committee for thursday, march 15, 2018. i would like to remind the members of the public that the commission does not tolerate any outbursts of any kind. please silence any sound producing devices, please state your name directly into the mic, and if possible, state your name for the record. i'd like to take the roll at this time. [ roll call. ] >> clerk: first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item number one, record number 2014-001400 enx at 2715 19th street. proposed for continuance to may 10, 2018. item 2, record number

2016-005617 drpa 144901451 south vanness for discretionary review, proposed for continuance to june 14, 2018. item 3-a, record number 2017-005881 pca formula retail grocery store on fulton street, board file 170514, proeptsed for indefinite continuance. item 3-b, record number 2017-005 # 81 cua at 555 fulton, a conditional use authorization proposed for indefinite continuance. item number four, record number 2017-003154 crp, at 31 sussex street which has been withdrawn, and then commissioners, further on your regular calendar for item number 12, record number

2014-1459 cua at 214 state street. we have received a request for continuance by the project sponsor for may 3rd, though you may take up the continuance now or at the call of the item, and i don't have any speaker cards. >> president hillis: all right. any public comment on the items being proposed for continuance? and now, if you do want to talk about the state street continuance, this would be a good time, also. okay. we'll take that up. >> i do not want to continue. i do not want a continuance granted on 214 state street. i believe it's tantamount to a demolition, and it's been a gigantic hole for over a year, and i would like it to move forward today and not be granted a continuance. >> president hillis: okay. thank you.

[ inaudible ] >> president hillis: overhead, please. there it is. >> i live next door on the right, inside, as you look at the picture, and this is the -- i'm sorry. i live to the right -- this house on the right, and this is 214, pictured with the -- whatever you might call that as it floats there in space. >> president hillis: okay. >> thanks. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. >> yeah. i'd like to also use that same graphic. my name is chris parks. i live a couple houses on the other side of the street, at 231 states. that picture, it's almost frozen in time. it's been like that for a number of years now, and if that's not a demolition, i don't know what a demolition is. it's just a huge cavity that was carved out of a hill. this is a demolition.

we would like to get this resolved. we would like to have this project move forward and to be adequately addressed, given that it is a demolition and the priorities that the commission has. >> president hillis: all right. thank you. any additional public comment? on these or the items proposed for continuance? okay. do you have a comment on the items being proposed for continuance? [ inaudible ] >> president hillis: you may want to give us a little more... >> hello, commissioners. my name is kevin chang, project sponsor for 214 state street. i'm requesting a continuance in light of the fact that there are issues relating to the definition of demolition between dbi and the planning department. given that there is a hearing being held sometime next month, and there are issues and presentations that this commission, this body is expecting, we respectfully

request that we be continued in light of that new information that may come forth. currently, the request for information concerning our project relating to demolition from dbi has not been proffered and because of that, we request that we all wait. thank you very much for your consideration. >> president hillis: all right. thank you. any additional comments? seeing none, we'll close public comment. commissioner richards? >> vice president richards: yes. question for the staff person for 214 state. is she here? would you, please? one of the reasons why we continued this item is because we were going to have the building inspection department come and tell us on their version of demolition, did it meet it and what were they going to do about it? did you get any indication from them in writing or we thought we'd have mr. [ inaudible ] here today. >> just to planning staff, there was an e-mail that i included on top of the case

report package richa. >> vice president richards: okay. >> that is an e-mail from senior inspector joe duffy that it was not an unlawful demolition. >> vice president richards: okay. >> and that's -- >> vice president richards: okay. >> president hillis: commissioner richards? >> vice president richards: so, you know, i -- i think what i still would like to have is somebody from dbi come and explain it to us. i actually think that we should punt it to the building inspection commission and have them make a determination. >> and i think that -- the intention of that meeting is kind of what the project sponsor is alluding to -- and the hope for the continuance is to get after this scheduled meeting with the planning commission and the building inspection commission. >> vice president richards: right. and i don't -- it's not, to the

best of my knowledge that there's going to be a retroacti retroactive definition that applies to a demolition in 2014. saying that it's not a demolition but not understanding the calculations or how it's not a demolition still isn't enough for me. >> mm-hmm. >> president hillis: yeah. i would agree. i know we can't require dbi commission to have a hearing on this item, and i think dbi has weighed that it's not a demolition under their rules, but it's tantamount to demolition under our rules. that's what we're hearing today. it would be good to hear more from dbi. i think they answered this specific question, is it a demo, no, but they clearly competed the scope of their permit. i agree with commissioner richards. it would be good to hear from the dbi commission, and we can just make a request that the commission take up this matter, and the public be able to speak

