>> mr. os ghat good, you have >> osgood, you have 28 minutes. >> thank you. >> i'm david osgood, the appellant. i have lived at rincon center for almost 30 years, almost half of my life. by the way, will you let me know if you have trouble hearing me. please feel free to interrupt. thanks to staff in helping in the preparation of all this. i see one familiar face. i understand that many of you are attorneys. i hope you agree that the city should not be giving special treatment to those simply because they are managed poorly. i hope you also agree this is more than just a legal matter. we believe, it's our understanding that you are

not just acting as judges interpreting code. our understanding is that your de novo capacity is that you are pretty much starting the process as new and also wearing your legal hats and hats of negotiate ors. there is a hat at city hall and the process should be stream lined and i think there is pressure on people throughout city hall to come to the aid of businesses and so forth. nobody, no officials at the

state or local level have ever said that this city should lower its standard. so something is not necessary, then by all means eliminate it and let's not make san francisco a worse place in the process. i trust you have read our brief and supporting the appeal. the respondents have no supporting detail. there was one from the area of france and the organization supporting our

appeal includes san francisco heritage, the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods, and the living new deal project based at cal berkeley. all submitted letters. i just want to read one. san francisco heritage wrote, and this is important because this stems to a matter of expert opinions. if you remember the old levi, i think our experts can beat up their experts, so to speak. such as san francisco heritage road. the proposed alterations comprising multiple sets of signs on the streamline exterior

of the building do not adequately carry the historic structure. we'll go to what the code says and we believe the proposed signage was the original architectural style of rincon center. the style from 1940. the city has the responsibility to continue this historic heritage and including the new artwork that includes all the people of san francisco, i'm sorry, that was the executive director of the living

new deal project at berkeley. one architect wrote please do not allow this from the architectural director. commissioners, we can use many adjectives to discuss the proposed sign. we were not name calling. they are all accurate. ask me about any of them. the proposed signs are excessive, unnecessary, over sized, inconsistent. they are different on all three sides of the building that we are appealing. and then ineffective. could you bring up graphic no.

9, please? >> thank you. the clash was the original architect signage on black marble, and the dolphins that surround the building. you see the quality of the owner's sign on the right in the original architect, these are right next to each other. it's no comparison. can you go back to graphic 19, please. >> in our brief, we said there would be six large signs fronting mission street if you deny these appeals. that was incorrect. i apologize for

that. there would actually be eight large signs facing mission street on this building including the original architect's two beautiful signs in the black marble. where else do you see eight signs like this in front of a single building? especially one that's a landmark and disoriented now. you don't see these numbers on the former federal reserve building on second street. now please go to photos no. 2 and 3. you don't see these in the buildings, you don't see these in the landmark

of the building warehouse and you don't see these in the side of the building. we mentioned this in our brief and counsel could have provided comparable examples of building signs of the ones they are proposing. apparently they weren't able to do so. i don't see any around. please accept no excuses of city officials attempt to explain their inconsistent approaches to similar buildings. you may be aware that the department of building allows two huge 25 foot blade signs to be installed on this building. that's graphic 13. you can leave it there for a second, thank you. 25 feet high and these are

permanent. there is no getting rid of them. there is nothing less than planning atrocities and planning should explain here today how that happened, just explaining these two sides. there is one on the other side. >> let's go to graphic 10. >> as you can see in exhibit 3. i believe this is an email from the planning department. they pledge that there would be no more blade signs on this building.

it's no. 10, sorry about that. it says very clearly there will not be anymore blade signs and there are two more. two that we are appealing are blade signs. so something is very very wrong, and it really needs to be fixed. they said look at any other building around and you won't see one with signage. especially on a historic building. i was told by city officials that the owners wish to replace 2 two 25 foot blade signs and planning told them replacement would be sign but asked to reduce their size and the owners refused. and the planning has the discretion to use good judgment and that's following the code, therefore

you do too, we believe. graphic 9, please. the owners have made no case that they have a need for these signs. we won't have any history buildings left preserved if they are allowed to be disfigured for anytime there is an economic down turn. i met with the management team a year or two ago. we had a meeting and ask why they wanted these signs and they didn't know. tourist, office workers, they didn't know. they just want signs, signs, signs.

so if you care to consider this board, you may ask them. obviously offices get minimal traffic and require the same amount of directional signage. the building has a lot of signs now. we need less, not more. the original architect, mr. underwood, it was his opinion in 1940, the busy post office only needed two signs. and now the planning department

has permitted eight just on the mission street frontage. the word rincon would appear eight times that is over kill is not necessary. graphic 16, please. the building was designed by gilbert stanley underwood. a renounced architect working for the roosevelt administration who also designed numerous grand railroad stations, post offices and national parks all across the country. he also designed the hold. he designed the state department building in washington.

the annex was redeveloped in the 1980s and the building lobby was restored and i give the former redevelopment agency a lot of credit for doing a very good job there. as part of that a carefully sign was added. the sign still exist. more are not needed. the la base corporate owners cared to be converting the food court offices and this required not more. this is called

streamlining. there is no neighborhood notice or opportunity for comment. a building like this needs regulation. the la based owners recently painted over their murals from 1989. picture 17, please. they had plans to turn the historic lobby into a cocktail lounge. there is the rendering of it. the planning department is wildly inconsistent. the comparable former federal reserve building also has no such signs. graphic 12, please. will it and others get them next. why does this building

have no signs in rincon annex is getting eight on the front and on the sides. by the way, we did not call the building historic simply because it is 83 years old. the wpa murals in the lobby were considered controversial by some. pictures 2 and 7, please. a congressional hearing was held seeking their removal. sounds like today's news. san francisco came to the defense of this building then and true san franciscans will do the same now. this building is a new deal museum. it is truly one of the hearts of san francisco. we

don't want to hear excuses from the planners. you can flip through one if you want. kind of a random. we don't want to hear that something was zoned this way or approved that way. this whole matter comes down to the planning department messing up. we don't want to hear the pilot is slumped over the wheel. we want to hear which stewardess is landing the plane. we are seeking a solution. we are looking to you to solve this problem. should there be any effort to seek compromise, keep in mind that we have already done that. the department has issued sign permits that we are not

appealing. the building owners have already been given those and all the existing signs, the original 1940 signs, the 1980 redevelopment signs. bottom line, none of the signs under appeal now are necessary. also, i asked dbi, the organization that permitted dozens of seismically buildings around town now need to be retrofitted like the tower. to build with more than 200 holes, into the walls of an 83 year old concrete building. the walls

are concrete. older concrete buildings are recognized as the most vulnerable group of buildings in the city and legislation is being prepared now to require their retrofitting. i know about this because i have led a panel discussion at the csf meeting in april where this is discussed and we had three seismic engineers, phd's, and they emphasized the concern about concrete buildings around this city, buildings. 18 that shows

the bolts. you can see the bolts. even those silly wavy lines has the bolts. you see there it's going to two inches. the signs say the concrete wall noted two inches. i don't know if they know that. these bolts will go a third of the way. this is just one of four signs. i believe there is 48. you can count them and see like i said even the wavy lines have three bolts going into the concrete

two inches. we raised this issue in you are brief and counsel downplayed the issue. then we note the engineering page is from the signed plans that show the bolts that appear in the plans to your brief. if you go to the briefing material, you won't see this graphic. they took it out and they actually took out a lot. you wouldn't even know about this issue if we didn't look at the sign plan that was on the city's website. we believe this is grounds for continuance of this matter. you don't have complete information. it's been concealed from you. this isn't

the only graphic. we also don't know the size of the signs. this is a reason to discontinue. you need to get accurate information. i guess i can bring it up. alex doesn't have it. the dimensions given for the blade signs on the corners are inconsistent. so we don't know how big they are. let me see if i can bring this up. >> i paused your time. >> thanks. it says stop screen share to do this.

>> you can share your screen. >> okay. >> >> well, i don't know if you can read that. it's pretty difficult. i added the read arrows. >> we don't see it. it hasn't been shared. >> sorry. i don't know how. >> you can put it on the camera if you want. >> this is page 28 of the

assigned plan. >> do you want to shift your camera a little too. you shifted it up before. thank you. >> >> well anyway this is page 28 of their signed plan. this is not going to work. i'm under oath. you can take my word for it. it's the official description of the blade signs and there is two dimensions right next to each other. one on the diagram of the blade side and the one on the text on the side. one is 45% higher than the other in size. so we don't

know how big it is. the permits make it clear that the sign plan is what they are permitting. it says on the permit. this is a sign that has been approved and will be installed per the sign plan. which size is it? 45% is a pretty good difference. that's another reason this manner should be continued to get accurate information. let's see. in trying to determine what went wrong in the approval of all these signs. we realize there is a situation of the tail wagging the dog. the owners

advised planning staff that the signs are administratively approved, not the other way around. their basically guiding the planning staff and the owners representative are misinterpreting the code and advising the planning staff based on these interpretations. council streamline the approvals in 71-18 and council's exhibit e. the ordinance makes it clear that the signs on a landmark must conform to the requirements outlined in section 1006.6.

then counsel doesn't provide in your brief which states that we are going to landmark -- all cases consider the factors of architectural style, design arrangement, texture, color and any other pertinent factors. any others, that's broad. section c, it states the work proposed will restore and shall not damage or destroy the exterior architectural features of the landmark. it further states the proposed work will not adversely affect the special character or aesthetics or interest or value of the landmark. in the case of

an important landmark like this, every consideration should be given regarding certificates of appropriateness reviewed by the preservation commission, etc. the signs in no way enhance the architectural features of this landmark. the signage plan says nothing about streamlining, saying nothing about the architect. it's pretty obvious they don't know those things. they were tasked with coming up with signs and that's what they did. the assertion of 200 bolts, is certainly damaging the exterior, and also the removal of the

existing bolts for the accessing signs will mar the exterior as well. you probably noticed whenever a building is removed of a sign, it's never a clean job. i can show you a photo that shows where the sign is removed. >> you have 30 seconds. >> okay. >> don't forget these signs if you approve them, they will be permanent. in our brief, we said they can say anything. counsel did not agree with that. >> that's time. >> thank you very much. >> we have a question from president swig. >> richard swig: thank you for

using all 27 minutes. it's not unusual when they say they are not going to do it and they do it. i found your testimony being very substantial, very important. as we sit here tonight and we have to come up with a direction, and i note this in the permit holder's brief. they accuse you of saying i don't like the signs and that's why it's very arbitrary, personal taste. and just because you don't like the signs doesn't mean that you can find, get a

positive nod to your appeal. and what i would like to hear from you and i know you just used 27 minutes of your time. if you can provide, if you were sitting here in the place of one of the commissioners where we have to find a legal basis for your appeal and i'm trusting that you will be short in your answer, please. what would be the legal basis that we could support your appeal or a legal bases if there is more than one other than the fact that you don't like the signs. can you really telescope that into a couple of bullet points for us, please?

