job this last year. right now i walk by the space and it's basically blighted with people who -- i understand there is not enough housing for homelessness in the city and i'm compassat to that, but as a homeowner in the neighborhood i appreciate seeing dead space activated and i'm in full support of this. thank you. >> hello commissioners. thank you for having this meeting. -- i'm the policy manager for san francisco beautiful and i'm here on behalf of san francisco beautiful to support the plaza programs. we think that the (applause) program will help activate the public realm by empowering the community and stakeholders to studthe long-term care. and will create a much more systematic and cost effective

process to activate the plazas. san francisco beautiful strongly supports the program that will strengthen the local arts and culture, and critical to the beauty and enjoyment of the neighborhood for the residents and visitors and making san francisco much more beautiful. thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is -- project manager at san francisco parks land and i work closely with stewards of other city-owned property and as our ceo was speaking to earlier, our street parks program has been around for ten years. and we have had a great partnership with local communities to activate and

revitalize the areas. we have noticed that negative behavior at parks have been reduced through activation. thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is susie mckenyan, the associate director for north of market tenderloin community benefit district and i'm here to speak in support of this proposal. in addition to my work with the community benefit district, i have a number of years' of experience in providing programming in public spaces peckly in the downtown area. united nations plaza, mint plaza and the central market corridor. i would like to speak most specifically to the transforational role that positive activities and events can provide to these types of

spaces. i have firsthand experience in seeing safety increased in these areas, increasing vitality and opening a number of opportunities for everyone who comes into the pleasure. most of the events that i have been involved in have been supported or funded by city agencies and so we had received a number of really wonderful guidance and technical support in the permitting process. and so i do think that the component of streamlining processes for permiting is very important as well. i feel that the most important focus for this initiative is the transformation role that positive activities and events can have in these public spaces and for the neighborhoods that they are in. thank you.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. andrea aloilo. i would like to that the castro community benefit district, there really needs to be something that can put some kind of control on these spaces and i know that the city is very interested in expanding and using this opportunity to bring economic vitality and positive energy to the spaces. so we really support that, but we also want to make sure that the city sees this legislation

as really the beginning of a relationship with the long-term stewards of these places. and that city's role is really in working with the stewards to make sure that these are thriving places that bring positive energy to neighborhoods. we really hope that the city does not see the passage of this legislate as the end of their responsibility, but rather the beginning. thank you. >> good afternoon, joslin cain the director of the entertainment commission and i am just here simply to let you know that the commission heard a presentation of this plaza program in february and they were unanimously supportive of the program. as you have heard a number of times we're part of the complicating permitting process that these poor potential stewards have to go through now and we're certainly happy to

have been involved with the development of how this program will be implemented. for our part is simply providing and regulating entertainment in the (applause) via the limited liability permits that you may have heard of in the past and that gives us the context to then regulate, if things sort of go outside of the lines. so in general, simply put the entertainment commission is supportive of this program. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is paul wormer. i was at a brainstorming session yesterday and facilitator pointed out one thing is killing good ideas and i want to compliment staff with

listening to concerns and really addressing the concerns. dennis antelli spoke to that. i did want to make a couple of specific comments about the planning code amendment before you. the first one is one that was made at the last hearing on this item, which is perhaps having p zoning treated as one unit. it's not the best solution, but i understand that that sort of a major revision might not fall within the timeframe. one specific item that i did note in the legislation before you is the restriction of uses to below-ground or first-floor level for non-public uses in a

p zoned building, obviously since we're talking about levels and it's not clear to me that restricting the non-public use to the ground-floor is necessarily necessary or desirable. i can conceive of a flush number ofip stances where you may have non-public use that is related to the building and public i can conceive of a:15:21 i can conceive of a:15:21

process >> it's enabling legislationing that aims to lowering barrier and provides additional maintenance resources to plazas behind baseline services provided bit city. so it's clear on the research that i have done in my trips to new york, speaking with organizations that have been activating public spaces and researching them for the past 20 years that vibrant and well-maintained plazas are vital for the city. in fact, kaiser permanente is beginning to work with the project for public spaces at looking at public plazas. so when it works well they serve as a

stage for public lives. so pps, the organization that i residenced 80% of success of any public space can be attributed to its mansion. management. [speaker not understood] there are visual cues about seeing couples holding hands and laughter and smiles that people remember and they want to return to the space. that is what a successful public space look like. i think we have all experienced that in your travels. in this country and abroad, as well as in certain parts of san francisco. so another rule of thumb that they go by great place should have at least ten things do it and ten reasons to be there and this is one way -- in terms of the activation to create a reason for being in

