these three kind of issues that persons have brought up around the radius, the issues and sizes of pop outs. i also don't know what we get by shortening the period by ten days. i look forward to when you come back here, i'm hearing more about those three issues. >> president hillis: can i ask you a couple questions on this? so i -- i agree, too. there's a lot of good in here. i think you're -- you know, you're trying to do the right thing and simplify this process, not short circuit neighborhood notification, but to make it better. i've gone up to the 30 by 30 signs and with the years on the planning commission tried to understand them sometimes, and half the language, if not 80% of it is bureaucratic gobl d o

bureaucraticgobbledegoo. i think there's vast improvement on that. oftentimes, you don't even know where the parcel is. it's not a good process. i mean, what we give out and what we tell people on those notifications is not helpful to anybody. i guarantee you most people have no clue what they're getting in those plans. but i think we can actually make it almost like how the -- whatever that committee that boyles down what's before people in terms of ballot simplification. it should be simple. what's now? it's 50 foot tall, going to

60 foot tall. we should boyle it down your neighbor wants to add a 30 foot building in the back and bump it out by 10 feet, and have things that people understand and have it in the notification. i don't know who it's made for, but it's not made for a person who's trying to get this information. it's totally not understandable. so i think that's great. but -- so the question is when will we see that? like, what's actually -- i'm for a postcard or, i think, a bigger postcard. you know, we are getting all kinds of postcards in the mail, and they can come bigger with more information. i don't think we have to do the bullet plans, but i think we have to tell people where to go? where are we going to tell people to go? to some long url that you've got to type in? that's my fear, it's going to

be www.sfgov and a back slash, and then blah, blah, blah. i want them to be able to go to sfgov's website and be able to find it. it would be helpful to see exactly what we're going to put on a postcard, how big it may be. on a 30 by 30, i think it would be better. i've seen them on the second floor or if you're the second floor condo on the third floor, you can't read them. so -- or at least put them on the ground floor if, you know, we require that they be put on the ground floor. but why did you do -- why did you go to 20 days? i guess it. it it's probably the average of what's here, but why did you do that? >> the table that's included in the packet in the presentation, you can see that the majority of notices are a 20 day notice

period. it's also worth noting that the 20 day notification period is pretty much fore things that are significantly greater scale than the scale of project that are being noticed in the 311 and 312 notification. this is the type of notification that we rely on that we're having a conditional use hearing in the first time. we were looking for consistency, which is the first reason we realized that tenants were not noticed. >> president hillis: i think that's great. but there are probably more 311 notifications than there are c.u.'s for gas stations. so if you put the number in -- maybe even cannabis clubs, maybe that it'll accelerate. that's the vast number of things, right, is the 311 notice. so i don't know. it may be strategic. it always looks like -- if one thing is 30 days, and everything else is 20 days, it looks like you're taking stuff away when you go from 30 to 20, and what's the harm -- who are

we harming by keeping it 30? >> well, i mean, again, what we're trying to do it reduce the errors that come from having all the different kiermts in the first place. >> president hillis: no, they're all 30. >> well, if they're all 30, it would be much more difficult for us to reschedule your hearings. when we do proper continuance, that's good. but when you want to renotice this hearing, i need to get the notice in the newspaper for the hearing next week, a month prior to the hearing. that's actually an easy thipg thing to miss. it's just -- >> president hillis: well, a newspaper notice -- i'm talking about the mailing period for the record a notice. posting in the mailing -- >> that's right, but our goal was to find a consistent standard, and the thought was well if we were to make it 30-day standard to notice any

kind of a hearing, that would detriment our ability to not y notify -- properly notify you of a hearing. we were taking a recommendation of consistency, and that was the recommendation we made to the mayor's office. >> president hillis: it would be good to get more thought on that. the only thing you're changing, so you're just kind of improving -- i think it's good you're improving notification. we may want to reconsider the 30 days versus 20 days and maybe just have a different one for the newspaper. i think nobody looks at the -- there's probably a couple people who look at the newspaper notification, but i can't imagine anybody comes to this hearing as a result of the newspaper notification. so i think, you know, it may be safe to change the mailing period and the posting period to be different than the newspaper period. but it would be good to also see what we think is going to be in the posting -- in the