>> i thought those comments sounded a little snarky and taken from a boiler plate from people that don't like a building and they don't like it is pretty subjective. >> give me one, two or three items that would be based on legal presence or legal compliance, planning code or otherwise why we should find in favor of your appeal because we have to do that if we are going

to fully support your direction. >> sure. well i mentioned the ordinance that points back to that talks about, well, it indicates the section 1006.6 that's relevant and subjective stuff, architectural style, texture, materials, color. stuff like that. and the need to preserve and enhance and restore the building to not damage or destroy it. the proposed work that will not adversely affect the special character historical or

structure of the landmark. remember i stated that and put my experts against their experts in the city of whoever any day. besides clearly making no effort to a streamline modern design. they are just standard modern advertisement and they are advertising. none of which has been seen since the building opened in the 1940s. this is all new. and the number, the number of it clearly ruin the look of the building streamline. if you go to wikipedia and look upstream line modern and i would recommend you all do that now on your iphones. go to wikipedia

and streamline modern, look at the pictures. one of the definitions of streamline modern is that they have a lot of unan adorned space on the side which is almost always painted white or a light color. so the permit holder is obviously see that space as not streamline modern but a place to put signs. so they are just citing the design. they have clearly no appreciation for the history of the building. so i propose putting a lounge in the lobby and they just, they don't know about style and architecture. the permit holder is basically a corporation, a real estate. >> thank you for your answer. i had to cut you off because you

are wandering back into your testimony which is very good and we already heard it. i want to ask you one more thing. i'm going to read from the brief of the permit holder and you can tell me please about how you discovered that this project was underway. i'm going to read directly from the brief so it's pretty clear. "appellant alleges that the building permit were issued in secret by the county and san francisco department. this is untrue. the owner initiated the review of the msp in june 22nd, at the meeting with the planning staff. the meeting details the public available on the website.

i'm going to stop there. how did you find out that the signing process was going on that an msp had been developed, and when we do a 311 notice, that's a 311 notice that a big building project is going to happen. there is a, you have to let everybody know within 150 feet, sorry i got that wrong that there is changing in the building, etc. how did you find out? what was the communication from planning? what was the communication from the building owner, or did you just happen to as it says, it was on the city website. of course this was available. did you happen to cross the city

website and see that this had been done? how did you find out? what was the communication? >> we made it our job to monitor historic buildings in the neighborhood and certainly here, but we haven't needed to protect our building on-site here. so, i over the years found a website that list things. i don't remember what it's called, but it's kind of obscure. a planner asked me that and she was surprised. so there is some obscured place that the average person certainly doesn't know about or have access to, and going to or finding out through the city website or ad of public notice, those are not to aid the public at all. those are a dark

and mysterious as can be. >> sorry to cut you off but i want to streamline it. in fact, let me ask you a question. did anybody from planning call you, your organization or any of the neighbors in your building and said, we just passed this msp, or we just recommended this msp, or did the building owner come to you and say you or any of the residents or interested parties in the building, come and devulge that there was this project going on? >> none of those. >> okay, thank you. i'm going to yield to mr. trasviña. >> john trasviña: thank you, president swig. thank you for the materials that you submitted to us on your

appeal. you began your testimony saying that you would like to start the process a new. that brings me to a question. i'm concerned and trying to find a distinction to whether this process was followed and whether this process answers your concern. when did you first get involved. is the first time you are involved in this process through this appeal? >> well, i'm not sure there wasn't any formal process, was there? i did reach out to planning staff after i found out about them on my own. in fact that email which we may or may not have brought up on the screen

where they said there wouldn't be anymore blade signs was in response, i believe, to the email from me. >> thank you. and if you could clarify for the record, you state your objections, your concerns, your view that the signs are unneeded or they are ugly, etc. can you state who your objections are on behalf of? >> well, historic preservation is a worldwide concept. i mean, china, russia, every continent. >> i apologize, i didn't ask the question precisely. while i'm sure there are millions if not more of that of people that agree with your view and we have

the 18 letters that have been part of the record. there are organizations from around the city. your, what i'm trying to get, what your standing is that you are a neighbor, resident, tenant, what is your standing, and who else do you speak on behalf of? >> well, i am currently the president of the tenant's association of rincon and currently on the board of the san francisco neighborhoods which weighed in on this unanimously. >> that's helpful. should i conclude that the tenants association, the position you are stating tonight is the president of the tenants association? >> yes, sir. >> thank you. but you showed in graphic 14,

two signs one of which was including the restaurant sign. do you object to those signs or whether you are appealing them or not? are those the kinds of signs that you are objecting to? >> those signs, you mean mentioning blade signs? those were, the two sided signs that hangout usually at the corner of a building, they are really dinosaurs, and you don't see going up anymore here. are extremely objectionable and done away with probably 30-40 years ago. you are all probably too young to remember. i remember there was a campaign to reduce

sign clutter in just about every city. it was part of the environmental movement starting in the 70s and it worked. >> what i'm hoping to find here and i will ask the planning department and perhaps the city attorney as well at the appropriate time is what standards should we have in terms of what's the appropriate signage, or is there something where you would request that all of us go back to the planning department for your views to be taken into account? >> well, there were standards set. in 1940, the decisions were made about how many signs were needed and there were three developed. those decisions were made and those stood for 30 years at least. and frankly,

some things are self-evident. i showed you some of the other historic buildings. none of them seemed to have any signs, they are very minimal. so there is something wrong here clearly. and i would standby that and maybe this is my opinion. if this is on the ballot, 95% of the people would agree. i have no doubt about that whatsoever. >> i'm looking for the standard which we will take up this matter in testimony. i be appreciate your testimony and will ask questions later. thank you very much. >> it's the 1940s signing. >> thank you. we will now hear from the permit holder. you

have 28 minutes. >> thank you. >> sullivan from -- here on behalf of the project sponsor, hudson pacific properties and holder of the for mentioned permits. i'm not going to use the whole time. i will go about 11 or 12 minutes and repeat some things that mr. swig has mentioned. this is the building on rincon center. we ask that you deny the appeal and approve the permit and the applicable provisions of the city's planning code. the appellant's argument are his opinion at best and has not provided any legitimate ground on his beale to over turn this permit. the mixed use development that

comprise of the full block from howard to the south and spirit to the west to the annex post office and the historic post office structure on front street and mixed use development constructed in 1989. in 1988, the building was designated an historic landmark and then the complex you see today. the current signage was installed in the late 80s and early nineties. there were many other landmarks including the 901 market street and hudson is committed to this

historic landmark and the value of the city. in fact they are taking construction at the ferry building. to say this owner lacks appreciation for historic buildings is untrue. the landmark the post office and the lobby at the rincon center is what makes this property unique and valuable. they appreciate the landmark building that they own. returning to the appeal even before the pandemic hit in 2020, they were hearing from their tenants at rincon center that they were struggling to get customers. all of this is exasperated by covid. hunters pacific want to make rincon fit

and the interior was not sufficient. the owner decided to upgrade the property and with the planning department. due to this property continuing a designated landmark, any changes, including signs requires preservation review. there was an initial project review meeting with preservation staff in june of 2022 and in the next several months worked with staff to find the proposal to modifications and finish. and in june 2022, the master plan was found to be compliant with the standards of article 10 and approved. per department procedures, the msp was established and reviewed by planning staff. the permits at issue, they were reviewed by planning staff and found to be

conforming with the msp and prior to final approval in may of 2023. the appellant provides no sound reasoning behind his appeal. and he assumes to have more knowledge than qualified professionals even the board of supervisors who amended the code to allow for review of landmark buildings. he has not shown how this adversely affect his interest or public interest. the appellant allegations that the permits were issued in secret behind closed doors by the planning department. this is not true. the msp is a publicly available document since 2022. further, most permits in the city are issued over the counter. meaning if

they meet the applicable code requirements, then they are approved by planning staff. this is not a secret process, behind closed doors. it happens in public at the planning counter. the planning permits must be approved if they comply with the code and subject to very limited review other than the compliance established in the article. here referenced in the approved application and standard process. there is nothing irregular about this process. the appellant complained there was no notice. these are not required for signage. allowing that it's the planning staff allowed to degrade planning standards. that is not the case. the board of supervisors passed the legislation by landmark buildings to be

approved by the planning department. the board made findings in that legislation that administrative review was in the best interest of the city, met the city's general plan goals and policies and would not adversely harm the public. if the appellant has an issue with the current process, it should be seeked at the administrative level. these are not reason for revoking the permit. saying the msp did not show good judgment. with article 6 and 10, for landmark buildings require that historic preservation professionals review the standards for achievement of the historic properties. the staff has qualified staff from standards and prevention and it was

preservation staff that approved the final ms p. certainly they are knowledgeable of what would be appropriate at the site. that is he disagrees of what planning staff approved is a difference in opinion. had the planning department established all the legal requirements for the landmark and there were no errors issued in the permit. additionally, they are found amicable to the landmark and development. and to state that these have been eyesores and they are not correct. they are included as examples from the planning department available on the website. the only regulation on blade scenes is that they project from the building and the height they can be on a building. the scenes

conform to these standards and whether the appellant can be considered as an eyesore. the rest of the appellants arguments are his opinion and states that they should be whatever his size and these are pertaining to the code of appeal. the appellant cannot insist that these permits should be what he thinks the law should be. if he wants to see blade signs prohibited, he should seek this through the legislative process. the appellant states that this sign would be totally out of base from the landmark. he mentions that it could read -- and these are issues that the city could not opine on. the signs cannot

depend on the appellant. there is no basis. the remainder is highly suggestive and personal opinion and demonstrates a lack of respect for historic design and is of no importance. i reiterate the sign is applicable with all regulations and approved by planning on the msp which includes the content of the entire site. further the sign is merely lettering and as long as it conforms with the size according to the code, the city cannot approve or disapprove a sign based on a tenant. the appellant appeals that to change the four existing signs currently separate rincon and center signs to simply read rincon center appealing on the

bases that is subjective design issues. his argument centers on the addition of words, the use of a logo, poor symbolism and excessive clutter. none of these are reasons or sufficient grounds to this permit. and the signs are smaller overall and taller and vertical dimension. on balance the replacement of the signs are the same physical area of the signs. the appellant's argument of the utility using of the sign is irrelevant. the changing of the signs would require new bolt holes in the historic facade and the patching of the old bolt holes and says nothing guarantees these bolts will be

repaired in the first place. all signs will follow the standards including any treatments of such work. the permit cannot be over turn the simply on the observation that it may not be performed correctly. there are available channels to report this and correct any work done. the appellant appeals the final permit ending in 1011 on the basis that the sign changes very little and should not be changed at all and reads as rincon center shop. the permit reduces the amount of signage to just have rincon split in two signs. the material will be in conformance with the plans. although this would remove the three words on the horizontal dimensioned seeming the

implementation that the appellant has on other appeals and now takes an issue with this sign. he has no reason other than it should be changed. the appellant has not provided a reason to deny this. further, permits for signs on designated landmarks are generally exempt from provision of article 10 as long as the sign designate the preservation of the landmark. the department simply checks the work provided by the planning and standard code. given that they conform to the msp and the applicable regulations of article 6 and 10, the permits are properly approved and the planning department with the city's historic preservation policies reviewed the permits and found them to comply. for

these reasons, request we request the board of appeals deny this appeal. >> we have a question from president swig. >> richard swig. . counselor, your brief was presented very well and i found yes, sir interpretation of article 6 and 10 very possibly for their use. i don't agree, but i have to compliment you on this very great brief but i don't agree. i'm going to talk about historic preservation. this isn't

richard telling you what i think about this. we hear a lot of cases here from statutes that some people felt should be torn down for right reasons, buildings, where there might be, big buildings that might need a structure required and after reading your brief, i didn't know that the historic preservation commission had been taken out of business because within the city it says the historical preservation commission shall advise the city on historic preservation matters, participate in the process that involve historic or cultural resources. now, this rincon center is city landmark no. 107 and designated

as a city landmark, not only a federal landmark but a city landmark in 1980. so where did the preservation commission go? you did a great job. i have to tell you, beautiful. but where is the preservation commission? and what do they think about this? i don't care what planning says, because what happened, i'm sitting here asking myself and i will ask you because and we'll have a discussion, why are we hearing this for the first time. why isn't the preservation commission heard this very important landmark no. 107, designated in 1980, why weren't they consulted on their use on this and provided a certificate of appropriateness that somebody like mr. osgood can come and

appeal as the law says they can. so where is the historic preservation in all this? >> thank you, commissioner president swig. the building is an individual landmark and under article 10 and local standards are more strict than federal or state standards, article 10, requires all exterior changes to an individual landmark or building in an historic district to be reviewed and obtain a certificate of appropriateness. that article 10 in section 10005 says that historic preservation shall execute this and it states in the planning code that the hpc can delegate certain scope of work to department staff for review. every year the hpc passes a resolution designating a scope of work at a staff feel

should not come to a public hearing, not go through the time and expense -- i didn't mean a waste of time, to go to get a certificate of appropriateness at a public hearing but appropriate for city staff including windows, store fronts, designs, sidewalk changes, smaller minor things, and i will refer to the planning staff that can speak to this. >> i will ask the same question. >> they are delegated to department staff for review. administrative appropriateness require a notice as well. in 2018, the board of supervisors passed legislation. they are above the historic preservation commission, they passed legislation specifically