these public spaces. these things or activities should define people's experience of san francisco and be dynamic enough to attract a range of user groups, people coming back and always evolving. great public spaces are where celebrations are hold, social and economic exchanges take place, friends run into each other and cultures mix. and there type of activation is already occurring in many other cities throughout the country. miami, detroit, l.a., seattle, portland, you can go around the country, and in some respects san francisco is playing catch-up to what is already going on in cities across the country. >> thank you, sir, your time is up. >> i support this legislation. thank you very much. >> good afternoon. commissioners, my name -- [speaker not understood] cootion for san francisco

neighborhoods, land use commission. we had some discussion on this and there are some concerns. first of all, i do appreciate the attempt to activate, to make unused space -- unused open space usable for the public. my concerns are this. one is noticing. we asked for noticing to be somewhat similar to the planning department notice where if you are on the list of neighborhood organizations, that we get notices of plans of the meetings and it appears for this public plaza plan that is not the case and we would have to actively go to the dpw site and look for this, unless you live in the neighborhood. so robin and ken, i thereby agree that they would try to do

similar similar to the planning commission and that has not been done. another concern is being involved in city politics and planning commission, sometimes there may be pay to play. a non-profit may have pet projects. and the vendor will say oh, i understand you like baseball or whatever. and they could get selected and then all of a sudden this non-gets all of these donations from everyone to benefit certain plans, which is not bad, except that sometimes it may be unfair to some of the other vendors, who are neither aware of how to do this. [speaker not understood]

commercialization and privatization, that is extremely important.

thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. kathrin howard, golden gate park preservation alliance and also the open space committee for the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods. i want to thank oewd staff for meeting with us and listening to our concerns and for addressing some of our concerns and for clarifying the administrative code to specify this program does not include property under the jurisdiction of parks and recreation. this was a very serious concern as we contemplated in horror what could happen to golden gate park if one-third were open to even more aggressive activation than it is now? we agree with the previous speaker this limitation should in the be amenable without citywide approval. thank you for clarifying the length of time for private

events, as well as setup and takedown. we share other express concerns about the privatizing public spaces, and about allowing more formula retail and lastly we're concerned about the very limited neighborhood outreach. really 300' is not very far. the city blocks are often 200 x800 feet and it's also probable that people not living next to a (applause) plaza and let's

include our neighborhood organizers on the list. thank you very much. >> sue hester following up on a speaker's comments. he brought your attention that developers could -- [speaker not understood] this is a real concern and something that the planning director and planning commission needs to pay attention to now, and not after, because once the legislation is out of here, it will not be amended, witness scott weiner's strong statements to that effect. i have right here the negdak

for 650 indiana, which is on today's agenda and coming back two weeks ago to get approval of the use of 19th street. i am one of maybe three people who gets negdex [speaker not understood]

and because you don't have eirs for most projects in the areas that are high-development, and you have to figure out how you are going to give notice that this is happening? and it has to be real notice. the current process of getting notice that you get to go through the 00 ages' of documents, six days before the hearings and you will find this exemption. if you are crazy enough to do that every week. i'm crazy enough to do that, but it's hard. so you have got to tell people hey this is going on and we'll add this to the project district, in advance and not at last-minute and projects that do have an eir, 75 howard street, that has

amazing amounts of public lands next to it, if they are going to add a front yard to their very high-end housing project, it's not in the eir. it should be in the eir. the planning commission has too make sure that notices are taken care of. the board of supervisors will not, oewd will not. thank you. >> thank you. is there further public comment?

seeing none, commissioner moore. >> does staff want some time to compile answers? >> we would be happy to. i think it would be a little more helpful if we got the specifics on which things you want us to address? there was a lot of public comment and i would be happy to or we would be, but i would need a little more specific gneiss on guidance on which issues were of concern to the commission? >> one speaker -- it's very difficult to sit here and repeat everything, but i saw you take notes and anne marie, and perhaps you could grab some of the things that you jotted

down to get discussion going. >> one comment referred to a process that is specific to the street plazas. the street plazas are not really under connection to the planning code. plazas are on right-of-way and they are very associated with the existing process that is in line with major encroachment permits. to add a plaza encroachment permit, which has a public hearing involved. in that case with the street plazas, the city would issue an open permit period during which various potential applicants could submit their proposals to be the actual applicant for the encroachment permit. in the way that is written for dpw, there would be a learing, --

