process that the developer did the out reach to us at mission housing and we were able to provide our community space within mariposa gardens to have the neighborhood meetings and we invited the residents, and the surrounding residents and business owners and the developer was very gracious, to come, to a number of meetings, four or five meetings that we had. and answered, lots of questions, that residents had, and showed us, that, at meetings, that changes were made to the development, concerns were being listened to, and everything from the size of the building to the number of units to the amount of affordable housing and all of those questions were dealt

with the developer answered the questions and made the changes and i want to say one more thing and i was there when we developed mariposa gardens and it is interesting that some of the complaints that i have her in this project were similar to the other project and that is 100 percent affordable housing 63 units we support this project. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> good evening, commissioners. mr. sanchez with the carpenter's union and first of all i want to say that san francisco is growing. and we need housing. and this building has all of the provisions of the general plan which is housing, and also, this project was approved by the board of supervisors and also by the planning commission. and so those folks they know what they are approving.

also, if i am not mistaken, the objectives of the eastern neighborhood plan is to maintain a nice mix of neighborhood, and commercial. and this project has given us. and i think that the developer's goal is to improve the area. and make it a more friendly, so please, deny the appeal. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> mira, aliza and i am here to support the appeal for the project. and we are primarily concerned about precedent setting high limit ex-exception and shadows and traffic and parking in the area, potrero, avenue is incredibly crowded now and with the amount of development coming it is going to get worse and for anyone to say that there is no environmental impacts on the park and traffic, restrictions that are coming to the neighborhood, are

really not looking at the situation, and realistic fashion, the fact that people are going to stop driving cars has not panned out and the traffic is bad all over the city and getting worse. the shadows from the higher buildings will have a number of negative effects on the neighborhood. and i did a search on the... production in the area, buildings over 5 stories require more electricity per unit and while the roof storage per unit shrinks has the height goes up. >> the more high-rises we build and the denser the population, the more dependant that we will be on the electric grid. they can cancel each other out and there is a limit of the scale at which the production

can pull fill the needs of the building and that limit is four to five stories and based on the square footage needed to produce enough power to make the system viable and the major requirement other than the scale that there be no shadows on the roof and most in the immediate neighborhood can be solely independent so we do not buy into the theory that the it is the most efficient way to house people, thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> and thank you, my name is jeff, and i am the owner of a property at 485 potrero across from the proposed development and i am here to oppose or to support the appeal and while the developers have offered a lot of engagement with the community, ultimately what is at issue here is the shadows

that have been cast on my building and property that i have worked so hard to own here in san francisco, but the rest of my neighborhood that is on the opposite side of this development, the hard fact is that we are going to be dwarfed by a giant shadow of this building at six stories and it is going to effect not only my personal heating, and energy costs, and supporting my family and my young son, but also, just casting an entire shadow on my backyard during a good part of the day. so, this project largely just puts my whole building in the dark. and for a considerable portion of the day, and i think that it is out of character with the neighborhood, there is no other building that is this size, and i think that it sets a very bad press did precedent for the development in the area and i think that it can be dense that does not have to be six

stories, this is very co-henive where they have a lot of resource and condensed the amount of effort to build this development so there is plenty of room for profit and as they have stated on numerous occasions they do not intent to sell many, and i would maintain that we can having affordable housing and a development there without having such a structure dwarfing the neighborhood out of character. thank you. >> i have been living there for 27 years. and i know that it is late, so i am going to give you just three letters. tfb, too freaken big and there are too few parking spaces thanks. >> next speaker, please? >> thanks, commissioners for

hearing us. i know that it is past everybody's bedtime most likely, my name is dean and i am the president of the verde club and i am a third generation san franciscan and my family the tory that my mom's maiden name and i have lived on utah street for 18 years and i know that does not give me special rights, but this building that they are putting in, i have been with this since the beginning and it has been rubber stamped all wait through planning because the verde club is the historical and all that they have to do is a study on it but it did not have to be approved and then there is the sequa and the eir and all of these things and one report was ten years old. you know, i just think that we are being run over by this big building and it is going to be huge. >> the developers have been nice and tried to accommodate us and they say that it is born

and raised there, but they don't live there any more and with the, and you know, what they are getting out of it is rent. and they are making money off of this, which there is nothing wrong with that. but it is just too big, and potrero avenue is constantly fire engine and ambulances and to add more cars and who got the great idea of putting a residential property when it is zoned industrial. those do not go together, do they? to put that many people and any way, thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker please? >> hi, my name is benny and impart of the ownership of the body shop next door and i want to point out a couple of things before i go with my spiel they said that they were enthuse enthuse when they got 24