saying we did not feel the signs need administrative certificate of appropriateness anymore. article 10 cross-reference with each other. as long as they meet the requirements which are according to the certificate of interior standards then they can be approved without a certificate of administrative appropriateness and without notice. that is what the law allows. so while i can't disagree with you that the hpc was not involved in this permit review process, the law allows the process that occurred. so it's -- >> yeah, and you don't mind if i suggest later on that we kick the canon this and send this back to historical preservation because i disagree with you that this is a, this is a serious important building in san francisco, and to skip over historical preservation commission i think is problematic for me, but we'll

discuss that. and as far as, so a certificate of appropriateness, which would come to us, it says, it's right in the city mandate which would come to us from planning or planning commission or from historical preservation commission, we are not seeing that certificate of appropriateness because they weren't even involved in this and a staff person decided to take upon themselves and issue and go along with msp? >> i think you are mischaracterizing this. they were not not involved because staff tried to avoid it. the legal process does not involve them. that is the process. if an administrative certificate of appropriateness was required, we would have sought one. if a public hearing for this signage

was required, we would have sought one. there was no avoidance of the hpc, this is an individual landmark. the owners are well aware. they have gone to the preservation staff on numerous occasions for other preservation issues. signage unfortunately does not go to hpc and does not require a v of a. >> that is according to signage and i'm going to ask another question. this is a designated landmark in 1980. to get this permit in the first place to do some of the beautiful work that was done to resurrect the building from being an old deteriorated beat up post office, there must have been permit hearings and all sorts of

approvals. was there a master signage plan back in the good old days when the initial permits were issued, and if there were signage plans, i'm sure there would be, how do you suddenly change plans? when a building is approved for a conversion, permits are issued, there is a master signage plan associated with that. how can you come 43 years later and say, okay, new master signage plan and we don't care what this old permit said. how does that work? >> this is a site from the local department in the 70s and 80s did not have original -- my

research was there was a proposal for it and the post office encompassed the entire block and a proposal to demolish the whole block. it was my understanding that an arrangement whereby the majority of the block were able to be demolished whereas the historic facade of the post office as well as the interior lobby and murals were retained. i don't know if there was a signage plan. there is a co-heeding to it and i'm not sure if there was anyone in the future modifying that sign plan. anyone can seek

an amendment to a permit or entitlement that they have. it happens fairly regularly with the city departments whatnot. i think the goal here was regardless of there being a master sign plan from the 80s, this sign was not working for their needs and current tenants and needed to be upgraded and they went to the city stating we want to improve the master scene plan. >> was due diligence done, and i'm going to ask ms. tang to comment on this. was there due diligence done to look at the file which was the basis for the permit which was issued in 1980, was there a signage plan and requirement to adhere to that

signage plan in perpetuity that it was a federal landmark. or was it just convenient that you are saying to me, i'm not being accusing, and should we say it was their job and was there a master sign agreement because we don't know whether those, you know, the graphic, i walk by it 100 times. i drove by it today. the sign that says the post office. can that be, hey, let's scratch that one out and put somebody else's name up there.

do we know what the restrictions are? you say that there just wasn't one. i'm going to ask ms. tang. >> we have not done the reduction files and there was no request from something requiring the plan. i personally have not. i again would like to reiterate that the historic preservation commission has delegated signs and sign review to preservation staff in the past up until 2018. and that the law currently allows qualified preservation staff to review the signage under the secretary of review standards to make sure it is appropriate, not damaged and not excessive whatnot and the staff did this. i would argue that it was done properly and that no further

review would be needed. all of the signs here are replacement signs with the exception of two. there is not an over signage here. it's all modernizing what is currently there. like i said, with the exception of the two signs, everything is a replacement. >> there is an inherent conflict between the signs and modernizing but we can discuss semantics at a later point because commissioner lemberg wants to talk now. >> alex lemberg: i'm sorry for the very petty matter but the director cut our food budget. so i want to start,

[ laughter ] yeah, thanks. i believe that you, i concur with president swig that your brief was wonderful and very artful in many ways. and i believe it did a very effective job which is undermining the specific viewpoint. specifically what i'm talking about is section 1006. 6, as you cited there is a section in 1005.6 that says specifically allows for signs to be exempted from this as provided that signage, and transparency conform to section 1006.6, and further requirements that the outlines generally

requires that any work should retain the landmark sites subject to the standards and under article 10. taken together, these exempt the installation of the signs from obtaining a certificate of appropriateness if they conform to the soi standards. here is where we start to get a little bit dicey. section 100.6 in the language, states otherwise as well that the secretary of the interior guidance is by the way, 172 page document plus a part b that i didn't even read because it wasn't relevant presumably hundreds of more pages. it says several other things that in appraising the effects and relationships mentioned here in, the decision-making body, the planning department, shall in all cases consider the factors

of architectural style, design, arrangement, texture, material, color and other factors. the proposed work shall be appropriate for and consent with the effectuation of article 10 which is a really broad statement, and states the proposed work shall comply with the secretary of interior standards which is a very lengthy document as i just said. it also says several other things that i think are less relevant. so going into my questions. >> no. 1, where in the record that you've submitted supports the factor the assertion that the planning department made explicit findings that all standards were met, and specific fully your exhibit c in your brief is a series of e-mails but to my reading don't say anything to that effect at all. that's my first question. >> thank you. the secretary of

interior standards also comes down to the secretary of interior standards to rehabilitation. there are ten findings that need to be met and broad and rules, they are protect the integrity of the landmark, the rules, whatnot. the further articulation in article 10006, mentions materials, other things you talked about. all of those things are inherently built into the secretary of standards. i am here as an attorney and also have a masters in historic preservation. i cannot speak and will not speak as to the planning department. that is their job and the staff that made the determination that the project, the msp met the secretary of standards and the materials were okay. you are

right, the materials i submitted did not explicitly say that. we had meetings with staff and we talked about it. it was inherently implied through their approval of that master plan that it met the secretary of interior standards in section 1006. >> thank you. next question, i think you have already answered that in president swig's questioning. to reiterate it was the waiver of the necessity of certificate of appropriateness was appropriate here? >> it is appropriateness that the law does allow, yes. >> okay. please explain and maybe your clients are better suited for this, but, please explain to this body how these signs specifically all the signs that are before us tonight on appeal comply with the secretary of the interior standards which

is actually what i was hoping that your briefing would address having reviewed the law in this area, and i don't believe it's just a 10 point plan. i'm reading a document that has several, dozens of recommendations for the specifically for new exterior additions to historic buildings. would you agree that it clearly falls under that category? okay. so, how do these signs specifically comply with all of those different requirements? >> commissioner, i would actually refer to the preservation staff to do that. it is not my place which is for the preservation and for review of the map in totality. >> please describe your efforts

that the client made all of these. that will not be done by the planning staff but your client. >> i will have to refer to my client. they know this signage needs special treatment. they were very careful. they said these signs for example around the entrance that says shopping and center were not working. they wanted to replace them with updated more contemporary looking signage. they looked at what was existing which was also found to be appropriate for the individual landmark and changed it slightly. they knew that, i think they pushed this whole process with this is an individual landmark and we have

to meet the secretary of standards and that's what this design company did. >> i appreciate your details and want to hear how they were careful. >> extra speak to that. they spent a lot of time on this. that i can say. >> my name is jared willis. as mentioned we are stewards of many san francisco properties. we own other properties in seattle, los angeles, i like to say that we honor the properties we own and we make them into

retail. we chose a font that aligns with this design and take other historical -- we have retail at the property. it's no secret. we need to make an attractive retail place for people to come. this is one of the ways that we can invite people to our area and help to revitalize that area. the specific guidelines and we rely on other staff to make those judgments for us, but i think we did try hard to meet those. the original purpose of the building and the original intent. thank

you. >> thank you. i have one more question for ms. sullivan and this is just asking for an acknowledgment on your part because in your time you stated that the values of this property were unique and valuable and you specifically cited the interior and want to get to the development of this ordinance of the 1980s and the interior. >> that was exactly during this time and appropriate. >> richard swig: i will try to be brief. i would like to ask

the same question to both sides. also trying to get perspectives on both. i asked the appellant questions about his standing and also who he speaks on behalf of. if i can ask you, who else wants these signs other than your client, if anyone? >> i will have to defer to my client, the owner, but i think the owners would like to upgrade the signs. they have owned this property since 2010. they have been living with these signs for many years, and they are not working. they have heard from their tenants, the current ones and the ones that have left. right now, the owner is the person that is requesting the signage. >> to the owners instruction that it's good for the tenants

based on his experience, etc? >> correct. >> the second is what we talked about in terms of historic preservation commission being involved, ten points that should be characterized. how typical, or how different was the process for these signs as compared to other matters you've brought before the planning department in terms of scrutiny over historical purpose or these standards? >> i would say it was the same level. i represent properties for historic buildings for commercial. and i apply certificates of appropriateness publicly and administratively. we do a project review meeting which is a premeeting to show them the project to get initial feedback. we get, we file,

different series that we didn't file an application but back and forth with planning and preservation staff about the signs and material. we did three iterations of plans to get to the final master plan sign. that is very common with other administrative and other public hearing processes and there was a high level preservation review. >> good. finally mr. osgood has raised concerns about the maintenance of the sign. is it you or your clients view that having this approved allows you to in the future to change the text of the sign, or if it falls off, do you have to go back to the planning department to get an approval for a replacement? what is it that we are approving? >> article six regulates when a

sign needs improvement. you can change a copy of a sign on a permit from a city. you can't change the size, dimensions, materials, anything about the sign, the placement, the holes, needs a sign permit. you can swap out tenants. if you go out to do a business identification sign and office buildings, tenants change, you can change the tenants. you will see store fronts that will change from bob's burgers to abe's. here is master plan states tenant signage can change. rincon center, that significant signage cannot be changed without a new permit from the city. but the other signage which actually is not subject to these appeals.

tenant signage can be changed out. >> i have one more question. this is for your client. the question is did you read all the public comment submitted in this matter? >> the letters submitted? yes. >> did those letter affect your thinking around the subject or this appeal? >> i don't think they changed the my thinking about it. again, we have been very diligent in this process and really think it through. i think we are making more choices about this signage and replacing like for like in most cases. i understand there is difference in opinion versus what should be on this and what should not be, but we are following the rules and again trying to follow the at least some existing elements as much as possible in our

design. >> thank you. >> thank you. we will now hear from the planning department. >> good evening, president swig, members of the board. i'm tina tam, deputy administrative. 101 spirit street is a multistory, multiuse, primarily offices and retail building in the c 30 downtown office special development zoning district. the portion of the property on the north end, the u.s. post office was designed by architect gilbert -- and was designed by

this architecture. the property is a designated city landmark no. 107, also listed on the national register of historic spaces. in 2021, consultants filed four sign permits ending with the numbers 1011, 1015, 1018, and 1021. these permits include the removal and replacement of the wall signs as well as new signs of the building. i will walk through each of the four permits. this is 101 spirit street.

stuart street to the east and howard street to the south. this comprise the entirety of the lot 3716. the historic post office rincon annex is shown in the blue of the property. here is an aerial photograph looking north. in the photograph, you see the large development of property constructed in 1989 for retail and apartment uses. in the redevelopment for the property, there was also a two story addition as well as a major interior renovation and of the historic rincon and post office.

