and fast fatrack is ill-advised please move forward with a neutrality or negative recommendation thank you. >> my name is testing wellborn about d 5 action using one ami standard for the city of didn't reflect the income diversities among the neighborhood didn't reflect the ethic groups that is one document that gives us an idea how rents vary across the city if you set one standard a whole bunch of san franciscans left out of the opportunities i've participated in the market octavia planning i participated in affordable verse did care we

know that community planning can create density i can support but not this one-size-fits-all so this program is advertised as rezoning about a third of san francisco that is way too much this program is touted as being able to produce a few hundred affordable units a year 20 years we can surely do better than that. >> there's been some disingenuousness in showing pictures how those units will be looking sensitive to the neighborhoods those graph boxes on market street had end up on 24th street than the charming david backer payers the zoning administrator issued a bulletin that seems to suggest that the affordable units can be smaller, clear uper leaking and the lower

part of the building we need the communities combasz based planning not this one thank you. >> good evening commissioners i'm here representing spur thank you for the opportunity to comment on the affordable housing bonus program spur supports this program we believe this is an important tool taking into consideration tool in the toolbox and building in the increasing the goals without drawing the resources away from programs and have this for the population whose needs are not and the we're hopefully, this will facilitator the dollar utilized sites they've not been realized and we applaud the

planning commission to design a smart program around the possible intended circumstances we larger support the amendments and feedback from the public have identified issues worthy of adjustment we have to areas of concerns one we believe more demolition of existing residential unit and cost analysis and a direct prohibition didn't allow for that analysis or discussion we also support the original proposal that the appeals body be the board of appeals rather than this board of supervisors and we're strongly opposed to the idea that separate fees will be not considered as finding with the bonuses program navigated wear disappeared not alleged projects included overall, however, this is a

worthwhile tool to put in place we recommend you recommend approval to this board thank you. >> good evening, members i'm kaeshth republican you know let's gets back to real the, in fact, the population has there's by over one homiciundred thousa that will not change walk and quack like a abduct quack quack that's a duck we got sweet spot mess all the years of projects being detailed and detailed and dragged on our infinity until nothing gets built and the housing stock is not there's we now have the mess we have with a massive shortage of housing i

urge passage of this passage and moving forward building more housing and that's the only way forward anything else is detailed tactics thank you. >> okay (calling names). >> whoever is ready there. >> good evening commissioners katherine howard i'm concerned

about a few things with the affordable housing bonus plan first is loss of cleanpoweropen our city is more crowded open space is necessary for both new and existing residents sells the description of the assistance of the availability for the business is like someone saying i'll run over you with a truck don't worry about that we'll have the best medical team i don't think you'll take up that offer at the beginning of the hearing it was saying quote that is legislation we put forward as a solutions to the housing probl problem well the problem is that the planning department has put it forward to us instead of coming up with a plan many participation from all the people will be impacted i suggest that be please pass that legislation to the board with no

recommendation and ask the board form a task force that includes the neighborhoods and helps to preserve neighborhood character and please workout the details so a new plan can move forward quickly with a new study. >> good evening commissioners i'm 14 in addition the director the community housing organizations we are here to recommend that this measure be forward with no recommendations from this commission it has been said this is another tool in the toolbox well the tool we have like a chainsaw nobody brought a tape measures what is cutie have in front of me is the map that has been

presented by staff showing the different i guess blue or dark blue soft sites this shows is - i sent earlier as you look at various areas in the proposal before you you'll see the areas slope boulevard get a 5 hundred and 77 percent bonus areas were showdown bayview boulevard with one and 70 percent bonus and terryville street gets a three hundred and 31 percent bonus under this proposal and what is the difference between that and a state bonus that is 35 percent seems rather large to me the question i think all of you should be considering in any of the proposals that are before you is wheat is the deal

are you getting a good deal out of this proposal are you getting enough affordable housing and nicole the affordable housing we're discussing will the majority be one bedrooms quotes to people that earner one thousand dollars is that a good genealogic deal. one and 7 percent in the irish cultural district i don't know by i think you should start over analyzing that thank you su, ve much. >> good evening commissioners peter cohen with the communities housing organizations another handful your b.c. being choked with information tonight several things in there starting with a paper we did about density you've heard the issues

our take a way to do density right this is not the band-aids you've got to start fresh i'm a i'll efficient an issue 2 the letter who's the affordable housing bonus program to serve who's this for who are the apples and oranges for you've heard the mayor's office of housing and community development 92 percent for households blow 50 first of ami everyone is a potential target for the program for reasons we can't you understand you've leaped from 60 up to one and 20 up to two and 40 every single qualifying households between 60 ami and one and 20 percent can't afford this is our cartoon the firefighters he and the teacher

and igiving us an idea of the range of divefferent types of folks not eligible for the housing and commissioner antonini there is a point you can't be eligible for housing if you make too little money that's a fact the other they know that is brought up one-size-fits-all you've heard whether you break it down by geography people will be priced out of affordable housing bonus program that ain't right we can start over and happy to answer more questions this is very, very important thank you. >> good evening commissioners my name is malcolm i watched the all of the testimony a month ago

i've been talking to san franciscan about this program for 17 weeks what you are hearing in those two hearings is what i've been hearing that there is a clear genera majority that is negative on this program i'm asking you for political leadership not bureaucracy and conditional use not asking you the the best way to administrator but forward general recommendations to the board of supervisors on what are the key question what should the priorities be and the limits be and once the board has considered those things to possible include ahbp in a solution i hope you'll take time to make general recommendations to the board and necessarily encompass

the broader part of your responsibilities thank you. >> i'm penn that he clark a rodent of the noah valley russian hill area from that blue map which i realized is sort of a floating target much of the northeast quadrant is a main target for this program and i think it includes a lot of sites where the developers are really given wah-wah-wah too much incentive for way, way too this product the larger sites where you can get real amounts of affordable housing should be

the rents that are the priority not in upsetting a very dense settled neighborhoods where you have a little mind field of volunteering minds none knows where suddenly a historic building will pop up in a block that be intercepted by narrow alleys the character of the neighborhood it is important the idea of promoting affordable housing in real quantities with will help to meet the need it should be prioritized thank you very much. >> good evening commissioner president fong and members i'm steve and he come to you today having

retire a month ago as commission director the council governments inch done those and transportation and air quality and analysis and you'll side issues your you're talking about we talk about and the housing issue is the toughest of all i'm here to ask for a specific minor modifications to the staff's recommendation as it applies to the urban design recommendations c and i bring this forward and he (inaudible) wish i can could make that larger. >> you can dial it.

