and second requiring direct not only an adoptive survey but a recognized survey by the department. 3, limit the filing by a notice of exemption until after a period of appeal. and 4, when the sequel depending party. the sequel a response

prior to the closing of that hearing and no. 5 extending the appeal to 30 days and when the board revise the i r, it maybe reviewed. at this weeks hearing the public raised the same issues. public comment was lengthy and divided neighborhood groups, environmental organizations and both in favor and some opposed to the proposal. there did seem to be concensus for rules of appeals should be codified and both supervisors kim and chiu were interested in increasing notification. our director committed to provide increased online notification for exemptions that would be

searchable. supervisor kim notice it maybe fact reduced to allow appeals until the last approval instead of the first approval which is essentially the situation that we have. supervisor kim announced she plans to introduce an alternative proposal and after this commission continued this issue to be heard on april 2nd. there was a minor alcohol and tobacco control. last week since your hearing supervisor chiu did recommend all modifications and this week they did approve the final modification. they considered supervisor chiu's portion of

the northeast ordinance that was before the board this week which is merely the expansion of the program to allow tdr's to be transferred to all districts in the area and voted to approve this portion of the ordinance back this appeal is the project is before the dr is to construct a 3 story vertical edition in addition to a 2 story home. they had 3 main concerns. first the project would have a significant impact of historic resources and impact to public views and 3rd the dr action is inconsistent with the planning commissions intent required to the front

yard setback. during the dr hearing which is before, the planning commission recommended a total of 3 feet for a total of 5 feet from the wall which will allow greater visibility of the adjacent building. the opponent argued it's offset impact to the historic resource building. if this were in fact a mitigation to avoid a significant impact, you could not be sent to the final review. a design concern to increase street visibility of a building feature on the adjacent properties and as such this change was a condition of approval for the building permit and not a sequel mitigation. given there is no increase impact to the

environment with these changes, it should not be considered mitigation measures to the project. staff also discuss with the board that the overall height of the building would remain shorter than the buildings. and are not designated vista and ocean views would not be blocked by the projected addition. concerns related to the commissions an approved motion and intent do not substitute nullifying the original. there is a hearing before the board of appeals which is the appropriate body to address the concerns does it match the revised conditions and that's been set for may 8th. while supervisor wiener he agreed with the decision and analysis of the department and the board voted unanimously to uphold it.

also adopted on final reading this week where the market street mason historic district for the alcohol restricted use district. most notably as i mentioned earlier for new introductions this week supervisor kim did introduce an alternative ordinance that would amend chapter 31 of our administrative code. we'll bring this item to hearing in both you and historic preservation commission as quickly as possible. our intent is to public our report next thursday to allow us to bring this item before the commission at your next hearings which will be your hearing on april 25th and on may 1st if they do in fact decide to have the hearing. that conclude my board report and i have a short note from the z a about the board of appeals. i will go with that.

the board of appeals met last night and considered one item. this is an appeal for building permit that will allow a new 4 story building at 721 beach street in z 2 zoning district. the planning commission approved this. that concludes my report. are there any questions? >> questions? doesn't seem to be. thank you. >> there was no historic preservation yesterday. if there is nothing further we can go to public comment. with respect to agenda items your opportunity to address the commission is afforded when the item is reached. i have no speaker cards.

>> any general public comment? >> okay. seeing none. next item, please. >> this will place you under your regular calendar formula retail in the upper market ncd proposed planning commission policy that would establish a methodology for determining the concentration of formula retail and set the appropriate level of concentration for formula retail in the upper market neighborhood nct and ncd. preliminary recommendation: adoption >> good afternoon. we are really excited to bring this to you today commissioners before we dive in i do want to acknowledge regina, who is the executive director of the small business commission. she's been critical to these effort. she can't be with us this afternoon because earlier today she was selected to be on a jury. it's important to acknowledge the good work that she's done as part of this. so commissioners as many of you do know of course, this commission members of this commission and members of the small business commission have been meeting informally and regularly for

about a year now. looking at the fundamental question of how we can stream line the land review process for small businesses. the title on your screen if we can pull up the overhead please is kind of where we began. this next slide is where we wound up like many good planning initiatives. it's a pilot exploratory project and like most we have an acronym. s bchlt p p program. so, i think we into ed to address the question of why we single out small businesses in the first place. almost all of the city's businesses are in fact small businesses. these businesses account for half of employment in this city. as most commission they company contribute in a very meaningful

way to our neighborhood quality of life and fabric we have in our neighborhood district in particular. a little bit of background for how we are here today. staff do hear concerns from the small business community regarding the red tape and time and process that's associated with opening or expanding a small business. our general feeling and we think that you share this commissioners, is that process for this sake of process when it doesn't confer any additional value, is not good government and in the case of many small business approvals we feel there may be a little bit of this going on. we did begin to host this series of informal discussions. you can see on the screen the names of those that participated. you of

course no who you are commissioners. i want to call president steve adams is an executive for bay area focus bank looking to funding small businesses particularly and he's involves with small business groups and castro area, kathleen dully, a long time north beach small business owners, she's served as a business leader. lastly commissioner, luke o'brien has managed various areas in the economies including real estate and he's involved in construction and civic affairs locally and further afield. so commissioners these informal discussions evolved into an effort to develop a protocol under which we can move small

business project through the required land use approval process without undue delay. now this is a planning commission policies. it's not unlike what you did last week with your stimulus policy and not what you are going to consider next on your agenda with respect to formula retail in the upper market area. so did we get into this predicament. land use role has increased dramatically since 1987 when the neighborhood controls kicked in. we have seen 80 amendments. with relative certainty on a counter basis. at a years ago, nearly all permits and neighborhood

commercial districts were acted on over the counter. you can see on your screen and looking at an out of date figure in 2007 we had a substantial drop off. install businesses require some review from you for small businesses. they require signing a lease and making payments before getting land use permits, these same businesses wind up making payments for months before they open for business. we have a

situation where the expenditures for small business begins substantially ahead of any income being received. that's a many month long process and it can cost 10s of thousands of dollars. the irony of these regulations that cause delay, at least in part were intended to discourage formula retail businesses. yes formula retail businesses are the ones that are most financially equipped to deal with that delay. so we are looking at a procedure here, a policy that can invert a formula retail controls. lastly on this slide commissioners, backlogs, commission calendars especially as the economy tends to heat back up. there is a timely constrain. specifically the comprehensive 20 plus page briefings that we prepare for every item on your calendar,

they demand a good deal of time to prepare. for many small business applications we would argue that is probably not necessarily. here is a proposal we came up with. it's a policy that applied to conditional use applications the s p 4 p has 3 components. we get these applications to you within 90 days of application which is a month or more less. secondly, we would commit to placing every sp 4 case on the calendar. typically 3 quarters of those items are acted on without being moved for discussion. the 3rd item, as i mentioned before we do prepare robust commission briefing

package for every item and that takes time and time well spent when we are dealing with a major new building and any other project of scale. if we are dealing with routine small business application, we are not sure that a huge briefing document makes sense. so we are proposed a new 2 page document calling a project summary and motion. a type of document that is going to evidence compliance with applicable code requirements and we think it's a right level of analysis for these types of projects. to illustrate, this is what we are talking about on your screen on the left hand side we have thumb nails of the commission briefing packet for 900 square foot expansion for a restaurant. that document is 32 pages. on the right hand side is a project for thato