formula that helps us pick which one to work on first rather than another. it's really about the access to data, the responsiveness of the property owner, and i would say just an overall sense of urgency perhaps like the rube goldberg building, as you indicated you'd like us to work on that and we know that is changing ownership and is going to be converted so that seemed to be a more urgent case for us to work on rather than another one that may be in the pipeline. if there are any of these that you would prefer us to work on sooner rather than later, we're certainly amenable to those suggestions. and then the performance measures are the first attachment and again i'm not going to go through this line by line, but it is, i believe,

self-explanatory. certainly happy to address any specific questions you may have about any of these designations that are currently on file. and then the last portion of the report you'll recognize from the summer, this is the memo we put together for the three community initiated designations that we most recently discussed, the goldberg building, the old -- university mound old ladies home and the lang house. as you know, we're actively working with the consultant on the goldberg building, but the other two we have not received any direction on to date. so, with that, that concludes my comments. again, happy to discuss this in any way you think is most effective. that's it. >> thank you very much. and mr. fry i will say thank you for including that whole process and that graphic

really is very, very helpful. >> i agree. >> what a great change. thank you. commissioner matsuda. >> yes, i totally agree. i like this temperature bar, color bar, to let us know very clearly where you're at. i also like just a very simple 1, 2, 3 approach about how a building becomes a landmark. is that going to be, is that already on your web site or will that be on your web site? i think that will allow people who have kind of a, maybe, a fear, i don't know how to describe it, they are a little mystified by how a building becomes a landmark or if they want to take that route, i think this will really clarify a lot of misconceptions or myths that are out there about, you know, the process and what it takes and it just makes

it seem like it's a very do-able thing and hopefully will encourage others to consider it. so i really like that and would strongly encourage that that be placed as soon as possible. just the whole thing of this chart here on the designations and being able to figure out when it was introduced and where you are at in terms of the hours billed and the remaining gives a really good indication about what needs to be done. so thank you very much. >> uh-huh. >> commissioner pearlman. >> yeah, thank you very much. this is, in my year and a half here this is, to me, the simplest, most straightforward, clearest document that i've ever seen from the planning department. i mean it really helped me a lot because, i mean, i know the basic steps but having the list was great and i concur on the bars, the color

bars. i think all of that, you know, was really excellent. i did have just one question on your performance policies about the fourth one about doing this every six months. i get it that there's a lot of data, but now you actually have a data base that's already built, so it seems like anybody working on any one of these projects would just be putting the information in. if i spend 5 hours on it i'm going to put it right into the data base, on this document, which i presume resides with the staff and it could easily be produced every three months. it didn't seem like there was any additional work because six months seems like a very long time. half a year seems like a long time for us not

to have any idea --. >> it was just a suggestion. but you are correct, we have standardized a lot of this so we can just run a report and we may have to tweak a few things just to provide some clarification, but if the commission would like to see this quarterly we're certainly amenable to that. again, we just thought because it's so much data to absorb at one time maybe six months made more sense than 3 or 4 months. >> i think we all absorbed it really quickly. >> that's good. >> when you have a data format it's not that hard to print a report. >> that's true. okay. >> i, for one, would like to see it quarterly as we've had it before. that's great. >> commissioner johnck. >> i congratulate you, it's a great report and echo the previous comments. as i was looking this over, what i was interested in as a fairly new commissioner is thinking about what are the gaps, what's missing? and so i was interested to read preservation bulletin no. 19, potential san

francisco landmarks evaluation form, which apparently was adopted in 1999 and reaffirmed in 2000, identifying priorities as far as themes or what we're trying to accomplish with categories of landmarks. and i wondered if you are continuing to use that, is this -- this looked like it was helpful. well, it's 2014 so it's 14 years old. is there anything we're doing now or need to do now particularly in the context of developing recommendations for the preservation element of the san francisco general plan whether this needs to be updated? but at least this i thought was the most helpful type of thing as far as what i was interested in, what's missing. could staff comment on that? >> commissioner, that's a great comment. as a refresher to all of us, we use that bulletin but we

