right-of-way, and removal of a door, and construction of a new stairwell and converting the roof of the single rear edition to a deck and replacing a window at the center of the rear bay with a custom built wood frame door and replacement of two non-historic windows in kind on the first story. and not visible from the public right-of-way. the garage design will retain the openness of the front yard and the existing straight run stairs. the preposal will remove the curb and planters at the front of the residence, the proposed garage will be contemporary in its design and will not create a false sense of the historic development in the district. the addition of the below grade space will not be visible from the public right-of-way and not impact the character defining features, the mass scale and location of the infill edition is consistent with the building and additions found on

contributing properties within the surrounding district. and to date, the department has received one letter of support for the proposal which was in the packets that you received. and the planning department staff, recommends approval with conditions of the proposed project, and it appears to meet the secretary of interior standards and staff supports the project with the following conditions, the project sponsor will use a smooth finish wall for the new retaining walls and planters with the driveway to maintain the public right-of-way. and the project sponsor shall retain the base of the bay on the primary facade above the garage and install a wood door with a painted finish similar in tone to the surrounding wall finishes and lastly, the project sponsor shall complete a site visit with the department staff and occupancy in order to verify with the approved project description and conditions of approval. the project sponsor is present

and prepared a brief presentation and available for questions and this concludes my presentation, thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners, virginia manahaw with the architecture presenting the project for the clients. >> project was built in 1900, and it is currently... sorry. it is currently an rh 2 residential home, two family residence, and it is in the historic district. and the current use is a single family and the proposed use will remain a single family residence. this is a subject property right here. and it is surrounded by other props of similar

characteristics. and the scope of work that we propose to do is to infill. >> it is almost impossible to hear you, if you could maybe, get a little closer to the microphone. >> okay, i apologize. >> thank you so much. >> we are proposing to do an in-fill beneath an existing second story over hang at the south of the property that is not vicible from the street and we present to add a new garage door at the front of the building. and in keeping with similar, garage doors that have been added on the neighboring properties. and we are proposing to reconstruct an existing stair that will lead to the basement of the rear of the property also on the south side of the building. >> this is the existing first floor where we have right now this blue area is the area that we are proposing to fill in on the south side of the facade in

the rear of the property, it is about two feet deep. and you can also see it on the photo, that points out to this area here that it will be in-fill. of the front of the property, we are proposing to install a garage door, this is the existing elevation and we are proposing to he is ka vait and install a garage door. the garage door will be very similar to the garage doors that have been installed to the south of the property, or adjacent neighbors here as well as this one here two doors down. the garage door will be wood panels, that will be painted to match the existing building,

and it also is recessed from the front of the building, and we are keeping all of the existing trim moldings surrounding the garage as to disturb as minimal as possible and have a minimal impact on the facade itself. >> this drawing here shows the area of the back that has been infilled at the first floor level and there will also be a new stair leading to the he is ka vaited basement. and the proposed area of the roof of the first floor roof deck in the back with railings that will be in keeping with the characteristic of the house. and there was a letter in support of the project by the neighbor adjacent to the property on the south side. this neighbor right here. we believe that the project is in keeping with the characteristic of the

neighborhood. and with very minimum impact on the neighborhood itself. thank you. >> commissioners any questions for staff or for the sponsor? >> commissioner highland? >> i just have one question on the and it relates to one of the conditions, and the surface of the garage door itself, first of all, i think that the staff recommendations is to make it as flush as possible so that we don't see the lines, is that the... intent of it? >> so the garage door is panel flush panels, that will be painted. >> okay, because the drawings make it look like there is more articulation in the joibts. >> it is a tongue and groove paneling system. >> so you have no objection to the condition that staff is putting on this then? >> no. i mean, we would definitely would work with the planning staff to make sure that the

door complies with the requirements. >> i just was not quite clear of how it actually is going to look. >> we submitted the changes and we will be happy to. >> one drawing calls it a one by six, horizontal paint door and then it calls it one by five tongue and groove and then 9 inches and so i was not clear how those horizontal lines. >> if i may commissioner. i am going to have a suggested addition to the conditions as well. so maybe we will make and so that there is another submital later on and so maybe we will have a submital of the actual garage door and we can add that as a condition of approval and then i will just say while i am on the subject. only because the base of the bay the rounded sections sometimes get taken off when these garages went in years ago, and completely messes with the balance of the building just that one little item i have seen it happen and it gets taken off and messes with the balance. what i would like to see is just a check-in, drawing sent