hearing. so it's designed to be parallel to the steward identification process. request for proposals -- it has the full intent of a request for proposal, which is a review committee. we actually couldn't replicate the review committee process structure under the performance process for the street plazas because the city is acting in regulatory. so our intent was to make the processes parallel, but it's a little confusing because they are slightly different. >> just to make it perfectly clear in either case, before the plaza isaproved into the program, and before there is a

steward agreement, whether that agreement is for city plaza or street plaza there is a hearing at bdr. there is always a hearing at the board of supervisors. there are a couple of different roads to get there, but you don't ever get around the hearing at the bdr. i just board of supervisors. >> i would like to speak to paul wormer's statement that concerns if you are looking at the ordinance on page 4 line 7. there is say limitation that if you are allowing a non-public accessory use it may only be located at or below the ground story i have talked to staff

and oewd and this was always in as part of the original proposal for the ordinance in recognizing there would be concern about the non-public uses on p-zoned properties. maybe if robin could talk about noticing. >> so noticing is one of the things that we added as amended as part of the presentation today and we added several things. one of the things that we added a specific requirement for mailer and that is 300' radius was based on feedback that we got through the input process that many stakeholders feel comfortable with the process outlined by the planning department. so what we did was actually take that process and replicate it for these spaces that are under the jurisdiction of either dpw or real estate, but those notices wouldn't actually come from the planning department. they would come from either dpw

or real estate and we're trying to build a mirror process under different jurisdictions. so we added three requests for types of noticing. one was for local residents. local property owners, and also the neighborhood groups. so that we could make sure that all stakeholders would have a vested interest in the space would get additional noticing. so we added that specifically to the administrative code amendments and are working on drafting into the public works code, which is the two types of plazas. >> thank you. >> commissioner antonini. >> thank you, i think this is excellent proposal and in my opinion long overdue. you go to other cities and you go to public places and you feel more secure, you feel safer, they feel cleaner. i think this would be a benefit that we come out of this. it's a little like an extension

of business improvement districts into other places. i have a couple of questions for staff. why only a non-profit? why do you have to form a 501(c)(3)? rather than a company just doing it themselves? or individuals? >> sure, i would be happy to try to answer that. we actually kind of went back and forth on that. we knew from the beginning there would be a concern about the idea of handing over public spaces into private hands and i think i have tried to emphasize in the past, we are partnering with someone to help manage them. we're not giving someone a piece of land of it's not a lease that you now own and put a fence around, but nevertheless there was that concern and we felt that concern would be allayed to a large gre by requiring the non-profit status of the steward. other folks on the other side reasonably said you are cutting out groups that may be for-profit and have a lot of capacity in the area.

we sort of weighed that and from most of the outreach we did we landed on the side that the non-profit requirement was on balance, a good thing to have in there. we had a good conversation with the park as license folks a few days ago and i hope they don't mind me saying that they are willing to explore with us an opportunity for the parks alliance to extend its non-profit status to smaller groups that would have trouble getting the wherewithal to get the 501(c)(3). so we think there are groups that are already 501(c)(3) and set up to do this to extend their umbrella around the steward groups and make us more comfortable that was the way to go with that. >> in response to your answer that would not prevent any company from forming 501(c)(3)?

>> we have hurdles -- a private company simply forms a 501(c)(3) and putsn the board of directors their ceo, their treasurer and their something else, that is not going -- we're not go to select that. it has to be a group that represents the neighborhoods and i don't think we would ever get that through the board of supervisors >> i guess it has to be arm's length and i can see that, but i think it leaves out a lot of good sources of revenue that would really get some things down. the second question, why not rec and park? if for example we looked at situations -- one is instances harding park that has been taken over? it is still run by the city and still owned bit city, but the pga and others have overseers that make sure it's maintained in the right way to be able to allow for tournament championships and keep the course up? and if we did this

on places like legislation lincoln park and golden gate park, it would allow? >> ruark is managing open spaces in the city and we talked to them and they saw a clear distinction between the kind of facilitis that they manage, which tend to be larger green, more sports-oriented and bigger. they have got lots of mechanisms in place, whether they work well or don't work well, to manage their spaces and this is really aimed at a different function entirely. there are mr. reasons i think and most people agree we should keep a distinguish between the two.