>> so, there is a motion and a second, commissioners, to adopt resolution of no recommendation, acknowledging the vote of the planning commission. ~ of the original motion. exactly, the vote count of the original motion. commissioner antonini? >> aye. >> commissioner moore? >> aye. >> commissioner sugaya? >> aye. >> commissioner wu? >> aye. >> and commission president fong? >> aye. >> so moved, commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 5 to 0. 5 to 0. >> 5 to 0. >> thank you, everybody. next item, please. >> commissioners, that will place us on item 9 for case no.

2013.0724t, amendment to the planning code sections 249.60 (mission alcoholic beverage special use district) and 726.1 (valencia street neighborhood commercial transit district). draft ordinance. >> good afternoon, commissioners, betsy hayward, planning staff. before i make my presentation if it's all right with you, i'd like to turn it over to mr. power from supervisor wiener's office. supervisor wiener is one of the two sponsoring supervisors of the amendment. >> hello again, commissioners. i'm going to hopefully more positive note. so, before you today is a piece of legislation that brings modest reforms to the mission alcohol special use district ~. our office has been working closely with supervisor david campos's office and our various shared individual constituents to advance legislation that maintains the goals of the alcohol district to limit

negative neighborhood externalities [speaker not understood]. we have had a sear i of town hall meetings and reached out to neighborhood and merchant organizations as we developed these modest reforms. supervisor wiener and supervisor campos are co-sponsoring this legislation. the sophie hayward from planning will present the ordinance, but essentially the legislation does a few things. first, it allows transfers of liquor licenses within the district. so, currently my understanding is that the mission alcohol special use district, the first alcohol restricted use district to be established under the planning code is also the most restrictive. it doesn't allow transfers within the district at all. this means that potentially bad actors are frozen in place, there is no enincentive to close up and move on because that would mean the loss of a license. this means that the code is propping up those very uses that perhaps most of us would like to go away. under the legislation, any

transfers would need to be considered as a conditional use and the legislation requires that good neighbor policies be attached to any conditional use [speaker not understood]. secondly, the legislation allows uses that currently have a liquor license to close down to make repairs, like opening up windows, improving the facade, improving layout for a-d-a access, et cetera, without losing their license. the longest the liquor establishment is bringing their use into better conformity with the alcohol district controls and with good urban design principles they can make those improvements. currently if they close more than a month they'll lose their license. there is no incentive to make improvements. third, the legislation allows currentes to relocate or expand. again, subject to a conditional use and good neighbor policies. and fourth and lastly, the [speaker not understood] remove the controls that incentivize large corporate stores that disincentive eyes smaller

lockally owned ones. as it stand large grocery stores are exempt from the controls. this amends language to say grocery stores from any size are exempt from controls except that smaller grocery stores are limited to beer and wine and user license from within the district. and the goal in this latter piece is to encourage smaller grocery stores to purchase existing licenses that are perhaps not from a grocery store and in doing so increase healthy food availability. this legislation was considered by the small business commission and was supported unanimously. the supervisor agrees with all of staff's recommendations and i would also like to thank sophie hayward, scott sanchez and diego sanchez for helping craft this legislation. last, the supervisor will likely offer amendment at the board [speaker not understood] to clarify that the controls apply to within the district. currently there is some ambiguity whether the controls

extend a quarter mile beyond it. so, on behalf of the supervisor and on behalf of supervisor david campos, we do [speaker not understood] support. thank you. >> commissioners, sophie hayward, planning staff. and mr. powers did a lot of my job by summarizing the proposed legislation, thank you. i want to just note that the department's recommendation would be to recommend approval with modifications to the board of supervisors. and i also want to note that our proposed modifications are intended just to clarify and i am mri identify the implementation of the controls and subsequently the department is supportive of the proposal which it does in two parts. first, the proposed amendment would amend the mission alcohol beverage special use district as mr. powers described. in addition, the proposed amendment would amend existing validity of street controls to restrict the conversion of existing ground floor retail

spaces to new restaurants. i won't spend too much time summarizing the mission portion because mr. powers did so. i want to note that the proposed amendments would continue to allow the four types of alcohol serving uses that are currently allowed to be established and those are for bona fide eating establishments, nonprofit dealers with large performers, bowling alleys and movie theaters. and it would allow an existing establishment to relocate within the sud with conditional use authorization and it would allow three new types of alcohol distributing establishments to open, provided that the new businesses use the liquor license that has been transferred from within the districts and that they would get conditional use authorization from this body. the proposed ordinance also establishes so-called good neighbor policies that would accompany an ecu granted for a