pour postcard which i do think could be a little bigger. the bump out issue, that's the one area where you're saying we have notification, we're not going to have notification on the bump out. but i think you can make the same argument for a vertical addition. i'd actually my neighbor do a vertical addition than do a bump out, but i think i would be a little shocked to come home one day and there's foundation being poured for a two story bump out in my neighbor's back yard, and somehow i never got word of that. >> they would be noticed by the building department for the building permit and appealable to the board of appeals. >> president hillis: but when? just run us through the current process. someone wants to do a bump out of their back, two story. it doesn't matter -- it's code

compliant bump out, so my house sits back already 7 feet behind my adjacent neighborhood. they can go farther out, right? and what's the process now? so first, there's a -- a neighborhood note if i -- a preapp meeting, right? >> i gright, which is triggerey the notification itself. >> president hillis: so the preapp, though, that can be done -- this's kind of a little loose on kind of what the rules are. >> well, we won't take the building permit application in for consideration unless the preapp is included in that. so you can't proceed -- you can't really proceed unless you've done the preapp things that require 311 or 312 right now. if you do that and you provide those materials as part of the your intake materials for the building permit, you give us your building permit, this is the point where it can't be

approved over the counter because it has to be held for the notification to provide for the appeal. >> president hillis: but what's driving -- you know, but you could have a very modest vertical addition, too, but that'll still fall under noticing in 311. what's driving you to say we just want to not do pop outs? >> it was the fact that -- [inaudible] >> -- it caught our attention that this was the one thing that niqad out. it was our experience from the department where we do spend a significant amount of time looking at that, and the actual physical planning out come is not altered by the amount of time that we're spending except in a very small number of cases. we asked this question to a lot of people, what are the things

that you see all the time that are turning up a lot of your hours where you don't really feel like you're adding a planning value add to the out come. >> president hillis: and what are those other 20 something things that you add today that category that to add to the impact of the pop out. >> some of the things that come to mind immediately are your bay windows and obstruction of cornices, decks, other types of horizontal bump outs, roof decks is also on the permit obstruction list. [inaudible] >> tool shed, garden structure. >> president hillis: not quite sure your bump out rises to the level. it's kind of analogous to a roof deck or tool shed. i don't want -- i think all of this is great, you know, and is going in the right direction, but you heard kind of people nervous about bump outs. i think a little bit, and i think what's driving them is

we'll kind of save two fte's on it, but maybe -- maybe you need two fte's. i don't know if that's the -- quite that somebody what's driving this, but i look forward to continuing this discussion. commissioner richards? >> commissioner richards: i think to commissioner hillis's point, whether it's 20 days or 30 days, if we're noticing, we're not getting additional housing in the ten days, so the public perceives it as a take away. i would give it to them. it's 30 days for everything, none of this ten, 20, 30, just 30 for everything. i would just do standard 30, and start regaining the public's confidence and trust. i do agree -- i thought this was a given, when we have any type of project that san francisco building code does apply. if it doesn't, why don't we

have one? that's like doing a project and saying san francisco planning code doesn't apply. state building code doesn't make any sense. and you know, obviously, if somebody's getting public funding as with ab 35 and the others, prevailing wage should apply. it's not like we're creating something new. it's just the standard. a few other things, and i pulled my notes from the mayor's housing task force work group director that we had many, many months ago. and one of the questions i had was okay, we'll do all this. what are we going to get in return and we're the public? and some of the things we talked about way back in the winter of 2016 assigned a plan on page three of the february 2, assign a planner to attend neighborhood meetings, these are things that i would hope if we do start saving time on

things, we get something, that we take something away. i think what we give is higher value than what we receive as a take away. couple other things that we talked about that day is require or reserve the right to require project update in community meetings, because we talked about something comes in. there's a project review meeting, and it says a, and then, there's a series of building permits that are pulled, and all of a sudden it's a-b or it's b and c, and the public goes well, that's not what they told us in the preapp meeting. if major changes, i think a give back would be on certain ones we have kind of a middle of the project preapp, hey, there's going to be a change, and i think the public would like that. the other one -- this is on the march 1, 2016 note. complete a wall for heritage element and approve a citywide historic survey.