over once you have a structural engineer, do the structural engineering for that opening so that we can confirm that it stays. >> okay. >> commissioner pearlman? >> i also have a comment on the garage door. it seemed like there was a conflict between the staff report said match the color of the concrete walls, i think. and then the architect said the color would be the color of the building. which seems more appropriate. so i just want to get clarity on the staff requirement. for the color of the garage door. >> and if you could just grab the mic. >> pardon me. so we asked in the conditions that the garage door be painted in a finish similar to the tone of the surrounding finish and walls. so that is something that we can follow up on and make sure

that. >> i am saying that there is a conflict between that and the architect said paint it the color of the house which seems more appropriate to me. >> which is the more common way to do it. >> it is more common, that is all. so i wanted to sort of clean that up to make sure that it is that way, that the architect said, that the color should be matching the house and not necessarily the walls of the retaining walls. >> yeah, i can update that thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioners any other comments or questions at this time? >> okay, seeing none we will take the public comment on this item, and any member of the public wish to speak on this item? >> seeing none, we will close the public comment and bring it back to the commission. >> i move to approve with the conditions as stated in the staff report with the one change. >> and then, actually the couple of changes, the one that president hasz mentioned and the one that i mentioned about the color. >> second. >> commissioners there is a unless there is anything further?

>> no. okay. >> there is a motion and a second to approve with conditions as amended to require a second submital of plans, post final engineering and the garage door matching the color of the house. on that motion, commissioner highland? >> yes. >> johnck, yes, johns, yes, matsuda, yes. >> pearlman. >> yes. >> wolfram. >> yes. >> hasz. >> yes. >> so moved that passes 7-0. and places you on your final item, 2014.0425 a, 981 grove street, request for certificate of appropriateness. >> good afternoon, commissioners, ally kirby department staff, the item before you is a certificate of appropriateness for the proposed project at 981 grove street located in the alamo square landmark district. the proposal includes a number

of exterior alterations including a vertical addition of a second story, and excavation in the rear yard, a horizontal addition, and regrading the existing driveway and excavation of the existing garage to reduce the slope. and reconstructing the garage, entry and playing with the wall above and restoring the base of the bay and reconfiguring the stair from the street level. the vertical addition will be set back, in the roof of the addition will slope away to minimize vicebility. the mask scale and location of the new horizontal edition is compatible with the rear editions in the surrounding district. and the proposal will return the historic bay and base of the building to a can't closer to the historic design. the date that the department

has received 1 inquiry regarding the project and although the contact did not express concerns for the proposal, the planning department staff, recommends approval with conditions, of the proposed project as it appears to meet the secretary of interior standards for rehab. they support the project with the following conditions, the project sponsor shall retain the eastern retaining wall along the driveway to preserve the character of the straight run stair at the upper portion of the stair and bring it in closer performance of the standards and condition of the property. and the project sponsor shall complete a site visit with the department staff, prior to occupancy in order to verify the compliance with the description and the conditions of approval, and the sponsors present and has prepared a presentation and i am available for any questions and this concludes my presentation.

thank you. >> good afternoon, my name is tim crudo and i am the home owner at 981 grove and phoebe is we mo'o she is going to talk about the project and i want to thank you for your time and attention today and i want to thank the staff and they have been helpful in the last several months in giving us communication and guidance and direction and that is helpful. and i am a san francisco native and i was born and raised here. i lived here almost all of my life, my great grandfather immigrated here in 1870, 20 years before my house was built. and i don't know whether because of that or for some other reason, i have always been a big fan of the victor an, i was a victor an history and literature major in college and one of the things that attracted me to this house in this neighborhood, 15 years ago, when i moved in, was the

opportunity to be a custodian of history, being the given the character of the neighborhood and it is attractive and excited about this project and allowing me to continue that maybe for the next 150 years and i will not be around but hopefully the house will and the neighborhood and the character of the neighborhood will be as well. i want to point out one thing and i don't think that you have it because it came in too late, we did receive an e-mail of support from a board member of the alamo square neighborhood association and we have forwarded that along to the staff and hopefully that it find the way to you if that will be helpful. >> we have been working with our neighbors, and we have had a number of meetings and communications and i expect those to continue, and the issues there, i think, have primarily dealt with permitting, type of issues as opposed to the historical issues that are on the agenda for today, but i expect for those conversations will continue, and we look forward