to kind of weigh in on the project itself in kind of what dbi plans to do, not just whether it's a demoor not from there standpoint but what they plan to do kind of with this project and -- in the clear expansion of scope. commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: if i turned this around and ask victor, if planning and zoning turn it over, i think we have gotten a senior judgment, irrespective of the fact that we are living in the middle of different interpretations between planning and dbi. that is just a fact of life which has been around for as long as i've been sitting on this commission. so i do not think that we will do anybody any favor by thinking that that meeting will change a fact that the definitions are different and that we indeed have received a most senior department reading on what the situation is.

and i think -- i'm of the opinion that we need to take some responsibility, like it or not, to use those tools which we as planning commissioners need to use and also do consider the extent by which this has been standing around in the shape that it does, including the effect it has on those people who live next door to us. i believe what's in front of us is a pretty straightforward request for us to use the judgment that we have and judge with those tools. >> if i may, commissioner, i think the -- you know, i think the -- the e-mail from dbi is simply it's a numerical calculation, and it's what the code says, so we can't -- there isn't a question -- i have to rely on their calculations to decide whether it's demolition by their code, and if it's not, it's not. it is by ours, so that's what's in front of you. the hearing on april 20th, i

believe it is, is not going to be able to change it at that time. it's going to take several months to change the code, if we choose to do that. so i would suggest that it's going to be several months before this issue might be resolved by code. >> president hillis: right. >> and what's before you is a project that exceeded the scope. >> president hillis: right. so my only take -- i agree with all the comments -- is to get some understanding from dbi as to exactly -- 'cause i think the course that we've been done if somebody presents a project that's not been tantamount to demolition, they go through the process, get a permit, they exceed the scope, which then makes it tantamount to demolition, it kind of comes back to us to ask for forgiveness. and that's why we're here. [ inaudible ] >> president hillis: i think the word dbi definition, it exceeded the scope of dbi's plans and permits. i think it would be helpful to

us and helpful to dbi to understand beyond just coming here and asking, okay, we'll fix this with one tantamount to demolition permit. so that's why -- i'm not sending it back to dbi to say, is it or isn't it a demo, but what do they do in this case to help inform us, because i think this is the exact same thing that we've been in the last few -- in the last few months that we've been in this situation. >> this project, the removal happened after a permit, and that's where the second kind of divergence is happening with dbi, is it an unlawful demolition or out of scope work? and as they explained to me, if you have a permit for anything, no matter what you do after that point, you're out of scope, and that's why this is not falling under the unlawful

demolition, because they did have permitted to do work. >> president hillis: but what have they done because of the out of scope? >> what have they done? >> president hillis: yeah. what's dbi's kind of course of action -- >> out of scope, they're doing -- they kind of give the project sponsor an opportunity to resolve the issue which always starts with working with planning on whatever permits, public notification or applications need to be filed to legalize work through the planning process. >> president hillis: but that's why i need -- this could be kind of -- it could instruct us and dbi. i think that's where we run into all kinds of problems. we let people exceed scope and just kind of come in and ask for forgiveness. if dbi -- i don't think these are necessarily brought to the dbi commission, right? they're generally handled at the staff level. so if we can get some guidance from the dbi commission using this an an example, i would

want to do it soon. i agree with the neighbors, they shouldn't have to suffer with the building there, but us denying the cu doesn't necessarily get us anywhere, either. so we're kind of caught in this awkward situation. commissioner richards? >> vice president richards: so last -- two weeks ago on 655 alvarado, i handed the city attorney the definition of unlawful demolition perthe building code, and it clearly said that they wasn't had to have any permit, that they had to have a demolition permit. and i was waiting for the city attorney to come back and say dbi's interpretation of the unlawful demois in line with the actual code, so that mr. duffy -- we're not saying that mr. -- i'm sorry -- horne is relaying to us that it -- they could cite the code and say well, they had a permit. if they had a demolition

permit, can you show us? i mean, that's what the code says. so that's why i think end issing it through the building inspection commission, run it it through their sausage mil, and coming back and saying hey, it's perthe code, and this is why. i think frankly maybe they erred in their determination. >> commissioner, if i could clarify. are you requesting that the commission take it up or requesting that the staff relook at it. >> vice president richards: that the commission look at it. >> president hillis: we can't require that, but we'd like to request that the dbi commission hear this -- have a public hearing on this permit in this case so they can advise us on how we're not in this situation in the future where we're kind of the -- you know, entity that's -- it puts us between a rock and a hard place on these.