maybe we have people reprogrammed to go do surveys, because i think we need it given where sacramento's going. speaking of sacramento, page 43 of the legislation talks about removal of residential units, replacement of structure required. i keep saying we need to separate those two because we're talking about demolitions of single-family homes. if we don't want to demolish the home, but it's the replacement structure that governs, i think we need to work on hey, we said you can't demolish the homes, but you can the units. i really feel strongly about that. >> president hillis: i think what people are asking, they don't just want a notice that just says demolition if there's a project being proposed. >> commissioner richards: what i'm saying is this section ties the two together. >> president hillis: right, so that someone knows when there's something going on, it says here's what they're demoing --

we have a c.u. for the demo -- >> commissioner richards: i think they're bundled -- i want to unbundle them because we're boxing ourselves in. >> president hillis: we're not noticing for approval. the approval hasn't changed. we just generally from the c.u. before us for demobecause the new project is generally code compliant is generally what happens. generally, the project tends to be code compliant. >> commissioner richards: okay. thank you. page 41, it talks about alterations. for the purpose of this section, an alteration shall be defined of removal of more than 75% of a residential building's existing interior wall framing or the removal of more than 75% of the area of the existing framing. [inaudible] >> it is -- >> president hillis: yeah. >> it talks about increased -- this is all just new to me. i didn't know that because

we're talking about demos. first time i ever read this. sorry. couple of other quick things. sorry. oh, on page 15, review process, if you can review urban design guidelines, the ones we passed, effective -- not just general design guidelines, that would go a long way because we spend a lot of time on that. and i also think again, going back to what we talked about, for 100% affordable housing spot on, i think we need to define -- i'm not going to be here this week so i'm just giving feedback to my fellow commissioners. they can do what they want with it. we need to define section 333 which is going to be follow up legislation. >> the ordinance already hasssection 333 all listed in here all of which incorporates requirement with places like 317 or 311, and then in kind of

answer to commissioner hillis's question when would we see what the postcard or half notice looks like, we would work out all of these details. this gives us the ability to adapt over time. >> commissioner richards: so expanding on his, and then i'm done. i kept thinking postcard was four by six, those things that we get for election stuff. if you can have four stiff 3-d views in -- different 3-d views, i think you've covered all the angles. that's all i have to say. i'm confused. it's late. >> president hillis: commissioner melgar? >> vice president melgar: it's late. i'm wondering what we're going to do because you're going to be gone next week, and i don't know if we're ready to take action on this. we have two -- a couple choices

on this. we see if we can take out all of the controversial parts that everyone, you know, commented on for next week or we can -- since it's already been noticed, just put it on the continuance calendar for next week so that people know that we're not going to be voting on it? >> president hillis: is it noticed for next week? >> vice president melgar: yeah. >> commissioners, if i can chime in for a second. dan cider with staff. i think our recommendation, we would encourage you to have the hearing next week to discuss this, and at that time you can consider what you'd like to do. one thing i haven't heard tonight that is sort of a point of consensus maybe is that the 30-odd different types of neighborhood notice, it's the department's position at least, they don't serve a public policy purpose. there is no value in 30 different types of neighborhood notice. there's clearly value in neighborhood notice, and that needs to be done the right way. what might make sense, what i'd

like to be able to do for you commissioners is to present you with some revised approaches to how we could deal with this in advance of next week's hearing, responding to the issues that you've raised and the members of the public have raised. and then, next thursday, if you're willing, you can consider what if anything you'd like to do with those. >> president hillis: commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: mr. ci cider, i think what you just said is a great idea. i would love to see you do what mr. wertheim did in the middle of the presentation of central soma is take what you heard today and start to have an expa expanded discussion with targeted to what was discussed today. i think it was fair, but i think the public also indicated next week is the beginning of a very big holiday.