new liquor serving establishment. the department [speaker not understood] the proposed amendment to the mission alcohol sud would facilitate businesses that would provide neighborhood serving grocery needs as well as recreation entertainment in a manner that is consistent with the neighborhood character without contributing to the deterioration of the neighborhood. and further, the department agrees with the supervisors that by allowing the transfer of licenses in the establishment of good neighborhood policies so-called bad operators would be encouraged to release those frozen liquor licenses and will be replaced over time with businesses that work to improve the safety and cleanliness of the district. the second coupon of the legislation would amend the controls for restaurant on valencia street just from 15th street to 24th street. while restaurants are permitted as of now to use nct currently, new restaurants under the proposed legislation that propose to locate in existing ground floor retail spaces

would require conditional use authorization. and a field survey conducted by the department interns last summer indicates that there are approximately 71 existing eating establishments on this stretch of valencia and then information from the office of the treasurer indicates that of those 55 have opened within the last five years. so, there has been an influx of new restaurants in that area. the amendment would provide a layer of oversight over the loss of retail space to new restaurants, yet it does not involve a ban or prohibition [speaker not understood] the department certainly supports. the department's proposed modifications as i said are intended only to clarify about changing the intent of the legislation. and staff has received feedback from one member of the public, specifically a representative of safeway who i believe are here today to express concern regarding the clarity around the issue of preserving the existing exemption for large grocery stores from the

controls of the mission alcohol sud. that concludes my presentation but of course i'm here to answer any questions. >> could you just reclarify that last portion again about larger grocery store versus smaller? >> certainly. section 790.55 defines liquor stores. in the definition of liquor stores there is a provision that grocery stores that are large over 5,000 square feet in size are not subject to the alcohol restrictions outlined within a number of alcohol restricted use districts including the mission alcohol sud. it's a long way of saying that large grocery stores today under the existing code may open within the mission alcohol sud and sell alcohol. >> okay. 5,000 square feet is the cap, the number? >> they must be larger than 5,000 square feet and the proposed amendment would allow smaller grocery stores or grocery stores of any size to

sell alcohol as an accessory use. there are size limitations on the amount of floor area that may be dedicated to the sale of alcohol, but it offers the same exception basically to small grocery stores that exist for large grocery stores. >> okay, thank you. okay, opening up to public comment. i only have one speaker card. deborah cartbender. good afternoon, my name is debby [speaker not understood]. i'm an attorney for sedgwick and i'm appearing on behalf of safeway to talk about the mission sud as sophie predicted. we have talked with city staff about this legislation as well as with the supervisors, and i think it's accurate to say everyone is in agreement that the new language was intended to allow large grocery stores to keep the rights and privileges that they currently have under existing code

sections. so, for example, a large grocery store could close where more than four months at this time to renovate, or it could actually demolish its store and rebuild an entirely new store complex at this point and not worry about losing its liquor license because it's taking these actions. we have some concerns about the current language because we're not convinced that it totally accomplishes that goal. we have seen some scenarios as i've been walking through with staff where that may not be the actual result. but the large grocery stores may actually get caught up in this legislation. i have not confirming resources. but we would like the opportunity to work with city staff and the board of supervisors to rectify that before monday at the board's committee meeting, land use committee meeting. at this point we'd like to know direction from you if we're actually ininterpreting the intent of the legislation correctly, which is to exempt large grocery stores, and ask that someone confirm that as

part of the discussion today. and we'd also like to know whether we would be able to continue working with the staff through until monday in order to make any changes that may be necessary in order to accomplish this unified goal. and we thank staff for their help and their cooperation. >> thank you. any additional public comment on this item? okay, seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini. >> i have a couple of questions for ms. hayward. i guess the first one is in relationship to what the speaker for representing safeway said. is it clear in this legislation that large grocery stores, and for that matter small grocery stores, could be that if they were -- it was a fire or some other reason that they had to close for over 120 days, they would not be in jeopardy of losing their ability to have a liquor license for off-sale consumption? >> my understanding certainly is that the intent was to

preserve the exemption for large grocery stores so that they could close for as long as necessary and reopen. if that is unclear, the department certainly supports that intention. so, if the language needs to be clarified, we would be supportive of language that clarifies that. >> okay, yeah. and my support would be based upon that being included and understood. and as a corollary to that, it is much better to have the 120 days for any other type of establishment that's currently 30 days, but there are instances where it might take a lot longer than four months to renovate especially with a process being what it is. that may be something you might want to look at in terms of other situations where you might want to have exceptions where, in lieu of fire or some other thing happening to an establishment, you might give them a little more time. but i think part of what they're doing here i'm very supportive of this, is to try to get rid of some of the bad