>> ever 50 percent and allow the commotioaccomodation and it difficult to see this was the origin lot think that block and now, one ab and - with, sir you'll have to speak indemnity

microphone. >> sir, unfortunately, your thank you, sir, your time is up. >> >> i'd like to see if you can't consider. >> thank you. >> sir your time is up. >> >> your time is up. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please hi there my name is susan broke i oppose the affordable housing bonus plan and i noticed somewhere along the line the title lost the word scents but it does paappear that is about density i've lived in san francisco for over 20 years and i love the city i did live in new york city for awhile and now there's a dense

city we're heated that way one of the best things about san francisco is the neighborhoods their have you unique and different their diverse and i heard tonight the idea this will take 20 years to implement and someone said what kind of city do we want to have and live in i want to throw out the idea in 20 years you've city abowill be a complete different city if this goes forward the way it is written it is something that will take on a life of itself own the the character of the fabricated will really, really change and no way to get it back we'll end that ruegional transi it so far as visibiliaffordabils

pleased to hear middle-income by the way, i've been looking at the term of affordable this wouldn't be affordable to me and most people we know but seems it is defines let's call it middle-income and i think we need to plan for the ground up and not the it top down as the n that the vera did care community put together so, please vote no on tha

this. >> (calling names). >> so sorry. >> commissioner president fong honorable commissioners director and zoning administrator good evening i'm ribbon you caner the co-chair the association as long as that an in a while he will like incorporate by reference the testimony that was held tonight by those that oppose this affordable housing bonus program we want to summarize and having sorry coughing attacks but some of the transmittal elements of our opposition

one is one-size-fits-all didn't fit all a process to determine on a district by district basis what is appropriate for that particular district based on the hectic sites and legacy businesses which have not yielded not been mentioned and the community planning process i know also hawas one meeting hel was interested at one of the sites i never heard from the city regarding this program and n none of the constituents were surveyed but more we feed community input and especially where we have office space improvement question need to look for thfor thatha

thfor thalook for thafor thalol approve that program sends it back for more evaluation thank you. >> my name is silvia johnson. we had no problem before when i built houses we accepted all of the requirements and i don't know what the problem is some of the people that don't think that a really are newer place is

possible and that too much put under control and the idea of not being in court is one of the main problems we've got here i will not you know some proufowe thing that is something that was marked by the organization we had no problem before i don't know why twhat the problem is i is kind of finish fishy and i think that this is not that bad

to changing we had befoo changc think that this is not that bad changing we had befonish fishy think that this is not that bad changing we had befoish fishy think that this is not that bad changing we had befosh fishy ak that this is not that bad changing we had befoh fishy an that this is not that bad changing we had befo fishy and that this is not that bad changing we had befofishy and i that this is not that bad changing we had beforefishy and that this is not that bad changing we had before. >> we had no problem before i've always you know you know when i got throuere and it was okay. i think it was something is going fishy . >> members ftd planings commission, my name is catherine courtny, i am chair of the russian hill social. in 2014130 individuals representing 107 organizations were invited to participate in the design of this program.

130 individuals, 107 organizations, not one neighborhood activist, not one neighborhood organization was invietdd. 40 years ago we down zoned the inner sunset. it was the largest rezoning in this city's history. 55 blocks, 80 percent of the property owners signed on to that down zoning. that was community participation. that was neighborhood individuals being responsible and designing the type of city they wanted to live in. this was not an acceptable process. it did not involve the neighborhoods, we have thousands of years of experience of people sitting in this room and they were not invited to participate. i ask you to send this up to the board of supervisors with a negative recommendation. thank

you. >> thank you, commissioners, dennis antonori, one issue that's really completely obscured by the staff presentation tonight has been the issue of the serious threat to our neighborhood businesses. it hasn't been discussed sufficiently tonight. in my neighborhood alone, the inner sunset, i counted within a 4 block area 30 neighborhood businesses in one story buildings. i think all of those businesses are at a threat, not just the areas that have been denoted as soft sites by the planning department. the planning department's solution to this issue of displacement solutions really are inadequate. the so-called early notification ignores one really important fact and that is the rights of tenants are governed by leases. the land lord condition be forced to lease a building to tenants so this early notification is of

almost no use. the idea that a right of first refusal somehow helps the business fails to say how does that business survive for the huge period of time that it's going to take for this project to be completed? what happens while this business is waiting to come back to this property? secondly, what is the property going to cost, what is the rent going to be, how do we know that tenant is going to have any ability to pay the rents for that building. we don't have commercial rent control. the idea of referring to the uniform relocation act is quite interesting because that was, that act was in direct response to the failures of the san francisco redevelopment agency in the western addition. congressman john burton introduced that act and had it passed but it was passed many decades ago but it is completely ineffective at protecting small businesses. as the president of the small business noted the limitations in that act would create a

situation where no one would be able to survive even if they benefited. i hope you pass this on to the board of supervisors without any recommendation at all. this thing needs to be completely reworked. >> next speaker. >> hi, san francisco is a beautiful amazing city. i think all of us in this room are passionate about this place, we wouldn't be here if we weren't. but the thing that's made san francisco fly, the thing that's made it extraordinary, is the fact it's made room for the people who want to move here, for the excentrics and misfits who didn't fit in somewhere else who came to san francisco and found a home. now, that has produced extraordinary results and a flourishing community, but it is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. so

many people want to move here, the economy has thrived, the technology industry has flourished from the diverse backgrounds of people who moved here, and if we don't make room for more humans, more people to live here, both affordable housing rate, middle income housing, then the san francisco we love will be washed away. so i urge you to pass this program but to seriously consider not making amendments that water down the number of units that are built. we need to build more beautiful housing, this is a very well designed program, not overbuild, it builds the right amount in the right places in the city, pass it and let's get on with solving the problem to strengthening the beautiful city that we love. >> next speaker.

>> good evening, commissioners, my name is loy leader man and i am a member of the inner sunset. it is clear staff has heard the many concerns voiced by members of the public. while staff's responses are encouraging and seem to reflect good intentions with legislation the deficient devil is always in the details. we need unambiguous language to maintain conditional use requirements, to prohibit the demolition of rent controlled units and other sound housing, to eliminate the income gap in the affordability ranges that continue to exclude a swaugt of the underserved population, and unambiguous language to make sure a (inaudible) provution for the merchants who will be displaced if this goes forward. but even if enforcable

language were enacted the need for adequate room size would still be missing, as would sufficient levels of affordability and the uniform upzoning of the entire city which fails to take into account neighborhood differences. we would still be at the effect of that upzoning. this proposal before you is still a demolition plan. demolition always causes displacement and we most certainly have a displacement crisis in san francisco which must not become policy under the guise of adding some affordable units. we need community planning and we need it fast. i urge you to vote this proposal out tonight with a do not adopt recommendation. thank you. >> hi, i'm (inaudible) and i wasn't going to speak tonight but sitting here it made me want to say that as a gay

youth i looked forward to the time i moved to san francisco. we would finally have this accepting community where we could live like we wanted. so i finished college a few years ago and i'm here but a lot of my friends aren't. they can't afford to live here and this is especially the case for gay women as on average gay women earn significantly less than gay men. i don't really want a small pilot program or to delay, i want my friends and lgbt community here now. we can't maintain san francisco's gay culture if the gay youth can't live here. please pass the affordable program. >> hi, i'm sonia trout. earlier a commenter said that one of the best things about our city is our neighborhoods

and all i could think was, i wouldn't know. i don't live in any neighborhoods in san francisco, i can't, i'm being kept out of them because there isn't enough housing for me to live there. 40 years ago we down zoned the inner sunset. that's the housing we would have been living in, that's the affordable midmarket housing, this 30-year-old, 40-year-old housing. that's what community planning gets you. they have not built affordable housing, do you see affordable housing in the avenues? we had two people tonight stating you can't build affordable housing in the avenues. people here are saying don't do it, it will destroy neighborhood community. i think it's worth it, there's nothing so ugly as no housing. you know what i want to do is