>> vice president richards: and i think we still on the end -- once it comes back, we'd still decide the section 317 issue. >> i don't think there's any question that it meets our code's definition tantamount to demolition, so you would see it regardless. >> vice president richards: right. >> president hillis: but i think the problem is we see it -- just on -- we see it to kind of clean it up and not to necessarily after -- and nothing really -- i don't know what the result of exceeding the scope of your permit at dbi results in except just go kind of go clean it up at the planning commission, right? >> the penalty of two times permit for you. >> vice president richards: big deal. >> but i don't think -- i think the point is only that nothing that we do here will necessarily change the fact that that kind of process might happen, right?

>> commissioner moore: right. >> because projects will exceed their scope. that's an unfortunate reality, and then, it crosses the line into tantamount to demolition. >> president hillis: right. i think we set it up so that people go right to the line of tantamount to demolition and then exceed the scope, and then it kicks into tantamount to demolition. but i don't think they necessarily -- they know that they're going to exceed the scope or there's a chance that they will exceed the scope tantamount to demolition, so how do we keep that from happening? commissioner richards? >> vice president richards: i would still like the city attorney to weigh in if the definition of the building inspection department is according to the code. >> directors, i think this came up at 655 alvarado. i don't have an answer today, and i don't think that's a role that our office typically

plays. you know, the building inspectors, and the department of building inspection that interprets the code, but i will definitely circle back and look at that issue. i think miss jensen was here and looked at that item, and we'll talk to the department of building inspection attorney and look at that closely and give you what advice we can. >> vice president richards: thank you. >> president hillis: so is there any motions on either this item or the other? [ inaudible ] >> it 's about the continuance -- >> president hillis: oh, we already asked for public comment. >> well, just so you know, the b.i.c. meets next week, and i don't know how that works with the calendar. >> president hillis: commissioner richards richard richardsrichard -- richards? >> vice president richards: i want to move that we move all

these matters to the date specified and the city attorney come back and give us interpretation. >> president hillis: commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: i'd like to ask to have the motion phrased separately. i do not believe that is the right course of action, so cause for the motion for the matter that is on the calendar and call for action separately. >> president hillis: will you revise your motion to continue the items all but state street. >> commissioner moore: yeah, call that separately. >> president hillis: do we have a second on that motion? >> vice president richards: second. >> commissioners, there is a motion and a second to consider items 1, 2, 3-a, 3-b, and also acknowledge there is the recovery room value of item number four. >> president hillis: correct. >> clerk: on that item -- [ roll call. ] >> clerk: so moved. that motion passes unanimously,

6-0. >> president hillis: all right. and then, commissioner richards, did you want to make an independent motion richard richards i'll make an independent motion for item -- >> president hillis: 12. >> vice president richards: is it to be continued to may 3rd. >> president hillis: is that isn't a big hearing -- when did you say the next big hearing was? >> the third wednesday of every month at 9:00 in the morning, so the next one would be the 20 -- or the 21st. so this calendar tomorrow and then the following one would be at april -- whatever that is, the third wednesday. so i don't know when that matches your april 20th meeting. >> president hillis: yeah. >> clerk: was there a second to that motion? >> i'll second it. >> clerk: commissioners, there is a motion and a second to continue item 12 to the may 3rd. on that motion --

[ roll call. ] >> clerk: so moved, commissioners. that motion passes, 5-1 with commissioner moore voting against. that places you on the consent calendar: item number five, record number 2017-010105 cua at 2901 california street, a conditional use authorization, and i have no speaker cards. >> president hillis: are there any members of the public that would like to remove item five from the consent calendar? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner cr commission commissioner koppel?

