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 queued to speak. we

will take public comment from persons in city hall first and then open up the remote access lines for those persons calling in to submit their testimony. you need to call (415)!a655-0001 and enter access. code 26628959697. and press power and twice. please wait for the item you are interested in speaking to and for public comment to be announced to comment you must enter star three to raise your hand once you've raised your hand, you'll hear a prompt that you've raised your hand to ask a question. please wait to speak until the host calls on you. when you hear that, your line has been unmuted, that is your indication to begin speaking for those joining us via webex, please log in via the link found on today's agenda and enter password cpc 2023 and use the raised hand icon to ask a question and you will hear a beep and then see a prompt that the host has unmuted you and

that is your indication to begin speaking best practices or to call from a quiet location. and please mute the volume on your television or computer for those persons attending here in the chambers, please line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. and again, if you care to state your name for the record, finally, i'll ask that we all silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings. and at this time, i'd like to take roll commission president tanner here , commissioner braun here, commissioner diamond here, commissioner imperial here. commissioner koppell here. and welcome back, commissioner ruiz. thank you. here we do expect commissioner moore to be absent today and welcome to the high school and university student interns occupying the rear few rows of today's chambers. welcome commissioners. first on your agenda is consideration of

items proposed for continuance. item one, case number 2022 hyphen 006707 for the property at 1240 stanton street conditional use authorization. it is proposed to be continued to october 5th, 2023. i have no other items to be or proposed to be continued, so we should open up public comment members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on their consent calendar. again, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. seeing no requests to speak commissioners public comment on your consent calendar is closed and it is now before you. commissioner brown, move to continue item one second. thank you, commissioners, on that motion to continue. item one is proposed. commissioner braun high commissioner ruiz high commissioner diamond high. commissioner. imperial high. commissioner coppell high and commission president tanner. i move commissioners up motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and we'll place this under your consent calendar. all matters listed here under constitute a

consent calendar are considered to be routine by the planning commission and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote of the commission. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission, the public or staffs requests in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this or a future hearing. item two case number 2015 hyphen 007816 seaway hyphen zero two for the property at 400 through 444 divided zero and 1048 through 1064 oak streets a conditional use and planned unit development authorization and commissioners. you'll be considered the revised or the amended motion that you receive today and was made available to through your correspondence folder to members of the public item three case number 2022 hyphen 00750788. buchanan street number 210 conditional use authorization an item for case number 2022 hyphen 006560 coa at eight buchanan street number 403 conditional use authorization item five case

number 2022 hyphen 0101498 96 casserly avenue conditional use authorization item six case number 2023 hyphen 000361c for the property at 6000. gary boulevard conditional use authorization item seven case number 2023 hyphen 0013978 2025 venice avenue conditional use authorization and item eight case number 2021 hyphen 007063 cour for the property at zero alamein boulevard tompkins avenue. also a conditional use authorization. members of the public or anyone for that matter. this is your opportunity to request that any of these items be pulled off of consent and considered at today's hearing or a future hearing. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no request to speak, commissioners, your consent

calendar is now before you. sorry. is that calendar. commissioner diamond move to approve the consent item? second, thank you commissioners on that motion to approve all items under your consent calendar. commissioner braun. hi, commissioner ruiz. commissioner diamond. commissioner. imperial commissioner coppell and commission president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 commissioners that will place us now under commission matters. item nine for your land acknowledgment. thank you. i've asked commissioner ruiz. we're so happy to have you back to share the land acknowledgment today. and we'll just give a moment for folks to clear out of the chamber before you begin. but yeah, it's great to have you here. thanks everybody. happy to be back. the planning commission

acknowledges that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the roman colony. who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the roman colony have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place , as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the roman colony community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. thank you. item ten consideration of adoption draft minutes for june 29th, 2023 members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on their minutes. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in

remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. i'm seeing no request to speak. commissioners, your minutes are now before you. commissioner brown, move to approve the minutes. second. thank you commissioners on that motion to adopt the minutes. commissioner braun i commissioner ruiz high commissioner diamond high commissioner imperial commissioner coppell i and commission president tanner i so moved commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. item 11 commission comments and question. commissioner diamond. thank you. i want to raise an issue that was brought to my attention by the division item we just approved. i was happy with how we resolve the divisive items so i didn't take it off consent. but it raises a broader issue that i think is appropriate for us to think about going forward. so as we get this increasing number of extensions, i believe that how