give you an 81 date on 100 van ness. on my way over here, remember that thing, i met somebody that lives there. this is the first time that i met somebody that lives somewhere that i testified in favor of, so i was really excited about it. he has a dog, he's really nice, he's really into bernie sanders. people are living there and there's going to be people living in the stuff that gets built if the affordable housing bonus program goes through. thanks. >> good evening, can i put something on the overhead? >> yes, of course. >> i just wanted to remind everyone how much property costs in this city nowadays. this was the biggest sale of the year here in san francisco. now, i'm not sure how appropriate it would be for me to name the person that actually profited from that sale, just as it's not probably

appropriate for me to make any remarks about other people who have spoken here tonight, so i won't. there is a tremendous amount of disingenuity in the criticism of this program. most of the reasons that people are opposing it are not al truistic. it is not the job of government to help people protect their own property val use or maximize them, just as it is not the job of this commission or any other arm of contract to help certain city contractors keep their piece of the budget pie. it is their jobs to try and make this city affordable again and livable. i ask you to please do the right thing.

>> good evening, commissioners, donald (inaudible) resident of the city and county of san francisco. and i just want to give my following remarks on this program that has been very effectively researched with the planning department staff for 18 months. they went out of their way to go to the neighborhoods of the districts affected by the 250 sites and had long discussions with the residents. whether -- regardless of political affiliation, the bottom line is the people that are opposing this program have no skin in

the game. they are already home owners. their claim that my friends and myself who have recently moved here the last 3 to 4 years are saying go back to where you came from. with this comprehensive program that even eric mar has spoken and said that we need, we need to push forward with this program because it is comprehensive and now because of all the feuding going on between the state bonus program and the affordable housing bonus program between the city which reflects values, by the way, the developers now are aware of what they can do. and with the state density program they had more leniency to build what they need to build

compared to sf values' program that we have developed in the planning department. i urge you to support tonight and move forward with this program because people are out on the streets curb surfing. >> thank you, sir. >> good evening, commissioners and thank you very much for staying so late to hear our comments. i live in district 5 and i work as a gardener and a landscaper. i would suggest that you consider the honey bee. each and every day honey bees perform myriad and miraculous tasks. they are essential to the prosperity and stability of their environment. now compare the people who currently live and work in san francisco to the honey bee. we

are engaged with our local communities and neighborhoods, we sit on juries, pay taxes and we volunteer in schools, libraries, parks and neighborhood organizations. i am a nert volunteer in my neighborhood, i participate in park and ocean clean ups, i help an elderly and frail neighbor when she needs it, i contribute to my community in ways that are not obvious. there are hundreds if not thousands of san franciscoans just like me. i am also a renter. we look after our neighborhoods in far more efficient ways than any city agency can. we are the glue of this city. you cannot put a dollar value on the contributions that we make. we must build more housing that is truly affordable for the people who already live here and who are the cross pollinators of our city. real estate speculation and free market values have caused an inflated

bubble and an unprecedented housing crisis and this affordable density housing program is not the solution. it is flawed andity build, baby, build approach is wrong-minded. the good news is that we do have a community based plan, the affordable biz community plan, a diverse group of over 500 neighborhoods met to hammer out a community plan from the bottom up and i would urge you to look at it. >> thank you, ma'am. is there any additional public comment? >> can you go to the screen? hi, my name is judith and i first appeared at this planning commission because there was a developer who wanted to build something next to my son's school and for some reason i've

gotten drawn into this bizarre world that you guys inhabit and kudos for all the work you do. so first of all i just wanted to talk about outreach because i've come here twice, i came here january 7th begging for a meeting in district 9 and i came here a couple of weeks ago asking again for a meet not guilty district 9 and there was a meeting in district 11 where 9 was invited, but it would have been really great if you had actually done outreach in district 9. district 9 has bernal heights and this is basically the area that's affected is along mission from caesar chavez to randell which is in bernal heights. i went to the meet not guilty bayview this week and gil kelly revealed the soft sites and i started looking at the soft sites and i actually think i'm becoming an advocate

for parking lots now, which is really weird. the first parking lot i encountered, the very soft site, is the parking lot right next to the employment office, right? people actually use that all day long to access edd at mission and chavez. okay, then i go to the next one, it's right next to planned parenthood. then i go to the next one, it's next to bank of america and this is the map from red lining from 1937, which is my neighborhood, which was basically banking is really important, they just closed the bank on courtland, the bank of america is just doing mortgages and having a working bank where you can do commercial dplts is really important. i just want to make sure the amenities which bernal heights is being denied after being red lined in 1937, storm water drainage, loading zones --. >> your time is up. >> next speaker, please.

>> good evening, president fong and commissioners, i am kathy devonchenzie and i have a letter i am submitting for the record which concerns among other things the failure to do ceqa review including the protection of neighborhood character for the housing development and this should be rejected. i also sent an email asking you to (inaudible) from the changes in i58 and map 6 of the housing element which refer to these areas and rh1 and 2 areas are not supposed to be affected by the affordable housing proposals. the bonus program would incentivize the demolition of low rise neighborhood commercial structures and

result in the displacement of small businesses that can now afford the rents in older structures. rent will be higher in the new structures attracting chain stores and resulting in the loss of the unique density that differentiates our neighborhoods from the suburbs. the clause that (inaudible) grossly inadequate since market rates will be higher in all the new rentals and once displaced it's very hard to return. the idea that middle class flight can be curbed by building units in multi unit structures is at best a radical experiment that may well fail since individuals westerning $100,000 may prefer the suburbs and families of 4 making $100,000 may prefer the

school advantages in the suburbs. since there are no size advantages the developer could make them very small and (inaudible) commensurate value. >> your time is up. >> next speaker, please. i think you have already spoken, you are next. >> good evening, commissioners, my name is john vargas. the affordable housing density program as proposed is to provide sites for the development of some affordable housing and thereby try and help the housing crisis for affordable housing in san francisco. and using the existing housing stock to create this will really, what

you are proposing in this legislation is that we can realize the existing housing stock to proceed to provide for meeting that need for affordable housing. in cannibalizing the existing housing stock you really are destroying the most affordable housing that exists in san francisco, the rent home, the general plan and the housing element was saying that as an explicit piece of language. it said the existing housing stock is the most affordable housing stock, therefore should not be demolished, should not be modified in order to meet housing needs. so where do you meet housing needs? well, i suggest you may look and see in the city we have 1500 acres at hunter's point naval shipyard, we have

1500 acres and where was this concern about affordable housing when we own the property in those sites and then they said what, that we meet the affordable housing needs in the city? do we say this is what we're going to do, you are going to build affordable housing, not inclusionary market rate housing or anything like that, it was going to be for affordable housing. >> thank you, sir. >> some of us that are asking to send it out without recommendation have been fighting to get the laws changed to build affordable housing and have been building

it for a very, very very long time. decades. some were sincere about wanting housing. secondly, some of us have also been burned by the planning department process through planning to do an area plan. i have been burned big time by eastern neighborhoods plan. others have been burned by the market octavia plan. we have a lot of comments from the community when you were doing the plan and like this one which didn't have that many really comments or anything. once you adopt the plan the plan exists in fantasy. it's on a shelf. no one looks at it, no one understands what it is, they just look at the rules. they look at the planning commission -- planning code. and i am distressed with my experience that the planning

department staff, the guys and the girls who have come in, gone through planning school, been here a year, two years, six months, are analyzing the project and are not asking the questions that should be asked. so the history is the planning commission has to be the entity that makes the decision, not the planning staff. the planning staff is the kids that graduate from planning school long after the plan is done so keep your role, send this out, there needs to be a lot more thought but the planning commission should send it to the board of supervisors and make (inaudible). thank you.

