see the uses above it. it's not disturbing, it doesn't make noise. the one 1 on union street. it's a retail space because it does sell bicycle equipment and outfits and accessories. it has the exercise component and retail component and this is typically what the front desk looks like. it's not a membership activity. you can walk in if you want to do it today you walk in and you can do it. you make appointments online, about 40-50 participate, maximum capacity. 6 :00 a.m. you can get up and 10:00 p.m. at night you can do it. it's 1 hour window for it. specifically with respect to the site on castro street. this is an important picture for you

all. this is the bank of america building in castro and market. you have four windows here and two on the castro street frontage and people don't even reach to the bottom of the window. it has a heavy difficult classical space and difficult to use. actually someone sitting in the bank of the bank couldn't make it there. they moved to 18th and castro with a new building. look at the building today. what you see is there are le -- three bays on castro street. this is straight. this was added and i have been going past id for 40 years. i never noticed this change and then

better than that because i looked at the plan and it didn't make any stones -- sense to me. again, i'm embarrassed. look at this. it's a fake front. who knew that. some urban designer said we need more presence on castro street. let's add another bay. here you are. that's the situation. it's very unique and it's a difficult building to participate in. then the market street frontage, harvey milk plaza and the entrance basically took the whole frontage off market street. even though you have a corner building, here it is again. the whole market street frontage is kind of blocked by the plaza and metro. here is

the main entrance and you have the three bays on castro street with two active. it's a difficult building and san francisco is very lucky to have a use like soul cycle wanting to use it and they feel confident in being successful to staying here. they have a 5-year lease with option to renew. they are on union street and today they are opening one in downtown on fourth street. this is the other facility in san francisco. with that commissioners, that concludes my presentation unless you have other questions. thank you very much. >president cindy wu: okay. we'll take public comment. mr. beach nelson.

>> i will be very brief. beach nelson. we are very supportive of this project and for a number of reasons. our planning and land use committee met repeatedly and we evaluated the project and made a recommendation to the board because of it's size. and the board had to take a vote and then we presented it to the boards position to our membership and the board agreed that the planning and land use committee because they are going to maintain the historical exterior and they committed to mitigating the noise via apparently some sound structure and it's going to be in the day and evening because it's open at night. if it had been a -- bar, most likely in the

an expensive space. we thought that was an important issue of it. we don't currently have this use in the neighborhood so it is a needed and desirable use. they are also going to preserve the painting of judy horn's house. i think they had to when they took out the window they were required to put that in. the board unanimously supported it and a quorum of our membership on november 13th or 12 supported our position on that. thank you. >president cindy wu: thank you. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner richards? >> >commissioner dennis richards: it's a

welcome presence. it's from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.. it's going to be great to have people going in and out of that building. i support it. >> second. city clerk: if there is nothing further commissioners there is a first and second. commissioner >commissioner michael j. antonini: >commissioner rich hillis: >commissioner christine johnson: >>commissioner kathrin moore: >commission vice-president rodney fong:, >president cindy wu:. that motion passes unanimously 7-0. >president cindy wu: i don't believe they are back yet. city clerk: we can take item 14. also conditional use authorization. 2014.1190. >> good afternoon again, the item before you is 549 castro street. the proposal is 1310 square feet

tenant space occupied by coffee. the project sponsor intends to close the establishment depending upon the proposed establishment. the project includes minor tenant improvements and intends to employ 20 employees. the proposed hours of operation from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. monday through friday. today the project has support from three separate groups from castro merchant and the castro upper market as well as two individuals and individual residents. one letter in opposition as to the limited space of restaurants and formula retail. i have copies of this letter

but they are included in your packet. i do have the letter of opposition, print copies of this. the recently approved letter of formula retail project does not affect this project based on the second quarter of 2014, approximately 26 percent of ground floor retail uses in the castro street neighborhood includes food and befrnl -- beverages. currently there are 1150 business amounting to 78 percent and it would not contribute to the formula retail as the recent one is proposed to close down. in order to

grant permit, it must grant 17.43 to establish formula retail limited restaurant doing business as coffee with the the commercial distribution. the project recommends approval and is necessary and desirable for the following reasons: the project would not affect the formula retail, the project sponsor would vacate the existing space. the project would fill a soon to be vacant establishment in the district. the project meet applicable requirements of the planning code and the project is desirable and compatible with the neighborhood. this concludes staff presentation and happy to answer any questions. >president cindy wu: thank you. project sponsor. >> good afternoon, on behalf