the property is maintained during this time period where construction is not occurring is critically important. in that particular case, the neighbors brought it to our attention through this planning commission. agendized item for the extension and ultimately a series of agreements were worked out that were in force that we will be able to enforce because they were adopted as conditions of approval. so i think it's worth some discussion. director hill, about how we proceed going forward. i recognize that every property is different. some are vacant, you know, some have dilapidated buildings on them, some are and better shape. so how do we as a matter of course , understand the nature of the property before the extension is granted? and it's particularly pertinent, i think that we think about this because later in today's agenda, in conjunction with some of the legislation, there is a portion of the

legislation that would have us delegate authority on extensions to the planning department. and so how do neighbors have notice of what's going on in order to bring it to our attention? i guess i'm thinking that, you know, a standard condition might be appropriate that, you know, that we broadly divide us to deal with different scenarios. but i'm open to anything so long as we're not asking neighbors to live with poorly maintained properties while the developer is trying to decide when he or she may move forward. i think. thanks for that, commissioner diamond. director pelosi, you want to respond? and i mean, i think we've we've spoken about this commissioner diamond and i think we can look at either a standard condition or a condition. we apply on a case by case basis for these projects. i was thinking about this when i was i was as i was walking over, i mean, to visit was in operation. when we approve this project, you know, it's not just during the extension that there were issues. it's been during

this kind of original initial period of entitlement. so i think we can we can look internally at either a standard condition or a standard condition plus some some things we may want to add on for vacant parcels to respond to this issue because i know it's been an issue and saw that saw the response from neighbors about to visit. and i think we have that issue elsewhere as well. yeah, i just want to make sure that we are not dependent upon neighbors to bring it to our attention. i feel like the we should be proactive in requiring and understanding the situation on these properties. and i'm requiring the project sponsors, you know, to undertake the appropriate maintenance so that the adjacent neighbors, you know, don't deal with all the negative impacts of poor maintenance in the city's got obviously rules around graffiti abatement and things like that. so let us work with with some of our fellow agencies like dpw and craft either a standard condition or a condition. we can use for these situations. thank

you. i would just add my voice to second that discussion as we go forward to make sure, because, you know, a property could be in one condition when we entitle it and change hands and things can happen and you know time goes on. so certainly looking forward to that. commissioner brown, i saw you had your hand up, but it went down. did you want to add something or are you all right? no, i was just going to ask that we as that standard language is developed, it would be helpful to understand to what extent some of this is just the responsibility, primarily through code enforcement and something that's already kind of on the books. but i am in full support of the idea of doubling down on on including conditions as well. thank you. great. shall we do the resolution now for claudia? awesome. well, it's my privilege to do a resolution recognizing claudia flores for her great work and contributions to the planning department. i'm going to read just a few parts of this wonderful resolution, but just suffice it to say, i don't think it fully covers the contributions you've made to this department, to this city, and we have been so blessed to have you on our staff and as a

part of a leader of this department. so really just so grateful to be able to offer just a few words, recognizing your service here. whereas claudia flores received her graduate degree from princeton university and her undergraduate degree from the university of california, berkeley, and. whereas, claudia has served the san francisco planning department for 17 years, both in the city wide and community equity divisions. and. whereas, as a mixed race mestiza female and immigrant, claudia remained respectful towards and anchored in the strength of her ancestors . and. whereas, the brazilian and innovative leader claudia brought knowledge to challenge the planning department's approaches that were harmful to our communities. whereas claudia was instrumental in the development and adoption of the centering planning on racial and social equity resolutions by the planning commission and historic preservation commission. and. whereas, claudia has normalized , organized and operational racial equity at the planning department such that the department can maintain this work beyond any staff's tenure

and therefore be it resolved, that the san francisco planning commission and the planning director expressed their deepest appreciation to claudia flores in recognition of her substantial work at the san francisco planning department and extraordinary service to our communities of color and low income communities. and for her leadership and mentorship of staff and the impact she continues to make in san francisco and beyond, and wishes her every success in her new role at the city's office of racial equity. so i hope we'll break from protocol a little bit just to give claudia a round of applause. and i'll make space if other commissioners or other staff would like to say a few words to claudia director ellis i just want to add my thanks and congratulations. claudia is moving on to do the similar work that she's done for our

department, for the city, for the entire city. in its appropriate. i mean, we're going to miss claudia extremely at the department and the work she's done. but she's. she's taking that that role on citywide. and, you know, you called out the work she's directly done like map 22 in our equity plan. but i think a lot of the things you are seeing today or taking on because of the work claudia claudia has done, whether it's our housing element or our community equity division and the work we're doing in communities, she's really led the way. so i just want to add to my thanks and appreciation for all her work. and she's a great person, so we will miss her here. here maria medium planning department. i just want to join this. thank you. and recognize claudia for her resilience. she started this work when things were not that well established for opening the road and for having this delicate conversation with