>> hi, john schwerk, i wasn't going to speak today but my young girl planning intern decided since she came this far she wanted to get on television. i'd like to make a couple quick points about something people said tonight that struck me. one, we don't want any more rich white people coming into san francisco which i thought was kind of interesting, considering that by far the greatest net worth people in the building tonight were the people speaking against the program. another person also said, well, one person has $23 million in the bank from the sale of his house, he spoke first tonight. another person had a house in the 70's for $40,000 and it's now worth 4 million, that's a hundred times

return, he doesn't have to worry about where he's going to live or where his kids are going to live. i'd like you to please pass the affordable housing bonus program. let's get it done with as few carve outs as possible. i know we have to make some political compromises but every time we alter it, less housing gets built. any further public comment? okay, public excellent is closed. commissioner comments, commissioner antonini >> we were recommending you take it by the 6 topic areas and if you choose not to do it that way, that was just a way of structuring the discussion.

>> commissioners, staff submitted exhibit c which might establish a framework for your discussion. >> difficult to find it in the file. >> it was in the staff report that was submitted to you. it's titled exhibit c, department recommendations summary. >> got it. . >> some folks are still looking for exhibit c in their case report. you can also make use of pages 27 and 28 of the case report. as a reminder for the commission, the first topic

which we discussed was program eligibility. hal walked you through a series of the program's current eligibility criteria, we started by discussing zoning control, zoning district control, and talked about historic requirements. the recommendation for the commission to consider is whether we would like to propose that the program not be eligible for any projects that demolish a residential unit. do you have any comments, questions? >> commissioner hellas. >> so just a couple questions. and maybe some comments that can help move this along at least in this section. i think these maps were helpful that you showed and i

think, you know, just i guess i have a clarifying question. when you went from the 3700 parcels which are those that don't include historic buildings as well as rental units and that includes residential that's under rent control and non-rent control, single family owned after 79, this is what you would recommend, that map that shows those units, i mean those parcels? and how did you get to the potential soft sites? >> sure, i think asking for the difference between 3,700 parcels that meet all the eligibility criteria and the 240 or so that are determined to be potential soft sites, and the real difference is the existing uses on those properties. so the 3,700, it could be any size structure but

it does not have a residential use. the 240-some sites, the existing structure is 5 percent or less of the development potential and that's a good estimator for us around where a site might be considered to be underutilized and it might make sense for development to occur on that site. the methodology we have used for both naubl naul and octavia to determine where development could happen. >> so it would be an existing area that would be less than the --. >> correct. >> so i mean, one, i think we should make it clear, and i believe it is, but if it's not what we're starting from is this 3700 parcels because i think that was helpful to a lot

of folks. we heard some people reiterate this notion of residential units or rent controlled units or any residential units, but so we're clear on this or we've been clear in the past that we don't intend to have this demo any existing rent control and now we've expanded that to any residential. >> that is correct. >> i certainly would support that. i think the only thing i would try to get -- i don't think we'll necessarily get at it tonight but perhaps it's to make a recommendation, if people are supportive to look at it, when i looked at the soft sites and i went through and spent some time kind of looking at them on google maps and figuring out what they were, a lot of them could work, you know, to add, there's things like the mcdonald's site on haight that people have cried out for development or

gas stations on geary and 18th. i truly think those parcels could work, could work under this program and generate more affordable housing and you could have additional storage on there that aren't impactful for the neighborhood. there are those soft sites that come up that i don't think can work. like there's the cake's kitchen on hyatt street which tends to be midblock, not necessarily because of the use, the building may be historic but the street there is narrower, it's less of a transit coronado and , a lot of

places that showed up on that short lift worked better than the neighborhood commercial districts like irving or 24th street. i don't quite know how to get at that, but i'd suggest we do this kind of, and people talked about a phased approach, if we're going to go down that path that may be a way to kind of get at this is to look first to kind of those more wider transit corridors. but i think a lot of your soft sites are on. >> commissioner wu's thoughts on program he will eligibility or do you have general thoughts? let me stop for a second, ultimately we'd like to take an action or recommendation on each topic, but if it's best now to do everything you have we can come back to them or do you want to tackle them one at a time? >> i think it would be quicker

if we just went through and talked about --. >> i have other questions, too. >> me, too. >> we can do one at a time but i'm going to ask some programmatic level questions. >> okay, why don't we try it this way? why don't we try -- try -- to focus on each topic. there are going to be some general questions you have that will affect all of them but if we can after we get through this round of comments we will try to take an action on topic 1. commissioner wu, thank you. >> so i want to go back to the fact there's 4 programs. so there's the, i don't know what all the terminology is, the individually negotiated state bonus program, right, basically people come in one by one and you try to figure out what the state bonus is. then there's the proposed state analyzed program, the local analyzed program and then the affordable housing, 100

percent affordable housing program. >> correct. >> so on the state analyzed program, how much leeway do we have? for example, the program in front of us has something between 13 to 20 percent if you do 13 to 20 percent affordable you get the bonus. are those numbers mandated by the state, are they proportion? >> the difference between the state and the analyzed program is the state law, simply the state law is broad in its description of the types of incentives and concessions, like waiver parking or parking back yard that can be offered or asked for. what we try to do is keep the density ratios consistent with the state law almost as literally as possible implement the state law, but really limit the types of incentives and kupb stions that can be requested so rather than

what would happen through the individually requested process where we'd have to look at two proposals and negotiate 5 or 6 percent on the back yard, we relied on the analysis of david baker and libby sifels to set up a menu. this is an approach that some municipalities like la have taken but the densities are exactly mimicking the state law. >> what happens if the state base line happens? if the requirement were 15 percent low income and then 10 percent whatever the next step up is, middle, is that what we're calling it? moderate? what would happen if it's more than the 20 percent? >> sure, we have worked through some analysis of this just very quickly and per the

state law, any project that met the affordability requirement proposed by the charter amendment would get a 35 percent density benefit automatickally. under the local program, which is the one that currently encourages people to go up to 30 percent, we have structured it to say first you meet any requirement that happens in article 415 and then we do the rest in middle income. so should that proposal be successful, a local affordable housing bonus program project would first meet the requirements described in the new change and get 5 percent at the middle income level. we built that in because we thought section 5 would change over the 20 year period. >> for both state and local, how much often would you just

say you can do more units within x envelope as opposed to saying you get two more floors? >> under the state analyzed program we developed a formula and we only give additional volume when we can tell from that formula that you couldn't fit what we consider to be an average size unit, which assumes 40 percent two bedroom within the volume you are currently permitted and then you are only allowed that extra volume as the formula predicts. so if you were getting a 35 percent density bonus and you can fit all those units in the volume you have you would get no heights or maybe half a story, but through our work with david baker's firm we realized there are almost no cases where 35 percent density benefit would warrant more than two story of heights. that's why we wanted to be specific with the public and the legislators that that formula

caps out there. under the local program, one of the benefits to the project sponsor that commits to doing 35 percent affordability is they have that option to choose one or two stories as part of the program benefits. >> okay, so i'll go to the issues as they are laid out. i'm the first one i think that's something the commission has helped for, i would be really supportive of taking out persons -- parcels that have residential units on them. i think what has been a struggle for me is i am not as clear on the other ones, other issues, so where does that leave me on the program? i think that's kind of a challenge. >> okay, commissioner bencini

