affordable housing. office projects as well as money for transit and safe streets for walking and one to one replacement of pdr space. the office sites provide substantial funding for community benefits. and beyond the community benefits, the office projects are themselves tied to office production. 4 of the 5 products include housing on their sites in addition to office space. three of the projects would include 100% affordable on their properties. there's even more on the slide. the commission could consider shifting office uses to housing but also increasing the height limits for housing.

adding height would necessitate additional analysis of urban design and economic impact and even more extended conversation with the community. revisiting the plan's core principles if central soma were to shift from a mixed-use neighborhood from a uniformly housing district. here's what i would mention is that the delay increases uncertainty. we've worked with community members for several years. it achieves significant density wheel retaining the eclectic area that is soma. the analysis would take years, in my opinion. you remember that this plan was meant to be a quickish follow-up to eastern neighborhoods, which was adopted 10 years ago. and the result? i can say it would be unlikely to yield too much new housing

without retaining housing like the s.r.o.s, south park, and south end historic district in the residential alleys north of freeways. so to sum up, adding housing beyond the limits of the e.i.r. in the 17-block area is possible but it's challenging. san francisco is adding housing across the city in places that work well. so now let's talk about that. san franciscos that 392,000 existing units. and more housing is on the way. we have an entitled pipeline of over 47,000 units with 6,275 under construction. an additional 18,000 units are proposed and under review. under today's laws, another 68,000 units could be built. most of these pipeline and potential units have been enabled by legislation passed in

the last 13 years. the city has dramatically expanded its housing potential with a rapid succession of housing-oriented plans and policies. here's a glance at initiatives, area plans and mast master plan that have led to the housing. these plans and their associated, expedited ceqa review have greatly increased housing production. there's been an average of 4,000 units per year from 2014 to 2017. that's four times the amount that was produced in the 1990s and twice the production. given that none of the major master plan or development agreement projects have yet to begin construction, the current pace has the potential for increase. in addition to the current capacity, in the next couple of years, there will be more opportunities to increase the city's housing, including those listed here.

beyond the efforts under way, our work program for the next fiscal year calls for the launching of new work, including the study of the rail yards in adjacent areas. it's directly adjacent to central soma and depending on your direction, we could include the broader soma area, western soma, parts of central soma. we're also working on the creation of a local density plan in our density, decontrolled areas and discussions in district 9 and the bayview. looking at both what is under way and soon to begin, we see the potential to add capacity for 10,000 units. it's a start, but let's talk about strategies for adding even more housing. we do believe that we should develop strategies for adding

housing, especially strategies that look beyond the eastern half of the city. there are ways to look at adding density and scale throughout the city. such ideas include further expansion of a.d.u. program, permitting low scale and middle scale housing that fits within the context of our lower-density neighborhoods. corrid corridor-specific planning and pushing developers to study more than what they might propose. but we could use further use of 80-73 and to speed up entitlements and improve feasibility. in summary, central soma delivers housing. we've shown just how much housing is here and how central soma, while billed as a jobs plan delivers more housing than many our past housing plans. we provide jobs here that cannot

be accommodated elsewhere. given the transportation needs for office, failing to local jobs in central soma would be a failure for the city and for the region. adding more housing in central soma can be achieved within certain costs. again, steve will describe some of the options for adding housing within the current plan limits. outside of the e.i.r. limits will have costs. more than ever before, san francisco is adding housing. and we believe it's the right thing to do. so that's why we have even more plans for adding housing up capacity. with as much housing as currently planned, we need a plan for more. we would love to hear from this commission and the public about where to plan for more housing. planning for the city's future must include a holistic plan for

growth and central soma is key to meeting those needs. i will turn it over to steve. >> thanks, anne marie. steve wertheim, planning department and central soma plan. we'll discuss some of the issues raised on march 1 by yourselves and the community. if you will recall from the last hearing, the plan proposes 7,060 units. in the e.i.r., studied a maximum of 8,320. so we have a cushion of 1,260 units to work with. we have a two-prong proposal to maximize and both strategies were introduced to you at the last hearing. the first is to raise a site threshold from 30,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet. now sites that are larger than 40,000 square feet are required to be commercially oriented.