also use, i'm going to say it was 3 years ago, 4 years ago now, the commission identified a couple other priorities. one i recall being properties that were significant for criteria other than architecture, looking at more significant events, significant persons. i think also trying to steer more towards the cultural heritage aspects of designation. the second was modern resources. if you look at our overall designation program it is lacking in terms of properties constructed or designed during the modern era. and then the third that i recall, and i feel like i'm missing one, but the third that i recall is focusing on areas that may seem to be underserved by landmarks, meaning they are neighborhoods where we don't have a lot of designations but there are certainly important places or buildings to the community and

that's been part of our most recent outreach and our method of conducting community meetings in those areas is always to ask that question, you know, what's important in your neighborhood? is there anything, whether it's a visual landmark or someplace you used to frequent, that you think is an important aspect of your community that deserves protection. so that's one way we go about gathering that sort of information. but if there's anything else that the commission feels we should add to that priority list, for lack of a better word, we could certainly do that. i didn't include that memo in here because i believe you all have a copy or we've circulated a couple copies of it, but i guess the one final question that i just want to reiterate because i don't want it to get lost is if there's any direction the commission

would like to give us on the actual work program in terms of either removing properties, adding properties, prioritizing properties, i know staff would appreciate some of that direction because, again, as you know we're working on them as fast as we can but it all depends on a lot of factors that are out of our control. >> thank you. >> commissioner johns. >> one, i'd like to add my voice to the general comments about how helpful this was. as to whether it should be updated every six months or quarterly, this may be a technical computer type -- if the information is being added to the data base can't this be made available online so it would always be up to date? >> part of it will be available online with our new permit tracking system. so we could check in with you and at least show the commission how to get access to the information at any time, but that's a great point.

maybe we could do both, we could show you how you as commissioners can access it at any time with the public or we could do this on a quarterly basis. >> if you could, i think that would be a good idea. as for your request for things that can be perhaps put on the back burner or deleted, it seems that the time for 2 henry adams has come and gone. so that i would suggest should not be given much attention until there are other developments. >> commissioner hyland. >> i'd like to congratulate you as well on the excellence of the report. it was very clear. >> interesting. >> hallelujah. >> mary francis did a great job. >> i did have a couple thoughts. one was on priorities, any

community-initiated landmark designation should, in my opinion, go to the top because it can really leverage the resources of those volunteers who really think it's important and you want to capture their momentum while they have it. so the community ones that you've identified, the rube goldberg building. we did talk before about resources and we have requested and additional full-time head count in the budget that was denied and i question for you, help me remember, we have one current full-time head count to be distributed amongst multiple staffs currently in the budget for this program? >> yes. that's sort of the short easy answer. the good news is because, again, we have a backlog that

we're dealing with we are hiring another preservation planner by the end of this month and then the good news is if we are able -- when we're able to do that, jonathan (inaudible) who is now on the preservation team, is dividing his time between ceqa and preservation work. he was working on a half time already but it will be solely for designation and survey. that said, we still have grant-related surveys that we're working on as well as other initiatives so it may not be solely designation work but it will, it does account for additional work hours that we can devote towards the work program. >> i wonder if adding another metric of how much time this full-time head count was actually utilized?

because i know the department, your staff as a whole is understaffed and has many different priorities and distractions or important things that come up all the time and i'm coming up on two years now and there hasn't been that much progress on the commission-initiated landmarks. so i'd like to at least keep track of are we putting the time in that we've had actually committed to it. so that's one metric. then as far as the 3 months, i would actually like to see it more often than 3 months. i know it requires you to prepare more for a hearing but if you are reporting back more often then it kind of keeps it in site. six months is way too long. three months to me up to now has been minimal, so i would

actually consider maybe every 6 weeks or every third hearing or something just as an update. >> okay. >> commissioner pearlman. >> tim, i had a question about projects like 2 henry adams where that was community initiated, in big quotes, and now of course is sort of tabled. i assume that the owner is not interested now in moving forward, which certainly reveals their intent of the whole process, but we have all this great information and it is a building that we all thought should be landmarked. so, i mean, does that forever live in limbo unless the owner wants to do something? i mean what do we do with that now? >> i mean, technically, supervisor cohen can revive the designation at the land use committee and move it forward to the full board if they