>> i agree with commissioner wu, i think we should when we pass it to the supervisors say examples of, like, 1681 fulton that you show where there is these instances where good things could happen but on the balance i don't think the program should cover that. there's no reason why someone who wanted to use the state plan couldn't involve some of the housing because that's separate from the local plan. so i think that i would eliminate residential units. and while i have the floor, you did go through infrastructure but then you didn't put a category in there. are we going to do that after we do this here? >> infrastructure is topic 2. >> oh, it says urban design. >> we did not propose any amendments related to infrastructure. certainly you can have a discussion on that topic. >> can i bring that up now, we can include that with our vote on no. 1 if that's okay, or do

you want to wait? we have concerns about infrastructure, you are trying to mitt gat the cost of the impacts of the new units. and i think you are talking about fees for 20 units or more and i would like to suggest the fees begin no matter how many units are added and everybody contributes something towards this to alay the fears that people have that the impacts will be, you know, too great to be able to be mitigated. i think this is going to happen pretty gradually and i don't think it's going to be nearly the impacts with the bigger plans we have approved. >> the reason for that number is that just passed the transportation fee which only applied to projects with 20 or more units so we're assuming

that same program that just went through a couple years of process and it was just adopted a couple weeks ago and why it applies to more than 20 units. >> on our recommendation i would suggest we ask the board to look at any other possible fee that is they may levy against smaller projects pro rata to their size to perhaps generate a little more revenue. >> commissioner richards. >> before i comment on topic 1, a question i have is foundational to the program itself in terms of how you recapture. we heard fernando martin get up and say value conferred on yadda yadda and we have a table that was handed in that talked about conferred value because it's taking away the density and adding height at the same time which is somewhat exponential, i guess, versus if a straight 20 percent

or 30 percent, that seems foundational to the whole thing. from there then i'd luke to talk about a program for the elderly. if someone can comment on the analysis or on value conferred, we just had 160 full sum here, we saw it was 66 percent value recapture of the value conferred. how do we know what the value conferred and value recaptured is here. >> that was a great question. the memo, unfortunately i didn't have a chance to dive into those numbers in great detail but i can refer to that question. the value impact fees, 2005 when the city established the rincon fee, generally it has something to do with how you accomplish your public goal, you make projects

feasible and that kupbls to finding the center point. eastern neighborhoods and market octavia we conferred, when we do density benefits and vair gated height upgrades and downgrades, height (inaudible) but we set the fees for both areas at a flat rate. so some projects were overburdened and the value was recaptured and some were get ago little more value than the value recapture mechanism. in the cases like in the eastern neighborhoods where the value conferred was so different we did set tours and we have looked at that today for eastern neighborhoods. tier 1, problems that had no additional height concern to

them,. those projects were requested to pay 20 percent inclusionary. we've asking for 30 percent. the same zoning benefits, density decontrol and two additional stories. (inaudible) required 20 percent affordability and here we're offering those same benefits and asking for 30 percent. eastern didn't appeal 3, that was available for projects that were available 3 stories or more. so we think the analysis wae drew with sheltie consulting. there are some sites that won't benefit from the density program. that's very true, we've talked about that all the time. we want to create an incentive for some of

those soft sites to look at density affordability. we think we're close to that part. if this question about the varigated density (inaudible). >> the thing i'm struck he willing with, mr. cohen, i have a box and the box is only allowed to produce so many units because of density, 1 for 400, 1 for 800, i want to build a bigger unit, i'm still going to build in my box. instead of 1500 square foot i will build an combination of flats. if you can explain to me what's the difference between building

within a box with more units or less units you are still building within the box. so how is the value conferred changed by a zoning district? >> right, commissioner, if you are familiar with the way the various density controls work, there's ratios, it's 1 to 400, 600, 800, so you have a tremendous numb require of density controls throughout the city. if you just eliminate those you are encouraging allowing the market forces to maximize within the building. this is without height increases. you have gone from a situation in 1 to 800, which is a very low density or strong control, of encouraging larger units, that's how you maximize a building to have larger units that take up the most space to

a situation where you are going to be encouraging smaller and smaller units. if you remember one of the early amendments was to eliminate microunits. that's what you would get but you are running up against the only mechanism to allow larger units. you get 40 percent. everything else is larger studios. >> small units command a higher price per square foot, that's what you are saying. >> that's microunits and it works the same way for anything. i think the important point is my colleague who did all the deep stuff, you end up not having just a center point as staff pointed out which might work at some scale, but when you talk city-wide with all the different zoning districts we have, you end up with a huge law of averages and

you have some sites for which the amount of conferred sdeepbing is just off the charts. so our point is to look at this at some kind of scale where you can find the right center point and it isn't just giving away the farm. >> commissioner moore. >> i would agree with commissioner wu and commissioner antonini on eliminating unwanted definitions. i have been concerned about the basic definition and what went into selecting soft sites. i have gotten a number of calls and (inaudible) those identified on that list with all the blue outlines on it. the question i am asking you what could you use to identify these sites, who identified them and what is

the record by which somebody could look at the criteria used to make them soft sites in your mind? in redevelopment, for example, no, i don't want an answer. i don't need an answer. any redwe., for example, there is a very clear strikly coat fieed meth utdology by which to lack at a neighborhood and identify if there are sufficient sites which call swoot category of redevelopment and there are identifiers and attributes which have to be unused to create an an he wills and apples as you move through the neighborhood to identify particular sites. i am asking what was used here other than finger in the wind or sending somebody out who thought because there was a gas station or because there was some dilapidated shack that this was a soft site? who did the work and why the document?