this would allow two known sites between 30,000 to 40,000 to be housing if they chose to be. that would result in the units above what we studied in the e.i.r. the second is to change the west soma that does not allow housing to central soma mixed use. and that's an area on bryant to 6th and down 6th almost to brannon, wrapping the flower mart. the result of that change could increase the potential for 600 units. between the two, 1,204 up to the 1, 2 execution. doing so would reduce the jobs and new development to 33,000. if you net out the existing jobs, it's probably closer to 30,000 new jobs in the plan area. next topic, how to spend the $70

million on to-be-determined money. our benefits package is detailed with the exception of not programming additional revenues. based on talking with the community and the supervisors' office, here's a proposal. first, social and cultural programming, $1 million a year. the same amount programmed by soma stabilization fund. that fund will run out of money in the near future. it would allow it to continue in perpetuity job training and tenant protection services. next, park and greenery maintenance and activation. $600,000 a year. it is necessary to provide

maintenance in public rights of way. the next is capital towards cultural amenities. this would be $15 million. yerba buena gardens is one of the city's great assets. there is also long-term capital needs and in a period of transition where management and revenue streams are uncertain. it was developed in conversation with current real estate and represents the outer bounds of expected needs. if other funding sources are discovered, this money can be shifted to other cultural facilities in the neighborhood. next, neighborhood cleaning, $50,000 a year. this was identified to us by the supervisors' office. we know that neighborhood streets are also besmirched and

can be dangerous. and betsy carmichael services. $270,000 a year. it's the only public school south of market, where 100% of the students received free or reduced lunch and 25% self-identify as homeless. it would supplement mental health services and summer program to enable year-round care. the next topic is ensuring the feasibility of rental housing. as we discussed and commissioner richards brought up again, we're very supportive -- about the cost of construction going up. we're supportive of rental housing. our proposal is remove the $1.75 square foot tax for large

projects and $1 for smaller ones. they're still challenged economically, but would help. part of the discussion would be identifying a commensurate reduction in benefit package. next, timing. i presented this last time, but will be more formally presented today. the affordable housing built on site or offsite, and we know that many of the parks are proposed as part of the large office site. we have the environmental benefits such as living roof, stormwater and our on-site

childcare and the sale and transfer of development rights to rehabilitate buildings. another area where we're collecting revenue, there would be a lag between getting the revenue and delivery of benefits. fortunately, they're at the -- planning is well under way for the projects, that's the advance of a seven-year process. that's job linkage fees, transit. and other parts like rehabilitation and environmental improvement, child care, and capital funding of the old mint facilities and communities. the benefits will be paid through the community facilities district including the noncapital expeditures including park and greenery maintenance, school services, cultural and social programming and neighborhood cleaning.

a handful of other issues that i want to bring up for your consideration. as you heard from tim frye, there was a hearing at historic preservation commission. i want to read to you their resolution as they're legally obliged to comment to you and the board. "now there it be resolved that historic preservation has read the plan central soma and this commission has provided the following comments. h.p.c. provides its overall support for all policies and plan in the effort to create a neighborhood and small lot consolidation and treatment of the alleyways. it provides increased support for the old mint under the central soma plan of at least $50 million to rehabilitate and stabilize the structure including seismic upgrades. increased financial support for

the arts of at least $50 million. so that the preservation, promotion and programming of tangible and intangible programming are well represented." we've heard a lot about the old mint from both sides people saying, we don't want any funding or more funding to be heard. john law will join us from economics. he's the staff for the project and can help to answer any questions that you have. sorry for the hydration break. for affordable housing, we've shared the strategy as 33% affordable housing. i know that questions have come up and how we'll roll out the

programs. that will be answered from staff and amy chan is here from the office and happy to answer any questions you have. in terms of community oversight, we heard a lot of requests from the community. this area is already part of the eastern neighborhoods and over the oversight of the eastern neighborhoods advisory committee and stabilization advisory committee. as we discussed in the past, one thing would be to have a split and merge that. i know that the supervisors' office has talked to the city attorney's office about legislation that would make these changes. this is not dramatic pause. finally, flower mart. there's been some drama regarding the flower mart in the last two weeks. the flower mart project would require a separate entitlement

from this body. it would need approval from the full board of supervisors. so there's a lot of opportunity to discuss the flower mart. that concludes my presentation. here's our contact information. we're looking forward to your comments and questions and public input. >> president hillis: thank you. we'll open this up to public comment. i have a number of speaker cards. jane martin, juan caseo, karen adams, angelo farrow, steven bus, cindy river, laura clark, cynthia gomez and gordon moore. others are welcome to speak. it's best if you line up on the screen side of the roome. and you can approach in any order. ms. clark?