decided -- there's nothing that requires consent of the property owner to designate a local property. if there was enough momentum they could still designate the property if they saw fit. that said, the designation report and the information and research that we've gathered is still, would be an active part of our data base. so i feel like we have enough information to respond to uets -- either current or future changes to the property in a very knowledgeable way, knowing what's best for the building. if this commission would like to do something with that designation report, certainly look into options. i mean, one thing to consider is we are moving to a system with the new web site where we are going to post all of our designation reports online. there could be a separate section for reports that, you know, were pursued or

completed but they weren't formally designated because at least we're disseminating that information to the public for their own use. that's one way of dealing with it. well, i'm wondering how the commission feels about this particular project. i mean, do we just say, oh, okay, it's done, it will just live forever in a data base? or do we feel like it's worth having this building that's already been research done and got all the way -- i mean, do we go back to supervisor cohen and say, and maybe wait until the legislation passes, but we go back to supervisor cohen and say, look, we still think this is a very important and valid landmark building, could you now go ahead and nominate it? >> we're happy to initiate that conversation with the supervisor or along with the commission if one of you would like to attend, maybe president hasz or vice president wolfram, we're certainly happy to have that

conversation because we agree with you. it's certainly a worthy candidate of our local program. >> commissioner hyland. >> i would support what you are suggesting, mr. pearlman. i think we should take an active role in putting forward, once the unintended consequences --. >> are played out. >> are played out, exactly, instead of letting it drop. the legislation clarifies how the pdr to office conversion works that we then encourage the supervisors to --. >> because i also think that would reinforce our role, especially to someone like supervisor cohen, where we're not -- i think commissioner wolfram said it best. we should be doing what we do, let the planning commission do what they do and let the supervisor's office do what the supervisors do. so our role is really in the role of the landmarks program is very much first and foremost in

the public's eye about what we do. we create landmarks. i mean that's what the department and the hpc, you know, is known for and we've often talked about how few landmarks are getting approved every year. well, here's one where the work is done. so i really feel like that would be a great way to at least put another one in the news and it will be in the news because everyone will know the building, of course, so it will really put the hpc in front of the process of we're landmarking, we want this building to be a landmark for the city. >> commissioner johnck. >> well, it would come back to us under the new criteria. because i would agree that it should come back. why wouldn't it come back under the new criteria for doing an economic analysis? i think you are proposing that, sure, it could come back to us

and the work's been done, but after the pdr legislation has been resolved, in which case there would be additional criteria for that building to --. >> they do a conversion. >> they on would keep it separates. >> it would only come back to us if they wanted to pursue the conversion. >> oh, all right, okay. >> commissioner hyland. >> that was kind of my realization in the previous discussion was that if it's a land mark, it's a landmark. >> okay. >> we're not going to not landmark because there's some unintended consequences so now there's this gray area that they are going to clarify, the supervisors' legislation will be clarified. i do want to ask the other supervisors if we can give tim some direction on how often we should have a report back, if it's 6 weeks or 3 months. >> my first comment is every 6

weeks is every third meeting. to be very honest, that seems like a lot. >> yeah. >> even if it's only a few hours to get a report ready, i'd rather continue to sink that into the time on the projects. three months i think is our base standard if we want to try and get a little bit further down, but i think every third meeting might be a little much. >> i was just thinking 3 months seems like we've forgotten about it before it comes back again. >> my only thing is what we've asked for from staff, and this current report shows it, is that accountability and timeline. we have 6 or 7 projects on a timeline right now. we have other ones that are on a graph idea of what's going to happen. i think it

gives everybody, i think it's now, staff is asking us to prioritize so i think we need to next time come back with a good priority list and with their help in understanding who has the information, how close they are, et cetera. so to me --. >> do we want to wait 3 months to create that prioritization? >> we can talk about it today. >> to be honest with you, talk about it at the next meeting, like continue this just simply to have that conversation because then i'd like to go back and kind of think about a couple of these projects. you know, a little bit. >> this is great -- i'm not criticizing staff or mary or jonathan's effort, they are both very dedicated and i'm sure put in a lot more time than even their normal work schedule. but i would like to see some momentum and it's been, for me, 3 months

