>> good afternoon, we'll call this meeting ftd historic preservation commission to order. >> welcome to the san francisco historic preservation commission regular meeting for october 15, 2014. i would like to remind the audience the commission does not tolerate outbursts of any kind. please silence any mobile dwietions and before speaking to the commission if you'd care to please state your name for the record. i'd like to take roll. commission hasz. here. commissioner johns, here. and commissioner matsuda. we do expect commissioner wolfram. commissioners, first on your agenda is

general public comment. at this time members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission. each member of the public may address the commission for up to 3 minutes. i have no speaker cards. >> thank you, any member of the public wish to speak on an item not on the agenda? seeing none we will close public comment. >> which places us on department matters. item 1, director report. >> tim fry, department star. the director's report was included in your packets. happy to answer any questions if you have any at this time. >> i see no questions. we'll move on. commissioners, that will place you on item 2, planning commission staff report and announcements. >> tim fry again, department staff. just a couple items to share with you. since your last hearing two

items at the planning commission, on october 2nd. first is the commission received this commission's letter suggesting the retention of the facade on the historic property as part of the proposal for 1545 pine street. at the october 2nd hearing the planning commission unanimously certificated the eir and approved the project as proposed without retaining that facade. part of the reasoning there was many commissioners or a couple commissioners remarked that they felt that the proposed design was successful and referenced the massing of the historic property from a contextual perspective and therefore they did not -- while they were appreciative of the letter they did not see retention of the facade as being an improvement to the overall design of the proposal. at the same hearing the commission also reviewed the office conversion legislation reviewed by this

commission for the benefit of the public, this is a piece of legislation proposed by supervisor cohen in regards to allowing for office conversion from pdr uses in landmark buildings. the commission had many similar comments to the hpc and unanimously recommended approval of the proposed legislation with the modifications that we discussed here. there was some public comment suggesting that there may be other methods for limiting the office conversion but the commission remarked that they felt that the vertical controls that are outlined in the proposed legislation was the most effective tool for enforcing the requirement rather than a percentage of the floor or another method of calculation. so that will be

the proposed leg will be forwarded to the board of supervisors and we will keep you updated on its progress. that concludes my remarks unless you have any questions about the planning commission. thank you. >> thank you. seeing no comments, move on. >> commissioners, that will place you under commission matters item 3, president's report announcements. >> no report. >> item 4, draft minutes for october 1st, 2014. >> commissioner pearlman. >> i just have a question. while i very much appreciate mr. fry's comments and everybody's comments, i'm wondering why we don't have all the text of the comments about the projects whereas, like i said, i really appreciate your comments, mr. fry, which are detailed quite specifically, but then we get to something like the civic center inventory and other things and all it says is so and so spoke and this is what the commission decided. so i'm wondering -- because i would

think that's where we would want to pick up a lot of the issues that we've discussed to make sure they are portrayed accurately. i don't know if there's a reason that that's not done. maybe you can --. >> just always been the practice. the minutes, requirement for the minutes is to indicate who spoke, whether or not they were in favor or in opposition or neutral to the project. we indicate those with minus signs and the plus signs, and then we very briefly paraphrase what the person said. without actually transcribing verbatim what a person says i worry that we may not provide what the person said or the intent of the person, what the person said accurately and, to be quite honest, it would be a tremendous amount of work to transcribe what every commissioner says for every one and the final action is what matters. >> it is memorialized.

>> on tape. >> it is recorded. the audio is recorded and sfgovtv does report our proceedings now. >> commissioner johnck. >> maybe suggest an idea about this because over many, many years i have done many, many minutes and they are, depending on the topic, very challenging to try to summarize, particularly the type of suggestion that we had. so i can appreciate staff's issue in response to this. but i was thinking if we feel strongly about, you know, what we said that we could submit something, right, submit something to the record that could appear in the minutes. i'm just suggesting that -- if our comments, in other words, if we thought this was really important that we should maybe --. >> i think we could if they were prepared in advance and your

