2014 >> finally, the last page is what we've landmark do date since your designation program. if you have any questions, i'll be happy to a answer them >> commissioner highland. >> when we approved the motion the j h s we had 3 items to be added and they've not been added. >> that's correct this the the report and it will be in the next quarterly report. >> thank you mr. fry on sunshine school any kind of timeline. tim fry staff. as of now we don't have a timeline but we can follow-up and get a followup, if you will, >> commissioners any other questions regarding the work

program? yeah. >> that's great interest thank you to all the staffs efforts on this. really appreciate it as well as the community they put time on each project >> we'll move on. i'm sorry we do need to take public comment >> any public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioners if there's nothing future item 4 commissioners reports and announcements. >> half disclosure this is not a new item but mr. fry and i met with the marcus book store building owners and that continues on. we'll be hearing it anyway on the sixth. so that's it >> item 5 consideration of adoption draft minutes for

october 2nd, 2013. >> commissioners any comments regarding the draft minutes move for approval. >> item of the 340, 50 fremont the approval was with the amendments; right? i don't remember what the amendments were. >> the signage. they were approved with conditions. so noted commissioners. and i actually have a picture of the pylon so it can be forwarded on. and we're going to do public comment is there anyone from the public that would like to speak? >> seeing none, that's closed and we'll bring it back for motion. >> move approval with approval

of conditions on 5030 fremont street. >> on that motion to adopt the minutes as he corrected (calling names) so moved, commissioners, that passed unanimously and placed you under item 6 commission comments and questions. >> commissioner pearlman and yeah. i wanted to bring to the publics attention on the bank building. many of you have gone by a and seen graffiti on it. it's shocking to how i found out mr. that fry called me i didn't go down to see it until a day later the the graffiti after the

put up a graffiti video of him graffitiing it along with other historic buildings in the downtown area. ? a building has has security, there's about an 18 foot high barrier on the streets faces. it's shocking how break in it was and you know the mayor's office knows about this and the police have been notified. on the video i can see the guys face. we're hoping he gets caught but the reason i bring this up she showed the street and there were 10 to 15 people there all the people were taking pictures and no one called the police. i think it's sad that's it's an event and, you know, rather than

you know the vandalism that it is. so i wanted to point out that. so if you see that call the police >> commissioner any disclosures or comments? >> i will for myself i did meet with the pine street sponsors to taking a look at their projects. >> i met with the project sponsor this week. >> perfect. commissioners that will place you under item 7 case 1307 at 1603 pine street review and comments on the draft environmental impact report and a good afternoon, members of the commission i'm lisa gibson i'm the supervisor for the eir pine

street. my colleague who's the case planner was not able to be here today but i have a colleague here. the item before you is the campaigning comment and the draft eir site. it includes van ness avenue and frank street. the west side of the parking lot and the 5 lots contain one and two story buildings and the project will be that demolition project and result in the instruction construction of one-story building with ground floor and the second story commercial use. the commissioner members were sent copies electronically at the start of the project which began on october 3rd, initiating and will continue on. by the also sent i electronic

copies of the 4 background copies of the historic research evaluation the staff response and then 2 analyze for the partial alternatives. today, we're here to provide an opportunity to discuss the issues and formality any comments you may wish to make. before presenting the finding related to historic resources i want to remind everyone that a meeting is on december 7th and comments busing must be submitted to the review over on november 18th. after the hearing at the planning commission the planning

department will perp our irons to all the subject comments and we're going to accomplish that document sometime in connection next year. the 5 buildings located on the project site are the historic district which was identified in a historic survey of the support structures in addition to 2 of the buildings that are individually eligible as historic resources. the project was to have demolition resulted in demolition and the buildings would result in the significance of the architecture resources and the eir found that would be a significant and invaluable impact that can't be mitigated because of the van ness support structures. there were identified mitigation

measures in the eir 4 of them but implementation of those measures would notorious the impact to significant levels. the eir looked at 3 alternatives to the proposed project wyoming's one would not have any change to the existing structures and the other were to avoid the significant impact it was a full alternative as well as a partial preservation the partial preservation would have partial demolition and would have a single story residential tower and with ground floor and second story commercial. overall it would preserve 15 to 22 percent of the buildings on the site by nevertheless, you're