it's the first part of summer holiday where people go away, and in order to have those people who are unavailable continue in this dialogue, hear you basically, give some really strong feedback. that is what we can do, i think that would be a strong robust standing in the dialogue, and i would personally appreciate it if that's what we would do. >> president hillis: i just want to make -- there's so much good in here, i wouldn't want to make it feel rushed. i think let's just continue it for two more weeks next week and give us a little more time to have one more community meeting at the department and hear it in a little more, you know, get answers and get them out with the commission packet which goes out tomorrow. i'd say let's give us two more weeks after next week just to get it right, 'cause i think there's good stuff in here, and there'll still be policy questions, whether the bump out, which i think is the most

controversial change to this -- you know, we want to recommend that to be in there or not. is that all right? >> well, and i was just asking for clarification. would you want that applied to the entirety of the ordinance or would you want to hear, you know -- it's broken up into three different sections of the ordinance so you could theoretically act on different pieces of it differently, so i'm asking whether the idea is to continue the entire piece or have the hearing that's noted next week to discuss and possibly take action on the housing components or the historic preservation components -- >> president hillis: i'd say just move them out two weeks. just move them all. it makes it a complete package. we should respond to the ordinance in total. [inaudible] >> because it's been noticed, it'll show on your calendar for action. >> president hillis: we'll just show it in the continuance calendar. >> so you have time to change it, put it in the continuance calendar? >> clerk: indeed. our calendars don't get

released until friday afternoon. >> president hillis: and that way, the notice goes out to the public in a packet that's released the week before. >> are you saying that's june 7th? >> clerk: i'll just remind you, pushing all that stuff to june is going to make stuff busy? >> president hillis: all right. did you have any other final -- >> commissioner moore: yeah, i'd like to -- mr. cider, i'd like to have some serious conversation regarding on-line versus paper reading of plans. people -- unless you have a very large screen, opening multiple files at once. engineering firms, most people have three screens to read across drawings. when you only have one screen, which most people have, and you

have to go from drawing to drawing, it's very difficult to understand what you're looking at. further to that, few home printers allow you to print in 11 by 17. i have a printer, i have a very sophisticated printer, but it does not print in 11 by 17. but to expect the public to go and print someplace else is quite expensive these days. a single page color copy is almost $1, so we need to find another tool. >> president hillis: i think we're just assuming if you get an 11 by 17 set of plans, the kind that we do, you're informed. if you're an architect, you're informed, or you know how to read plans, but i don't know how many people -- i like the idea that you get some indication, one, some verbal indication or a written -- this is a rear addition of this

person's home by 10 feet, and a rendering, if that's the 3-d. >> commissioner moore: i'm a little biased. i read plans, but i don't read words. >> president hillis: but what about your neighborhood? >> commissioner moore: i'm just looking at the equity of who should be informed. everyone should be able to bri -- to bring up planning department files brings up quite a bit of horsepower on your computer. >> president hillis: commissioner richards? >> commissioner richards: i think just on the point we were just talking about, reducing the friction on the person getting the notice so they can understand whether they need to take action, the action is not to get more information to determine whether it's going to affect them, it's oh, my god,

this is going to affect me so much. look at these 3-d drawings. i think that's the next step versus trying to find more information. >> president hillis: yeah, i would agree. i think the notice is i need to find out more about this. >> commissioner richards: commissioners should get this, too, so we can understand what's going on. >> president hillis: all right. thank you very much. thank you for the public comment. are we good? >> well, i don't believe there was actually a motion to continue. >> clerk: there's the motion required. >> president hillis: we have to do it next week, unless we do a motion of intent to continue. >> clerk: commissioners, moving onto item 12. [agenda item read] >> just wanted to introduce this. nick perry will introduce this topic. we have been working with a number of departments to do

what we think is a long overdue rethinking of the i say spas around city hall and the entire city center. there's a consultant team on board, some of whom is represented today, and we just wanted to give you an update on how that process is going. we are very excited about this. the department received funding about this a while ago, and we've convened a large group of city staff and constituents all within the district as well as many members of the community in that area, so nick will go over the process for you just to give you an update. >> thank you, john. good evening, commissioners. nick perry, planning stach. ve -- staff. i'd like to acknowledge behind me patrick, assistant plan manager, and also we have lauren and willett, our prime consultants on the public space