motion to approve item number five. >> second. >> clerk: commissioners, there is a motion and a second. on that motion -- [ roll call. ] >> clerk: so moved. that motion passes, 6-0. >> clerk: that places on commission matters. item number six, consideration of adoption of draft minutes for february 8, 2018. >> president hillis: any public comment on the draft minutes? seeing none, we'll close public comment. commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: move to approve. >> second. >> clerk: commissioners, there is a motion and a second to approve the draft minutes. [ roll call. ] >> clerk: so moved. that motion passes unanimously, 6-0. that places you on commission -- item number seven, commission comments and questions. >> president hillis: commissioner richards? >> vice president richards: couple of things. i don't know if anybody saw in

last sunday's examiner the grand jury report. they do them, i guess, once a year, in the spring. and i looked at it, and i read it, and i was like oh, it's kind of nice, you know, how does this affect anything in the planning department, and i came upon number seven, and it talks about accelerating san francisco performance and taking accountablity and transparency to the next level, and lo and behold in our packet this week, we had an update from mr. desantis and said wow, i think we're being as transparent as we possibly can. when you look at everything you see on-line, i will have to tie these two together, but i think we're making really good strides to being transparent because pretty much everything we have, you would see except all the correspondence and everything that goes back and forth, so good job to mr. de-santo and the staff. second thing, we'll be

struggling with these items today, twice in the past week, there have been articles about why housing is not getting built even though it's entitled. everybody keeps blaming the conclusiona inclusionary right. yeah, they're high, but construction costs are really the issue, and the headline is developer says rise in construction costs not offset by sf's record high rent, so construction costs are going up faster than people can pay more in rent, and that's why a lot of buildings aren't getting built, so that's a stick a feather in your hat one for folks who want to know what's going on. and lastly in sunday's paper in the chronic will, sf streetlights cast a shadow over

night life. we got a rosier picture on the retail vacancy rate at 3%. i actually talked with somebody in the retail brokerage industry, and they said well, but it was only 2% two years ago, so it's 50% more than it was, so maybe it is actually going to be -- it is getting worse, and this is kind of the canary in the coal mine that we're seeing in our own neighborhoods. thanks. >> president hillis: thank you. >> clerk: that places on department matters: item number eight, director's announcement. >> thank you, commissioners, i was actually going to call that memo to your attention that we put in the packet for today's meeting that tom de-santo wrote. i wanted to kind of summarize very briefly the enhancements that we're doing. the building i-map is a very

inenter active map that the public can use to find what's going on in the city. it's actually quite useful. the records digitization process is probably the single largest thing we're doing. if you've been to the department, you'll see the huge file room we have is no more that we used to have, and all those files are now digitized, and that's the reason more information is available to the public than there used to be. we've had some comments from the public being more information being on-line and available and that's because it's digitized. we're working on digitizing every single piece of paper in the files. it's a massive project that miss silva is in charge of, and actually doing a great job. we are also switching to an electronic document management system related to that. we are making further

improvements to the property information map, which is a very, very popular map on our website, very popular system, and we are moving into the 21st century on a number of other ways. we will finally, next month, have citizen access to the accelis system. for us, as you know, we have been live on that system for 3.5 years, i think. so for now, it will be access only to the planning department side of the work. when dbi goes live in the fall, it will also then have access to their side of the work. we are launching this summer electronic application review, which is a very big improvement over our current process. and then, we are also going to be egg certain types of applications on-line that have fixed fees associated with them, so that projects where there is not a fee calculation involved, we will be able to accept those applications

on-line. so quick summary. i think i really want to give credit to tom and the entire i.t. team for all the work they're doing on this. this is really making staff's work a lot easier and getting our work more stream lined and more efficient as we move forward, so that concludes my presentation. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. >> clerk: item nine, review of past events at the board of supervisors, board of ael pas, and historic preservation commission. >> good morning, commissioners. diego sanchez from the san francisco planning department. on monday, at the land use committee, a resolution urging amendments to the california state bill, senate bill 827, transit rich housing bonus was considered. because item ten on the agenda's also going to deal with this matter, i'm going to hold my procedural rundown on this so that both can be considered and discussed in tandem. then, on tuesday, at the full board, the full board

considered two landmark designations. the first was at 2117 to 2123 market street, also known as the new era hall. this passed on its first read, and the second landmark designation was the wall at the intersection of diamond heights and 8th street. that concludes my report on the board activities. as i mentioned, i'll probably be back up here for the next item. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. >> clerk: and i don't believe there is a report for the board of appeals or historic preservation commission. >> president hillis: okay. >> clerk: that places on you general public comment. at this time members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes, and i do have