comments that you provided at the hearing, you read off of those bullet points and we could include those. i would only caution providing written comments after the fact to be included in the minutes you could add things that weren't necessarily provided at the hearing. it just gets a little sketchy. >> i agree. something immediate. if we write down bullet points or something, that would be my solution. >> i certainly understand that most of the things that we're, you know, that we're talking about are fairly straightforward. there just have been a number of issues, you know, the pdr office conversion and some of these bigger things like the civic center, inventory, things like that, it garners a lot of conversation and we don't even get, we don't even have a bullet point about, you know, what the conversation was about. so, you know, and then with mr. fry and the director there's, it's pretty much verbatim what they

said and that seems less important. the report seems less important than the discussion of salient, you know, salient projects or something. so that's where i came down. but i appreciate very much the challenge it would be. >> commissioner wolfram. >> actually i just had a question about, when did we start doing this verbatim description in the beginning is pretty new, right? what did we do before? >> it is relatively new, commissioner wolfram. i appreciate you noticing that. you may recall that i was fortunate enough to hire an assistant and a manager of the commission affairs and christine lamiranda has been striving to make our minutes from the office consistent and so it's something we provide the planning commission and we decided to provide it to you as well. it prevents us from having to second-guess what you were

trying to say and just put down exactly what you said. >> and any corrections at this time? seeing none we will open up for public comment. any member of the public wish to comment on the draft meeting minutes? seeing none we will close public comment. >> and move to approve. >> second. >> thank you. >> on that motion to adopt the draft minutes for october 1st, 2014. (roll call). >> so moved, commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 7-0. and places you on item 5, comments and questions. >> i have none so we'll close commission comments. >> very good. in that case, commissioners, it will place you on item 6, cultural heritage asset

subcommittee. >> commissioner matsuda, you want to -- or commissioner hyland, the first one. >> this is a quick introduction, commissioners, about a month ago president hasz appointed a couple members of this commission to a subcommittee which met earlier this afternoon and are here to give you an initial report and just as a reminder to the public, this is a subcommittee that was created to, in order to directly respond to san francisco architectural heritage's recent white paper on cultural heritage assets and devising a way that we can, as a city but also as a commission directly respond to the recommendations outlined in that report. so with that i'll turn it over to commissioners hyland and matsuda. >> first, thank you, president

hasz, for appointing commissioner hyland and me to this subcommittee. we had our first discussion today and it's really exciting that we would be able to participate in i think a very important project that would remember and recognize a lot of intangible and tangible assets that are often forgotten about. and so instead of i think starting from scratch we wanted to start with something solid, some type of foundation that we can work from, and then expand upon it. and what better way than to look at the piece of legislation that was introduced by supervisor campos to look at heritage legacy businesses and to kind of take that and not only recognize and appreciate those heritage legacy businesses that are in existence but also to look at those that are no longer in existence and look at

that by various communities and various districts. so i kind of want to leave it at that. i'm sure that commissioner hyland would like to add some comments but this is a first, i think, of many exciting discussions that we will have to recognize really important assets in our city. >> thank you. commissioner hyland. >> i think commissioner matsuda pretty many summed it up. one thing we elected -- neglected to do was elect a chair of our committee. >> any questions for the subcommittee members? seeing none, do we take public comment on this? >> it is an angendized item. >> any member of the public wish to speak on this item or request from the subcommittee? seeing none, close public comment. >> commissioners, in that case it will put you under your consent

calendar. items listed on the consent calendar are considered routine and will be voted on in a single roll call. you have one item under consent, item 7, 201349.h, request for a major permit to alter, i have no speaker cards. >> any member of the commission wish to pull this off consent? seeing none, any member of the public wish to pull this off consent calendar? seeing none, commissioners. >> i move to approve. >> second. >> thank you. >> on that motion to approve item 7 under consent rk commissioner high land, yes. commissioner johnck, yes. commissioner pearlman, yes. commissioner wolfram, yes.