design. so i'm just going to go briefly over the project background and talk about some of our community outreach highlights and then an overview of our street design work and our public space design work and hopefully some time for any questions or discussion you might have. little bit of history to begin. civic center was originally designed around 1912. it is probably one of the best examples of neoclassical bozart architecture in the country outside of the washington mall. it was designed to be a grand grand assemblage of the building like we're in today. publg spaces that we have are quite fracked in both their design and their management. since the last plan was

developed in the 1990's, the area's changed quite a bit. there's no arts and cultural institutions that have moved in, there's a lot more residents that are closer in the heart of the civic center, and then we have the hub area just to the south, so we have a lot of residents that rely on the space in civic center from today. there's been a lot of work and a lot of activity in civic center over recent years. probably the best example is the opening of the brand-new playgrounds just outside of civic center hall that rec and park built. and the public realm plan is seeking to build off of these efforts and projects. it's trying to create one coordinated long-term plan for improvements to the streets, plazas and other public spaces. planning department is the lead agency, but we're working very closely with seven other city

departments. we have a fantastic team of consultants that we brought on board to work with us on this project. as i said, they are led by cmg landscape architecture based here in san francisco. i wouldn't talk about them, but i have hr and a, i have new york city, we have lotus water looking at green infrastructure, so a very wide, diverse spectrum of speeexpert to work in this plan. the areas in the light purple are covered by cmg's scope. we are also doing street design

work, and that's being led by the city with mta and public works. and then, there's an area of overlap. the streets bounding the plaza is the consulting team and city team working very closely together. one other element is we are looking at braksall, the 90,000 square -- brooksall, 90,000 square foot hall. we're also looking at the ground floor of bill graham civic auditorium. so we just had our second public workshop in late april. we have design options which i'll share today and we are going to be working to consolidate those into a preferred design plan by the end of the summer. we'll have one more large

community outreach event and from there we will release a draft plan and go into environments review which we expect to end in 2020. two year process for environments review, anticipating a full eir. but we're not going to be waiting to do improvements in civic center while we go through that process. this project is being closely coordinated with the civic center commons initiative, which is a joint effort. it's mostly led by oewd with a lot of coordination with planning and community partners to look at near term improvements, stewardship, activation of these spaces today, things like coordinating on the playgrounds, the installations that are at u.n. plaza, the exploratorium, and then, the key component also is stewardship, so we've partnered with two nonprofits, the hunters point family organization, which is providing stewardship to all three main public spaces. it's a -- some of the people there are formerly incarcerated

individuals or they're coming back -- they're starting to work again so it's an opportunity for them to be involved and for them to be stewards with the space. we're also working with a downtown streets team which are homeless folks that are helping to be ambassadors of the street and keeping it clean. there's a lot of cool stuff that civic center initiatives are keeping up on. i encourage you to keep up by checking up on their website. just to reiterate the difference between these two initiatives, one focuses on the long-term and one focuses on the short-terms.

we've reached out to over 50 community organizations to get them involve and encourage them to participate in whatever ways they're most comfortable. one of the first projects that we did from an outreach perspective is something called civic center stories. i don't know if you're familiar with the humans of new york series that the new york times does. we had two wonderful planning department interns two summers in a row who just went out and talked to people in the space, took they are portraits, recorded their stories, and the goal was to put a face to the diverse spectrum of people that are out in civic center, what their interests are, what their concerns are, find out about each other so we can see each other as human beings in the space. so we have a website and documents that document those stories. we have two major surveys, the first of what we call the public space and public life

study. it's complete back in may and june of 2017. we were out there for four full days, counting people, observing, recording what they were doing and we collected over 400 intercept surveys in the spaces. after the first workshop, we had an initial you asurvey and got over 2,000 on-line responses and about 280 in spern surveys conducted mostly u.n. plaza, and that was targeting people who don't speak english to make sure their voices are also represented in the survey results. we've had a series of focus groups. the first was through the public life study, talking to the key stakeholders, community leaders, operations and maintenance staff. we had a local focus group in october of this year, and that was focused on reaching out to neighborhood residents that

typically might not come to our public outreach evented. so we have a focus group in vietnamess, chinese, in spanish, so all local residents organized by our sub consultant to hear their thoughts about the future of civic center, and it resulted in a fantastic focus group that's really informed the design so far. and then finally we have a community working group that is meeting three times. it's local residents, just kind of a sounding board for us to check in after each major outreach design about how the sign is progressing and what their hopes are for the space. we've had two community workshops, the first in december at u.c. hastings, and the second on february 4th at