speaker cards. >> president hillis: okay. i've got a couple speaker cards. rudolph mueller, sarah h, and car -- rose h. >> good afternoon, commissioners. rose hillson. i just have a general comment about the urban design guidelines. and although it was postponed from last week, the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods held a meeting with the department on it on february 6th. we were asking for a handful of requests and there haven't been substantive dialogue since. and i was actually going to take part in a hap-a-thon, but that never materialized, and suddenly, i understand it's going to come before you next week, so i'm just asking for

additional postponement until we actually have something besides having it, you know, agendaized without anymore dialogue, because the hack-a-thon never happened. thank you. >> president hillis: all right. thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is cathy hop and i'm the executive director of theby gardens district. i serve as the board chair of a new nonprofit, and i'm here to talk about the yerba buena gardens. i think we can all agree it's a great civic treasure in san francisco. i can tell you that the guard especiallies a -- gardens and the surrounding institutions atrack 3 million visitors. to ensure that the gardens continue to thrive as it has

over the past 35 years as a community asset, stake holding in the neighborhood got together and created this new nonprofit, the yerba buena gardens conservancy to maintain and operate the gardens from this point forward. one key issue that we need to resolve is capital improvement funding over the next 30 years, and while the gardens in their kurpt construct generate enough income to maintain the operations on an annual basis, there is a shortfall in funding for capital improvements, a shortfall of about $20 million. the central soma plans city districts. as a city owned property, the gardens would be eligible for mello-roos funding over the next couple of years, and our request for you is that a minimum of $20 million be included in the long-term budget and become a part of the

central soma budget that is going to be approved by this board and then the board of supervisors and then the mayor. one other thing, i have some letters of support. >> president hillis: you can leave them right here and we'll grab them. >> okay. thank you very much. >> president hillis: next speaker, please, miss mchugh. >> good afternoon, commissioners. mary mchugh, and i am also here to request the $20 million to gill the gap that we'll need. we know that we will need at least $90 million over the next 30 years, and we anticipate we will have about 70 million of that. i wanted to let you know a couple of statistics at yerba buena gardens. we have the contract to manage the asset and public spaces. 197,250 children from soma, the

entire city and tourists delight daily in a wonderful playground and ground every year. more than 150,000 children and families visit the children's creativity museum annually and leroy king carousel. there'll be someone here from the ice skating rink will enwi tell you about that. 146,000 visitors from around the nation each year come to the center for the arts. 88,000 city residents come annually to major civic and special events such as the celebration of martin luther king's birthday before a stunning fountain named in his honor. just under 100,000 city workers and residents enjoy the seriousness of outdoor musical presentations presented by the

yerba buena gardens e splanade, and about 25,000 adults arrive in the year for exercise, t tai chi or just to enjoy a peaceful garden. we have people that show up to eat at the caves, visit the wonderful cultural attraction, and contribute to the overall health and well-being and social community that is vital to the soma district. so we're asking for the $20 million to continue to allow this special place to continue to the financial and social health of the yerba buena community. thank you approximate. >> president hillis: thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is karen carr. i'm a san francisco continuous

resident for 45 years, a homeowner continuously for 40 years. while i live in bernal heights, the majority of my work has occurred in the yerba buena gardens area. i am also on the board of directors for the yerba buena alliance. it strengthens partnerships, providing critical neighborhood and leadership and infrastructure, serving as an information source and forum for the area's diverse residents, businesses, visitors, and promoting the area as a destination. i wanted to provide on behalf of the alliance of which i am a board member and also board member on the yerba buena gardens conservancy, an thuk endorsement for what we're endorsing on behalf of the alliance's business community members. this includes businesses and firms, colleges, and universities, culture and entertainment, food and district, hotels, shopping,

technology, and residents. we all depend on the maintenance and preservation of this je wedwel and focal point the neighborhood and strongly encourage you to approve this. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is scott roitz. i'm the chief operating officer at the yerba buena theater for the arts. i'll keep my comments consistent with the other comments you've heard. our organization represents the arts organization and the two civic assets within the district of the yerba buena center for the arts theater and arts gallery and forum building. and those two buildings, while architecturally significant, as we have discussed previously, are important to continue for what they do and what they do for the community and the civic.