>> this is the ground floor plan of the property. in green and purple are the locations of the four permits in question. >> the permits in green for the removal and replacement of the existing signs. they are on stuart, and on mission. the permits in purple are for the installation of the new signs on the building. they are the two projecting signs of the corner on mission and on

stewart. the first permit ends with the no. 1011 to replace the existing non-historic wall signs on spear street. the conditions are at the top and the proposed condition is at the bottom. the new sign will be at the same exact location of the existing flanking the original main entrance to the post office. as you heard from ms. sullivan and as you can see in this photograph, the current sign says rincon center shops and restaurants where the new sign will say rincon center. the new size of the sign will be smaller and contain less letters. the 12 letters will measure 20

inches in height and aluminum in material which is matching the type of material. the second permit ending with the numbers 1015, is to remove and replace four existing non-historic wall signs on mission streets and the proposed condition at the bottom. the new sign will say rincon center as part of its design. the six individual letters that spell out rincon will be about 15 inches tall, while the six individual letters that spell out center will be seven inches tall. the individual letters are painted in dark gray, the line in dark blue. the materials and color are consistent with the design motif of the dolphins and the waves that you see above the

windows on this facade. the third permit ending in 1018 are for the two signs on mission street. the first photograph shows the corner of mission and spears. the new signs will be about 60 inches tall, five feet or so, 30 inches wide, two 1/2 feet. the sign cabinets will be aluminum and material painted in dark blue in color. the tenant name on the project sign has not been identified. this means for us a new sign permit will be required to add the name of the tenant once the tenant has been

identified and ready to move in. i know this is slightly different from what ms. sullivan stated earlier but this is what it is for and the rincon logo in name. once the tenant name is provided to us, a new permit will be submitted to the city. just to wrap things up. this is the other corner of mission and stewart. again, the top is the listing condition and the bottom photograph shows the proposed. existing condition. >> the 1021 is to install a sign above stewart street.

tenant sign. the new canopy sign will include a six feet tall wavy bar. both the wavy canopy bar painted in dark gray and the tenants name painted in white will be aluminum material. as i mentioned about the double sided projected sign once the tenant is identified, a new sign will be required to add that tenant's name on top of the waiveey canopy bar. the appellant is david osgood. david believes there should be no changes to the existing signs and no addition of any signs on the property. i understand that david has also expressed concerns about the two existing projecting signs on the property. these projecting signs he noted in his brief and presentations. he is concerned with are 25 feet tall and 5 feet

wide near the mid-block of the property of spears and stewart street. however, there is no proposal to alter or modify these two existing projecting signs and as such those two signs are not part of any permits before the board. as you heard from the project team, the proposed scope of work under these four permits complies with the planning code. article 6 of the planning code authorize the regulation of the signs. there is no limit to the number of signs that you can have on this property. and because the property is not within the vicinity of the school, park or rec's and parks facility or freeway, there is no limit to the size of the sign. as such, the proposed signs under the propose permits are no where remotely close to what

would be allowed by the planning code. because the property is in fact a designated city landmark, the proposed permit does comply and needs to be with article 10 of the planning code section 1006.6 outlines the regulations for a review of the landmark. the department believes the project proposed signs are appropriate, are consistent, and compatible with the character and signage features of the landmark site. according to the ordinance, the finding features to the rincon building and its exterior and the overall building envelope, scale and massing and the design of the street facade and the smooth and clean wall finishes and modern material. the proposed signs are in keeping with character of the property and will not impair the landmark. the existing signs

proposed for removal were installed in the late 1980s and early 1990. they are not historic features. thus the removal will not damage, destroy, diminish or negatively impact the design features or the landmark. i understand from reading the letters under public comments that there is objection to any modification, sign removal or new sign installation. there is simply no restriction or prohibition for any sign modification removal or new sign installation. planning staff reviewed and approved these four sign permits on the basis that the proposed scope complies with the planning code. specifically article 6 and 10. as follows, the secretary of the interior of standards of the historic properties and consistent with the rincon center master sign

program. no neighborhood notification is required and no hearing before the historic preservation commission is needed. while signs are routinely approved over the counter, buildings like rincon always require an approval and review by historic preservation specialist and they have a great deal of education and work experience and training in the field of historic preservation. they also meet the preservation qualification outlined by the secretary of interiors which is a requirement by the state to be a san francisco certifiable local government. these permits filed in 2021, our technical specialist worked closely with a team on the master sign program. this took close to a year to complete and only after the

program was approved by the department did the planning department sign off on the permits. in conclusion, the planning department request from the board to deny this appeal in that they were improperly issued. i also do want to note that i have the preservation technical specialist, rebecca salgado via zoom to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you. we have questions from president swig, commissioner lemberg and commissioner eppler and commissioner trasviña. >> if you want to modify this

building, you have to go through these hoops. if you want to change a facade on a window on a house built in 1847 that has landmark status. why this very important landmark, this is not a small asset, why do you skip? why do we have an historic preservation commission if the planning department can simply skip over them? >> well, i know that they meet every other week and they have a full agenda. so i'm not sure to answer your question what else they do. this is a review. >> this is not changing plumbing on the inside of an historic building. this is not a minor thing. this is a facade and something that everybody see's and for me, i don't understand,

i'm confused. maybe i'm naive. why on primary signage on multiple entrances, two which we don't know what the heck they are going to look like. i don't know why these permits are in front of us if you are telling us right now that you have to get another permit in the first place. are we going to be back because mr. osgood doesn't like them? i don't understand that. signs are important. right? they communicate the historic nature of an historic building because it's all part of the project. why is this in front of this body without a certificate of appropriateness from historic preservation commission? i don't understand

that because once you start setting the precedence for one building, let's go through every landmark building in town and just change the signs because somebody on planning staff says it's okay and does it without the body known as the historic preservation commission which is supposed to do all this from my naive only simple citizen point of view. >> that's a great question. the only answer i have is twofold. there is a delegation. the commission trust our staff. they trust their expertise, their experience, and they oftentimes take up the recommendation when there is a hearing to what they are saying. you know, there is a number of scope of work that we are okay with you handling administratively. you don't need to schedule these items and they outline the types of work that we can do without going through a hearing process. that was happening for quite some

time, and then there is the amendment in 2018, that spelled out in our code that says signs do not require any entitlement and therefore does not require any hearing before the hpc. so that's been codified. that's what we are looking at and that's what we are basically implementing. >> when they show up, i will remind you of that statement. i'm sorry. that's snarky from jetlag today. so the question that i had to the person, did they look at the file? what was the master sign plan in 1980 or whatever the year this permit

was originally issued? >> i can start with the sign program in 2008, the most recent one that we have. there was a master sign package and program reviewed in 2008. i will put this up really quickly. >> is that through historic preservation, i had to ask it? >> of course. it did because that was before the delegation and before 2018. >> okay. all right. we have an expert in the back of the hall who is going to comment on that. >> let me go through the program and it's not before the board but happy to provide some context. this is the 08 sign package and program that was reviewed and approved by the lpab, the landmarks preservation advisory board that predated the historic preservation

commission. at that time that program called out a number of new signs which includes those 25 foot tall projecting banner signs at both the location and the corner of southern corner of annex on spears and stewart as well as the northern corner on mission, that's spears and stewart. i believe only two were installed, and i believe mr. osgood is concerned with those the most. but this program, based upon what i can tell allowed for signs that are bigger than the one we are looking at right now in 2023. 25 feet tall versus five feet, that's a comparison i'm seeing

right off the bat. and the number, you have four here, four large signs are 25 feet, as all the corners of the annex. so while we are not talking about the 25 foot signs today, you asked about the historic photos of the historic of the background of the programs of this property, this was done by a replicable consultant in 08 and reviewed by a technical specialist in 08 and brought to the landmarks board in 08, and approved by the city. just to provide you that context. i do want to go ahead and make one other note. >> and you didn't answer my question. was there a master sign program that was created in when the initial building permit

was done in 1980 something. was there a sign program that was done in the context of the historical preservation that was mandated through the life of the building because i don't know, you are making the grand assumption that the 2008 action was done inappropriately too. >> i'm just reading what the file says. this is the file, and saw the motion and the date. in 1980, that's a lot harder because we don't have that information at our fingertips. i wasn't able to find a program for the 1980s, but it doesn't mean that one did not exist in the 1980.

if you don't mind, i would like to make one last comment as mr. osgood stated about your question earlier about the communication about the staff design program where he didn't get any -- that's not true, we have records, email and staff and mr. osgood and the design and the review and the master sign program. >> my concern is i have been accused that my taste is allen my mouth. so i'm not going to be subject to the accusations made by mr. osgood because my taste is all in my mouth and i have no other about the way that signs look. what i am concerned with is precedent setting and what i am concerned with and it

does not have anything to do with hudson, they are very reputable with what they do, etc. as i complimented the legal department on their brief. what i am concerned with is precedent setting and so the next group that comes in to a landmark building and goes through the same process and planning without the oversight of historic preservation, decides this sign is good too and changes the character of a historic structure. i would like this to go back to historic preservation so they can do their job. okay, when it comes back, the wavy lines are beautiful, there is no problem. it's the precedent, they jump

over without a certificate of appropriateness that really bothers me and sets the precedent for the future. and what i got from the city, i don't want to set this precedent. that's all. and do you have any feedback on that? >> i'm here to present you the information. it's up to you and the board to make that decision about the permit. >> all right. i have said enough. i'm being too wordy. commissioner lemberg, please. >> alex lemberg: thank you for your testimony. i want to thank you for going through each of the permits which i often expressed and i think it's a very valuable thing for all of us regardless of what the subject of today is.

i have a few things. first, i want to challenge a little bit of your interpretation of things that i heard you say. the first one being that there are no limits to the number of signs that can go on a building, but the challenge i want to make is that there are limits and that's the limits laid forth in section 1006.6 which have all of these standards but i have already talked about extensively. i don't think it's a good faith argument that you can put 80 signs on the rincon center and it would be acceptable by any standard. am i off base there? >> no, i'm simply talking about code compliance and i thought it was my responsibility to at least mention what standards and co-divisions we look at in signs and the projects. some codes have limitations as to the size

and some don't. i thought that was important information you needed to know about because of the zoning location that this property is in. >> thank you, and the other part i wanted to challenge a little bit is that there is no restrictions on essentially the entitlement process but that it is simply laid out in the code. is it the planning department's position that complying with the standards of 1006.6 requires any sort of explicit written findings or anything like that? >> very good question. thankfully we have rebecca salgado on the line. she was the technical specialist who

worked on the master sign program and can give you more of an overview of how she arrived at her determination. >> thank you. >> hi there. rebecca salgado, department of planning staff. to answer your question, for this particular scope of work, a written determination of compliance with section 1006.6 is not required. if the work did require a preservation entitlement at the staff level or at the hearing level where it would be reviewed by the hpc, we would prepare the entitlement that evaluates in writing the project against the interior standards for rehabilitation which are the ten points that was brought up earlier de do

have a larger document associated with them as well for national parks service, but each of the ten standards, is condensed into basically a sentence or two. if it's helpful, i can share those standards, but this work was reviewed under the guidelines of 1006.6, and it was my determination in consultation with other members of the preservation team within the department that these signs did meet the requirements of section 1006.6. >> so, to dig in a little deeper then, essentially, if we are going back to section 1005, 1005 basically says a certificate of appropriateness is required unless it falls under one of these exceptions, and one of

those exceptions as ms. sullivan brought up is when the application is for a permit to install signs or awnings provided that it conforms to 1006.6. i don't see how we can come to a conclusion that we are all good with the compliance with 1006.6 if there is nothing in the record showing that it is apart from, i'm not saying you are unqualified to make a determination like that, but what i'm not seeing is an actual determination, and please correct me if i am wrong, but this kind of goes back to the question i asked ms. sullivan earlier. is there something in the record in the planning department review that actually

states that these signs comply with 1006.6? >> yeah, i understand. i agree. it would be helpful especially in light of this appeal being filed to have written statement that outlines point by point compliance of section 1006.6. however, for those items that don't require a preservation entitlement, there are no documents that are provided that outline compliance. so that review was done internally, but there is no written document required under the code. >> that's where i think the disconnect is happening for me because i heard ms. sullivan and i just heard you say that this project was automatically exempt

from the requirements because it potentially falls under the exception under 1005 e 6. however what i'm not seeing is that it was exempted under 1005 e 6 and underlying as a presumption whereas this is actually an exception to a rule that says that every project is subject to receiving a certificate of appropriateness unless it falls under one of these exceptions. i need to see this exception being explicitly made or else what are we supposed to go on here. i just don't see that. if the argument if it falls under this exception, we need something in the record showing us it falls under this exception. >> i mean the assumption would

be that is signage and the code says that the signage is accepted. >> that's not what it says. it says the signage is being installed and conforms to the standards outlined in section 1006.6. it's not just signage, signage automatically exempted, it has to also comply with 1006.6. the argument that's being presented here kind of washes all over that by the permit holder and i'm stuck because we have to make a decision on appeal that to my estimation the permit holder has the responsibility to defend their position that they complied with 1006.6. i'm not seeing any evidence from the

permit holder or the planning department that that occurred other than your word on it which i appreciate, but also i don't think it's legally sufficient. >> i guess there would have to be a wide scale changing to our procedures to provide that for everything that is allowed under 1005 e to be approved without an entitlement for all the scopes to have this statement of compliance of 1006.6. that is not something we have right now where we check the box to state that it complies with 1006.6. >> sorry to add. i don't think it's the intent from the amendment of 2018 to streamline the review of these what we call minor scopes of work and delegated and trust the staff reviewing it to do the job in