>> there is a document but it's part of your case packet or handed out to you, it's gary 22nd, it's the potential housing program soft sites and it walks through a lot of the questions you have just asked today about what are the steps. the planning department has a large set of data that tell us what the existing building size is and we did some nagt an excel spread site to look at the potential development and in that ratio what's 5 percent or less is deemed to be poe tpxly soft. but to your point, we don't believe that all of those potential soft sites will be developed under this program or at all. for example, and the memo goes into this, it likely included many or all of the gas stations found in the area. it turns

out to have been a need to maintain the gas station services in a neighborhood so we know some of theirs will remain in that function. we agree with you that this analysis is a good proxy for understanding the potential scale of the program, but not an exact predictor and there might be some sites inside the potential ore that don't develop or some outside of that benchmark that, because of the density of the building, are ripe for development. >> you are saying to me you did not go out and physically survey those sites? that is a yes or no answer. >> we do not go out and survey all the sites. power actually do a *fr most of their work. what we have done we look at the perfect sites and this is

after we removed places like synagogues and churches that aren't good candidates for development. >> thank you, you answered my question. >> commissioner richards. >> just a couple comment. absolutely we shouldn't be demolishing any housing sites. but what i heard today was the 210 vacant lots and gas stations and start from there. i know this isn't in any of the topics but i would make that recommendation base order a feasibility value recapture as we do in any -- selma, 5m, 160

fulton. for the remaining 5 oocytes that would still be covered that are still commercial, i would do a survey. most of the commercial sites in my neighborhood are one and two stories, there were no 3 stories. i want to do a survey and at the same time you can make sure any historic issues are caught, all those sites become a or c, that would be a good time to do it. we are it doing that, this is a 20 year plan and you go away to the big kheeds, 15,000 units that would be given by this 20 between sites, it's a 20 year plan. to address community development plan, i don't know how long you want to take to do it, six months, that's how i would go. >> commissioner. >> i agree with commissioner richards. i'd like to see if we can make a motion for this

first section to support it with the plan expressed by commissioner richards as the starting point, the ones you know for sure you stop with, the one there is no problem is. the way we have said we are eliminating any rent controlled units first then and on historical, we are eliminating all of category a, eliminating part of category b and finally we are eliminating all housing units as part of the plan so that would be my motion to support the program eligibility with those provisions. >> second. >> before we vote on that i want to hear a recap, please.

commissioner harris. >> i'm nervous about the soft sites but i think putting criteria, and i would just suggest that the planning staff come up with recommendations to phase this program that would prioritize soft sites which are defined as kind of vacant or underuelgtsized sites at 5 percent or less. >> parking lots. >> also looking at border lots in transit corridors and wider -- because i think there's other criteria than just soft sites because in my look there were sites in the soft sites that i maybe wouldn't recommend be in the first phase, yet there's others that aren't in the soft sites that could be. so i would just, because we're making recommendations here, phased approach where they look

at things like that. outier streets, transit corridors, low intensity development on lots, so you are not on the 24 streets and you are looking more -- gas stations on masonic or gas stations on geary and not one story buildings on 34th street. >> sounds good to me. >> are you asking for within the soft sites 3 categories? of greater importance or greater opportunity. >> corner lots that work better. >> from the audience to let you have a discussion, please. it's very distracting to me and to other staff, please. thank you very much. >> this obviously is going to take some work and effort. i don't think we have the answers here so we are directing staff to look at a phased approach

which would be something similar to the soft sites but could be, well, our work could be broader based than what they look at. >> commissioner wu >> i wanted to ask a procedural question for us. so i don't remember back to short term rental. if we are going to vote on each issue one by one, but will we take the package and -- there's the auchtion to either support or not, give recommendations. >> it's really up to you. you can do it either way. you can do it either way, really, and actually both ways where you vote on each of these topics individually and then on the entire program as a whole, or you can choose not to vote on the entire program and just simply program the program to the board of supervisors with the individual votes.

>> right, i think i would prefer the second if i understand it right, if there's -- it's just forwarding the program to the board but then with recommendations on certain pieces. >> yeah. so tr would not be, then, a recommendation on the entire program. there seems to be some consensus on that. >> each one. >> then we will forego the vote on the entire program but rather on what will be forwarded to the board are the individual votes on each of the 5 topics that staff is proposing amendments to. >> if they are marked amendments. >> commissioner moor rr on the process. >> i am concerned about the voting part, voting up or down. i think making comments for or against it or asking on-going questions as a commentary rather than as a vote would be much more come fartable to me

if we would have 6 to 8 weeks to work with you like in a planning session it would be something else but we are here to decide what to do with it, pass it on without comment, pass it on with excellents, but voting is very different. (inaudible) we would be sitting here till 6:00 tomorrow morning in order to formally give it all we have to do it justice. >> well, we have had many months work on this, so we should have some idea, some direction at this point. commissioner richards. >> the issue for me would be on this first item, i'm trying to dwifrs the other topics to create a big ball of spaghetti which is not what i want to do.

we should take a look at phasing this because the topic 5, small business, those are the other sites i'm talking about that would be recommended. one of our resolutions could be if this program goes true how to make it work. the other thing is there are other topics also related to it, but again i would vote, if we're voting yes i would vote yes if we do a value recapture study that says we're getting similar value recapture on these original sites as we do in all the other value recaptures that we've been involved in, which is 2/3 or three 4 *. we have a gas

station, all of those gas stations are in the south side for one gas station requires a significant amount of clean up before they can even be used as housing site. so i know there's one at union and van ness, there's one further down on lombard that might be ready but these are almost the only ones in town at least in the western part of town that i know are available. >> i think the south side analysis is just the first

indicator, so over a 20 year period all it's really telling us is the existing structure is taking up less than 5 percent of the total. but as was alluded to there's a number of private transactional steps that would need to take place before any change of use would happen or any development and i do think that those first soft sites that we developed are potential soft sites would need some further vetting so i really like this recommendation that's coming from the commission for program eligibility to move forward with the removal of residential and a direction for staff to do further prioritization and i've been trying to take really detailed notes but broader streets, corner lots, existing small businesses, those were the three issues i wrote down. >> vacancies? >> value recapture, making sure that that was the first thing, that's the ticket to the dance. second one was the

remaining sites that are not gas stations or parking lots, they are surveyed so you can see what's there because that would impact your topic number 5. i mean --. >> absolutely. >> small business, also if they are historic. >> surveyed --. >> both. >> you are physically going there, i don't know if it's two different people -- that would really help things out, if it's historic, hey, we're going to be affecting 3500 small businesses. some of those may be vacant, i don't know. >> they will come up with a technical solution. >> community planning process when we phase this out, there will be some community planning process on those 3500 sites like a sherette >> we did this over the course

of 4 meetings. supermarkets may be 20 sites. it's a 20 year program. >> we've seen, i don't know that we've seen other communities come up and say they've looked at things in the course of a few months, i know that's progressive and -- but i think it helps with that community planning process. >> commissioner hillis. >> i need some clarification on what we're voting on. i'm just a little confused. i'm all for looking at a site today that has a small business in it may not be a site 10 years from now that has a small business in it. a site today that's not historic may be historic 20 years from now. i think we're trying to set policy and kind of broad zoning issues that you look at at the time someone

wants to do a project. a gas station may not be a site today or is a site 10 years from now. we're not going out and developing these sites. that's what i was trying to get at is let's do a phased approach, which i think is what you're trying to get at, and not be so prescriptive that's what's in these first phases, not there's a great restaurant we like on irving and 9th so that slud pbt be in. >> i wasn't saying what should be in or out, i'm saying the remaining 3500 parcels we don't know what's there. >> we don't know what's there 10 years from now or 20 years from now. >> but we are creating incentives for the demolition of a structure today. if i'm a literacy business siting on a corner site somewhere and i have a 5 year lease but if my

site has been rezoned, the lease isn't going to be renewed. this will set the stage for tomorrow. if there's a way to be more flexible i don't see any way around it. >> i'd say if you are a legacy business that can't participate in this program. >> that was just an example. the question is, most of the commercial spaces are one and two stories. i just want to know what's there. >> maybe we can make our recommendation that staff take a crack at making a proposal and bring it wak as an informational item to the commission to get further comments and as we're evaluating this, because i think we're hearing a lot of different ideas and we can probably gel this together some way. >> if we can get this to the board that's going to inform the board to take whatever kind of action they need. >> absolutely. >> commissioner antonini