actors where they would be encouraged to transfer their licenses to other establishments. and this is the first time anybody's done this. for many years i've seen all these projects and these fight over new liquor establishment, sometimes very upscale type ones. but nobody ever talks about doing anything to discourage the ones that are probably, you know, not doing good things for a neighborhood. so, i think this is a step in the right direction. >> commissioner borden. >> yeah, i think this is a good approach. i'm happy with having something that deals directly with [speaker not understood]. there is some sort of concern, i think this is a better approach than the outright ban. i remember when we made the exception for the movie theater and bowling alley, we actually said to supervisors, we'd love to see something a little more holistic looking at the entire corridor. with that, i would move to approve with modifications and maybe just say that staff continue to work on ironing out

the grocery store issues specifically. >> second. >> second. >> on that motion to approve -- to adopt the recommendation for approval with modifications including staff to continue work being on the grocery language. on that motion, commaedthctionv. >> aye. >> commissioner borden? >> aye. >> commissioner moore? >> aye. >> commissioner sugaya? >> yes. >> commissioner wu? >> aye. >> and commission president fong? >> aye. >> so moved, commissioners, that motion passes unanimously +6 to -0. and places you on item 10, case no. 2013.0134t, amendments to the planning code, including repealing sections 790.84, 790.86, 890.84, and 890.86, and amending section 317 and various other sections regarding the criteria for reviewing and standardizing the definitions of demolition, merger, and conversion of residential units, and revising the requirements and restrictions on alterations to non-conforming uses and structures.

draft ordinance. >> good afternoon, commissioners. sophie hayward, planning staff. and again, before i begin my presentation, i'd like to turn it over with your permission to jeremy pollack, he's here from supervisor avalos's office. supervisor avalos is the sponsoring supervisor for this piece of legislation. >> good afternoon, commissioners. jeremy pollack from supervisor avalos's office. and, yeah, i'll leave it to ms. hayward to give you the other details on the minutiae of this ordinance. i wanted to present just a brief overview of the ordinance and our intent with it. the staff report hopefully breaks it up into sort of three main parts. the part that deals with section 317 that deals with the controls for loss of dwelling units through demolition,

conversion and merger, and our intent is to bring the criteria that you use when evaluating those situations more in line with the general plan's housing element which has a strong support for preservation of existing housing, particularly affordable housing and rent controlled housing. the second portion of the ordinance deals with legally existing nonconforming units. that's in sections 180 and 181. then we're looking to add -- get protection for those units and also bring it in line with the housing element that sort of when in doubt these units should be considered legally existing units. and also provide some flexibility on the modification and alterations of those units. and the third part of the ordinance is basically simplification and clean up of the planning code. so, let's see. a few words about the portion of it that deals with loss of dwelling units and section 317. we believe that the modifications that we're proposing bring it more in line

with objective to and objective 3 of the housing element ~. objective 2 is to retain existing housing and promote safety and maintenance standards without jeopardizing affordability and objective 3 about protecting the affordability of existing housing stock, especially rental units. and i think an excellent example of the need for this is number 2 on your agenda, which was withdrawn, the proposed merger of 124-126 mullen avenue. this was a one bedroom unit that was proposed to be merged. this is a property that went into foreclosure, was purchased by real estate speculators who wanted to merge these into one unit and was as a result would have displaced a couple living in one of those units. and i believe the merger was originally administratively approved. and if you look at the existing criteria, there's reason why that would have been. there is the criteria that mergers should be allowed if it

brings the building in conformance with prevailing density and with the prescribed -- and also brings it in conformance with the prescribed zoning. that goes counter to the housing element of trying to preserve existing receiptctional housing stock. so, we are proposing to replace that with criteria that would put the -- you're considering mergers, demolition and conversions that you should consider whether it's going to be removing rental housing and whether replacement housing will provide like affordability and family housing. so, yeah, i believe we submitted a letter to you early this afternoon. our apologies for not getting it to you sooner. that addresses a lot of the planning staff recommendations. we agree with all but one of the planning staff recommendations and we have an idea of where an alternate solution to that issue, and one other proposal. maybe i'll save that for after the staff presentation and we'll say that we're open to considering separating out section 181 that deals with

modifications to legally existing nonconforming units. and if the community and the commission want more time to consider that, we'd be open to moving out on a slightly slower track. that seems to be a more complicate and had nebulous portion of the ordinance. so, with that i'll turn it over to ms. hayward. >> thank you. >> thank you. so, as mr. pollack described, the proposed amendment can be divided into three topics. consolidation and amendment of controls for the loss of dwelling units. adding protection and flexibility for existing legal nonconforming units. and three, simplification of the planning code. and the department's recommendation will be for this body to approve the draft ordinance or recommend approval of the draft ordinance with modifications. but i would like to note that the commission may want to conduct further review of the issues particularly surrounding the nonconforming units.