we support numerous community organizations throughout the year, including lamp lighter's music, theater, lines ballet, san francisco ballet, opera parallel, and hundreds and hundreds more throughout the year. and we're just requesting as the other community members that you consider and place in the plan for the central soma $20 million to keep the capital assets for the organization and the garden. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is page scott. i am the vice president and general manager fore the yerba buena ice skating and bowling center and third generation native san franciscan. we are here to support our fellow group members in the funding for the gardens, and the tireless effort of this committee that they've put in because we all treasure the gardens so much. some of the ageing buildings will need some repair so that we can get a new refrigeration

system someday so we don't become a swimming pool. so congratulations to everybody on our committee who have done such a wonderful job putting this together. i hope you see our passion in it, too. thank you so much. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. john helberling. i hope you know that the yerba buena gardens was a vision of george moscone, before he was assassinated. as the speakers said, it's going to need major renovations in the next 30 years. it's the biggest, most heavily used civic asset maybe downtown, and it's clearly a

treasure, you know, my seniors are there in the morning. i'm there watching the free music at lunchtime, and workers, people from around the world, conventioneers, everybody comes. so i've been mystified why it's impossible to get the staff to include the maintenance cost to include it in the long-term facilities district. the original study area included the gardens, but it was jerry mgerrjmandered out o budget. we thought we would have to come down here to support the community and urge you to do the logical thing and fund a modest amount that it will need, you know, long-term. we are just -- to update, we are in the process of working

out the details of the master lease with the department of real estate. it's going very well. we have the support of city administrator, our nonprofit group, to make this happen, and it is -- probably would -- you know, we would probably take over the transfer sometime this summer, depending on the technical details. so it's really important. the financial plan is essential. that $80 million capital need figure is the ocii most recent update that they completed about three months ago, and so we can see our internal sources can cover most of it, but not all of it, and i think it's clear that this should be part of the central soma district utilities package. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. >> may i have the computer,

please. good afternoon members of the planning commission. my name is rudy mueller. i live at 1705 broderick case. you may remember our opposition to the full house-fuller house. i want to play with you a two-minute time lapse video on the activity in front of the house which occurred last week, friday, march 9th between 2:15 and 3:00 p.m. the house you should look at is the one in the middle with the red steps. the commission decided at that hearing to approve the permit with certain conditions which included requiring the owner to

install a gate in front of the steps and recommend that he consider other mitigation measures. unfortunately, several days after the hearing, and against our protests, the original language in the first d.r. requiring the gate was changed by the zoning administrator from the words install a gate to consider installing a gate. this was very important because on january 10th, the board of appeals did not give much weight to recommendations using the word consider. fortunately, the board revoked the permit on a procedural issue, namely, that the permit was issued in error because of the failed bbn note any indication. since our december 7th hearing, the owner of the full house has not undertaken any of the measures that the planning commission recommend that he do as a good neighbor. we have talked again to the mta and the police, our council has contacted the city's attorney's office. they are all willing to help, but they have consistently told us that they do not have power to regulate how the house is being used. they would need to see an order

from the zoning administrator or another planning department official. today, as a consent item through school was approved to increase their enrollment from 280 to 340 students, which is a good thing. drew is only located one block from the full house. if i sit at the full house and you stood at drew's side entrance on broderick street, we could waive to each other ad we could see each other. it should be clear that drew's family, children and staff continue to remain to be at risk from the activities at the full house. these include all the things that we talked about previously, visitors coming in cars, vans, buses, double parking, and unloading of strangers on the block where students drive, walk or bike to school. i see that mr. sanchez is not here today, but i would say

that the zoning administrator plays a pivotal role in this program. i ask them to issue some sort of order stating this is a nuisance because of activity. would you please help us protect our neighborhood and please help to encourage the zoning administrator to take action. >> president hillis: thank you. >> thank you. and there is somebody from drew senior staff if you wanted to hear from them very briefly about the safety issue. >> president hillis: how quickly is that -- is that speeded up your video? what was the time lapse on that video, do you know? [ inaudible ] >> covering 2:15 to 3:00 p.m., which i thought was relevant because that's when the drew students come out of school. >> president hillis: thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm chris parks, and i live at