signatures we got over 100. i love the fact that the mission housing authority, owner and talked about his project, 62 units and no higher than two floors and spread across on the higher square block. and they are talking about 75 in the tiny corner of our block. and now, on my spiel, i am at the body shop next door and like i said we have been there 16 years and i am going to be there for another 20 and we just extended our lease and we are in the m1 industrial use zone, behind me block is a plumber, and is a furniture construction, and there is the artist studio that paints, and we paint all day. i have got neighbors across the street that don't like me because they can smell my paint in the afternoon and i have neighbors on the block behind me that come over and say that they have a newborn that can smell my paint in the afternoon, luckily the fire department and the bay area

agree with me thatvy been there well before and that i have grandfather rights that we have the right to spew paint out of our exhaust that is properly filtered. >> okay if you want to put a 7 story building right next to me and have my paint reach up on to their roof deck open space, and reach down into their recessed backyard, where they are kids are playing? i think that i don't think that you guys have any right to be poisoning people or to approve a plan without thinking clearly which she did not considered industrial applications around the block that have been there for ages that are not leaving any time soon. >> thank you. >> thanks. >> okay. >> hold it please, that is okay. >> my name is olga,

>> please use the mic. >> i live at 467 potrero avenue and that is across the street >> we bring up the shadow and because it is so far-reaching and it even is, it gets, even the morning shadow that is on the other side of it, and it is even father, reaching. and we have a picture here where the developer had made this, and this is a shadow that they say would cast, this is the shadow, that was cast by the previous building. and this was the penthouse and

it was actually, two and a half and it was two stories plus the penthouse and this is the outline of the penthouse, and this photo was taken in 1997 and even the appendages on top of the building will cast a shadow and maybe even a longer shadow and when they are talking about the height of the building they often would mention like, even in this picture, that these are, it is a similar to the one across the street. and it is actually two and a half stories. and three stories here that is three and a half stories and then, add another story for this, for the back side. and then, on utah street, across the street, that is five and a half stories, and you actually have the six story building that is taller than the tallest building that is on the top of the hill. and, we just feel that this

street cannot... sorry, this street... is what we are talking about. that is mariposa gardens and this is the former building that was there. okay. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello, my name is michael hunter and i live across the street from this building project. one of my main problems with it is just because it is permanent, is it appropriate? >> and i think that the size is completely out of line with anything on the entire street of potrero except for general hospital which is the only other building that size on the street and the other thing is that the construction project of this size and type, could be at least a year. and, ambulances use the street

every day, all day long for emergency routes, and a construction site can only load in on the potrero side of the street and that means that they will be blocking an entire lane for major parts of the day at all times of the day and there is no other way that you can load in because of the grade. and so i think that it is, and without, in the afternoons it is a parking lot and the ambulances have a lot of trouble getting through that thing all day long as it is. and so having a year project on a building like that could cause problems for the emergency vehicles. thank you. >> thank you >> is there any other public comment? >> okay, seeing none, then we will start our rebuttal.

three minutes. >> forgive me if i speak a little fast because the points that i would like to raise, laerry should not have been speaking.

>> we are not sure why. but it been submitted already. they are saying now $4 million is going to be the cost to build this building. as you all know, the buildings are charged based on the cost of permit. san francisco is being cheated out of a million dollars. and how can you go through triage with cbi without approving the project. most important is the commission hearing was pretty much in a legal hearing because

it was not posted on-site. the date after the commission of july 18,th, said they had problems and come back until august 8th. they had set downs. the day the project sponsor saw it. the day after the project sponsor sawed off the signs. it's funny because this sign, it only talks about the application. when they were put back up, 3 weeks later i sent an e-mail to the planning commission. it was with the date. it was not proper posting on sign. these signs now that they are up with the old date. people still look at them all the time. these are important because a lot of people weren't

given proper notification with families at the mariposa gardens including the property owners. to conclude, right here. land use attorney, sue hesser wrote the administrators. >> wrap it up please. >> this is from the project application, it says within 30 days it should be an appealed to the board of supervisors. thank you very much for your time. >> okay. we can hear from mr. -- >> before you sit down on that point on jurisdiction. what's your point that we don't have jurisdiction to hear all of this? speaker: it's that in the project application it says opportunities for appeals from other parties from large

project authorizations are to the board of supervisors. we were told to appeal to you within 15 days. we were also told that you haven't had any other large projects authorization appeals. i don't know if that's why. i also know the department treats these as conditional uses which go to the board of supervisors. >> can we have the citation please. >> yeahch thank you very much. >> this citation. okay. we are just looking at the submissive. it's nothing cited. it's someone's interpretation of something.