adhering to the standards, because the background is in historic preservation. i know the ten standards because i was part of the historic preservation. rebecca, would it be proper for you to walk to the commissioners in your thought process with the preservation that complies with the standards? >> before you do that, i want to call out specifically in what section 1006 b states that the first shall comply with the secretary of interior of standards for individual properties and landmarks. when i googled that phrase, the exact phrase came up with the 172 page

document from the national parks service that includes several, on page 156 of that document stating things that are recommended and not recommended. why are parts of this document not relevant here? >> we are not saying it's not relevant, but when we do bring analysis, in this case we didn't do one because we weren't required to do one under the amendment. when we do one that's required, we go through the ten standards. we outline a response to each and every single one of the ten standards under the secretary of interior of standards to whether it complies or no it does not comply. i understand the text behind the standards are heavy

and thick, but we go back to the ten standards every single time. >> i understand that that may be indemnity practice but that's not what the planning code specifically states, unless i'm wrong here, but i don't think i am. i see all of these recommendations and i can see several different ways where at least potentially and again, i'm an enthusiast historic preservationist, not an expert, and in 2018 don't even comply with the landmark ordinance that was done with this property. i see the permit holders and permit planning glossing over this saying this is the way we do it and the way it's done but

not looking at what the code that actually requires the planning department to do. i'm not saying you are not doing your jobs well, i'm just saying the procedures the department has established for itself may not actually be fulfilling its duties and requirements. i don't know what the question was there, but what do you think about that? [ laughter ] >> i'm not sure i fully agree with you. i understand you expect a lot more in terms of a written determination. we are simply saying one wasn't required. it doesn't mean we didn't review it per the lenses of the standard and not concerned about the features of

the building and whether there was going to be damage and impairment. we are looking at all that and the year long review of the master program. i trust my staff, i trust rebecca. she has extensive training in historic preservation. i'm not so sure that going to hpc will, i'm just not sure. i don't know. it's really based on something you guys have to decide on. basically on my experience for how signs were approved, i'm beginning to wonder. >> one more related question to the 1980 ordinance landmark. the state of significance states, sorry, i lost it.

are merged with the then models designed with same detailing and the use of modern materials, aluminum, block and concealed and reflective lighting. going back to those blade signs, how did those signs comply with that description required in the landmark ordinance? >> i'm going to see whether rebecca has an answer for that. >> i can speak to that. basically with the review of this sign program, a big part of what i was looking for in compliance with the secretary of interior standards was does the signage allow for significant individual landmark to still convey its character defining

features, did us the signage does not obscure them or damage them. it was my determination in consultation with other members of the preservation team that having two five foot tall by three foot wide blade signs on the facade that is 275 feet wide would not be considered a significant detraction from the building as a whole, from that mission street facade. that it would be reversible, it could be removed in the future without causing damage to the building that couldn't be repaired. that's the matter. it is somewhat subjective. someone can make the argument that any blade find installed on a

building would significantly detract from the architecture of the building from the defining features. that was not the department's determination due to the features of this building specifically. we review signage on a historic building on a case by case basis. if it had a decorative facade, a much smaller facade, we would treat the signage differently. >> thank you. >> we have a question from

commissioner trasviña. >> john trasviña: i have questions and i believe we should give our questions to our deputy city attorney for a response at a later meeting because we are getting into areas where we are trying to parse together federal regulations, your practices, legislation passed by the board of supervisors, signed by the mayor. i think we have a number of inconsistencies. but i'm not sure whether we should at this point conclude that just because the historic preservation didn't handle this, that the analysis wasn't made or that it was made

less well. it's been described as we don't want to set a precedent. my question is going to be to you, ms. pam, is this precedent setting. my larger questions are whether this permit holder having met what appears to be the requirements laid out by the city, having met them, this having the expertise of ms. salgado and the planning department whether we should come in to say well, we don't think the process is right therefore this permit should go down. but all of those things are premature to getting some questions answered from the city attorney about the role of the historic preservation department. whether a written determination is necessary rather than a determination

based on the expertise of your staff. so my question to you is this precedent setting using your staff rather than historic preservation commission? >> thank you for your question. if i understand correctly, you are stating whether we have determination for all signs or just this one, and if it's just this one, would that be a precedent for us to do all the other ones? >> my question is more narrow. that is if we approve this permit without the involvement of the historic preservation commission, would that be setting a precedent, and then

second, as long as you brought it up, what would it take for your department experts to produce written determinations on every sign, historic sign to application? >> thank you for your clarification. i think the answer to your first part of your question is no because we haven't been doing the written determinations since the ordinance is adopted in 2018 and it's been five years that i know of that we are writing written determination for sign per compliance with the secretary of the interior of standards. if you approve these permits today, we are not going to be like charting new territory here. the second question, i'm not sure i can answer. i'm not sure i'm in the position to answer

that. that's up to the work policies in the department and we can consult the management in the department to see whether there is an interest and need to stop preparing written determination whether it's for certain projects or all sorts of projects even though it's technically exempt from the entitlement process from 1005. >> again, the intention of my question is to get the issues out there, and to really to take your department's take your time and the attorneys office to take their time to address the various different perspectives. in washington, when people are coming up with legislative intent, it's great. the people are actually here in the room that you can ask. i think it would be useful for the city attorney's office to get the relevant input from the supervisors who may still be here who wrote this and voted for this. i think it passed

11-0. to get their info in what was originally intended. that will give us an educated body of knowledge to make a decision on this permit. that would be my intention to get to the disposition of this matter. >> thank you. i'm going to rewind a little bit to my line of questioning about the limitation and historic signage even in the district of this historic building and relate to article 10. my question is, when we do the article 10 analysis, it's not on necessarily on any individual's

time, it's on the plan itself. the signage program, there is an article 10 analysis done on it, right? >> i'm going to call up ms. delgado to answer that question. >> if you can repeat that question. >> sure. the historical review is done on the signs for the program itself, correct? >> yes, they are all considered together. >> then as each sign comes up for permit, we then have the opportunity to assess whether that individual sign is consistent with the master signage program and determine that it may not be consistent

with either it or article 10. would that be fair? >> correct. and a big purpose of having a sign program to begin with is to have someone take a look at the building as a whole with some purpose to determine what amount of signage is appropriate rather than having a planner who has no prior familiarity with a property trying to make that assessment at the permit center. so the sign program is intended to set parameters for the number of placement, material, size of all future signage. if it doesn't align with that sign program, then you would have to go back and either reconsider the sign program or else not approve that sign. >> when a permit is pulled for an individual sign within the msp, do you review it again for

article 10 consistency, or do you simply review it against the sign program, or do you review it for consistency at all with either of those two? >> what typically happens is once the sign program is finalized and put on our property information map, then the preservation planner who is working at the permit center which is over the counter center will review it against the sign program with the assumption that the sign program has been already reviewed with 1006.6. they will not do a secondary review under 1006.6. >> with respect to the public and their ability to weigh in on a sign program or the determination made on a sign program really the first time they have the opportunity to have any real weight is with respect to any permit pulled

under the sign program, right? >> yeah, that's correct. any of those scopes of work that 1005 says can be approved over the counter. there is no noticing requirement, no review by the historic preservation commission required. so, the only way a member of the public would know about them is if they see the work happening or happen to be reviewing our property information map and looking at what permits were pulled. it's not a requirement for those scopes of work to have any sort of public notice. >> okay, thank you for that. slightly different line. let's say i'm trying to think through consequences and repercussions on decisions we've made on both sides of the cone. if we were to uphold the appeal

with respect to a single permit or if the msp doesn't comply, what happens next? let me see if this is accurate. the sponsor could start back with a new msp. that new msp process would go directly to planning for approval because it is not required to go to the planning commission under the 2018 amendment. so, it would go directly to the department for reassess but would go to the department for assessment, is that correct? >> that's correct under our current processes and outlined in the code. >> and then you would conduct your review and there is currently no requirement for you to issue any sort of written product showing how the msp complies with the article 10 standards, is that correct?

>> that's correct. >> okay. and then that would happen if we know it's having maybe someone is involved in the process but if no one knew it was happening internally, we wouldn't know again until a permit is pulled on the property, is that correct? >> yes, under our current process, that is correct. >> that could very well lead us to the same position we are in right now. okay, that's all my questions, thank you. >> the city attorney would like to make a comment. >> yes, i thought it would be appropriate to make a comment regarding the discussion. article 10 deals with preservation of historical architecture and that's aesthetic landmarks, and section

1005e 6, is very clear. it allows administrative review for signs and awnings provided the signage conforms to section 1006.6. so that particular provision, e 6 was added in 2018. it passed unanimously with the board of supervisors. the ordinance was 17918. what that ordinance cited was the housing crisis was that neighborhood notification was too time consuming, took up too many resources. and there were certain provisions understand that ordinance to planning, processes, permits that they exempted from historical preservation review. and one of those was of course these signs. so i do not believe under that ordinance and the ordinance is the best evidence of the legislative

intent. we don't need to speak to the supervisors. what we have is an ordinance that we take it for what it means and we have findings that provide some context and we have the language of the ordinance, and what the ordinance says is that there can be administrative review by the planning department for signs and awnings provided the signage conforms to sections 1006.6. now if an appeal comes before this board under this role under the charter, it has two options. it can either concur on the planning department or overrule the planning department. the other is there is not enough information. we already heard there was no finding as to this signage. but there is a request about the referral to the hpc. i don't think the code would permit that. the code

explicitly exempts a sign from that process. so the role of this board is to determine whether the planning department action was appropriate or not. >> let me ask you a question on that and this is confusing to me. i hear a noise coming. >> i think possibly it's the police station. so as you were saying, this was done in the context of housing crisis so that i will use the word, so the plow would be sped so that housing, that implies,

infers, to make one assume because of this housing issue happening. that is the disconnect from here. that this is that commercial use only and preservation landmark building. what the hell does it have to do with housing and the plow on speeding up more housing. i keep looking to the back of the room to a very patient president of the board of supervisors who i will ask ms. rosenberg to speak who was involved in this legislation. so my confusion is that this was citing something that had to do with a housing crisis, and this has nothing to do with a housing crisis. this is about signs on

our old post office that is a landmark by the city and the feds and what does that have to do with housing? zero. so that's why when -- we'll let the person that actually voted one of those unanimous persons, we'll let him talk about it probably in public comment. >> what the ordinance speaks to is the resources of the department that was involved, and the resources that it requires to go through public notification and all of the categories that then existed that required public notification, and so, to your question, as to how they relate, i think there's a determination made that there was a department that was overwhelmed and to simplify and streamline some of those procedures. there is very explicit language in the ordinance which we see now codified in 1006 e, and what

that says is, when the application is for a permit to install business signs of this code to a landmark or a district, provided that signage, awning and transparency conform to 1006.6. >> okay. if that's what it says. thank you for that. >> # do we have a rebuttal now? >> we have to hear from the department to weigh in. >> dbi again, i don't have much to say but there was a comment about the attachment and embedded in concrete and after a discussion with engineers, it should be a minimum of one inch

and up to four inches and well within the range here and the attachment is provided by our dbi engineers. i'm available for questions. >> okay, we are now moving onto public comment. if you are providing public comment, please approach the microphone. >> thank you, president swig, commissioner lemberg. >> richard swig: thank you very much for being here and for taking the concerns in this case

and sticking around for three hours to take this public comment. we appreciate your participation. >> thank you, president swig and commissioners. >> my name is aaron peskin. in 2008, i authored proposition j which is now in ensconced section 3.5 in the charter that created the historic preservation commission and offered the updates to the two relevant positions of the san francisco planning code to conform them with said amendment of articles 10 and 11 of the code. as discussed, i am also one of the 11 members of the board who in 2018, voted for the aforementioned ordinance whatever the deputy city attorney said. let me be very clear, this is to my mind

presidential. the reason i'm here transcends the instant case and i appreciate the very thorough deliberations and line of questions. i think you have gotten down to the issues. the 2018 ordinance that i voted for, first of all, all of the findings are about streamlining of 100% affordable housing and the ten articles have nothing to do with the streamline of residential affordable housing construction in san francisco. those were added and discussed at a very detailed level between my office and myself and the planning department, and were predicated on the actions subject to the existing codes setforth in article 10 at