in my presentation today i will first address the consolidation control -- of controls surrounding the loss of dwelling units. and the loss of dwelling units can be described by demolition, merger or conversion. they're addressed separately in section 317 of the code. section 317 of the planning code is the primary location within the planning code that addresses the loss of dwelling units. these controls apply to most zoning districts. typically project proposals that will result in the loss of three or more dwelling units requires conditional use authorization and projects that would result in the loss of two or fewer dwelling units require a mandatory discretion review. currently the planning code also addresses the loss of dwelling units in section 207.7 of the code which outlines controls that are specific to the zoning districts that came about through the market octavia plan. that is the rto, nct and upper

market districts, nc districts. the loss of residential units in the c-3 districts is also addressed separately in section 2 12 e of the planning code. 67c.103 of these three sections, section 317 which applies to most of the city, section 207.7, which addresses the market octavia plan area, and section 2 12 e which applies to the c-3 district has its own set of controls and criteria for the loss of dwelling units. the proposed ordinance would for the most particle these controls into section 317. planning code 207.7 would be amended to delete the 13 criteria for review of the loss of units in the market octavia area and would replay them with a reference to the criteria [speaker not understood] in section 317. just move them over. it is important to note, however, that the criteria, the 13 criteria outlined for market octavia do not exactly match up

with the 16 criteria used in section 317. so, to that end the department's proposed modification would be to include any criteria that don't line up in section 317. so that we're just consolidating the same set of controls. the list gets longer, but nothing gets lost essentially. now, further, the proposed amendment would delete most of section 2 12 e and replace that with a reference to section 317 ~ as well. section 2 12 e covers the loss of dwelling units in [speaker not understood] above the dwelling floor. the current aye tier ~ currently listed in [speaker not understood]. the cu is required, but almost none of the cu criteria need to be evaluated within the c-3, na

makes sense. ~ if that makes sense. let's see. as proposed one difference how we treat losses in the market octavia district and other districts would be removed, we would add language to section 317 requiring conditional use authorization for the loss of even a single unit in the market octavia plan areas. and the ordinance would further amend the criteria for evaluation of the loss of units in section 317, additionally by changing the criteria used to evaluate mergers and conversions. so, the market octavia plan area, the same 13 criteria are used to evaluate demolitions, mergers, and conversions. in section 317 we have 16 criteria to evaluate the loss of units through demolition and there are the five criteria to evaluate the loss of units

through mergers and conversions. so, that's another difference. but for the department's recommendation is that we add a new 17th criteria for the review of residential demolitions that would require the commission to consider whether the demolition would remove affordable housing or housing subject to the rent stabilization ordinance. i apologize, that's in the proposed ordinance. that's not exactly what the department's modification is. i apologize. let's see. the department recommends -- i see. the department recommends a series of modifications that i described where it says basically no criteria are lost in the transfer to 317 from the other two subsections, section

table. i apologize. >> please stand by; change of captioners

>> and however, the department is supportive of amending the criteria that would consider whether the merger will bring the unit in closer conformity with the prevailing density of the district. so there are many circumstances? which the prevailing density does not match up with the prescribed zoning. >> the department is recommending that you continue to prescribe zoning. it can't possibly have been clear but that does summarize the recommendations regarding the loss of the units and i am certainly available for questions. the second part of the proposed

ordinance deals with non-conforming units and it is much more clear and easy to present. legal non-conforming units that is units that are were constructed with permits but do not conform to the density under the proposed ordinance would be allowed to be in larged and when the history is unclear, the presumption would be that the unit was legally constructed secondly planning code section 181 that outlines the provisions and reconstruction of non-conforming uses would be amended to allow the alterations needed to bring a building into conformity and to secure the bike parking and it would allow non-conforming units that exceed the density

to be enlarged altered or reconstructed provided that the alterations would not increase the non-conformity and permitted height for the required rear yards and set backs and it is this last piece that the department has concerns about that we would like to address. >> the draft ordinance is adropted would result to changes in the way that the alterations are controlled and considered. non-conforming units are legal units that do not conform to current existing density controls and generally they are units in older buildings constructed to prior zoning district and typical example will be a three unit building that was legally constructed in a zoning distributing rh2 that permits two unit or a larger building in the rh 2 district. building that contain a greater number of units which disi go

nature the units of conforming and non-conforming and only conforming may be expanded and altered and it is it is building owner that can determine and choose which units to designate. which means that most often it is the smallest for least desirable units that are made for the non-conforming units. the age of the structure with the prohition to expand means that these legal non-conforming units are among this staff and often subject to rent control. and while these units are affordable and they are not by definition so-called illegal and secondary units as they were legally constructed with permits. based on information from the department information and analysis group, of the approximately 360,000 dwelling units in the city 52,000 units exceeds the permitted zoning of the parcel on which they