going to have a sixth invaluable impact. the full preservation alternative would demolish portions of the 5 existing buildings on the site and only involve construction of a single store tower. again there would be preservation of existing buildings and in this case all of the existing building facades and all the buildings would be incorporated into the alternative. and with that this alternative was found to be generally but still a significant impact. but the mitigation measures that were identified would railways this impact to less than significant level. that's the summary of the eirs finding. that concludes my presentation and we're here to a answer your

questions >> commissioners, i have no speaker cards. >> commissioners, do we have any comments? >> first i do. >> commissioner pearlman. i had a question looking at the partial and the full preservation alternatives highway they were arrived at because as an architect i know there's an infinite number of ways to do that. so i'm wondering how the department determined what those would be? >> shelly preservation staff we worked with the consultant to try to craft a project to meet the standards as close as possible. some of the perimeters wore to

get below the threshold defining the demolition. we use article 10 for demolition in our sequa analysis just for some parallel review between our sequa review and other reviews in our department. essentially, we neat to do preserve about 50 percent of the building materials in order to stable the threshold. in order to create a feasible alternative as required under sequa the project sponsor was marked out while staying within the rehabilitation standards. so that's how we arrived at the amount of material that should be retained on the site. we looked at the height and massing there were proposed and tried to imagine some setbacks

which would respect the character of the district which would allow the historic sites to read individual of the sites i behind them not necessarily connected to the historic buildings. we used the visual models to kind of play around with the different massing studies which might achieve that. meanwhile the project sponsor is trying to resolve the - they used the information as well, to create perimeters for the alternatives. so it's a partial trend of more demolition was allotted a large navy envelope was studied which

resulted in the reattention of all the historic facades but really significantly less than integrity among the historic buildings. did that answer our question and a yes >> commissioner highland. >> so the justification for mitigating the impacts are less than significant is that the demolition technically not a de facto definition under the threshold. >> yeah. by - while we found the full preservation alternative still does not meet the intent of the rehabilitation standards it's still two massive and it still has a prominent impact to the site. there's mitigates measures that included we did not find it

would be a significant impact as defined by sequa. and, yes the fact that the don't guess criteria and a section 1005 of the code did become sort of a threshold that defines how we approach the project >> is it t is miss no more to call that a full preservation and that's something we might want to discuss i was discussing that issue with lisa the fact that the full preservation alternative still requires the mitigation measures to be incorporated into the project. but we really struggled to come up with the preservation alternative that was feasible to building and there needs to be some reasonable feasibility in the alternatives to study them in the eir. if you were tow prop for

example, a one to two-story addition on the site and not achieve the goals an alternative does need to meet some portion of the goals >> maybe a full preservation alternative and drop the partial to the full as a suggestion. >> i'm going to deter to lisa gibson on that question and a lisa gibson. planning staff. point taken. it's the title >> and the integrity of the district is susceptiblely impacted. >> misunderstand. >> commissioners if no other questions we'll go to the public any public comment? we have no speaker cards >> good afternoon,

commissioners mike with san francisco heritage. i wasn't expecting this item to come up so quickly but heritage is the the process of reviewing the eir. our initial observations are the proposal is not a preservation treatment given there are zero lot lines set back for the retention of the facades. we agree with the comments by commissioner providing the alternatives i expect we'll champion distribution of now construction across the sites next to the historic project. we're concerned this is the only eligible historic project identified in the survey that

was collected a few years ago. including two eligible structures and that survey identified other support structures so thank you very much >> thank you. any other member of the public wish to speak. seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back to commission >> commissioner pearlman. >> i did have a preservation by the project sponsor open monday. i had a number of questions and objections and the reason i asked the question about the partial and full alternatives was prepared was from the project sponsor showing me performance that the project couldn't work, you know, unless they got the full project as proposed obviously which is their goal. so i look at the partial and

full alternative and i was struck by, you know, here we go or here's a project they're proposing 2, 13 story towers. you can achieve this full alternative and not have a 5 or 6 story tower by have the partial alternative and get much close to the goals of the project sponsor in terms of numbers and making it feasible to build. i think once you've set a building back partial to 20 feet to the tower once you set that back from the street it basically has the same feeling relative to the historic building. it seemed like an artifical way