that motion passes unanimously 7-0 and places into your regular calendar be case 20142013u, the civic center cultural landscape to adopt, modify or disapprove the findings of the inventory. >> commissioners, tim fry, department staff. i'm here on behalf of grech enhilliard who is out of town this week. really just a quick update on the inventory. we certainly heard your comments at the last hearing. what we've done to date is we talked to the consultant and they are scoping out really how much work it would take to complete and finalize the history and addressing all the edits brought up by this commission but also member s of the public. i think we'll have an estimate of how much that will cost in the next week or so, then we'll

also have a better idea how long it would take them. my understanding right now is there is a small gap in their schedule so if we're able to engage with them quickly they could get this done in a fairly short amount of time. so that's the good news. right now, though, we're talking about the cost associated with it and then also we've exchanged some emails with mr. hasz who, as you know from the last hearing, has a huge amount of research available that we think could be very beneficial for the consultant in expediting the completion of this work. so, with that, and pending any of your comments or questions or those from the public i would recommend or request that you continue this item to a december hearing, either the first or second hearing in december. by then we certainly will have a plan and if we are able to engage -- if we have the

funds and we are able to engage the consultant, we won't wait until december to do that, we'll do that now, but we'll have something more meaningful to report to you by the end of the year. >> commissioner johns. >> thank you. when you discuss the items of cost with the consultants may i suggest you consider pointing out to them that part of the basis upon which they were hired was the an tits paition that they would do a good job and with a plethora of factual errors in the report, one could argue that they ought to be correcting their mistakes but not on the city's budget. >> any other xhepbtds at this time from the commission? >> just a matter of process and then a comment. so when i received the agenda and i looked at the regular calendar

and see civic center cultural landscape inventory then i go down to preliminary recommendation, adopt, so i'm scrambling around looking for a new motion or another recommendation and i thought that i had misplaced it. so i was concerned about that. i suppose i could have called or emailed saying did i misplace it or whatever. so i guess because it says adopt, so we're not -- basically continuing the hearing, which i think is good and i highly support the recommendation to continue. so that would have been better phraseology for me. i wouldn't tear my hair out. >> so noted, i will make sure to address that in the future, thank you. >> then the other point that i want to make, i guess i thought that this, what we're really talking about here is an inventory and what the attempt was, was

to put a whole lot more into it in the form of a cultural landscape report, which those kinds of things i think are wonderful, but i think all we were really aiming to accomplish was an inventory. so i would prefer when we look at cost or whatever that we stick to the inventory for now. it's more managable. >> that's a great comment and i appreciate you making those comments, commissioner johnck, because it is in fact an inventory, and to respond to commissioner john's comments just as a matter of clarification, we agree there are errors in the report. it was outside the scope of this project to address those errors. those errors were not made by this consultant, they were made by the folks who did the historic register so they were solely relying on existing information that they believed was factual. if there is a need to go

beyond, as commissioner johnck stated correctly the inventory to fully document the history we're certainly able to do that and we welcome that, given the direction of this commission. but it will, as you know, cost a little bit more in terms of resources and we'll certainly be able to report to you on that once we have something from the consultant and, again, you know, with mr. hasz' supplying us his footnotes and his source data will tremendously speed up the process for us. >> commissioner, i see no other xhepts at this time. i will open up public comment. any member of the public wish to comment? seeing none, close public comment and bring it back to the commission. >> i move to continue this item to the first or second -- is there a precedent? december 3rd, that's fine. move to continue to december

3rd. >> second. >> thank you. >> on that motion, commissioners to continue item 8 to december 3rd, commissioner hyland, yes. commissioner johnck, yes. commissioner john, yes. commissioner matsuda, yes. commissioner pearlman, yes. commissioner hasz, yes. item 9, landmark informational presentation. >> good afternoon, commissioners, tim fry here on behalf of mary brown. included in your packets was a memo and the most recent report on your landmark designation program. this is really just an opportunity for us to

discuss in a much more detailed format your work program, but also the format of the report, the performance measures we've created that i think will address some of your comments you made during the planning phase of our most recent budget cycle. so, with that, i'm going to quickly walk through just a couple components of this memo and then certainly open for discussion or to answer questions, however you think is the best use of this time. to start out with, i did want to point out on the first page our survey and designations team has been working very hard to wrap up some of the lingers designations we have on file and as you can see, we're going to have a number of local designations that are going to come forward in the next

several months. so i hope this will give you a better understanding of what you are likely to see in the pipeline. there's a couple extra steps that we still need to take to finalize these to bring them to hearing but we're certainly committing to these dates to bring these items before you. one that i wanted to point out is that the december 17th hearing you'll see there will be discussing a new article 10 application form. if you recall, section 1004.1 of the code when we were talking about the code amendments so long ago, the commissioner decided to defer developing criteria for reviewing landmark designations or proposed landmark designations until such a time that this commission could really sit down and figure out what those steps are and what kind of information you'd like to see.

