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tv   [untitled]    October 19, 2014 9:00am-9:31am PDT

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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designation. they were also the ones that had hired a consultant, they were ready to go, which is i think part of the reason why we received that direction. but we, i didn't hear, at least, any indication to begin working on the ladies home or the lang house. >> i remember specifically saying we didn't think the lang house was of highly critical time frame, given --. >> maybe we can add it to the list and put them in the priority and then every three months we can reshuffle the priority based on new information. >> to commissioner hyland's comment before, if you want us to prioritize the community initiated designations we can certainly add it to the list. we have had some correspondence with the public about the proposed designation
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but we certainly could ramp things up. i mean our main focus has been the goldberg building right now. >> i think the ladies home is interesting. a, it's in an area of the city that doesn't have any landmarks, b, the social history of it seems to be highly interesting and potentially significant so i would support adding it to the list. >> and it has 225 people on a survey. >> probably even more than any other landmark designation. >> we also do have a letter of support from supervisor campos already. >> commissioner johns. >> i move that we continue this to some date in december that we get the priority list, suggested priority list, from the department and that then we take this up. >> might we be able to do it in november? >> november would be fine if they can do it by that time. >> in terms of the priority list. >> continue this item to then
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so we can get the priority list. november 5th may be tough. we could schedule it for the november 19th hearing if that works for you. >> november 19 would be fine. >> do i have a second? >> second. >> thank you. prrp. >> thank you very much. >> commissioners, then on that motion to continue this matter for further consideration and prioritization to november 19th, commissioner hyland, yes. commissioner johnck, yes. commissioner johns, yes. commissioner matsuda, yes. commissioner matsuda, yes. commissioner commissioner hasz, yes. >> with that it passes 7-0. >> and with that we will adjourn this meeting. (meeting adjourned).
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>> hi. i am cory with san francisco and we're doing stay safe and we're going to talk about what shelter in place or safe enough to stay in your home means. we're here at the urban center on mission street in san francisco and joined by carla, the deputy director of spur and one of the persons who pushed
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this shelter in place and sa enough to stay concept and we want to talk about what it means and why it's important to san francisco. >> as you know the bay area as 63% chance of having a major earthquake and it's serious and going to impact a lot of people and particularly people in san francisco because we live on a major fault so what does this mean for us? part of what it means is that potentially 25% of san francisco's building stock will be uninhibit tabl and people can't stay in their homes after an earthquake. they may have to go to shelters or leave entirely and we don't want that to happen. >> we want a building stock to encourage them to stay in the homes and encourage them to
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stay and not relocate to other locations and shelters. >> that's right so that means the housing needs to be safe enough to stay and we have been focused in trying to define what that means and you as a former building official knows better than anybody the code says if an earthquake happens it won't kill you but doesn't necessarily say that can you stay in your home and we set out to define what that might mean and you know because you built this house we're in now and this shows what it's like to be in a place safe enough to stay. it's not going to be perfect. there maybe cracks in the walls and not have gas or electricity within a while but can you essentially camp out within your unit. what's it going to take to get the housing stock up to this
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standard? we spent time talking about this and one of the building types we talk about was soft story buildings and the ground floor is vulnerable because there are openings for garages or windows and during the earthquake we saw in the marina they went right over and those are -- >> very vulnerable buildings. >> very and there are a lot of apartment buildings in san that that are like that. >> and time to. >> >> retrofit the buildings so people can stay in them after the earthquake. >> what do they need? do they need information? do they need incentives? mandates? >> that's a good question. i think it starts with
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information. people think that new buildings are earthquake proof and don't understand the performance the building will have so we want a transparent of letting people know is my building going to be safe in it after an earthquake? is my building so dangers i should be afraid of being injured? so developing a ranking system for buildings would be very important and i think for some of the larger apartment buildings that are soft story we need a mandatory program to fix the buildings, not over night and not without financial help or incentive, but a phased program over time that is reasonable so we can fix those buildings, and for the smaller soft story buildings and especially in san francisco and the houses over garages we need information and incentives and
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coaxing the people along and each of the owners want their house to be safe enough. >> we want the system and not just mandate everybody. >> that's right. >> i hear about people talking about this concept of resiliency. as you're fixing your knowledge you're adding to the city wide resiliency. >> >> what does that mean? >> that's a great question. what spur has done is look at that in terms of recovery and in new orleans with katrina and lost many of the people, hasn't recovered the building stock. it's not a good situation. i think we can agree and in san we want to rebuild well and quickly after a major disaster so we have defined what that means for our life lines. how do we need the gasolines to perform and
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water perform after an earthquake and the building stock as well, so we have the goal of 95% of our homes to be ready for shelter in place after a major earthquake, and that way people can stay within the city. we don't lose our work force. we don't lose the people that make san francisco so special. we keep everybody here and that allow us to recover our economy, and everything because it's so interdependent. >> so that is a difficult goal but i think we can achieve it over the long time so thank you very much for hosting us and hosting this great exhibit, and hank you very much for joining >> we broke ground in
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december of last year. we broke ground the day after sandy hook connecticut and had a moment of silence here. it's really great to see the silence that we experienced then and we've experienced over the years in this playground is now filled with these voices. >> 321, okay. [ applause ] >> the park was kind of bleak. it was scary and over grown. we started to help maclaren park when we found there wasn't any money in the bond for this park maclaren. we spent time for funding. it was expensive to raise money for this and there were a lot of delays. a lot of it was just the mural, the sprinklers and we didn't have any grass. it
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was that bad. we worked on sprinkler heads and grass and we fixed everything. we worked hard collecting everything. we had about 400 group members. every a little bit helped and now the park is busy all week. there is people with kids using the park and using strollers and now it's safer by utilizing it. >> maclaren park being the largest second park one of the best kept secrets. what's exciting about this activation in particular is that it's the first of many. it's also representation of our city coming together but not only on the bureaucratic side of things. but also our neighbors, neighbors helped this happen. we are thrilled that today we are seeing the fruition of all that work in this city's open space.
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>> when we got involved with this park there was a broken swing set and half of -- for me, one thing i really like to point out to other groups is that when you are competing for funding in a hole on the ground, you need to articulate what you need for your park. i always point as this sight as a model for other communities. >> i hope we continue to work on the other empty pits that are here. there are still a lot of areas that need help at maclaren park. we hope grants and money will be available to continue to improve this park to make it shine. it's a really hidden jewel. a lot of people don't know it's here.
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>> instructor: commissioner buell? >> here. >> commissioner low? >> here. >> commissioner bonilla? >> here. >> commissioner harrison? >> here. >> commissioner mcgoldrick donnell? >> here. >> commissioner levitan will be here in a minute and commissioner wei has an excuse the absence today. >> thank you. >> just a couple of quick things before we get started. this is the recreation and park commission meeting of october 16th. if each person could fill out a blue card, that would be great. you do not have to fill out a blue card to speak. at the end of us calling all of the blue cards we will ask if anyone else would like to speak and if you would like to, you can come up then. so don't get