bill graham. and then, one final outreach component is through planning department's ground play program, we're developing what we call a mobile outreach station, and the idea is to go to where people are already gathering. we can rool out, put our display -- roll out, put our display signs up, and people can come and interact, just really trying to engage people in a variety of different ways to get them involved in this project because civic center is everyone's civic center. it's someplace where we all come together. so going into street design very briefly, the streets in blue are the ones we're focusing on the ones bordering the main public spaces as well as the grove street corridor and the backside of the war memorial at the intersection of

fulton and franklin street. we have wide road ways especially around civic center plaza, and the reason why they are so wide is they are designed to accommodate large ceremonial pro-sessions and gatherings. loading and drop off needs are really high in this area because of all the large institutions that are here. we have an entire street design network that we're working on which i'm not going to get into today. just wanted to let you know that we're looking at these street holistically, and integrates them with things like vanness brt. like i mentioned, the streets are extra wide. when they designed the space, they shrunk the blocks so the streets could be made to accommodate prosessional

gatherings. we think that there's a variety of ways -- that shows an example of what it looks like today. we're investigating a variety of options for repurposing that space while still accommodating the necessary travel functions. so we have two options for groev street design -- grove street design. here's one example, protected bike lanes and loading zones. we have a plaza promenade options. vehicle access is restricted to loading in front of bill graham. similarly on polk street, we have two options, one which removes one lane of parking to

create parking protected bike lanes, and then the plaza promenade goes further. we're going to continue to refine these with mta and shou

in the city, that when there's a disaster, we can come here and know we can get resources, and lastly, it should be world class, elegant and beautiful. so civic center today, the spaces in yellow with the public spaces.

it's fragmented, it's divided by large, wide streets. fulton street in particular is a barrier between civic center plaza. how can we you know identify the commons and emphasize key gate ways that welcome people into the district? all the design schemes really respect and emphasize the main civic spine that connects city hall to market street. that's a key component of the historic design. it should be a key component of the future design. they also all accommodate space through large public gatherings in front of city hall and also space for large gatherings at the foot of market street. wind is an issue in this area, and we're looking at ways through design to mitigate wind and a lot of that has to do with the placement of trees. right now, we have these little sycamore trees out there, they don't do much.

also, in a similar vein, the spaces today are kind of blown out, it's just a large ex-pans. they're out they're meant to be large fore ceremony, but they're out of scale. finally, on this set of slides, trying to look at not just the major gatherings that happen there, but the flows of people that happen on a daily basis, whether they're people going to work at city hall, like us or whether they're neighbors that are looking to get to open space from the tenderloin or soma, how can we find ways to invite those people that are just moving through to enjoy the space. so we have three framework plans. they are public platform, and this is a vision that emphasizes performance and gathering, civic sanctuary, a

vision that emphasizes history and civic life, and culture connector, a vision that emphasizes diversity and culture. there are features shared amongst all three, and i'll just highlight a few of these. the helen diller civic center frame playgrounds, fulton street is turned into a public space. we are looking at relocating the pioneer monument and simon bolivar away from the public space. a new civic center station building at the b.a.r.t. entrance on u.n. plaza that covers the hole that's there today. large space for civic gatherings, and basic features like seating, rest rooms, drinking fountains, kiosks, etcetera. before i start describing these frameworks, they are interchangeable. these are meant to be conversation starters. they're meant to show a raping

of options, so when we go out to the public over the next couple of months. it's about talking to them, and combine their favorite. i'll start talking about this one, the public platform. at civic center plaza, there's a large paved area at the center, there's flexible flat lawn in the northwest corner, and it would have brooksall access tucked underneath. there are three food and beverage that could be used for a variety of things, but they also provide brooksall and plaza access. [inaudible] >> -- or could be part of an outdoor reading room or some sort of program that's koort nated with the library.

