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 facts and we spent a lot of time on fact finding. i want to thank tim fry and john ram and numerous others from the planning department to help us understand the process. i'm going to run through a brief power point. i will menace that the two chairs of this task force were mike boourl the head of heritage and the attorney which i ail know. wvp i'm going to go to the power point here. we had empathetic forces members representing project with expertise and the committee was given a clear charge at the beginning and the desire well, first of all, to sit at the

table you have to care about historic preservation and smart growth. so every single person at the table took an oath they card about both things. the report has 3 sections to it. i'm going to talk about the survey section. mike will talk about district and andrew will bring it up with sea gal. we spent the most amount of time and that's where many of the problems people brought up examples they ended up tagging back to the sequa process so that's a good place to focus our time. first of all, i'm going to talk about surveys. as you know surveys are incredibly important for the building blocks for the city

preservation. the city has surveyed a sizeable part of the city. what's working well, is the survey provides valuable information to property he owners and other. it's used to inform the neighborhood planning effort and the planning approach has continued to expand. one positive example was the sunset district process where there was really strong notification and strong feedback from the community and that has begun very well. in terms of what is not going well, the survey process it complicated and the impacts are not always clear to the public. in fact i spent 8 years working in san francisco and didn't

understand how a survey gets conducted and what's examined and why. it's done with professionals and be, in fact, i know understanding from an outsider what the themes are and how they're identified is something i think is still vague to the public. another issue is appealing survey finding can be time consuming. if you know you need to hire a consultant to contest survey finding and doing so it expensive you might be he less likely to do so. and as particle true in the process surveys sometimes come two late in the planning process so the surveys are done after the process is completed and

they're not used as a planning tool until much later. so we had a set of recommendations for improving the process. and one of the things that's key and this is to complete a citywide survey. and this is critical not only to identify the historic resources and to insure with the most valuable a protected but to address sequa challenges. we found that the city has not gone through the district ramifications and that's where the lack of clarity is so we recommend the complete citywide projects. we ask them to be done early.

and recommend scloith public input on public themes and this is informational presentations to the planning commission and it could include increases a survey advisory group to the public that serves as a liaison and to notify the public on this process. we believe this notifications process is good and it builds on the process. fifth is the community outreach standards it something that came up in the article 10 and 11 arrest and a lastly we think it's important to have a user

friendly grievance process. that can formalize the process for the draft process. with that i'm going to turn it over to mike to talk about the districts >> thanks. mike buehler. i'd like to echo sarah's comments thanking the department and staff for their assistance over the two mrs. process. we've received a lot of guatemala input and feedback from the department and incorporated many of the recommendations in the final product. so my section historic districts which is probably the least interesting or controversial of any of the 3 sub topics. i won't read the definition on the screen for you but the report does include the

recommendation focus only landmark districts under article 10 as well as the downtown plan article 11. in addition to that, however, the report we think it valuable as a primer for delineation of different types of district. we describe the the california districts as well as the cities kind of evolving model for the social districts. in terms of what's working well. there's actually a lot of all the time on what's working well, in the historic district they help foster conservation and stability and the articles require the department to have outreach to the property owner

that is ongoing. also the historic districts provide greater certainly by transcribing and non-contributing processes. in terms of what's not working well, and up think the recent process in the park is evidence to many the potential impact may not be clear to property owners and resident. the process for seeking approval for a project within a district can be confusing and property owners are sometimes required to conduct additional historic evaluations on properties that have been identified as resources. there are insufficient resources available to identify those resources particularly as

incentives. as i mentioned the report actually recommends codification of the departments existing practices. the b.alboa park is an for example, to inform the property owners about the available incentives like property tax abatement. in terms of our recommendations for this section. the task force recommended that the planning department publish engagement policies and procures for a new administration bullet tin this is a codification of the practice used in the park. development clear design

guidelines how to apply it to historic district. they already do include the design guidelines in the apexes for each of the ordinances adopting historic districts. this is aimed at creating a uniform template that is user friendly and easily accessible to the public of what is appropriate and not. provide a clear mechanism to enable the applicants to get the opinions from the architecture review committee. this is a recommendation that's fleepd the sequa section. it provides a mechanism by which the applicants can approach this body for an advisory opinion for the treatment of any given

project and finally, there's expand the property tax relief for the owners. it's wonderful to see there are applications before you today and, of course, last year heritage claubtd with spur as well as supervisor wiener in supporting the access to the mill zach and we're hastened to see people are taking advantage of that. people are seeking the millions act property tax and that's encouraging. that in terms of the design guideline recommendation. this is an example of 750 second street a project that the task force felt was a again example of incorporating design guidelines and how they can

benefit new construction within a historic district this was a project that was second-degree murder by the department staff as an example of construction. with that i'll turn it over to andrew >> thanks mike and thank you, president and commissioners for taking the time to listen to us. so my name is andrew i'm a land use attorney. we do a lot of sequa issues and a lot of preservations. it was a pleasure to be part of this. i drew the short straw so i get it wade through the sequa provisions. we're all familiar with sequa

inlick most local zoning maps and things their all initiated on a local basis. sequa is a state law but the actual body of law has been around since the 1970s but it's implemented locally it's all implemented right here in the planning department trying to take state rules and mcthem work on a local effort. in terms of who endorses sequa the court deal with it. the preservation issues came forward in the 1970s. that's why we're here to talk about the historic issues

related to sequa. i don't want to turn this into a technical conversation but it's important to talk about the things in san francisco that doesn't apply anywhere else in california. it applies to discretion projects only. this is one thing in most jurisdictions in california building permits are not discretionary. if you're project complies with the building code you get our permit. that's not the way it works in san francisco. in san francisco every building permit is technically discretionary which means every building permit has a sequa

component. it's interesting the planning department hearsay a deal with an enormous amount of sequa issues. preservation issues and non-presentation issues it's a an enormous task and even during our deliberations mike actually brought someone up from la and they were a bit stunned to find out the magnitude of the sequa rules. so we're going to talk about the secretary of interior standards the standards are important to this bystander and the sequa process. the difference between the project and not having a project is very much trying to get within the safe harbor of the secretary standards. we'll be talking about that.

what's working well. well sequa is certainly, you know, is in every nuke and koran i didn't in san francisco. it adds a protection area of review. it supplements and provides an extraordinary amount of implication. and they work well, but this expands well beyond the district. what's not working so well. we're going to get to the recommendations but we're putting aside a lot of the abuse of sequa. there's a lot of reforms in sacramento. we tried to focus on the implementation and trying to understand the sequa process and

the building process works together in san francisco. and how we might be able to suggest some recommendations. so getting into our recommendations. i'm certainly not going to go through all 9. those first two right here 24 this the low hanging fruit. we have thresholds of significant can be responder out and worked out in terms of exactly what is a resource trying to give the public and practitioners a little bit more resource when they're identified. guidelines that, you know, make the sequa process how it's applied and things like bulletin 16. back in 2008, it has been there and it needs to be updated the staff is working on that. we really think