>> as a maker of the motion, acceptance of the staff thing with all housing being out of if. that's the first part but commissioner richard's attitude is there's a priority of sites where there are no structures on there and it's much easier to move, any that do have structures you already told us you are going to tell us whether they are a, b or c historically and what we are basically saying in this one is our eligibility will focus on first priorities are ones that everybody agrees there's very little development on them and if there is development there will be more attention given to that, that sort of a motion, as i understand it. >> when i say there's an agreement we should not use sites with any existing housing, i think there's general agreement on that.

there's agreement the value recapture, there's agreement there should be some kind of phasing and what i think i heard is that you are comfortable with the phasing that includes the soft sites, perhaps some soft sites, i don't know how you define that, but the 215 soft sites that are on the table, recognizing some of them aren't going to be developed anyway, and that you want further analysis of sites beyond that. >> yeah, that's good. >> from a small business and historic preservation point of view. >> i would suggest, i know commissioner hillis is interested in looking at light streets, i would suggest you take that up as a separate issue so you take that up separate from this issue about

what sites are eligible. >> good. >> so the motion, i believe, under program eligibility was to move a recommendation to the board of supervisors to remove parcels with residential units, to recommend a phased approach to implementation of the program starting with soft sites which include vacant and/or gas station sites and include an evaluation of value recapture for ami limits, as well as small business and historic preservation. is that it? okay, on that first motion then to pass along that recommendation regarding program eligibility, commissioner an tow knee knee, aye. commissioner hillis, yes. commissioner moore, no.

commissioner wu commissioner president fong, aye. commissioners, that recommendation will move on to the board with a vote of 4 to 2 with commissioners moore and wu voting against. commissioner. >> public infrastructure and focus on transportation -- sorry. >> commissioner moore. >> i was wondering, are we making any footnotes to any of those decisions? >> i think it's wide open. >> just to be clear, we always memorialize your discussion to the board with the types of discussion and the issues, it isn't just a yes or no, we always summarize your discussion. >> the comment i'd like to make and i restate what i said earlier. i like to have a second look at the methodology by which soft sites were identified that might indeed

require clearly described parameters which might include identifying other sites, it might eliminate a number of sites that are currently on your list. >> i think that's what we were asking for, a revisit of that. commissioner --. >> something on that we just voted on was the sites above the term 15 or some type of community planning process. >> that was in the motion. >> right, we have to go back. >> the way i suggested was you look at those sites beyond the 215 for considered further eligibility. if you want to add community process for that, that's great. we would do it anyway, that's fine, jonas, did you capture that in the motion? >> no, i did not actually specifically capture that so if

you want to recuse the previous motion and offer a substitute motion then we'd have to do that. or it can just simply be captured in commissioner richard's comments as commissioner moore's comments were captured. >> it should be noted that that was discussed. >> i'm just curious, would commissioners be able to submit after tonightfully writing, any footnotes, thoughts, maybe why they voted no on a particular topic and if a suggestion was not included in the motion be able to submit that in writing? >> essentially they'd be submitting it as an individual but not as part of the commission, right? your actions as a commission have to be done in a public formal collectively by vote, by majority vote. >> so can i ask that that last vote be reopened to include

commissioner moore's and my comment then so it's official? >> i guess if beef to go through it again we can. i'm not exactly sure what community involvement input is going to be. i mean we always do have community weigh in on things. >> maybe community sherette and plan. >> rescind the previous vote? jonas? >> yes, please. someone needs to make a motion. >> rescind the previous vote. >> do i hear a second? >> second. >> thank you, to rescind the previous vote, commissioner an tow, aye, commissioner hellis, commissioner moore, yes. commissioner wu, no. commission president fong. >> this is getting a little silly.

>> that motion to rescind passes 4-2. your substitute motion. >> substitute motion, exactly the same motion that we made before with the inclusion of as we move into the more contention --. >> the phasing. >> phased sites that we will have community involvement in this process with, i'm not exactly sure how we're going to do that as a commission. city attorney. >> deputy city attorney milana burn. may i ask the commission a qualifying question? the way this project will be implemented is by application of the owner. so maybe staff can work with you to understand better what this phasing idea means but the city isn't reaching out and --. >> no, we're talking about phasing the parcels that would be eligible for the program, right? they are making a recommendation to the board on

which parcels might be eligible or not be eligible and they are saying the first phase is soft sites with a further analysis of soft site analysis and then to consider the other 35 hundred sites with community input. the state program probably city-wide, we couldn't do anything about that. >> commissioner wu >> just to help us i think the more we try to package all this together the harder it makes it to vote. so the reason i voted no previously is as stated publicly that i want to remove residences but the more we are packaging something together it feels like processes we take otherwise to come up with a cohesive package of recommendations but i don't think that's where we're going. so i would just encourage us to separate issues as much as we can. >> the reason why they weren't

mentioned in any other topic. >> you can certainly add them, take separate votes and nothing to keep you from doing that. >> so i believe commissioner antonini made a motion, do i hear a second? >> second. >> thank you. on that motion, then. >> would you restate the motion? >> i'm going to try to. on the motion to then move a recommendation to the board of supervisors on program eligibility to remove parcels with residential units, to recommend a phased approach, the implementation of the program starting with soft sites identified as vacant and/or gas station sites and then during that phased approach to further evaluate the other identified sites based on small business and historic preservation and then have the value recapture valuation for ami limits and

that include a community phasing process. is that everything? >> pretty close. >> okay, on that motion, commissioner antonini, aye. commissioner hillis, commissioner wu, no. commissioner president fong, aye. okay, commissioners, that motion passes 4-2. >> topic 2 is transportation from infrastructure. staff did not prepare any recommendations. >> okay, unless you had any that you wanted to --. >> commissioner antonini. >> we're supportive of that position i think unless there's any feelings otherwise, but i did want to have noted that we want for the board of supervisors to look at all possible projects to see if they can make some contribution

towards the use of fees or exactions toward possible statewide -- if the other commissioners with that being mentioned. >> i think that was noted. >> not in the motion, just --. >> topic 3 is urban design. staff had made several recommended amendments for urban design. one is to add a design guideline to maximize light and air to the sidewalks and frontages along the streets including alleyways. >> that gives me -- if conversations can continue outside the chamber while this is occurring, i think we stated that repeatedly during the course of this hearing. >> the second staff

recommendation is to modify what major limitations to 50 percent of the actual block length rather than apply a city-wide numerical cap, and the third is to direct planning staff to include analysis of a project conformity to design guidelines in a planning commission case report. so there's three proposed staff amendments on this topic. >> commissioner moore. >> i disagree with all of them. light and air does not apply to the street side of buildings, it applies to the requirements for unit requirements for light and air and project comes in with definability. to provide street for cars, there is no provision for light and air sidewalks have to be in the sun does not apply to the neighborhoods which we are trying to identify. it would be nice but i don't think it would fly because this is

particularly codified nc3 and does not have anything to do with concerns about light, air and privacy, particularly concerns affecting the rear yard and light wells is the issue so i would think that that needs to be rethought and brought into a completely different discussion as it relates to rear yard, rear yard sepback and building separation or respecting the property windows. because we're building in build-up neighborhoods where many of the existing buildings, the older neighborhoods, were built prior to the institution of no property line windows. as a protect ive element to protect the buildings we will do a lot of damage to the issue of light and air and i believe further to your discussion about street