there's a new interactive fountain that would replace the kurpt that's out there. that's the public platform option. the civic sanction twauary opt there's flexible lawn on the north side of the plaza, there's plexible paved area on the south side where you can have large scale art installations, there's a viewing courtyard on this option that wouldn't be accessible, but it would be there to provide light to brooksall below, and there's kiosks and gardens around the edge. there's lawn panels in the center of the street, so turning it into a green space. and then u.n. plaza, for this

pgs on, the existing structure is mostly retained, and the fountain would be restored, but some of the back boulders would be removed. and then finally, the cultural connector, the focus on diversity and culture in this option, an expansive tree canopy, civic center plaza, there's a mirror fountain in the center of the plaza that could be easily drained. there's glades that frame that central space and could be home to a variety of uses such as picnicking, and there's two large pavilions, one side provides access to the garage and the other to brooksall. on the fulton mall, there's a

sculpture focusing on neighborhood, showcasing the neighborhoods of san francisco, especially the local neighborhoods. each of these options have ideas for brooksall and bill graham civic auditorium that are tied to them that could be paired with the design options for civic center plaza above. and then, these images, i just want to show to highlight a ground level view of what these designs look like and how they compare. this is looking towards city hall at civic center plaza from the corner of the playgrounds on the north side. you see on the public platform option not as many trees, the middle option, slightly more,

the third option, culture connector, a lot more trees, but for each of these ideas, the ideas we'd have a very tall canopies, and letting things happen beneath. at fulton street, the main difference you'll see between these options is of course in the middle, the green space on the civic sanctuary option, the bottom option, you see on the left, the series of small kiosks that march down the space. and then finally, u.n. plaza, one of the main differences that jumps out is the paving, the civic sanctuary option has the existing brick shown. it's more of a preservation alternative. the fountain is still there. the third option, the culture connector has kind of a hybrid

where it's turned more into a planter, some type of adaptive reuse of the fountain structure. so right now, tomorrow -- patrick, we will have an updated website where you can really dive into knethese graps where they're interactive. we'll be releasing three surveys, one on public space, one on street space and ones on brooksall, and we'll be going out to the public space to do surveys in person. coming this fall, a streetscape materials palate, an operations and maintenance plan, and an initial phasing and blending strategy. that concludes my presentation. i'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

>> president hillis: thank you. first, we're going to open this up to public comment. mr. haas is here. and others, if you'd like to speak, please do. >> commissioners, i'm jim haas. i've been involved for all things civic center for several decades, as some of you know. i've taken a great interest in what's going on here, and i'm greatly impressed. i think your staff is totally committed to making this happen, and i find the consultants really full of great ideas and so forth. the civic center complex is a unique and remarkable set of buildings and design which should get national, if not international attention. unfortunately, we tend to ignore it or neglect it or it certainly hasn't gotten much respect from the city in the

last 50 years and as an example of that, 20 years ago almost exactly, there was a contract let with prominent consultants to do exactly the same thing as going on today, and it had workshops and the whole to-do. in the fall of that year, willie brown aborted the whole project because he thought it might interfere with his reelection campaign. and if you want to find the gory details of this, i'm writing a book which will be out in november or december which will give you the full history of civic center. after he was reelected, he showed no interest in reestablishing the planning process. mayor newsom was interested, but often there wasn't any money or there were other complications. finally, in 2014, mayor lee asked the department to begin

to do this and because we happened to have a lot of resources these days, here we are today. but the -- the attitude out there of neglect and disinterest, i can tell you, still exists. people don't understand what this complex of buildings is all about, and as was true over the last 20 years, there are a lot of people who don't care. but today, the project is not under the control of the mayor's office, it's in the planning department and therefore it's under your control. so what i wanted to say to you is, it is very important that you keep attention on what's going on and take responsibility for it, and make sure that everything is done in the highest possible manner in terms of quality and that it gets done and gets approved. we need to have a plan for this important area. people say well, we don't have

any money to do anything. well, without a plan, you can't even talk about money, so it's absolutely essential that we get this done, and that is your responsibility. thank you. >> president hillis: thank you. rochelle? >> first off, i'd really like to thank jim haas. he has been diligent for 20 years. i've been looking at this for ten and with nowhere near the commitment he's shown to it, but inspired by his commitment. there's so many good things in this. you know, the design principles speak to what i think we'd all like to see here. you know, i just am looking for the public outreach and process and commitment from you to see it through, to see this one really get done. when we look at hub, trinity,