1000.6. what i heard today is really quite troubling. what i heard today is the way that the planning department has errored in this matter that they have taken that and that is not the way it should be treated. whether or not they are appreciating the processing. the condition is that msp in 2021 really should have been brought before the historic preservation commission for a public vetting where you would have gotten letters from experts that appear in the file before you, christina madrid french on the historical heritage is a

qualified person from the california preservation foundation. i rest my case there. i think you should grant the appeal and i think the department needs to treat this very very differently and needs to take the master plan before the historic preservation commission which is the expert body on this matter where it can be publically vetted. it was never meant to be a defactor blanket condition. thank you very much for your time." and very thoughtful deliberations. >> thank you again supervisor for spending the time and waiting for this very valuable communication for us. we appreciate it very much. let's continue. >> thank you. >> did you want to take bio break. that should be priority. or did you want to finish public comment? >> okay.

if you would like to provide public comment, raise your hand. go ahead. you need to unmute yourself. press star 6. public speaker: i am strongly supporting each of the appeals and a potential continuance. the planning department has failed to document its decision, really? not in writing. speak urges the board to require the planning department to produce a written document. regarding the deputy zoning administrator's statement, this is not about trust. this is about transparency. speak would concur with board president peskin that this should be the board of appeals, should require that there be a

hearing by the historic preservation commission. the signs could potentially make the annex appear like a character of a landmark. thank you. >> okay, thank you. we will now hear from marie eliza. please go ahead. public speaker: okay, i'm going to associate my comments with those of the former public speakers, and i want to also acknowledge that coalition for san francisco neighborhoods as supporting this appeal. i believe that's all i need to say. thank you very much for taking this seriously. we definitely need to provide some support for some of what's left of our historic buildings. thank you. >> thank you. is there any further public comment, please raise your hand. i see some people in the queue, but no hands are raised. so i'm

assuming there is no public comment. so why don't we take a five minute break and we'll move ont >> okay, welcome back to the july 12, 2023, san francisco board of appeals. we are on 4a-d. we are moving onto rebuttal. mr. osgood, you may do your rebuttal. >> thank you very much. i believe this needs to be continued to the very least. the process is about as murky as

donald trump's business records it does seem pretty flimsy. i was looking at the report from staff and the final approval was nothing more than two sentences stating high tara, i reviewed the plan and should go to pem with no further comment. that's the approval. it seems minimal. i think you should continue it frankly because i don't think you know what you are voting on and it's not your fault on the

information that you have been given. i pointed to some of these. i don't know what the size of those blade signs are. i tried to show you the sign plan where there is two different sizes right next to each other. so i have no idea which one is correct. and there seems to be the process for the sign plans. it's also not clear and actually conflicting whether those blade signs are lit or not. in one place, and i'm

happy to share the documentation. it calls it non-illuminated and someplace else it says lit. so we need to iron out these things. i'm missing engineering documents. remember i said how many bolts were in there because it was in the original design plan and seem to mysteriously disappear and that is disrespect to you. show me any building in town that has this many signs on it. what is the deal? we showed you several of historic buildings that don't have any. that gets to the issue of

precedent. the bar association is in the old federal reserve building, and with a law firm and others. what if they want a huge blade sign now? which reminds me nobody addressed how these 25 foot blade signs were approved. apparently they are okay. i mean that's outrageous, and you know, this isn't my opinion really. you know that. it's not my taste. i keep hearing what i like or don't like. i don't think i ever commented on the style or the shape of the sign, anything like that at all. they are just

simply inappropriate for an historic building like this. pretty disconcerting getting back to the bolts. apparently dbi is now saying if i understand him correctly that the bolts can go in four inches. didn't he say that? tell me if i'm wrong. >> the permit holders are definitely giving, ignoring section 1006.6, but you don't need me to tell you that. as far as the need, i see this place everyday. i can't help to point out. they say they need

the signs, customers need them, etc. this food court, and i know some of you have been there, was packed at lunchtime for 30 years. you couldn't get a seat. i would go there every week and go to selma chicken. it was packed. that started to deteriorate before covid, and i mentioned bad management and they started their misguided remodeling. they kicked out two or three very successful food businesses, the korean place and

taqueria. for what? they jackhammered the beautiful marble floors which were terrific and they ripped out the wood panelling. this was one of the most beautiful food courts in the country. the water column was like no other in the country. and they painted over the mural. who does this stuff? they started kicking out people before covid hit, and that was a problem. asked about the sign problem and all of that got under the domain

of ocie and the planning department and there are very strong feelings about that. the point is when i went to planning, everything went to hell. that's when things started to deteriorate. i have got one more thing i want to share with you to keep things in perspective. >> pbs news hour: it is a hidden history. dr. brown has

more on the arts and culture series. >> this is one of the bridges that is still here. the bay bridge is an eight mile long connector between san francisco and oakland constructed in 1936 and now carrying a million vehicles a month. the historical geographer has also assembled a big idea. >> what this bridge is to me what could be done for big projects. >> big projects like treasure island and san francisco bay, the airport, the hoover dam and as well as yellow stone national parks and signs and gutters. hundreds of thousands of work leading to the height of the

great depression and the program and the administration and wp an and public works administration that were part of franklin roosevelt's new deal. in 2005, created what they call the living new deal. an online archive documenting projects in the country. >> what we are trying to do as geographers is to teach people about landscaping and trying to reveal an invisible landscape created by my generation and you don't see it. >> one is including thousands of murals like those at rincon annex post office in downtown san francisco. it started in 1941 by the russian painter. 27 in all of art and history of

california. they faced various threats over the years including real estate development in one of the most expensive cities in the world. rincon annex is one of the historic places in 1979 to preserve it ever since. >> the ethics were collected creating a real civilization, a society which everyone played a role. that's what democracy is all about. >> they have created a digital database including more than 7,000 in the state. >> there is no record, official record of what -- we are the first one. also geographer, professor at uc

berkeley and now director. >> you drive around. >> thank you. 40 seconds. >> i can't get this off my screen. >> this was just shown just last winter and i just want you to know there is also national attention on this building and what you are doing. so, i hope you will continue this. i hope you will get the process back on track and do the right that people want. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. we will now hear from the permit holder. >> >> good evening, commissioners, tara sullivan, for pacific properties. i'm not going to speak long. i

just want to say that over turning these permits would be precedent setting. the city has been approving signs administratively since 2018 without finding. i have worked on many of them with the planning department staff. i have many clients that have done master plan programs and individual signs all without the explicit written finding. they all meet the planning code requirements. they a you will adhere to the secretary of interior standards and do not of an impact on the historic landmark. these signs were found by rebecca at planning specialist to meet the standards. she did speak to that. the city attorney correctly clarified the intent of the board of supervisors legislation from 2018 and what can and cannot happen here. the administrative review, pacific is being penalized for following the procedures and laws that many of the property owners have

been doing since 2018. we respectfully ask that you do not over turn these permits. the admission of engineering drawings was not an intentional omission. i think it was left out of the larger packet sent out to you. mr. osgood says the building has too much signage and has too much clutter with signage. i want you to know that all the signs are pretty much existing and two new signs being proposed in this package. if these permits were over turned, the buildings would have the same amount of signage minus two. there would still be a lot of signs on the property according to him and we don't believe there is too much signage on the property. i would say that pacific is a good steward of landmark

buildings. they knew this was a landmark building and they take pride in historic lobby and murals and exterior building, they approached the signage here knowing it was a landmark trying to do the right thing by the landmark. we ask that you pull these permits. thank you. >> we have a question from mr. swig. >> richard swig: we have two smart people coming from two different directions. you being one of the smart people and the president of the board of supervisors. he's a pretty smart guy. i don't know anybody that knows the city charter, unbelievable. i'm a mayoral point of view and he didn't want me to do anything, it's not a conflict of interest. you used the word "sets a precedent". he

used the words "sets a precedent". i happen to agree and setting a precedent. it reminds me of marina boulevard where i live by the way, where the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. i want to tell you about 90% of the cars that go by my house go about 35-45 miles an hour and that has set a precedent. it's illegal. so how do you justify. and it may be and with respect to the city attorney, she gave her opinion, and with respect to the president of the board of supervisors, he created the legislation, argued the legislation, voted for the legislation, and i think contradicted the city attorney's

position respectfully. so, how would you help us argue the issue of precedent? is it just because everybody goes 35 miles an hour, to 45 miles an hour on marina boulevard, does that set a legal precedent, or should traffic motorcycle cops who used to be on marina boulevard when we had enough cops to uphold the law still be out there ticketing people for going 35-45 miles an hour, therefore setting the precedent which is the law? help me with this argument here. just because my feeling is, that just because everything you say, i'm not going to argue with you. you are right. you are smart. you did a great brief, your argument is correct. you have done a lot of things and you say

we set the precedent. i think you are going 35 miles an hour on 25, but i would like to you comment on precedence and why we should get the precedent back to where it might should exist. >> thank you, president swig. i think with all due respect to president, i have worked on the board and i agree he is very familiar -- on all the processes. i think multiple cities have looked at this legislation. it's not one person saying we are going 35 miles an hour on a 25. most of the people, when you go to law school and you take classes on how to interpret legislation. obviously, you look at the plain language of the legislation itself first. you go into the

record, and then you kind of keep digging further and further down. i think here, the plain language of the legislation delegates authority to the city staff to approve signs without a certificate of appropriateness if it meets the requirements. i think staff and planning staff have widely interpreted it that way. i know i have asked staff to consult with the zoning administrator to go over this in the legislation if there are any errors and omissions. he agreed. the city attorney also reviewed this legislation and code and agrees. it's hard to take that piece of legislation that was big but it did include a piece of code and did allow this to happen since 2018. the precedent has been set in that

everyone from the minute this legislation has been enacted and effected has been approving landmark buildings without a certificate of appropriateness because they think this is the way it is written in the law. >> i need some information from you. you just said they have been approving signage on landmark buildings. can you give me an apples to apples, that means red apple to red apple, an example. let me finish, please. you just said it, that you have been getting approvals, planning has been getting approvals on landmark buildings for signage and i would capture that implication as like buildings, can you please cite landmark buildings where signage has been approved in the way that you are asking for for this landmarked

building? >> sure, i can think of one where we went through the process with staff within the past year at 685 market street. it's also a large building, i can't give you another example of a like for like building. >> it is in san francisco. >> a category 1 significant building under article levan individual landmark under article 10. they have multiple store fronts and multiple tenants that go along market street down the alley. it is quite a significant building in the city. they administratively approved store fronts through an administrative certificate of appropriateness and we also received sign approvals through administration review without administrative certificate of appropriateness. that's the one off the top of my head. >> okay, was historic

preservation commission involved in any of these activities? >> the commission, no. because as ms. tam has said and i said, signs have been long delegated to staff for review. delegation staff has been able to do this without an entitlement. so the commission itself, no. they have not done sign review in many many years since i have been doing this, many many years, i would say at least ten plus before 2018. they have been delegating this task. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. we will now hear from the planning department. >> thank you very much. once again tina tam for the planning department. commissioners, i want to say thank you for all the questions. i really

appreciate it. it is very helpful for us to hear so that we as planner can do a better job. however, i can't help to go back on what our city attorney hubert said about the vast written language in the 2018 amendment. to reiterate what i said earlier, we did spend a year long process reviewing and working with the project team on the msp, the master plan, the master assigned plan to ensure that it complies with section 1006.6. the 2018 amendment did not state that a written determination is needed. as i expressed earlier, a written determination would be contrary to making the sign permits an otc review which is what the 2018 legislation was written and adopted to do. planning stands behind the review and approval of these

four permits. we followed the process laid out in the code. we had the appropriate and required planning staff, technical specialist preservation assigned to work on the program and the permits. and rebecca and myself walked you through even though at a very high level as to why we believe the proposed signs comply with the secretary of the interior of standards. the planning department did not make any errors in the review and processing and approving these permits, and i respectfully ask you to acknowledge the attorneys remarks that no entitlement and no hearing before the hpc is required to the 2018 amendment. if there is an interest in changing that, and it sounds like there might be, that change can be made through the delegate

process and can be moved forward with hpc. >> thank you. richard swig: i'm going down the same path with the permit holder with a different wrinkle. you heard from a member of the board of supervisors who created the legislation, who argued the legislation, and who voted for the legislation that the planning department errored. that's a direct quote. all right. and that's hard. you know, i don't want to bring god into it, but god, that's god. he created it. in this case, it was a he. and he created it and so he's pretty good expert on this

subject. so that's one thing i'm concerned with and i would like you to respond to even though you said you disagree. the other thing that was important is the evolution of this legislation. as the city attorney brought up and i questioned her on this, this is all about the speeding of the plow was related to housing, and as supervisor peskin pointed out, you know when we started on this, this was not about housing, this was conveniently added politically for really good reason and that is to accelerate house, but this has nothing to do with housing.