219 state street. i know the item is off the calendar, however, i do not intend to talk about it. i'll same my confidential informan informants -- confidential informants for the subsequent meeting on this, but i want to mention that may is a very bad time for two critical members of our group, from neighbors who are very intimate and very concerned about this and who are experts on this, and if there's any way, as much as we wouldn't want to wrap it up -- we want to wrap it up as much as possible, if this could be moved to the following month, in june or if we'd request that staff provide you with some other options to hear this in june, we'd be most grateful. thank you. >> president hillis: and you can talk to staff, if that date doesn't work in may. >> okay. thank you. >> president hillis: mr. bellder. >> good afternoon, president hillis, members of the commission. just in regard to 655 alvarado,

which i heard some discussion earlier. if you look at the building code, demolition is defined as removing all of the building from the site down to foundation. that's why you can leave one stick and you're not demolished. but then if you look at the other definitions that the building inspectors have to enforce, like building, enclosure, shelter, if you look at all of those, once there are only two walls, like at alvarado street, it's no longer sheltering anything. a building is a shelter, if there's no building there, was it demolished? i think so. if you look at building area, you're allowed to calculate the building area between enjoining enclosing walls, but there are none there. if it's carport, you can calculate the area underneath the horizontal surface. there are none there. so i could list, and i will at

the hearing on april 12th, how badly the building inspectors twist all of the definitions of the code to wrongly interpret only one. i'd like to move onto 214 states now. i want to show you the permit history because it was clear that you were not cognizant of the things that happened there. i believe from the staff report -- oh, i'm sorry. i represent several of the neighbors adjacent. from the staff report, the park property changed hands late 2013, so in 2014, we were still worried about old dry rot balcony permits. the second one the new owner took out was foundation replacement, concrete cap existing brick foundation. the next one was, number three, establish as a single-family residence. number four was comply with a 2000 -- previous complaint about illegal work in the

attic. number five was replace this and that. and number six, here's the clincher. we're now going to remove the brick foundation walls and replace with shotcrete. so the foundations, when you do a brick foundation, it doesn't extend up 30 feet. it's probably 2.5 feet deep and goes into the dirt. so you can see that finally, in six -- 1-28-15, the permit's suspended, all six of them, because they were issued in error. the engineer submitted plans that weren't correct. the permit applications contained statements that weren't correct. there was no garage in the building, ever. i -- i'll just leave it at that. but mr. santos has built thousands of buildings in san francisco. he knows what's up. >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please. miss clark. >> hi.

laura clark, yimby action. i don't know much about the full house, but i just thought i would say i grew up in d.c. near lots of tourist attractions of all kinds, and it was a wonderful,en riching thing for me as a child. living, my metro station was union station which attracts people from all over the world to come look at it, and there are ways to manage attention to a building, and it shoulden rich all of our lives, and so i don't think it necessarily means that a fence should be put up. maybe there's opportunities to get white curbs going, so cars can move in and out because this is a resource for all of us. i also wanted to pivot to something less pleasant. a commissioner recently stepped beyond the bounds of their office to interfere with the timely approval of housing. and there are grounds to take this before the ethics

commission. i hate going before more and more commissions. i don't enjoy that process, but i think that we all need to be -- step up a bit more and follow the rules and not interfere with the timely approval of housing, and not break the rules. you all are here to represent the office of planning and to follow the rules that you, yourselves have passed. and so i hope that this won't happen again. i skbrujust just hope it doesn again. thank you. >> president hillis: next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is bruce bowen. i'm here today to provide a brief postmortem on a couple of planning decisions that were made in 2015.

sad to say this is literally a postmortem. can i have the overhead, please. this is a photo taken on monday morning of this week of the maestic monterey cypress at 660 sanchez. the tree was visible for blocks around, even from beyond market street. it hosts numerous birds, including hawks, parrots, and even the occasional heron. here's a photo taken on tuesday afternoon. what happened? the tree succumbed so the inevitable excavations on boyds that destroyed its root structure. here at 323 cumberland, this is a small dead end street of cottages. an 8,000 square foot home is being constructed with deep

excavations to match. i couldn't see the side. here's the tree -- to take a picture, but you can see on the west side, the scope of the excavation. at 660 sanchez, the property on which the tree was, a 28-foot deep excavation starting from sanchez street to add 3,000 feet below grade was also approved in 2015. in the cu hearings for 323 cumberland, the project was opposed by the neighborhood and neighborhood association. there was much to talk about the impact the excavations would have on the tree. we're convinced that when the tree roots became entombed in concrete, the tree would not survive. the probability of loss of a