line up on the screen side. that's helpful. >> laura clark. we've sent you proposals that we have to get more housing build in conjunction with central soma. i think you've seen a lot of our demands. i'm happy to see that the planning department is incorporating a lot of our proposals into what they're thinking about. i also know that other people in other departments are thinking about incorporating a lot of ways to get a lot more housing built in conjunction with this plan because we're going to need to deal with the fact that we're adding a lot of jobs. and not opposed to adding a lot of jobs, but we need to recognize that we're signing up for a lot of housing. we've had eight jobs for every one unit of housing added. i appreciate that the planning department has a lot of plans that it's put in and done a lot of legislation, we need to

understa understand, but we need to understand the skafl the problem. nothing we've proposed or done is sufficient. some of the proposals get us to the point where we might see rents plateau. that's not my goal. my goal is to have rents fall. my goal is to have people move back to. people to move to and stop driving to the jobs here. my goal is bigger than making sure that rents go up. that will mean we build a lot more mid rises on the west side. these are big things that we need to be contemplating and we need to not just be talking about redeveloping the bayview and the mission. i'm surprised that those are the areas put up for building and not looking at exclusionary zoning, not looking at glenn

park, or geary boulevard. why aren't we talking about that in a realistic way? >> president hillis: thank you. next speaker, please? >> i'm juan castillo. i want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. i'm a security officer from san francisco i represent seiu. i live in the mission district for 30 years. i've seen a lot of changes in our city. rents are going too high. i'm lucky because i have rental control, but i've seen neighbors become homeless, security guards become homeless, because people cannot afford rents in the city

anymore like it used to be before. in soma, we have an opportunity to make a plan that will help working people. we need more affordable housing that security officers can afford in this plan. a lot of security officers have families to take take of. with their salary, it's not enough if we're put in rents that are this high. we need to rest assure because the security jobs are good in the union. i used to work in a non-union company before and it was very hard for a non-union person to work with no benefits. it's very different. you condition live on low wages without healthcare and benefits. thank you very much. and i hope you take care in this situation. >> president hillis: thank you, sir. next speaker, please? >> good afternoon jane martin. also with seiu, usww.

we're here to demand the we are soma coalition for good jobs and affordable housing. our members like juan, who just spoke, are the security officers that work and the service workers that work in big, new office developments. office developments.

>> i've been a security officer for 27 years. i'm originally from los angeles. i moved here to get a better life. this area needs more housing. we need more housing. it needs to be affordable housing. when i moved here i was homeless the first three years. i lived out of my car and it was difficult. it was difficult to make ends meet. and -- sorry. i'm getting my notes. so, what i'm really trying to say in this situation is that it's great to have housing. we also have to have secure jobs. the jobs have to be paying good

money so people can afford these houses. it cost a lot to live here. i live in the east bay right now and it's gone up. the price just to get into the city has gone up. i literally can lower my expenses every single month by at least $400 if i could afford to live in the city. because literally, this is costing me an extra $150 since january to come to the city every month. an extra $150 because that's how much things have changed. we need things to be better. >> thank you, mr. adams. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is angelo ferel and i'm into reclassified on sixth

street s in order to permit the development of housing along the sixth street corridor as part of the central soma plan. my father owns property out of sixth street which we have operated fantastico a party store since 1961. it's our long-term goal to redevelop some properties to build a new space for our retail business at the ground floor while providing housing above. we agree with public testimony delivered at the central soma plant initiation plant advocating for increased housing. we strongly believe that the sixth street corridor provides an opportunity to deliver some of this additional capacity. thank you. >> thank you mr. farrell. next speaker, please. >> my name is dan a delara. thank you for mentioning about the flour market you are working together it's very helpful to

know that information. i am a fourth generation native to san francisco. used to work by coastal for about 10 years new york and san francisco and have come back to san francisco to hear a lot of bad press about our beautiful city. it's really shocking to me and i hope the supervisors will get behind the flower marking making a win-win situation for the developer, the flower market and realize it's part of a wonderful core of workers and history to the central selma. since we've been here alone, there's been about 400 additional signatures to a change.org petition that was on this particular issue so it is something that is important to people in san francisco. as well, the art since in san