of project sponsor, phillies coffee. i appreciate the staff support in the project. i won't go into everything in the comprehensive report. this location will replace the existing location. it's a tiny storefront where phil's is now and will allow to better serve the community. it's been at that location for years and has a lot of ties to the castro community and really wants it to stay but in order to do that it needs to expand into a bigger space. phil's technically a formula retail use and local ground home company. started in 2003 when phil opened the flag location at 24th and mission and grown carefully focusing it's ties with the san francisco community. approval will allow to remain in the castro community that it served for years. the project will not change the size of the building and will make

small aesthetic changes to the outside. we have received multiple support letters and making a big effort to reach out support for the project which has done successfully. we have few people from phil's today, the architect and phil himself if you have questions about the company. we are happy to answer them. >president cindy wu: we have public comment . i believe there is a block organized public comment. >> good afternoon. i'm patrick adams, i'm president of the castro

merchants. 27 years in the castro and 19 years of gay erotica and memorabilia that is collectible by people from both the national and international collectors. last year i became coowner of a limited restaurant on the 400-block of castro street that was and has been a limited restaurant for nearly 5 years as far as my landlord is concerned. i opposed to the change of use, not because it's phil's. phil's had been a success story certainly one in san francisco that many of us could be envious of. what i have issues with is the continued bleeding of retail spaces in this castro ncd to both formula retail and limited

restaurants. in the last 2 years, i think you all have a piece of this thanks to the help of mr. ionian, in the last 2 years these are the spaces that changed from retail to formula retail from hamburger mary's which i did not oppose and the proposal that is in the works for mr. anatomy -- natalie for hotdog stand but there has been no movement. in addition to that, i know staff said there were four coffee shops in the neighborhood. this is an actual list of

the coffee shops. the top half and the bottom are coffee shops in two 2 blocks of the upper market ncd. so rather than four, there are 8 within the immediate area. i understand the theory is replacing one with another. that is true, but it's taking away potential retail. we spent 8 months working on castro street improvement project which has been a killer for merchants in the neighborhood and we really haven't had time to assess the future of the neighborhood. so there are two or three vacancies that remain vacant because no one in their right mind would be there with the loss

of traffic we had in the neighborhood. and in the on november meeting when we voted on the soul cycle proposal which was 42-0 and when i made the argument of giving up another piece of retail to a limited restaurant the vote was 20-15 with 7 abstentions in favor of phil but there is a divide in the neighborhood. i think you as commissioners would need to take another look. phil has other options. they could take over another restaurant. if there is no more formula retail. the neighborhood at the moment is at a tipping point. thank you.

>> good afternoon, to the commission. i name is arthur miller. i operate the coffee shop since the 70s. we have a lot of history in the community. we have consistently contributed to harvey milk's civil rights academy, to lyric a lavender use for lgbt students and film line film festival and many local events and we've contributed $60,000 to the account which is for the aids emergency fund which makes us the largest individual contributor to that. we are very excited about growing and changing with our neighborhood and we've been really excited about the improvement project even though it's hard to get through. we are hoping for good

things. but we are here to say that this is a very saturated market. there is a lot of cafes and there is a lot of new cafes that have come out and we were hoping that you would consider delaying this project until the dust settled. this project just ended and we have not had a chance to absorb how this change is going to affect our community. we are here to say that we would like to be able to serve this district and we are hoping you will consider how this will impact us and others in the area. thank you very much for hearing me.

>> good afternoon, my name is john singleton. last year my son decided against my better judgment to go to a coffee shop in castro street. since they opened a year ago, there have been at least three coffee shops in the area. every place you go, there is a coffee shop and there is too many coffee shops and nothing else there other than some bars to get people to go into neighborhood and walk around. thank you. >> is there any additional public comment?

>> hello, allen beach nelson president of the castro valley neighborhood association. 20-year resident of the neighborhood. when i first moved to the neighborhood, the only thing there was to do in the neighborhood was drink. there were hardly any coffee shops. the fact that there has been an explosion of coffee shops. a year 1/2 ago i did a survey of the neighborhood and we only had four coffee shops. there have been some additions lately but that's a good thing particularly for those of us who are not getting older but who have some experience who don't want to go out to bars and we want to have coffee and those that are sober. our planning and land use committee met with phil and discussed the project and they made a recommendation to the board because it is a formula retail

project and the board also highways to take a -- has to take a vote n on the project. it's in the castro area 1. phil has a connection to philanthropy which is close to me. the proposed plan to the location seems like an appropriate scale to the neighborhood and i don't think it's going to hurt any other coffee shops. they are all developed in a unique way. depending on what model you want, you have something to go to. patrick did bring up one concern, i remember when he was talking about changing, lifting the ban, i was told when the ban added on the castro area was going to happen and upper market i was told that it had conditional use required