all the other development going on around it, this should be a lot of people's dpregreen spac. hayes valley is constantly dealing with parking issues. the performing arts parking garage is always full, and the civic center because the entrances are in the wrong places and because people think it's unsafe, has tons of space and it's not used. the comment activating bill graham, it's phenomenal. it's only active for homeless people sleeping there on rare occasions. there's so many things that are important here. one of the great institutions that we have is, you know, our farmer's market, keeping that vital and if anything, growing as a source for the public is absolutely critical. the promenades they talk about

are vastly superior to our own designs. it's vastly important to see things like the helen diller playgrounds. there are kids in this area, and they're using it, and it's wonderful. one of the few otherme comment that i really have, you know, while we have one plan that's supposed to be historic, you know, this really is a very historic site. it is one where we know what the original designs look like, and throughout the planning process at every meeting i've attended, i've asked, do you show the designs of what it was originally intended to be? are there any pieces of it that we should be recreating since we know what the original design accurately was? and they always say yeah, sure, we can show them, but here are big concepts, and they fall into these three concepts. given this is an historic district, i'd really like to

see a little more credibility given to as we adapt this to the future and incorporate things like helen diller and brooks and the garage and all the other new uses, how we also see if there are things from the original design that we can incorporated. thank you so much. >> president hillis: all right. thank you. any additional public comments? seeing none, we'll close public comment. commissioner moore? >> commissioner moore: this is a remarkable day in the history of this project, and thank you to mr. haas who has been in front of this commission at every angle when anything regarding civic center came up. he has done two incredibly important reports that i think each of the commissioners should have a copy of in order to stay on top of the depths of work that has gone into it. what i'm excited about is we are entrusted with the responsibility to push this forward, and i do think that is an amazing responsibility, particularly in light of the fact that across the way, we have hayes valley, which has grown in a phenomenal

neighborhood, and i personally believe that we need to find a way to also reconnect that to here. all of a sudden it stops at the front steps of city hall. i have a strong belief that this plan at least from a policy point of view needs to reach up to go through the center between the opera house and the war memorial, also embrace the exterior spaces of the symphony and the state office building. one of the things is over the years we have created marvelous restorations and buildings which really pulls the civic center buildings together like no other spaces. it's not just historic buildings which are the examples to create modern architecture that works with historic buildings but each layered itself to a space that is just amazing. the process is just marvelous. i think there is a lot to get out, and i hope that we find

the support with planning and everybody else to really hear about this project at least once a month so that we can find out how this moves forward. let's figure out where we save staff and push them in this direction chl i'm in full support and very excited to see this coming to us at this particular time. >> president hillis: yeah, i, too -- i think this is great. i remember, mr. haas, when you were pushing for another plan a couple decades ago on this. and i admire you. this is kind of the rodney dangerfield of public spaces. itt it gets no respect. you've got large institutional buildings adjacent to it that don't necessarily have ground floor retail and spill out into this space. it needs to be a gathering space for the city.

it's big, so it's got to be broken up. it doesn't get a lot of activity on weekends or weekends. i applaud the team that's kind of come up with the options and thought through the design, the entire design team and the public. it's a tough space to use, but we see it being used wonderfully when the farmer's market is there and other activities or when there's a civic event and there's a huge gathering or a trump protest. it feels great. so it's got a function for so many different things. i think designing that to do that is difficult, and brooks hall underneath adds another layer of complexity to it. i won't opine on the various designs. i think they're all interesting and there's parts of each of them that i like.

i'll comment on brooks hall. i think civic center will be a more passive rec rakes, but it'll be good to have active recreation. i think it'll be good to have. i think a recreational use would resonate this, but like commissioner moore, i would like to see us advocating, but you can't necessarily do that unless you have something that looks great that we can advocate for so thank you very much for this. commissioner koppel? >> commissioner koppel: yeah. wanted to echo the other commissioners. i do want to emphasize the importance of that civic spine. i know that the market and vanness muni stop is closer to city hall, b