it's in jeopardy and i'm very concerned about that and what our options are at this point. >> thank you. any other member of the public wish to speak? please come up. >> hello, my name is jennifer davidson, i reside in the city. i'm a recently graduated interior designer and i also wanted to speak on the topic of the conversion to the office use because i have just gun to start my career in the design industry and i see this as an incredibly valuable resource for current and future designers and i feel that it would be damaging to remove that accessibility for incoming designers to learn more about their craft and to have contact with business people such as these in that space, which is currently very nice and is a

historic spot, but the current business is important and future business as well. so i oppose the office allocation portion of this. >> thank you. any other member of the public wish /o speak. seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring back to commission. commissioner pearlman. >> thanks very much everybody for your presentation. i was the one who brought up the whole issue about losing the design showroom space and i didn't know mr. dixon, thank you for the information, if that's true about the 101 henry adams being 90 or 95 percent occupied, it leaves -- you know, this is my concern is that these businesses will no longer be able to operate in san francisco because i imagine getting 22,000 square feet, you know, that's somewhere related to the design industry is

probably not possible in this neighborhood. so -- and then mr. shaheen also, i'm wondering about the /phrarpb plan that was put forward. what you said was you're going to get a 30 day notice to leave and that doesn't sound much like a transition plan at all. you know, while i understand the parking issues, 250,000 square feet of office space is going to generate a lot of people and that's a whole planning code issue that we have nothing to do with, but i understand the loophole in the code because we have the opportunity but at the same time it is a historic resource already, and any changes to that building would have to go through the /skaout any of our whole code and review process so, you know, i'm just really torn about this because i

really see that -- you know, and i understand that, you know, starting ten years ago i had an interior design partner and in 2001, 2002, 2003 , the internet had a huge impact on our business and ability and need for focused design center space and that was, you know, ten years ago, the /#12* years ago, but clearly if one building is 95 percent full, i don't know how full the 2 henry adams building is. in a way it'd be nice to do the reverse where all the design goes into the henry adams building because that's such a nice building and the 101 henry adams is the one that might turn over, even though i suspect that is historic as well. obviously it's the show piece of showplace square is 2 henry adams because of its location and its prominence in design so

i am very torn about this. it doesn't seem clear to me that exploiting this particular loophole is really gaining anything. it feels like we're actually losing something if we're losing these businesses when the building would be maintained and taken care of anyway because you have a 30 year owner who says they're going to stay in this neighborhood and not let their building deteriorate so i'm not sure what we gain by landmarking this if it's already at historic resource that has the protections of our process. that's my take. thank you. >> mr. fry. >> commissioners, tim fry, department staff, just to clarify a couple points. the provision to convert the building to offices is a very specific incentive that was created as part of the eastern

neighborhood's rezoning to give flexibility to historic buildings that generally have a hard time to reuse in a sensitive manner. to clarify that is not currently provided to this building. as a historic resource it's identified in a survey so any changes to the building, including signage, would be reviewed by preservation staff, but that does not preclude any alterations to be proposed in the future. maybe not under this current owner, but maybe 30 years from now that could be detrimental or if seqa were to review and /e collude the review of

historic resources. >> not likely. >> just to clarify, article ten has a very separate sort of meaning than just a historic resource for the purposes of seqa. >> thank you. my comment -- i spent a little time in the area because of the concern of are we going to keep the design center area as a center or are we breaking it up. i believe the sponsor spoke to this, but there's 150,000 square feet would be my rough estimate of open space in that area. i know when the page family bought 200 kansas street i walked it with the family, but that was half full, half not. it is a tough situation here because you have a building that's been identified as a cornerstone of the design center, however the rest of the design center is also pdr.

how do we help those landlords fill those spaces? from people in in building partially? yeah. i'd say we're at the height of design business right now. it doesn't seem that it would expand too much more. we're booming here locally so i think it's a overall pdr question as well. you know, is there enough pdr to fill all these spaces or not so director ram. >> yeah, we're still looking. i mean, obviously you're looking at whether this building is eligible to be a landmark. some of the things we're looking at is the pdr uses citywide. some parts of the city it's growing and some parts of the

city there's a lessening demand for pdr. because of our code the showrooms are considered pdr uses. it's a different type of use than a manufacturing use. if it is a pdr used by our definition, but there's a fairly low job density because of the number of the showroom spaces primarily occupied by furniture and design objects. so we're looking at that issue. we're also looking at increasing the potential for pdr space in other parts of the city that seem to be more attractive to makers and small manufacturers that seem to be growing to a certain extent. i guess the point is that we're starting to see a shift in where the pdr users want to be and that's one of the things we're looking at when we look at this larger pdr question in the city right now. >> commissioner pearlman. >> i appreciate that, but this

is called showplace square. you know, it's not that you could be down in dog patch and have mr. dixon's business because then he's completely disconnected from 50 or 60 or 70 other businesses that might be at a smaller scale. so, you know, i'm just worried about losing that. and i think i said at the other hearing, we're going to have the change the name of showplace square if all these businesses move out into a different area or disappear entirely we're not showplacing. relating to what president hasz said about the other 150,000 square foot of other space, and mr. dixon, i don't know if that's useful to you, if there are spaces that meet that scale of your business, but, you know, i think it is part of the larger question of if you're

two blocks away from 2 henry adams that won't be particularly useful. /kwrorpbgs you know, if they could meet the zoning of the pdr d, if that's the current zoning, if some of these makers could use that kind of space, if they met the definition of the zoning as a way to fill up other space that isn't full right now. an encouragement from the department to look at the periphery of showcase square relative to these new uses you're talking about. >> i would -- to counter what commissioner pearlman said, i'd say we start regulating or we don't do any of it, but once

it's written in a code i think it's unfair for us to -- somebody who goes through all the steps, the code says if it's a landmark you can have these uses and they go through all these steps and then turn around well, we don't think your building counts, then we should