just hasn't been quite a clip. maybe once we do have it prioritized and we start seeing some progress then it might feel like 3 months is enough. >> commissioner wolfram. >> sorry, i was -- just to quickly interject. i'm prepared or we're prepared to talk about any of these properties today so if you do have a question about the status of the property in terms of research or owner or whatever, we even have our own personal suggestions on which ones could probably get moved to the bottom of the list, but just to let you know we can talk about it today if you want or leave it to the next meeting if you want to mull it over. >> is the listing currently, is that the priority we have the way they're listed in the report. >> no. >> to be honest with you, i think it would be a little frustrating

to look at the whole of these and start calling out numbers. what i'd rather see is a list of priority, to start with what does the staff recommend then we can process it better and come back so potentially we could continue this to the next meeting and in the interim get that list from staff and then i think we would have a more efficient conversation on this. in the meantime, commissioner wolfram. >> i guess i would say a couple things in response to commissioner hyland, which is we shouldn't forget we did designate quite a few buildings last year, the marcus and the tavern so there was a big set of landmarks that went through, it's like you swallow a big meal and then you take off until it's digested again. i don't think we should forget, i think the staff has done a great job in pushing through a lot of designations. >> absolutely. no criticism intended. >> i agree with commissioner

hasz that three months to me seems like an appropriate time. i think six weeks we'd spend all our time doing reports. about the prioritization next time, i would throw in a pitch for the modern designations. in the 4 years since this list was created we haven't designated any, in pacific heights, every time i go, oh, my god, what happened to that one? there is so much change in that neighborhood and i think it would send a good message these are important resources in there and a lot of people buy houses and they are modern houses and they think, oh, well, i can turn this down. >> those are two particular -- one of the most important in california and mendelsohn one of the great architects in the world so we have two

options there. i see the cowell house is coming forward too. that's a great one. >> why don't we open this up for public comment at this time. any member of the public wish to comment at this time? >> yes. >> name is boris yedler and i'm representing potrero district which has the university mount ladies home. about 3 months ago i filed a petition with 222 signature with regard that building should be designated as a historic landmark. evidently you people told us that you're going to do survey on it and come up with all the qualification for that purpose. then today i have the survey in my hand, it says based on initial review of historic

photographs that i presented with the petition and previous survey efforts, the building may qualify for local designation. as it appears i hope this -- do you have this one in your possession? >> i believe we did. >> okay, if you do, then i don't have to go through the whole thing. but according to my thinking, any building that has significant architectural features and also historic features, which this building has, according to the architect who was les martin, he was very famous architect and he designed that building 1932 and they built it and also historical,

which is like passed away and this man was important person and historical background of him was he dedicated a lot of fortune, really, helped the schools and helped some other things, he spent more than $1 million. also he supported this building for many years and it's been a landmark, really, according to our people in that residence and i've been there for 45 years. and every one of them thinks this building should be designated as a historic building, a landmark, based on architectural and historical fact and improving itself also, it has beautiful features. this building is built up on

hard ground, 1989 we had an earthquake, six point something, nothing happened to that building. even it's a brick building and it doesn't have reinforcement foundation, but that doesn't mean it cannot be qualified for that, they can underpin that and put anchor bolting and it's going to be as good as any any other building. i hope you tell me when you are going to approve it. >> thank you very much. any other member of the public wish to speak? >> hello, commissioners, good afternoon, i am (inaudible) with san francisco heritage. i just wanted to bring your attention to one of the potential landmarks that's on the designation work program which is ingleside perez resbyterian.

earlier heritage petitioned to take on that designation and we have recently begun research on the site and will be preparing a landmark nomination for the site. we have an intern with us from us history department and we also have erica schulz who is a senior historical person from (inaudible) met with the reverend roland gordon from the church and also the artist of the interior collages, painted some murals that are on the entry of the church as well so we'll be looking at that, at the whole interior. we met also with members of the congregation a couple weeks ago and have a list of oral history interviewees that we will be

conducting later this week. we just wanted to provide this and hoping this process works out nicely in the future and heritage can help tackle some of the landmarks on the work program. >> a quick question about that one. is that the old el ray building? >> no, different neighborhood. >> seeing there is no more public, we will close public comments, bring it back to commission. >> can i ask a question through mr. fry about the ladies home? it's not listed because we haven't added it to the list? >> correct, at the hearing in august the only direction staff heard was to begin working on the goldberg designation. they were also the ones that had hired a consultant,