that's just been folded into the process, and you know, we go back to that wonderful word of precedent, and had we not mixed what bugs me here is i think we got mixed up. this legislation got mixed up in priorities and that it was originally created. i'm using the creator's word. he was here. the creator was here. we don't often get the creator. the creator testified and stated this is why we created it and it evolves because of other issues related to housing and therefore the precedence, he doesn't want the precedence set even though the permit holder has been doing

a 35 and in a 25 zone and we might as well keep doing it, the precedent has been set. first of all, what about that claim, you errored. the planning department errored. if indeed, the person who created the legislation said that you and your counter part, the planning department errored. please, would you comment on that, and then i want you to really again talk about where is the precedent? is the precedent that planning has approved a bunch of signs improperly and therefore it is a precedent and can we stop this improper and

start approving these correctly by planning. >> yes, thank you for the question. i did hear that the planning department errored but i did not hear the reasons why. he said the code said this and something else. >> i knew you went out of -- early. >> i'm simply going with what we have in the code and what this language specified in the 2018 amendment. i agree, i did hear him say it was an add on. i don't know, i wasn't personally involved with working on this legislation. i can't say for a fact that it was the case, but i

agree with ms. deputy city attorney jenny hubert to say that this was for the sake of trying to streamline important housing and now for the downtown recovery and to help alleviate the work load of staff to make it where there is an excessive or redundant processes and providing written determination sometimes or subjecting someone to go to hpc when it's not required would be contrary to that legislation just from the basis what i understand, that's what the legislation is for. >> commissioner trasviña? >> john trasviña: thank you, president swig. i will ask the

question again for the record. your staff did analyze this sign request based on the secretary of interior's standards, correct? >> yes, that's correct. >> so irrespective of whether you or the department disagrees with president peskin, if we sent this back to the department, can you envision what you would do differently? what would we get out of sending it back? i'm trying to get a sense of what that would look like? >> thank you for that question. i would probably ask you to give us more direction and clarity and what are you asking us to do to take this back and look at a determination. i would need a direction from you. >> that would be different. we

can send it back to say we need a written report on the evaluation, etc. and as we talk about precedent, that might set a precedent that every other sign application would require a written evaluation on a historical building. >> i believe so. >> thank you. >> thank you. to pivot off of commissioner trasviña's question and even though if were not to have a finding and continue this, would the department be able to provide written determination that is conducted with respect to the existing msp? >> we can certainly do that. i'm more than happy to do that.

>> and in commissioner's responses where the program has been approved in 2018 for many examples like for like, do you have any of those handy to tell us now, or if not, at such point if we ever deal with this again might happen? >> thank you. i don't have those examples off the top of my head. i don't work with the team or area of work. >> maybe your expert may have examples, please. >> hi there. yeah, i can speak to a few that i have worked on. i would say master sign programs are not extremely comment. i have worked on administratively sign programs for 120 stockton street which is an article 11

property. 114 powell street, 300 grant avenue, those are all article 11 properties. i don't think i have worked on an article 10 sign program. but they are not super common within the department. it's usually larger buildings that seek them out. >> and with respect to individual signs where you may have conducted administrative review, any significant signage there, maybe not an msp, but something that was difference and new perhaps. i'm just trying to get an idea of what the department has done in this program. >> you mean by reviewing signage? >> from historic resource.

>> from 2018 when we didn't require the entitlement? >> correct. >> no, we have internal sign guidelines that we use as a basis for review for article 11. we use that as a guide along with the secretary of interior of standards for review of signage, and if there is anything that kind of went beyond what those guidelines discussed, we would talk to it with a larger team and come to a decision about the appropriateness of that. but i'm not aware of anything that is really unusual. >> notable example that we may have seen as citizens of the city? it's okay if you don't. i'm grasping here. it's okay. >> yeah, most of the signage that we review, it's very

similar and kind of overall maximum size materials, elimination, placement. >> okay, thank you very much. i appreciate it.. no more questions. >> okay, thank you. did dbi want to weigh in in rebuttal? >> matthew green, dbi, i will be brief again. i want to address mr. osgood's questions from my previous comment. as approved, the anchor is two inches. to my comment in general for a six inch wall you can have 2 inch imbedment and it is designed for

two inches. i wanted to clarify that. >> okay, this matter is submitted. >> let's do what we do at the other end and start with mr. trasviña, if you don't mind. >> john trasviña: thank you to everybody for your very thoughtful presentations and on the phone and particularly planning staff. i see kids in the background and it's a late night for everybody. i also want to thank our city attorney. i do believe this does raise a lot of questions, but the questions i have, i don't think they need to be visited upon this particular application. we've heard that the planning department has done historical review, true. there is no written declaration or written determination. that may be something we may want to ask for. we've heard about the 2018

legislation. while we heard from the author or the creator, as i read it, it goes back to mayor lee's executive directive on improving the timing on process improvement and measures to allocate staff and resources to meet the housing goal, and then there is the follow-up, the general finding from the board of supervisors about streamlining the processes for the purpose of getting housing, the planning department and city resources focus on affordable housing. so i do see the connection between how the planning department has implemented this going back to the legislation itself. but we also have not just the creator, but there is one name on the legislation and that is the city attorney's office. the city attorney approved this form. the city attorney can tell us what it means. i think there is

a very substantial important question as to whether president peskin's view is what the supervisors did or city attorney's current view is what the legislation does, and i do think it's very relevant to have the testimony of both back in 2018 as well as now as to what they intended to do. maybe what they intended to do isn't what they did but they did that. for two reasons, to get a better sense from the city attorney's office as to what this legislation requires the planning department to do, and second whether there can be a more, an enhancement of the record as to what the historical implications are as to the proposed change. for those reasons, i would ask that we

continue this. >> alex lemberg: i'm going to concur with commissioner trasviña for similar reasons. i didn't bring up in the code for various reasons and nor was it brought up by the permit holder and the planning department. however, my very cursory recent reading in the last few minutes of article 11 shows that this should apply to this property as well. and article 11 has much more stringent standards than the ones we have been talking about here today. and it applies to title of article 11 is preservation of building of district architectural and historical and importance to the

district which is what we heard from planning is the case here today. section 11.6 of the code is much more different than 1006.6 we have been discussing all evening and contains significant additional content that i think merits discussion and research, and further discussion by this body. for that reason, i will definitely support a motion to continue. i also think it's important to have all five members of this body here to vote on this matter, because as president peskin and president swig have said as well as the permit holder as well this is precedent setting and i agree with this as well that it is precedent setting regardless of which side we come out of on

this matter. i think we should have frankly full briefing on the section article 11 issues too, which, you know, i don't know if it was intentional or not but the permit holder's brief did not include at all. with that being said, i was ready to and i know i didn't have the votes for it tonight, i was ready to grant this appeal in full tonight based on the fact that the planning department didn't have any written record of its decision-making process. that alone i think was enough reason to over turn all four of these permits without doubt to mirror the code with potential classes with the historical preservation guideline. i also want to kind of give a

shout out to all of the people who submitted public comment. it really does impact our thinking and our view on these issues, and i ask the city attorney prior to this meeting whether i had to disclose this and the answer was no and i'm going to do it anyway. the two gentlemen that was shown in the video the professor of the art berkeley department introduced me to this field study course. i'm a graduate and we spent two hours in this building and this building is special and there is no doubt in my mind that among many other buildings in san francisco is special in so many different ways and we haven't discussed the interior. that's not the issue tonight, but the need to preserve this building is a very real issue that i

think warrants consideration and even past consideration, whatever action this body can take to change policy and change the way things are done in city government to the extent that we have the ability to do so. with that being said, with my discovery of all the article 11 points, i would like to continue this meeting to where all the body of this commission is present and able to review all angles of the law. thank you. >> certainly, i support continuing to me because we will have another time to talk about this. if i take the law as it

is written and presented in front of me and take it to mean what those words say, it's true. we have two components here. is this a sign issue? yes, does it meet 1006.6, i think the answer is probably yes because i trust the people that worked on this. but with your accustomed to having that record that made that determination and i think frankly when that exclude a public from a process particularly when it's something that is a recent change that has excluded the public from a process which they were currently included where we can make the record with an informed decision at least makes our process more valuable and lends more credence to our process and

to that motion. >> i'm deeply bothered by the short sightedness by the planning department. the historic building is a historical landmark for a purpose in 1980 forever. there was no housing emergency in 1980 or wasn't recognized. but now we are letting a short hopefully god help us that this housing issue will be solved but let's not let it be mixed in to something that wasn't mixed in in the first place. this was an

add on. with all due respect to the city attorney, president peskin said it was an add on. did he say it was a bad add on? no, he said it was an add on for the right full purchase of housing. why should something which was landmarked in 1980, that would mean forever or with housing emergency or no housing emergency. we are starting to inconvenient the planning department to mix in what i think is a very temporary situation to something that had permanent. i think it has the word back to precedent. to

business folks, my family has been in the business and we are dealing with what is going on in the environment. i feel your pain. has nothing to do. you are great. you have a great reputation and doing everything right, unfortunately you are getting stuck in something that where one person feels something and another feels different. i was born and raised in san francisco. if something is created as a landmark and where if someone decides that we are in a housing emergency and because of that, we can do signage on the golden gate bridge that says come to joe's bar, are you kidding me? this is the precedent. i'm really sorry. i'm actually one of you. i'm in the commercial real estate business, but i'm

desperately in love with san francisco, and i want to protect the core values of this city, the core landmarks in this city from getting compromised in the short-term situation. legislation was one way, there was an add on for very good reason, housing. again, we'll solve it. we'll get through it. but hopefully maybe in 2030, the housing thing will be gone, but we still got your building which is a post office building which is a permanent landmark. this is a conflict. this is why i'm feeling the way i do which is in line with i think my fellow commissioners. so i agree with continuance and i really think the written documentation of the findings from the planning department are important for us to see, just like we see plans on a building and we approve plans on a

building when we are hearing about other permits. we need the documentation from planning. and i would ask planning to very much separate their view between what is the short-term that is right now, the housing emergency, and this other thing which is a permanent, a completely different chapter in a completely different book. that's my point of view. i apologize. you are like san francisco's worse, you are suffering from san francisco's worse nightmare. we can't seem to get away from our over politicizing and over stating but we are protecting san francisco and the core values and we don't want it to become a precedent like in front of my house. they all go 35-45 miles an hour and it is a 25 miles an

hour zone, and i wish the cops would get out there for the first 20 years that i have lived there to get rid of the traffic to comply with the law. i concur with all the reasons that we talked about is a really good idea. commissioner, trasviña, can you get some specificity with regard to what you want back and then make sure that our fellow commissioners are allowed to chip into what specifically you want to hear back so we can get this back on track? >> john trasviña: i would be happy to do so and knowing i need the vote from my colleagues to get all the suggestions and additions and given the lateness of the hour and looks like we are in a consensus to continue

this. i will not respond to some of the statements but it doesn't seem to me this is planning's doing. as i read mayor lee's directive instructions from the board. they make it very clear. they don't like all this money being spent on paper, newspaper advertising. they want something streamlined for the betterment of san francisco which is housing. i don't think the signs the signs that are at issue here are going to hurt san francisco's values or how we feel. the housing may hurt those values but i don't think signage is. in the spirit of moving forward to giving clarity to the city attorney and to the parties and anyone who is still listening tonight, i would move to continue this item to