francisco are seen as people around the world who are valued and i hope that the supervisors will understand that and support that as well moving forward. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> my name is cindy reefer, i work for stanley getty design i'm a floral person. i want to express our concern about the relocating the flower market to pier 19 and 23. some of our concerns are the safety going in and out of the embark a darrow crossing the bike line and the amount of pedestrians on the sidewalk there, especially with it being next to the cruise terminal. those cruise ships come in at 7:00 in the morning. the sidewalk is very full and there's a lot of activity going

on and then you have our trucks and our vans going in and out. i'm also concerned about the parking on the pier and the length of the. if you park at one end and get your product to where your vehicle is parked, you are walking about six football fields. it definitely is a concern and with the pier the way they are, there's only one entrance. it's currently as we know this market you can enter in different spots. this one you can just enter at the front. it's another concern of ours. and the vendors also that are going to be relocated there temporarily for the three years or three and a half years, whatever it's going to be, the people of course the vendors closest to the door are going to get the most business because if you are walking into a pier --

>> you have 30 more seconds. >> so i just want to -- it's human nature, if you are going to walk in the front of the pier and that business has what you want. you will stop there and you will get it. the vender that is all the way at the end of the pier because there's only one way to get in, the person at the end trying to sell their product, they're not going to get as much business as the person at the front. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is gordon mar we're a coalition of community and labor groups in the bay area. we are part of the we are soma coalition. we fully support the core demands of we are soma for stronger affordable housing and community stabilization measures to mitigate the impacts of the central soma plans on the

extreme jobs housing and balance. while the focus of this hearing and in most of the public conversation about the central soma plant is focused on the housing element. i also want to call your attention to an important sort of complimentary strategy to address the soma plant extreme jobs housing and balance. namely maximizing the hiring of disadvantaged san francisco residents through stronger local and first source hiring requirements. on the hotel -- on commercial projects in the plan and then also ensuring that the jobs created will be high-quality family-sustaining jobs with worker rights. by maximizing the hiring of disadvantage residents from the soma neighborhood for the ten of thousands of jobs to be created, we not only directly reduce the number of workers from outside of san francisco who would otherwise fill those positions,

and contributing to the extreme demand and competition for affordable housing in our city. but we are supporting disadvantaged residents to improve their economic security by accessing good quality jobs. we're calling for stronger targeted and local hiring commitments along the lines of what was included in the cpmc development agreement which the good outcomes we've seen from the cpncen harassed first source program over the last several years and again we're also calling to ensure the jobs are good jobs and the workers are able to organize and have the right to a union. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners. i have a hand out here for you. peter cohen with the councilor community of housing organizations. the letter here, the packet is something that we'd actually submitted to you a couple of

weeks ago electronically. i don't think we had a chance to give you paper. you can't go home without paper. you know, the central soma plan is an opportunity and it has already, to learn from all of the previous area plans and i think director ram has been here for a lot of them, i've been here for most of them. going back to rincon market and eastern neighbors and western soma, there have been so many experiments with creative policies and mechanisms and the central soma plan is an opportunity to take it to another level. on the one hand, i would like to say good job on the part of staff, on the other hand get it as high to the edge of the envelope as you can. each plan needs to be better than the one before it and take all those risks. we've done this very detailed jobs housing fit analysis and we do think this is the primary way that the department should start thinking about it's housing needs. it is a methodology and we can do it at different scales.

this is all the numbers. no one is suggesting, at least not us, you blowup your e.i. r. that's not the point. this isn't a prescription per se but it's informative about what that true need is and not pretending it will take care of itself magically. 55% of the housing need from the workforce, just from this plan, is affordable to low to middle income folks. 55% of all the housing needs and about four times as many units as you have affordable in the plan already. so what the idea staff says there's housing to be built elsewhere in the city, my suggestion is you try to connect the dots a lot more explicitly, how is the actual workforce in this plan area going to be housed by that big sort of nebulous city wide housing production. lastly, if you want to build units, there needs to be mechanisms to build the entitled units and somehow that needs to be planned. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please.