(inaudible) grade streets, he spoke more about the designing of trade streets, not how to create them. the discussion of adjoining building heights is a good one but as long as we add two floors that particular rule will hardly apply before the streets are so much wider than the adjoining streets. it's nice to mention but has hardly any bearing on what we do. i think it's actually a misuse of a reference but i think it's nice when you start telling the city to use that, it does not apply here to protect something that doesn't need protecting. i think we can think about it but i don't think it helps. what is of real importance to me is to look at how changing street wall heights might have to meet requirements of upper floor setbacks in order to

protect view lines as we do when we build additional height in buildings that currently have height limits and we are adding extra floors holding them back by 15 feet. i think that would be a good discussion, but not the street wall height itself. >> okay, great. >> commissioner antonini. >> i think i agree with commissioner moore. probably if we modified this we have to talk more about maximizing light and air to the sidewalks, you know, in terms of what she was talking about about setbacks on these floors that might be what we would need to do, not necessarily just the height of the building but rather how it affects the higher floors would affect the streets and the sidewalks and also particularly the rear yards which was mentioned and property line rear windows that need to be protected and these

are all the kind of thing we have to look at and the rest of this, it talks about lot merger, the 50 percent is fine. there was one gentleman who said if it was one lot you might have a exception that needs to be study because you have a case for something that was originally a lot but may not make it to the 50 percent. then conform to the guidelines and case reports and continue to work on the issue. i think actually with that sort of thing i think it's something i could support. >> commissioner moore. >> talk about lot mortgages, i forgot to talk about that. residential in san francisco are about 230 or 40. if you are taking, aggregating lots of 250 or half the block you are creating substantially large buildings in areas where you

might have a need of much, much finer grain and with additional heights on what is half a block i'm very concerned that those buildings could look overly monsterous relative to what we are trying to achieve. unless additional guidelines are developed which break down the appearance of the building into what is the typical lot width in san francisco we want to avoid in the rush for value capture we are forgetting architectural modulation and all these kinds of things for, by which i was wondering --. >> don't worry, i'm listening. >> not forgetting the essence of what san francisco architecture is all about. i'm sorry, the urban design plan itself, and that is 4c3, very strongly spoke against lot

mergers. for those people who haven't been around i need to remind you because what urban design plan for the downtown district required was indeed to avoid having the city lack like houston and then in this redevelopment fervor indeed what we ultimately decided not to do and that is oversizing buildings that really negate the typical lot pattern and lot subdivisions of san francisco. so if we are using lot aggregation as a metric i think wae need to have additional guidelines which speak to the type of buildings that we want and then be neighborhood specific if we are to develop guidelines. >> i've been reminded the affordable bonus housing program includes several guidelines that would be in effect as an interim measure

until the universal design guidelines that david and maya are leaving up. the guidelines issues and additional many of the districts in wit affordable housing bonus program is applicable currently do not have lot limitations and i think with the planning commission's recommendation of excluding any parcels that have residential units the opportunity for lot mergers is greatly diminished but i do believe that the design guidelines we have drafted with david baker's team really did address the really think about the fine design scale and character of the neighborhoods. >> i would caution we do not make this too much one size fits all. david baker is a very skilled architect and while this is not about mentioning names, there is an equal number of less skilled architects in this town who bring buildings forward which

clearly meet the intent of what he is suggesting. there is a very, very good feeling about sticking local units into preprescribed volume metric envelopes. not everybody has that skill. so i think you need to be very careful on that one. >> commissioner hillis. >> lot merger, 125 feet versus the first feet on the block we had, what would be the rationale for changing? >> we are changing from 125 feet and are proposing we change it to 50 percent so that ratio can be block specific. as commissioner mara suggested there is an average block nreepkt this city of 250, i'm getting tired, but there are some blocks that are more narrow so this would enable that block merger limitation to be specific to those corridors. >> other blocks that are longer. >> i defer to -- i believe in

selma, which is not included in the program area. >> 121, 125, whatever is the maximum referring to commissioner mara, we did develop guidelines related to lot mergers. >> commissioner richards. >> i still think it's too much. i keep looking at the castro theater, which is roughly 6 lots wide and it's going to look as tall as some of these buildings are going to be and i keep imagining those plopped down on 24th or some of the other coronados so i will vote no. >> i will remind members of

the public that the garage closes in about 15 miplts. >> commissioner antonini. >> in terms of what we're presented with here then i guess that there are some commissioners who would want the merger to be less than 225, i think it was the lesser of the two, 50 percent or 125. and that would be the maximum. and once again in our approval process, which is coming up next, if we're going to move into a stricter approval process we will have control over, you knee, whether or not they could have a project aproofrpbd on a larger site. so that's one thing we can control the whole process a little bit. >> commissioner richards. >> i think sitting in the mayor's housing subgroup pipeline and process the thing i keep hearing from the

development community is the first thing they do is secure the land. if we are going to allow them 125 feet or 5 lot mergers and we say no, i don't think that's going to work. i think we should say no and forget it. >> commissioner moore. >> at the stage where it is i am hesitant to support it because it is too generic for me. i think it's such a radical program and has far-reaching consequences and i think on that particular 3 point item on urban design it needs more work and needs to be more specific. i think we need to disallow lot mergers or not permit lot mergers. >> i think that one is correct, develop more specific,

site specific guidelines and be more specific about building types in what neighborhood depending on lot size. so there's 3 parts. takes it out of the generic checklist into something much, much more responsible and with much more scrutiny. >> commissioner antonini. >> i would probable move to forward this without recommendation to the commissioners with the comments that have been made about giving greater individual attention to the lot merger question rather than having a one size for all and also in terms of modifying to protect light and air expanding it far enough to deal with back yards, to deal with property line within windows and those sorts of things, i think we forward it back with an idea they would continue to work on those

without any specifics from us. >> (inaudible) we'll take recommendation d and we'll modify recommendation c to say no lot mergers until adequate community guidelines are developed. >> okay, fine. so we'll accept that modifications and commissioner hillis, second? >> fine. >> i believe there's a motion that has been seconded to accept staff's recommendation on d to recommend that further

evaluation for lot mergers be conducted until --. >> no lot mergers until guidelines. >> thank you. >> are adopted. prohibit lot mergers until adequate guidelines are developed and protect light and air. >> i think she said more site specific guidelines, responding to the width of the streets. >> refine the guidelines. >> i think they have to be site-specific guidelines. >> guidelines for every site, commissioner, i don't know how we'd do that.

>> when a site comes forward you have a basic set of criteria and you develop them or respond in how you guide the design based on basic considerations. it puts a little extra work on the ppa >> how about we find a review of light and air? >> no, that's okay. special reference to rear yards and property line windows. >> it needs more work. >> i believe we are because the maker of the motion is actually suggesting we send it forward without recommendation and give special consideration of these three elements. we're recommending d