and shocked when that didn't happen. i think that's concerning. if anybody has been to boys town in chicago, it's boring as heck because all there is is coffee shops and restaurants. i'm hoping the planning commission will look at that. >president cindy wu: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i just want to make a very brief comment if the threshold for formula use retail is 20 stores do we need to have this hearing and the small business would not need to go through a timely and expensive process to get a store open and we would have a storefront on castro street open much sooner. i urge you to approve this conditional use. thank you. >president cindy wu: thank you. is

there additional public comment? >> good afternoon commissioners. i'm phil from phil's coffee. i will tell you about san francisco. it's only seven 7 miles. >> unfortunately you are party to the project sponsor and your opportunity to speak was during the project sponsor time during the time of the hearing. >president cindy wu: why don't i do it this way. mr. phil, can you tell me a little bit about your business? >> our business is personal. we higher people, culture. we respect each other, work with each other as a team. it's only 7 by 7 communities

closer to each other. we've been in the castro district since 2004 and we've been there for a long time and we conduct our business in a community where we become a community like going to grandmas house full of love and we help communities. that's our mission and my concept, my system. where we go in the community we fit in the community and we are like one. we have a school we are training. we have rules. we after conducting our businesslike my dad one time left me a note. let your life speak for me. anywhere we we go to, we have to help each other, compliment each other. when you go in a community especially

like castro, we increase business. if there is a vacancy and phil's coffee go to the district in no time it is vacant before. we create businesses, we enhance business, we create desire for people to come to the district. phil's coffee is a good thing. we have a good name. we are like an icon in the city. i have been here 42 years in san francisco. 35 years in the mission district. you know if you conduct your the right way, people are smart these days. they have smart intelligence, they have qualities. they have all the good things and they look for quality and that's what phil's coffee provides, good quality. we are not moving from new york to castro, we are already in castro. god

bless you, happy holidays! to you all. i can talk for 3 days. thank you so much. >president cindy wu: thank you. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner >commissioner michael j. antonini: >> i have a question for staff first coming off a comment by one of the most recent speakers who commented if we had or the board of supervisors kept a line at 20 then this would not be coming before us as a conditional use. what's the cost for a conditional use for the city, how much does it cost a project sponsor to do a conditional use, just out of curiosity. i'm not talking about additional legal fees. >> you are talking about a conditional use application? >> yes. >> i believe it's around $2025. >> that's still a significant

amount of money in my book. thank you. the reason why i think it shouldn't have to happen, it's replacing another phil 's with a new location. what it's replacing is a former campaign office. this maybe zoned retail at this time, i'm not really sure. maybe there is a zoning change but it's not replacing a retail use. it's only a transfer and there is only 16 phil's statewide and fortunately he's decided to keep his headquarters in san francisco. if we push small businesses hard enough, we'll drive them out of san francisco because it only makes sense that you are trying to run a business and you don't want opposition for something as minor as this. in regards to some of the comments, the figures i have gotten, they are from staff, i would assume they are correct is

that using the castro ncd, the food and drink is 17 percent and the retail is 25 percent. also was presented in an out of 158 retail establishments in that same ncd only 11 are formula retail and the rest are independent. we are not adding a new one because all we are doing is transferring the location of the other one. i think this is a good measure and makes total sense and i'm going to move to approve. >president cindy wu: commissioner richards? >> >commissioner dennis richards: we talk about the policy of eating and drinking on the shop on polk street. i don't know if it made it there. we were going to look at the policy whether the tipping point is 20, 40 or 60 on the economy. maybe we

can add that to the list. >> i apology -- apologize for that. >> i want to talk about the shop in the castro district. to my understanding i haven't been around in the 70s. there was a margin, it encouraged everybody to go into the alcohol and coffee business and it raised the rents and everybody was afraid that we who lose the vibrancy. we learned it didn't happen. a lot of the families that had the buildings kept their stores vacant and we had a vacancy rate at 10 percent. i don't know if supervisor wiener or

duffy changes it and said we are going to have this as a right and what happens is we have this proliferation of coffee shops and my friends joke that it's like boys town in chicago. an adult service store, the castro is becoming homogenous with moving that way. i don't know what the answer on this one is. we want the neighbor to become, but the castro business, the community, cbd, whatever it stands for, the partnership community benefit district, what the mayor's office, supervisors office, the neighborhoods association and developers spend $2,000 on the economic need and where is the need and unfortunately this business and other ones that

are coming before june and i hope we can review this in the planning commission, it's going to really start telling us what the neighborhood really needs. this is a one for one switch. this is a superior retail space to an inferior retail space. it was a shoe store before. we don't have any shoe stores. i remember commissioner duffy said we want this and that, this is part of that legacy. i had my first coffee of the day, phil i didn't sleep last night. i'm going to support this and welcome to the castro community and i'm concerned about what's happened to the neighborhood. >president cindy wu: commissioner johnson?