so based on the previous landmark application form and what we've heard at the commission over the last couple years we're going to create a new form, this is a form for the public to fill out so they are -- it's much easier for them to submit nominations to this commission in the future. right now we've been doing it kind of on an ad hoc basis where it's a much more informal thing where we ask them to provide info, we bring that info to you. now this will have a more structured format and we'll have that application ready for you by the end of the year. you'll also see that there's a couple landmark initiations that are part of your work program. there's a couple that are community initiated. things seem to be moving at a good rate on those community initiated designations so we think this schedule's realistic. the last item, new era hall, as you recall we gave you the

completed d designation report. we're still talking to the property owner. it's at the discretion of the commission and we'll let the property owner know if you wish. the performance measures that begin on page 2 and continue on to 3, i mentioned these earlier in the summer, but this is the first quarter where we actually have data to show you. again, there's 4 performance measures, these measures will change over time. the first is a goal to prepare landmark designations and the whole process within 150 staff hours and you'll see in one of the apen deeses in the report which ones are over, which ones are still on track. we think this

is an adequate performance measure given that we've spend from 100 hours on a landmark designation up to 200 hours. this is just for individual landmarks. as you remember, the bose park which had over 90 properties was well over 500 hours but that's to be expected when you have a large area that requires a large number of community meetings and engagement. the second performance measure was with regard to the application which we'll have at the end of the year for you. this is, again, just a performance measure to keep us on track and make sure we get to you by the end of the year. we can always revisit or change this performance measure after it's been achieved. the third is base order that application is a commitment to bring those applications to you within 30 calendar days so they are not languishing in our office or there aren't any other issues that we have to divert our attention to. we're

still bringing those to you in a timely manner so you can respond and decide whether or not to include them on your work program. and then the last performance measure is because there's a lot of time that it takes us to prepare these reports because we're providing you more data instead of doing a quarterly report, we're suggesting that we give you a report every six months. we can certainly do it more often or at the discretion of the commission, but we thought six months was reasonable, given that we are collecting more data and supplying you with more data at the time of the report. the next section of the memo outlines the landmark designation process in a very simple fashion, but i shared this with president hasz and vice president wolfram at one of our last meetings and they thought it was very helpful and that we should include it in the memo

to really give the full commission an idea of all the steps it takes to bring something through the landmark designation process. so this essentially is what we've translated into the new graphic that you'll see on the progress report, which we'll talk about in a second. so the current landmark work program then begins on page 5 and this is largely the same information that we've provided you in the past. what we've done here, though, is really two things. one, we're trying to provide you more accurate and up to date information as to the status of these designations and we're doing that not only through the narrative of the completed tasks, which we're fleshing out a little more than we have in the past, but this graphic that shows you all the steps. you'll see that some, it appears the landmarks report is almost done, some it appears we've done a little bit. that green bar that i'm talking about now is the result of a

couple things. one it could be that staff is working on the report actively. two, it could be that it was an intern project and we have a designation report completed by an intern but preservation staff has to thoroughly vet that report and make sure everything is accurate. the other scenario could be that the property was part of a survey so we have a dpr a or b form so it has some of the initial research that we need but it doesn't have the full-fledged narrative report that's required. so what you'll see for active cases is the first few are the ones that i would say are in the close estate of completion, then we move on to active cases which have been owner or community initiated and that includes

the rube goldberg building, which we've discussed at a couple meetings, 149 9th street which is a change in article designation. 2 henry adams is still on here. if the commission wishes we could pull it off of the work program but that's entirely at your discretion and we defer to you, so for right now it's documented as part of your work program. and then they go on and you'll see that they are all the same properties that we've discussed before, including those we identified as part of the transit center district plan that was added during the adoption of that plan and also the three properties we identified as part of the jay chess. and then just the last item i wanted to point out as part of the landmark designation report, there is a

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,