to if it's not one of the 3 then, you know, if it's endorsed that the eir, you know, needs to - they're going to have to take one of the alternatives. it seemed like there's numerous alternatives that would be done with the partial and full alternative. i did one of my comments was that i think that, you know, we've seen a bunch of facadesism i may be called. there's 1 on folsom street on door alley you know the facade was saved and a low income housing project was done and then there's one out on or grul gull that's a terrible design. but literally only the facade was kept and a, you know,

housing was built behind it. i was struck two of the buildings in the project as the project sponsor has proposed it two of the facades were going to, you know, buildings were going to be removed and it distinguishes the integrity of the street. but the other one was a facade in the court between the two buildings. it seems like i know there's some land between the project as proposed and the partial alternative that certainly it seems like there could be some study that maybe more satisfy the project sponsor and still achieve the goals of the preservation goals >> thank you. any other commissioner comments? i will say that the previous

developer brought this forward and i don't know what year it was mr. fry might maybe four or five years ago >> it's in the package. >> they came in with the affidavit to what type out the whole block so i, you know, taken out a couple of the buildings and i know we're talking about the eir i put weight towards the building this year behind there are separateed and there's a sense of this old building in the middle of the project and i actually weighed that a little bit heavier in taking down two buildings this

partial situation kind of is working for me. just - that's my comment on that. commissioner highland >> just for clarification commissioner pearlman he's talking about the full prestige or the partial preservation alternative. i'm hearing what would apply to the fill >> i was talking about the partial alternative my comment really applies to both in that how you design the towers above relative to retaining part of the building or more of the building obviously not the whole building seems like i could get closer to what the project sponsor is trying to achieve finally on the lot while still

preserving the partial alternative. >> the challenge is we don't have an appropriate solution architecturally for the treatment of the historic resources with the program that doesn't necessarily fit the site so to call it a full preservation alternative and say the impacts are less than significant there's not a champ. i've been looking for this my whole career and you keep seeing more bad examples. i don't have a suggestion on that >> commissioners. >> just a clarification on the process here. we're being asked to provide

comments to the staff with all of those are good, i think. and point taken. then - i know we have reported minutes and their reported today but are those comments considered official comments that would go into i mean into the h public works t so this is a full discussion of the draft or is n buried in our note taking >> my task after this hearing is to disstill interest the comments you've provided a comment letter from the h pc that will be distributed to you and upon signature we will accept that as an official comment letter on the draft environmental report and we'll

respond to your comments as part of the documents we'll prepare after the close of the public comment period. >> i'm pleas with that. >> commissioner, if you will, man. >> this is a question the building that's at the corner of bush and franklin a very handsome auto use building certainly in terms of in my opinion a far more handsome and appropriate building to preserve is now a hole in the ground and i went through the same process i assume. i'm wondering you know the impact here's another developer coming in one block away and saying this building isn't nearly as nice as that building so how do he as a commission

reconcile that conflict and a good comment. i gave mr. franklin a call on that. it was actually approved as part of the western improvement area and under their rules it was still valid so the former development commission approved that. i don't know how the history of that boundaries was formed the department had no control over that essential >> okay. but back on this one. because i made that phone call right away. okay. so any other comments. okay. so staff thank you, very much.

you've weighed the six on what qualified >> commissioners that places you on item 8 the prejudice report and informational presentation. >> good afternoon. commissioners just a couple of introductory remarks. i wanted to let you know over the past couple of years the department has provided technical help on the prestige program and we really appreciated being part of the discussions. as a result of those discussions which i'm sure sarah will tell you about the countless meetings they you published a report this july which you all had access to

and requested a formal hearing to discuss this and we're here to listen and hopefully, we'll move some of them forward and report back to you in the future how we've been to do the proposals. so with that, i'll let my colleagues lead you throw their recommendations in the spur report >> good afternoon. commissioners it's a real pleasure to see you here today. i've got several copies of the report for you in case you don't have you're with you. i'm the deputy director of spur

we're a public policy think attaining. we partnered with san francisco architecture heritage to look at the way historic preservation functions in san francisco right now and look at it what's going well, and what a can be improved. yes, there were many, many meetings, in fact, we started three years ago and at that time, both mr. jennings us and myself were recently engaged with our respective partners and we've gotten married and a celebrated the second anniversary; is that correct? it's an incredibly productive process as you know in san francisco there's a lot of discussion about san francisco preservation but people don't agree on the