>> as i understand it, that came from the department of planning website. >> thank you. okay. i only have a few more comments. one of the things this board needs to understand is how really large this project is. i think the model shows somewhat. if you drive down the street and down to the general hospital, this will be the largest building on that whole path half way across san francisco thereby largest tallest building until you get to general hospital. it's only 1 story less at all than the new hospital building. it's really going to be a monolithic problem for our neighborhood.

we also wanted to correct a few things. our understanding is that over 50 individual apartments of mariposa gardens were not given notification of this project. we were sure nobody was going to be advised that there was going to be serpentine as best as asbestos an we also know the department failed to notify the downtown high school which is within a quarter mile of this project and bylaw they should have been notified and we heard various explanations from the planning department like the high school is not a facility or this construction site is not a facility. the high school should have been notified and given an opportunity to weigh in on this project and they were not. we again say as much

as the planning department fits within and complies with all requirements, i would ask you to look at our briefs to nine ways that it does not comply. the fact that they had to give variances that were very significant. 48 percent of the units in this house in this construction site will not have the required air and light access. it is, it really is a project that is way too big that's been squeezed on a site way too small. i would like to begin by the fact that 62 units go on the quarter block of mariposa gardens and put 50 units on that one small corner lot of potrero and mariposa. >> 6 minutes.

>> thank you, again, commissioners. john, on behalf of the permit holder. i just want to respond to a couple issues that have come up. with respect to the height measurement there is no individual new height measurement. this building is measured every way the buildings in san francisco is measured. i just want to make that clear. in addition the ground floor height of the commercial space. it's added to this project specifically in response to community request for such a space. other request were also to maximize the parking as much as possible because they were concerned about parking because of increasing amount, it would cut into parking spaces and we would lose parking spaces in the garage below or would start eating up the residential units and would leave a dead space above the retail space. we think it's appropriate that since we provided this in

response to the neighborhood, that we do, we are eligible for that exception that the planning commission has granted. with respect to the height, i just want to make clear, the project sponsor hired a licensed is you -- is survey or of the measurements across the street at 47 potrero, 8 feet lower. portrero, 10.8 feet lower. portrero,.8 inches higher and 459 potrero 9 feet lowerment we have our licensed is surveyor looking at the site. we are not

quite sure that it reflects what the survey shows. with respect to how the example of the previous building, how they cast shadows before, this is actually an elevation of that billion. -- building. it had this project which had bulk above that going taller than this building. i want to be clear that was a significantly sized building at the time and that wasn't going to be significantly larger. the issue of notices has been brought up. i just want to speak to that briefly. there was some confusion about the site posting. it was a unique situation where we had one planning commission hearing and one planning commission 3 weeks later and we worked with the

planning commission to provide notice. they have power to determine whether or not notice was adequate. this was done at the planning commission and that note was provided. there are at least five neighborhood meetings. there were several site postings due to the fact that we had now two planning commission hearings and now board of appeals. we haven't heard any example of anyone not getting notice and not being part of this process. with respect to downtown high school, there is a section of ceqa that does require special notice of schools within a quarter mile of the project, but they only require that when a project is anticipated to emit hazardous substance. this is a residential project so

both ourselves and the planning department agree that it's not appropriate for this project. we are thrilled to have the opportunity to build these sites and manage these apartments in the future. they have made numerous modifications based on the input. just to go through a couple of those changes shall they have reduced the account and increased the parking spaces and provided those set backs from the upper two floors in addition to the others. those are the main ones. this is the way we would want project sponsors to approach then advertisement process in san francisco. a lot of outreach and willingness to make project modifications based on the input they receive. the project is fully consistent with the eastern neighborhood plans of 2009 and therefore we request that you deny this appeal and allow the

project to move forward. thank you. i'm available for questions. >> i do have a couple. i heard one. i don't know if it was one of the appellants or counsel or representative. someone represented a height of 4 feet instead of six. >> my client had a property rezoned in 2009. their intent was to fulfill the intent of the plan. which is the height of 58 feet and 6 stories. in response to the concern about the height, there were those set backs as on the top. >> so, in recognition of the surroundings, we have a nice model there. is there anything even close to 6 stories as the next highest 3 stories? >> if you take a look at it. the building at the caddy corner here. it's four 4

stories at the street and then it immediately starts going up five and six 6 stories as you go up. that's comparable. >> he's got the floor, please. you are saying it's four or 5? >> it's four floors at the street and starts increasing by a floor and another floor. >> wait. he has the floor. okay. let's see. those shadow studies of the -- i appreciated the public commenter who put them both up because that is what i wanted to understand. the distinction between your illustration with the shadow versus that angular spread that's on the other one. i need someone to help