>> afternoon commissioners. local 2. we have been part of the we are soma coalition from its inception and really appreciate the amount of attention that this commission paid at the least meeting to issues of housing affordable and including scheduling this hearing. what i want to start with is saying that it is less than helpful to talk about housing and without talking about housing affordability and it's less than helpful to talk about housing affordability without talking about income inequality. it's extremely unhelpful to talk about the housing crisis that we currently have in the city without talking about how income inequality has fuelled that and has added more and more fuel to that fire. so, i am going to say that the city does not have a housing supply problem. the city has an affordable housing supply problem. let's talk about one little project. the news today talked about 33

game us street where you have an alfred do your laundry and run your errands. i would be surprise if they were unionized. which means they're likely to make around $30,000 a year serving the needs of people who make around $300,000 a year. without safe guards in place, this plan has the potential to exacerbate this crisis and completely ice out the needs of the alfreds and the security guards, the dish washers and room cleaners for all these commercial projects. as a commission, there are things that you can do to mitigate this damage. one, you can consider very, very carefully whether these new jobs come with an enforceable guarantee they're good news. union makers has a difficult time reporting housing in the city but they drop to nothing at a $15 an hour wage. you can also consider commitments to hire local people, disadvantaged residents, who already live here. there's much to consider but we

really want you to consider that very, very carefully when you think about approving this plan. >> thank you, very much. next speaker, please. good afternoon commissioners. my name is mario and i'm soma philipines a in the south end market. the phillipino community in soma was once 5,000 strong and due to the price of housing our community is reduced to 2500. therefore, we support the community's over all demand for more affordable housing and less office space development. all market rate development should be required to build 50% affordable units with a 30 to 90% a.m.i. range for the units within these projects. as for the 100% affordable housing developers, we would like to see a 20 to 06% ami and housing the needs of seniors and people on fixed incomes and people with disabilities. lastly, as a member of the we

are soma community coalition, we support the coalition's call for an increase to the public benefits package. particularly around the funding for social and cultural funding. funding can be used to support programing and services for soma's most vulnerable residents like families, seniors, after school programs, youth sports, arts, tenant organizing and cultural districts. and the current amount of $25 million is not enough to support the needs of our working families. funding to be street cleaning and capital towards cultural amenities which come out of the public benefits could be fallen from other sources. these funds could be used to fund our social and cultural programming. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker and i'll call a couple more names. max marry claire and susan zazi. welcome. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm catherine and i'm a

architect actual historian. i've addressed this commission with regards to the soma plan with regard to public dollars that are intended to aid the old mints future restoration. the long-term vision for the mint which is advanced in a partnership between the california historical society and the city will result in the center for art, history, culture for all people and a changing neighborhood. key to the partnership in the mints restoration is the city's 20 million-dollar commitment 1% of the over all public benefits package. on various recent occasions, in front of this commission, many other mint advocates and many of you have contended that the amount for the mint should be much higher than the present $20 million. as we heard earlier from steve worthhymn, at yesterday's historic preservation hearing, commissioner richards johns led the discussion and resulting resolution resulting that at

least $50 million for the mint be allocated. of all members of the h. p.c., he is the most knowledgeable having being involved in restoration efforts. the mint project has some momentum and now is the time to find a way forward to look at creative ways to funnel additional funds to the mint and to commit to a resolution and. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> steven boss with mission m.b. i'd like to thank anne marie and steve for their presentation. it was very informative and i didn't know that there was equal square footage for office and residential in the central soma plan. like most people, really mapping number of units, the square footage and office space square footage to the number of people it's not intuitive so having those examples is great.

one thing i want to take issue with though in the presentation, not critical of the presentation but of the underlying zoning is that so little of san francisco is actually zoned for office space and i think anyone who is sat on the bus on gary trying to go across town, to the office hub would be sympathetic allowing office being spread across san francisco. why is the west side just single-family homes. that can be offices and housing. i would love to see that. and specifically i want to talk towards the displacement concerns. i brought it up at the last hearing where i was concerned about people, since the jobs housing balance is so out of whack, people moving here to

work these great jobs and this great city and pushing out people because we don't have enough housing for them. in particular, the memo that was released yesterday, the day before, highlighted a place in the mission, the la lingwa area with a lot of working-class people. it was highlighted as a place for possible redevelopment and i worry about the impact of the people who live there and any sort of so i'll repeat rezone the west side and build more housing there. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon commissioners. i have some handouts here. so some witnessed the result of ways of people of color and the working class continue to get displaced based on the urban