to resolving any issues that might remain with the neighbors on any of those issues. so, let me turn it over to miss lamb and she can tell you about the project. >> hi, there, thank you so much for this opportunity to address the commission, and we really started out this project wanting to improve the home, but mainly to also preserve the historic character of the home and mainly the front facade is kind of the main jewel of that particular house. and now, here is a existing photo of the home, with a proposed version of the home side by side, and we are really proposing minimal impact to the actual facade of the house with the exception of the garage area and also regrading of the front driveway and the existing concrete stairs leading up to the main house. just want to note that the existing wood stair that goes

to the front entry, will not be removed, it will be remaining the same and we will preserve that and i would like to point out that you know, we have worked closely with the staff to make sure that we are in full compliance and they had some great suggestion and we have also incorporated those within our design, and as you can see here, we had originally had a vertical addition in the front closer to where my finger is pointing here. and in which it was visible to the public, and we have since changed that to a slope roof with a skylight so that it can be as minimal as possible, and pretty much not visible and the other items that we did incorporate was the front hanging of the front garage wall, and in setting it back. and the original and the house as it currently stands does have the garage in the front and we also thought that the suggestion was great to push that back, and to create the bay so that it can return closer to what it would have

been originally. and here is kind of a quick image of what that looks like with the bay. now it was just a couple of clarifications for the commission. i would like to make sure. and the garage door had noted that it would be the same size, verses the existing. we are actually going to keep the same width but we are increasing the height of that door by four inches. and it is mainly because the proportion needed to kind of look right. we are regrading the driveway so the front portion of the house right at the garage will be slightly higher, than it used to be. so we are pursuing adding about four inches to the garage to the new garage door height. the other items that i want to be sure the commission to know is that the first floor rear addition in the back of the house, it will be curved, if

there was any digital copies of the drawing that showed it as a square, that is actually not the case it will be curved, i believe in your 11 x 17 packets they are curved. but the size of it remains the same. i like to focus the commission's attention to a specific issue that was in the conditions for approval. in terms of the driveway. this is the driveway as it currently stands, it is an extremely steep slope, i believe that it is more than maybe 2 and a half inch to 12, it is almost like a roof slope. the cars have a difficulty in getting in and that is really the reason why we are regrading the driveway. i think that if given an alternate to that, we would have liked to have keep the

front facade as is, but regrading the driveway is trying to solve a functional issue. and the other thing to point out in this driveway is that there is retaining wall on both sides that are quite tall and it has been fairly difficult for the home owner to be able to actually pull up and unload things and etc., without actually banging the door into the retaining wall. and we would like to request the commission to consider the widening of the driveway, which is actually shown on the packets. and the idea here being is that you know, we do know and understand that we like to keep the driveway as minimal as possible throughout the city in residential areas. what we are really proposing here is to keep the paving width about the same but to widen it so that we can add

plantinging area just in that spot. now the idea being is that it is better to open a car door and maybe bank in to the shrubs verses open a car door and bang into the retaining wall and this also helps soften, we believe the over all front facade and provide more greenry and the other idea is that given how long this particular driveway is to get to the garage, with the retaining wall on either side it does kind of create a tunneling effect where you are looking at the garage which is fairly prominent and so part of the lowering of the grade is to also help normalize that, and we believe that the widening of this area in the driveway will actually help minimize that effect. and deprominize and that is not really a word. and make it less prominent. i was going to turn it over to the home owner and speak a

little bit to the issues that he might have had in terms of using the current garager. >> i don't have much to add to that. it is, and it has resulted in some car door dings and fender dings just given the narrow width of the driveway and backing in in and out, has its challenges as well and makes it a little bit more difficult for when my father comes over, or friends with kids, to get them in and out, it is hard to pull up in the street, because the street is fairly steep, there is not a lot of traffic just given the tourists and all in the neighborhood, so pulling in and trying to unload kids and elderly folks and groceries and that kind of a thing would be a little easier to do if we had a little bit more width in the driveway, but we appreciate the staff's comments, and i think that we will leave it at that. thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioners?

any questions? comments? >> commissioner highland? >> yes, i have a question for the staff. is the issue with the offseting of the stair width of the driveway, or the fact that the stairs is being offset? >> it is kind of a two faceted issue. we both felt that in keeping that straight run, to a certain extent kind of maintains the historic character of the problem, and the street scape. so we felt that that would be more in compliance with the secretary of interior standards and on the other side the residential design guidelines express that she should be kept as narrow as possible essentially. more so just allowing for cars to enter into garages rather than being kind of a parking lot type of space. and so the residential design team has expressed that they would like to see the width of the driveway remain the same as well. >> as well as keep the stairs