july 26th. >> we are too busy. september 6th is our first available date where we are going to have all commissioners and a light schedule. >> unfortunately we have to move it there. i feel very sorry to the hudson folks. >> to september 6th for the purpose of receiving a report from the planning department on the determination of the impact, well, the determinations that has already been made on this permit application, and any other relevant resource considerations that may come up with a decision by us. and as also a report from the

city attorney on the consistency of the planning department's view of the 2018 legislation with the city attorney. does that encapsulate it? >> ask commissioner eppler? >> jr eppler: i would definitely want to ask to get the legal opinion from the city attorney and a planning department's opinion as well on the applicability and conformity with article 11 of the planning code that is of utmost

importance because we didn't talk about it tonight and i think that's important. there was something else i wanted to say but now the motion has been made. >> anything else you want folks to bring back to us? >> i have nothing else to add. >> alex lemberg: this is something i wrote down and didn't say but i do think it's relevant here. the real question before us with this appeal, i was fully prepared to demonize the property owners here and you did a great job. kudos for that. the question to me is not that, but really whether the planning

department should have requirements to show its work, to show documentation that support a mandatory finding that is required to exempt projects from historic preservation review, and obviously my proposal should be, but i think that's really the essence of this appeal, and of the precedent that this appeal potentially sets, and because of that, are i support commissioner trasviña's ask that in this case, the planning department does show its work because of the extreme importance of this particular property. i think that's in line with what you

said, but feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. >> your last request is beyond what i requested, but what's important is the deputy city attorney understand what we are asking her for. >> richard swig: i was originally asking is whether the planning department's process use on this department complies with the 2018 law and any other pertinent laws. your request is whether the written findings, etc should be read into the 2018 law. not whether it does or not, or whether it currently is or not. so we can ask for both, but i

want to be sure whether it is compliant and you want to know best practices. >> we are making decisions on the permits, not on the processes. >> of course. >> alex lemberg: and yet being the permits themselves we can't see that. >> i don't think we can direct them. >> i think part of -- >> richard swig: one of the discussions tonight is whether the planning department errored. and the planning department erroring would be what we could uphold of the appeal, and honor the appeal because the planning department errored. now, when we get further

feedback and information from the planning department as being requested by commissioner trasviña, and i think furthermore is being requested from commissioner lemberg, then, that supports an argument that the planning department may not have errored and therefore that doesn't become something for discussion. so i think is not about processes, it's about information that supports a standard that the planning department did not error and acted appropriately in making its finding. so that's kind of where i land on the subject of this discussion. >> i just want to clarify. i am not opposed to commissioner

lemberg's request. that is a good point. that may help us decide that it was a legal way of doing this and without that, we can't make that determination. >> john trasviña. . yes. >> richard swig. . i know you find it hard from your experience and i'm being very sarcastic at this point. there are bad actors that appear in front of us and there are bad actors that participate in developing activities not only in san francisco and in other places. i know that hudson pacific is not a bad actor, but let's say they were a bad actor, and they also had a building called the ferry building which is of a cherished level in this

city, and we have to be very careful, and it could be anything, right? if they owned coy tower. that if we are not very rigid on this, they will say well, we got away with this over here. this has nothing to do with you guys, the permit holder. i promise you. believe it or not there are some bad actors out there and we have to protect the city against potential bad actors, one of them not being yourself. so what we do here is really set the precedent for making sure that the planning department is doing the right thing, going to the right procedures, coming up with a balanced report in support of their act, and really prevent somebody from taking advantage of maybe a miss direction and doing it even on

another building. that's just my super paranoia of protecting the city. >> i remember the trump tower and it was too late to do anything. i would if i could ask the deputy city attorney whether the collective request is understandable and acceptable to her, and/or can it be improved? >> let me make one suggestion which is that given that we have a long period of time, what would be helpful to me is to have the parties submit their brief in advance and have this board the opportunity to review those so that the parties, the planning department is an expert on article 11, i'm sure counsel is as well. if they can address that question at first in

particular, i think that would be beneficial for everyone. as i understand it the question is on conformity to article 11. that is something where i would benefit from the position from the parties who deal with this day in and day out on to see what their analysis is. with respect to legislation, i understand the request for the opinion is on the consistency of the planning department view of the 2018 legislation with what is my own with what is happening and with the city attorney's view of this legislation that is required. there is one more piece i think from commissioner lemberg that i am not 100% clear on. was it were written findings could be required? >> alex lemberg: whether this body could require specific

findings for this particularly historically significant building as part of the condition for its continuance. >> okay. >> richard swig: so we have a motion for a continuance. you have a laundry list that we would like the testimony address at the time of that continuance, and we also have the suggestion from the city attorney that we might ask for documentation a little bit more advanced than we would normally receive it. so how can we get that done? >> first of all, why don't we ask the parties if they are available september 6th. >> mr. osgood is available. >> okay, thank you. for clarity, the deputy city

attorney was requesting briefs from all of the parties on these questions? >> i'm not sure mr. osgood could weigh in but he has an opportunity. >> alex lemberg: if mr. osgood wanted to hire an attorney that might be very helpful because it would be helpful to have both sides and also i might even ask for a request from planning as well. >> we are under a time frame for him to go out and hire an attorney, find one and get briefed. it's pushing it out larger. >> not a condition, just suggestion. >> okay, when would you want the brief by. the idea is to get the brief from the parties. >> deputy city attorney, it was her idea. so jen, when would

you find it appropriate based on your own direction to have briefs submitted in advance of the september 6th hearing? >> i'm looking at my calendar, and i think, it would normally be the thursday prior to the hearing. >> you want to review their briefs prior to you issuing. >> i think that would be helpful. we are looking at september 6th. if we had briefs two weeks earlier it would be august 17th. >> okay. so that would give you two weeks to review. >> yeah, and the board as well and if they have further questions. >> i mean, i think the board

would review the brief and your mo the friday before the hearing. they wouldn't be reviewing it two weeks. would that be okay with you, ms. sullivan. let's talk about how long you want the brief. is there a page limit? >> six pages, we want a whole new 12 page brief. >> if i understand correctly, there are a lot of requests for briefs from the city attorney and us, i would pause that a lot of it is for the city and not for us, but we are prepared to assist through the way in terms of pulling transcripts. you would have a written determination before the 31, the week before the hearing, is that what you are asking for? >> i'm asking for briefs sometime before the hearing.

i'm open to discussing what is reasonable for the parties. >> a month, five weeks would be great so we have time. >> i understand. i have been there many times. if the 24th is better. >> yeah. >> >> in the interest of mr. osgood, unless he wants to and having the briefs at the time they are made public is the important time. so he has a chance to be prepared to -- >> right, they will copy him on there. >> and make him, i mean everything we brought up tonight is about, did the planning department error or not. okay. i don't have an opinion necessarily one way or other.

i'm going flat foot on that. whether this sets a precedent or not, some commentary needs to come from the city attorney and from the planning department. the issues related to article 11, and article 10, that is something that the permit holders attorney can -- opine on. i'm sure she'll have an opinion on that and the district attorney will have an advisory on that and to support the findings is a simple request, put it in writing if that's what you are asking for, correct?

that is the responsibility of the planning department. i think we just, unless anybody has any other thoughts on who should write-up what, i think i just captured it, or did i fail to? >> i have two thoughts. one is on the last point, i also want to know the resource implications from the planning department as to whether we would require this as a precedent. >> john trasviña: second is that i'm uncomfortable advising mr. osgood that he needs an attorney. but anything we are asking the permit holder, mr. osgood should be welcome to provide anything as well, and any written submission he would like on whatever the date that we selected. >> alex lemberg: including the

historic preservation angle because i think that's who he represents a lot of. >> he's free to get other organizations or people who are similarly of his mind to write things for him or submit. >> with regard to the length of the brief, i don't think we should put a limit on it, julie, because we want direct answers. we don't want new topics, we want direct answers to specific questions. >> i think we should put a limit because we could get a 200 page brief. i think we should stay with 12 at least, at most, i mean. >> i will follow your advice and ask the fellow commissioners to follow your advice. >> can i just clarify what we are asking them to do because i know that the city attorney

wants to have a briefing on applicability and conformity with the article of the planning code and whether the process used by the planning department complies with the 2018 law, and additionally, we want a report from the planning department on the determination it made on the permit applications and any other relevance resource considerations that you have been making to approve the permits. do you want that as part of the brief? then you have two weeks to issue your opinion and that dan be part of the record. >> so this is a motion from commissioner trasviña? >> yes. >> what is the basis of this motion? >> john trasviña: it's 9:30. >> richard swig: the need to

have the information to make a good decision. >> okay. we are going to have 12 pages submitted due 4:30 p.m. by august 24th, all parties copied. on that motion, >> alex lemberg. . aye. >> jr eppler: aye. >> richard swig: aye. >> that concludes the hearing. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> # >> >> >> >> you are watching san francisco rising. >> hi, you are watching san francisco rising. reimagining our city. he's with us to talk about how

our library's economic recover. mr. lambert, welcome to the show. >> thank you. i'm glad to be here. >> i know it's been difficult to have books going virtual. have we recovered? >> yes, we are on our way. our staff stepped up big time during the pandemic to respond to the health emergency. since last may, we have been able to steadily increase in person access to library facilities. currently we are at 95% of our precovid hours of operation. in the coming weeks we are going to fully restore all of our hours. we have four branches that we are going to bring back to seven day service. they are currently operating at 5 days a week and we are going

to go to every tag line and i know all the foot traffic has not returned to san francisco, but our library is seeing a resurgence coming back. >> can we talk about programs after covid? >> absolutely, that is part and parcel of our mission. we were doing that work precovid and certainly the library stepped up during the pandemic. we doubled our level of programming for personal finance, small business help, jobs and careers. we have a dedicated small business center here at the library. there is a wide suite of programs that our librarian led. we have a financial planning day coming up in october and we have financial coaches that members of the community can come to the main library and take advantage of their expertise. >> i understand the mission is

in the middle of a renovation. how is that going and are there other construction projects in the horizon? >> yes, we have major projects in the pipeline. the historic mission branch library, carnegie library over 100 years old and we are investing $25 million to restore that facility. we are going to restore the original entrance on 24th street, the staircase from the lower level up to the grand reading room. we are going to push out on the orange alley side of the library and expand space for teens and children, we are going to create a robust community room, a multipurpose space. we are also investing $30 million in the chinatown branch, we are going to upgrade the mechanical systems to the highest level of filtration as we increasingly respond as

cooling centers and air respite centers and open access to the roof. it has some unique views of chinatown to create the inspiring space it is. >> i believe you have programs for families that have free and low cost entries for museum and zoos, is that correct? >> yes. it's a fabulous resource. go to our website. with your library cart, patrons, our residents can go to the public library and get passes to the museums, all of the incredible cultural institutions that we have in san francisco all for free with your library card. >> how are these great free services paid for? how is the library system funded? >> we are so fortunate in san

francisco. we are funded for by the library fund and those that taxed themselves just for library services. we also get a dedicated portion of the general fund. that together allows us to be one of the most well supported libraries in the nation. we have the third most library outlets per square mile of any municipality. all of our branch libraries have professionally trained librarians on-site. service that we are able to provide, the collection, we are a leading library in our country. >> that lead know ask about your biggest annual event in the city. how does the event work and what's happening this year? >> we are excited for this

year's one city one book. this is our signature annual literature event. we have everybody in the community reading the same book. this year's title is "this is your hustle" named after the pulitzer prize nominated and pod taste. this is about the population. one nice thing about this selection is that they are both local. we are going to have several weeks of programming, kicking off next month. it will culminate here in the auditorium november 3rd. so our library patrons will get to meet the authors, hear from them directly, and one other important aspect about this year's selection, we have our own jail and reentry services

department. recently the foundation awarded the san francisco public library $2 million to work with the american library association to shine a light on our best practices here in san francisco, and really help our peers in the industry learn how they can replicate the service model that we are doing here in san francisco. >> that's great. well, thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show, mr. lambert. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you, chris. that's it for this episode, we will be back shortly. you are watching san francisco rising. thanks for watching.

broadcasting and streaming this hearing live and we will receive public comment for each item on today's agenda. each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes. and when you have 30s remaining, you will hear a chime indicating your time is almost up. when you're a lot of time is reached, i will announce that your time is up and take the next person