displacement project of research and action initiative of u.c. berkley in collaboration with researchers at ucla, community-based organizations, regional planning agency and the state of california air resource board. soma is in advance stages of displacement and and we see it by people trying to come in and get help from the evictions and finding ways to actually talk to their landlords to keep them in their units. with the passage of the central soma plan this pattern of displacement will only intensify and instead of just looking to market based solutions to address the displacement crisis, the city needs to start prioritizing interventions and regulations that can actually keep people in place. in order to combat the destructive effects of the soma

plan on existing communities, emergency controls need to be put in place and serious changes must be made to the plans. some of our emergency steps that we would like you to consider is establishing interim controls before the central soma plan and one is aggressive rent control buildings and this is the home to a lot of people that's been living in the neighborhood for 20 to 30 years. right now they are doing a soma trying to identify where all the rent-controlled buildings are and also a moratorium on existing rent control buildings. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. seem a.

>> controls need to be put in place in the south of market and before the implementation of the plan. including aggressive side acquisition for 100% affordable housing sites as the value of land will on continue to increase, especially with the passage of the plan. a ride oa right of first refusah allows the first option of purchasing the building and if it goes up for sale among the private market allowing the community members a chance to own the building before it goes up to the private market. additional changes to the central soma plan should be implemented before its passage including the requirement of 50% affordable housing for any newmarket rate housing development with an a.m.i. range of 30 to 90% for new affordable units. this percentage of affordable housing is consistent with san

francisco's housing balance policy passed in 2015. additionally, mandatory land dedication of sites for affordable housing for any new development that is one acre or larger should be a part of the plan before it is implemented. the city must take proactive steps towards stabilizing and protecting the existing community in the south of market, especially those who are most vulnerable to displacement. without implementing the solutions discussed and i hear in previously soma and the entire city shocking levels of inequality will only worsen. thank you. >> thank you, very much. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, my name is claire. i live and work in the south of market and i'm here today because the central soma plan does not create any new policies aimed at stopping eviction and displacement pressures as a result of the plan.

as a plan rezones the area to increase height limits, pressures on eviction and increase of speculation takes place, there must be new controls put in place to prevent evictions and displacement of existing residents in the market that occurred due to the plan. it is important that new affordable housing produced under the central soma plan relation a.m.i. levels to meet the needs of existing residents. like me. and the planning department october 18th, 2017 strategy for new housing memo, it states that through the plan wants to see 50/50 rental on ownership, it will still likely be majority ownership rather than rental. this is a major issue as a majority of households are renters in the market. the type of new affordable housing proposed by the plan does not match the reality of residents' needs in the market. below market rate rental housing units produced and available units through existing buildings should have an a.m.i. range of 30% to 90%.

to meet the needs of existing residents and below market rate housing units produced should be majority rental rather than ownership. thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm with the firm of urban land development. the plan is clearly driven by five to six large projects, which is great because those projects will provide an enormous benefit to central soma and all the public benefits that will be built there. but it looks like the smaller projects have not gotten the attention that they need. the vision for central soma has clearly been one of architectural diversity in style and density. there's no question that projects or land that is going to be up zoned from sli or cmuo should pay something.

when we looked at the revised numbers, it was $41 a square foot for a typical, small project office building. on top of the $14 you will pay for the eastern neighborhoods and then on top of all the rest of the fees it comes to about $90 a square foot for a small project. what i think we end up with then is these infill projects won't get built and we'll have a community with large projects and existing buildings. you might be sitting there and we need and and i would ask you to consider this. these small buildings provide space to professional service firms to the professional service firms and to small businesses that don't otherwise fit into these large office buildings. and they provide the diversity that you are looking for not

only in architecture and also economic vitality that will be providing a cross section of businesses both small and large. i would urge you to reconsider a $41 fee to small office building. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is max. i am equal itsed about the development going on in my neighborhood to bring more people to san francisco. but we have a severe housing imbalance in the city. and central soma exacerbates us in the current state so soma and an fran rents are bad. we need more housing and central soma and san francisco everywhere in the west side, which is really under you guys so i hope you will consider pushing for more housing in this plan and elsewhere in the city.

>> thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners i'm joyce. we appreciate the planning staff for considering alternative options to increasing housing in the planning area. however, we would like to advocate for zoning changes to prioritize affordable resident den shall. we suggest zoning north of here to be mix use general and mix use residential with some neighborhood commercial transit. chaining the zoning in red and orange. would increase available housing stock while remaining compatible with exiting neighboring uses. providing housing and building communities. the neighbor has been something we have committed to since 1980

and we're strong proponents of that today. we support more housing south of the freeway and we recognize the importance of major development sites that are plenty of other available parcels suitable for housing. we urge you to consider the zoning suggestions to help with housing pressures the neighborhood experienced today and better housing jobs balance and foster genuine community building. finally, we are proud we are a soma coalition and we support the policies on housing jobs and cultural programming because many of the other members have discussed earlier. thank you. >> thank you, very much. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. while the department staff is clearly prioritized expanding downtown and major office development for central soma from the start of this seven year process, as you know, we

have always prioritized building a future south of marketing neighborhood and community. as you just heard, we have more land zone for housing is part of that and that is what we recommend to you, especially north of harrison street and our long-time neighborhood. we have spent 38 years asking for more housing. 38 years. but, the other part of a real neighborhood is the neighborhood commercial space. the space for the business they want to accommodate and the small businesses, the markets, the existing p.d.r., everything the arts that give the neighborhood character. the problem is that the department has no plan to make that space affordable. and without affordable, what you are get is downtown retail, lots of fancy restaurants but not what builds real neighborhoods? the department, the best part of the soma plan is the

department's requirement that .40% of the ground floor space in these big office projects would be p.d.r. now. that's very good. but they need to broden the uses to include these other uses displaced businesses, the restaurant, the markets, not the restaurants and so on. now, to make it affordable, it will take an incentive. office allocations can be awarded first to the office projects that guarantee affordable space on the ground floor. you can see from here, last week we pulled this as a

>> which is outdated. so, as many of you know, the farmer operates starting very, very early in the morning, so it's difficult for the tenants to make it to the hearings, so we have letters of support from them we wanted to provide you with, that is the support of the new former project and temporary site at pier 19, 23 and 23.5. in addition to that, we have a video that we put together that allows the tenants, but also some of the neighbors to share their thoughts since they aren't able to make it to the hearing. so if we can play it now?

>> you can pull the mic down to the speaker. >> whydon't we take a look at

that and we'll go to the next speaker. we'll preserve that time. >> thank you, commissioners. my name is mike, representing killroy realty, thank you for all the work that went into the soma central plan. i want to make a slight correction to what the director announced in the beginning of the hearing, we are looking for alternate sites for the temporary flower market. the city is not doing that, we are. and as we've said we would do. i just want to respond to a couple of comments that we heard about the currently proposed temporary site, piers 19 and 23. first of all, the petition that

was referenced contains a lot of misinformation in it. it ignores a lot of the information that we've made publicly available about the piers, for example, the safety of crossing bike lanes and pedestrians on the sidewalk, all that has been looked at in detail and i note that the existing flower mart has the same conditions in front of it. it was the question of the distance to walk from one end of the piers through the other, to the parking and vendor places. it's about the same distance of walking from one end of the existing flower mart today to the other end. there is only one entrance to the piers is not accurate, there a multiple entrances. it won't surprise you to hear with that is a compliant in the

existing -- complaint in the existing flower market. some people are closer to the entrances than others. we're supportive of the central soma plan and hopefully, we can get the video to run after my time is up. thank you. next speaker, please. >> i want to thank you for the support of the project. we do need a new flower market. what the issue here is the temporary site and it is not really possible for us to stay there longer than we have to. ok. the present conditions of the flower market is awful.

it's got rat infestation. the doors are always open, so we have to operate -- excuse me -- that's my wife. [laughter] [dog barking] [laughter] >> sorry. so because all the doors are open at all times, we operate in the un-godly weather conditions, it's like for me, taking my desk and putting it into the middle of the street. there has been times that i had to send my employees home because we couldn't stand the cold weather. the other thing we have is that

because of the fact that we're across from the homeless shelter, the homeless use that as a bathroom. ok, so people like me that go to work at 3:00 in the morning, parking my car is really hazardous situation because you know what you're going to find in there. that's another thing. the other thing is security. we have no security there whatsoever. thank you so much. >> thank you, mr. gomez and mrs. gomez. [laughter] >> next speaker, please. >> hi, my name is rico and i want to say thanks for support of soma and i'm one of them 50% of the vendors. and we're happy to move to