limb, which would obviously be a serious matter increased by a factor of ten, so the tree had to come down, according to the contractor as a matter of public safety. in the planning process, we're always told that excavation is not a planning department function, it's a building department issue, but i believe when you have to do more to find protections from adjacent serial digs to protect water flows and trees, section 241 of the planning code which establishes the delores heights special use districts states that the s.u.d. was conserve existing buildings, plant materials and open spaces. we all failed here. there needs to be a better way for us to include the -- [ inaudible ] >> -- thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. excuse me. next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon. i came to follow up bruce's talk about excavations because it's something that sort of pondering -- i've been pondering for a while. when you approve a project -- that was a legal demolition, even though that excavation is very similar to other things you've seen, like 655 alvarado, and maybe even state street, and there were others around that were all over, when you approve a project, and it requires an excavation like that, you're approving it for ceqa. and there's a little box that's checked off in the cat-x that says okay. yeah, you're going to do this demolition, this excavation, and it's okay, and there's geotech reports, and no one's going to hurt the tree. and i know that you don't deal with that, and it usually winds up at the board of appeals when people have an issue, but most of those projects that we're seeing, whether they're d.r.ed or real demolitions or not

real, they have these major excavations, and i think that it's something that the commission and the planning department need to figure out how you're going to deal with simply more than just checking a box. people are building what they call in london iceberg houses, and they're building iceberg houses on these little lots, 25 by 114. you're glg to ha you're going to have problems. you could see that tree from sanchez street, above the house that the lot was on. so i just think that that's something you need to consider. maybe you need to consider it when you meet with the b.i.c. on the 12th of april, but it should be more than something that's a box that's checked off, and i pi that people who come here need to have a chance to air that in front of you and in front of the staff, so thank you very much. >> president hillis: thank

you. >> steven bus with mission yimby. i've got good news, bad news, confusing news today, so if i could have the projector, please. so the good news is that the quarter four pipeline report was released a couple of days ago, and i've regenerated the graphs that i've been bringing up every week, so the good news is that quarter three 2017 is no longer at zero projects, so they were missing from the quarter three report. who knows why, but they were included in the quarter four report, so we actually got about 300 units or so proposed in the third quarter in 2017, according to the data available on sf open data. and quarter four also picked up a little bit. however, you can still see that

we are well below where we were back in 2015. so that's the bad news. we're still below where we should be. and the confusion is i ran into commissioner richards in the hallway today, and he suggested that i look at the ppa's. so i've done -- i'm in the process of doing that. unfortunately they're pdf and not machine readable, so i am manually entering this data into my program, and it's going to take a couple weeks. so my -- i have two requests today: one, can we have -- can you ask staff or direct staff to digitize the pdf's in a readable format so they're actually in a database on sf open data. that would make my work and other analyst's work much, much easier. and the second request is i'll just repeat my requests from last time, if we could direct

the staff to include analysis of incoming applications, ppa's, ee's, all of that in the quarterly report, rather than just entitled or approved projects, that would add a lot more transparency to an already very transparent body. so just to build on that, i know how much data i can get from planning. it's great. so keep up the good work. thanks. >> president hillis: all right. thanks. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. peter cohen from the council of community housing organization. and the data that we just saw was fascinating. it's good stuff from the -- i don't know, the general.

the thing that i wanted to talk about was data. in fact a few weeks ago, you or the of went through the dashboard update in a reformat. we want to commend your staff for updating that. it's good, it's very informative and continuing to fine-tune it so it tells us some stories. the other issue, though, that we'd raise is how do folks see this? how are you as commissioners or us as public or that the data analyst guy able to actually see this on a regular basis unless somebody's coming to public comment every week? the administrative code actually requires that information to be attached to every single case report that comes to you for projects of five units or more, and staff says it's rather onerous, and i think at a practical level, it probably is. however not having it anywhere or buried five clicks deep on a website doesn't make it terribly useful, either.

the in-between that we proposed at a hearing a couple of weeks ago is that every two weeks you put it in a live link on your website. all it means that somebody who's reading through under director's announcements or director matters has a limpg on the dashboard and it takes you right to the site and folks can see it. in the meantime, visiblity of that information on a constant basis is valuable. otherwise, it's just data sitting somewhere buried in the electronic format or data guy's going to come here, or we data guys are going to tell you about it. so our recommendation, rather than burdening you with a threat earlier about complying with the law is to have a