straight? >> there was no stance on the stairs from the residential design team. >> okay. commissioner pearlman? >> i am wondering if there were any historic photos before the garage might have been put in, because clearly those are different stairs, you know the stairs that start at the landing point and go up to the house are original and then everything below are all concrete and clearly put in when the garage was put in and so i am wondering about the historic nature of that last, you know the flight from the sidewalk to the first landing. >> yeah. >> and then, one other question, related, is in that general area, are all of the stairs straight up or do some of them shift? >> so, for a quick clarification, we asked that the retaining wall retain the straight run, sorry. and we are opened to the kind of i don't... i guess that it

is like where there is a turn in the stairs were open to that because there is a pattern of that within the neighborhood. it is more of a matter of the retaining wall itself. and as far as historic photos, the 1976, survey photo, of the property already has both the straight runs and the garage and so we have not been able to find anything earlier. >> thank you. >> i just want to let the commission know that we did look at the sf public library for older photos and we are unable to find any. >> thank you. >> commissioner highland? >> yes, so, i don't have a problem with the shifting of the stairs, but it seems like because it is only a slight shift that it just seems a little bit odd and so to two thoughts that i had is one that if the stair could be shifted further to the east? >> to the east. >> yeah, and then just so that the stairs is not just kind of

jogging just slightly and making more of a deliberate jog, and i know that you have the cherry tree in the way and so that might be a problem and so could we put a curb along the drive as opposed to a retaining wall so that the drive is established? >> are we discussing this or are we... >> yeah, i think..., yes. >> okay. >> let's discuss it. so on the curb, what do you mean by that. >> the staff recommendation was to continue the retaining wall and i am wondering if the stairs moved over then it does not need to be a retaining wall it could be a curb so that the driveway is delen ated. >> and just so that we understand, then how much room is because it comes sorry i am just trying to get this. so you are saying, push the stair all the way over, almost a property line, basically and have it go straight down once it jogs. >> yes. >> at least the width of the

upper stair. >> right. >> where the retaining wall stops, there could be a curb that could delen ate the planting. >> well, rather than this..., and do it..., yeah, and on the straight. there is a tree there. >> well it could go here, though. >> and i don't know how close we can get to the tree. >> that is not on there. >> >> you have to go out further. >> yes, you have speaker cards? >> yes. >> not there yet. >> commissioner johnk? >> yeah, well, i sort of process and technical issue here. so, the project proponent is saying that they have a issue with the staff recommendation,

you want to expand the width of the driveway. okay? and then the staff is saying, no, and well, no, and you brought this up duriright.

>> okay. >> what you are and what you are talking about right now curb issue, does that help with this issue? >> i think that the one issue. >> yeah. >> that is the drive width. and the driveway width is one issue. >> yes. >> but the fact that the stair jogs in the man their it does is kind of odd. and so if it shifted and then was straight. >> down and then is shifted the width. >> only shifted once. >> that will help. >> it would help it look better. >> but it does not address the driveway width issue. >> and yeah, it does. >> because you are shifting it even more, early. >> and i was thinking that you achieve both things. >> and then, delineate the drive with a curb and you have an entire planting area. >> right. >> commissioners if i may interject, just to reflect on the commissioner highland last comment is i think that regardless of where that stair ends, while we do think that a straight run stair is more appropriate for the building

historically, the residential design team would want to insure that that area does not become a paved over area and so adding that as landscaping or adding planters there, would be the ideal situation. >> yeah, commissioner pearlman. >> that is exactly what the architect this suggested was that the driveway is delineated no different than it is now, in terms of width and there is a planting area, for however, far the stair is shifted to the east, i agree with commissioner highland that the double jogging is kind of awkward. and that is why i asked the question as if the stairs do shift, clearly the garage was not there when the house was built and it is not, you know, obviously it is now part of the house and considered part of it. but if the shifting stair is okay from a historic perspective of the neighborhood, and the district, then we are giving everything that the home owner is requesting and we are not changing the quality relative

to the secretary of interior standards and i know with the residential design team as long as you are not paving that area, even if you took that entire driveway area in the front and you did permeable pavers so that even that greener than it would be, with a paved surface tha, would increase the greenness of the front of the house. >> right. >> and further, emphasize the house itself. because i agree with that kind of tunnel effect, makes you look at the garage, and so opening it up a little bit helps you focus more on the house itself than the garage. >> and then putting in a curb would hopefully prevent them from paving over. >> yeah. >> i don't think that is the intention. >> certainly it would prevent that. i mean, the owner is clearly committed to the house, and the maintenance of it as a victor an home. >> mr. fry?