community folks and with staff as well. thank you. thank you, commissioner. imperial yeah. um, first of all, congrats. moving into a different department and also congratulations to all the contributions that have that you have contributed to the planning department and to the community before coming to the planning commission, i know more you as on the community side and it is a demonstration of your partnership that you really want to work with the community. and that speaks a lot to me personally. so congratulations on your next endeavor and planning department is going to miss a ton, but you left a lot at the same time too. so we're actually, since you're here, wonderful. well claudia, do you want to say anything on your own behalf? you don't have to, but just want to give you an opportunity if you'd like to. yes i had all these plans and then i continue. so i forgot

what i was going to say. but the main thing i want to say is i, i, you know, i'm really from a strong belief that, you know, we just come from our families and our communities. and i just get emotional. so i well, i appreciate it. and i take all the accolades. like we really couldn't do a loan like this work, you know, was started like mission action plan. it was the community that asked for it. and we just like stepped up to serve the community and we had the support of our leadership. formerly or our former director or current director. same thing, racial equity plan. it was a collective staff effort. you know, i just inherited a baton and i was proud and happy to continue it. and i also just appreciate, i think, what kept me in the agency for 17 years is just the people, right? the it's the people that are committed to the city and just dedicated to making san francisco a better place, a livable place, an equitable place. i appreciated

the commission's leadership and supportive staff work. and you've been charging ahead alongside with staff. let's try something risky. let's try something new. it's the right thing to do. so i appreciate the thanks, but i think it's all of our effort in. i'm happy to some of my new team members are here. thank you to for all of us to continue this work together. so thank you. spoken like a true community builder and i still will say i know personally from working alongside you the role that you have played, the leadership that you show having hancock and sometimes repeatedly , maybe for over 17 years, and being sorry, my microphone currently goes in now, but is it on? hi. okay, here we go. i don't know what i said, but hopefully you heard some of it. the main point is that, yes, it's a collective effort, but hopefully you can bask a little bit in your accomplishments and we're so happy you're not going

very far. so great. and i'm going to come down and give you this proclamation. if there's nothing further, commissioners, we can move on to department matters. item 12 director's announcements. good afternoon. welcome back. commissioner ruiz. today is also , you know, we're recognizing our, as jenna said, our future planners. so our interns are here today. if you all want to stand up, that would be great. don't be shy, steve. vito, stay seated. so, yeah, so this year

we have 40 planning interns for this summer. all of all are being paid in generously. thanks to san francisco's minimum wage ordinance. six teen college interns, 24 high school interns for the college internship we received over 900 applicants and letters of interest. so it's a it's a great relief cloud crowd. who's here? they're working on all facets of what we do from housing element implementation to making recommendation to make the mills act more equitable. historic resource contact statements parklets transportation element. et cetera. so a ton of great work they are doing in our young planners program, which is the high school program we've grown over the years. again now 24 interns. so i want to thank opportunity for all, which helps fund the high school, the high school program and our focus is on san francisco, san francisco public schools. so it's been a

great partnership with with opportunities for all in our high school interns. i want to thank commissioner chan, who is here and kind of led the effort and pushed us to advance that program and make it more robust. i know when i was in high school i had no idea what a planner did, but i loved cities and living in cities. and so hopefully this is giving those our high school opportunities to kind of know what we do and how they can be the future. claudio flores is impact communities and work with communities on their dreams and hopes for the city. so thank you. i also wanted to recognize tina tam, who runs this program on top of her job also is a deputy zoning administrator and does a wonderful job in in making this a successful program. so thank you, tina. well, it's really great to have you all here. are they going to say for the entire hearing or just a little bit? you don't have to. you i will tell you this one story. my very first job out of grad school i

had was in a program, a government program, and i had to go to every city council meeting for a year. so i learned a lot. look where i am now. so just to say stay around, you might learn something. but seriously, welcome to the department. hopefully you're having a good summer and we just hope you learn something, whether you decide to go into planning or just learn how to be an engaged citizen involved in planning and land use. this stuff affects you, whether it's for your job or just for whatever city or town or even rural area you live in. land use and planning is all around you. so again, welcome and thank you, tina. i know this is a lot of work, but you do it as a labor of love. and thank you so much for your service again. yeah we broke protocol twice. i know. no more clapping after this. okay everyone okay, commissioners. item 13 review of past events at the board of supervisors. there is no report for the board of appeals or the historic preservation commission . good afternoon. committee owners dan snyder with the department of staff. i am here for aaron star who can't be with us today. we had a very, very,

very busy week at the board. i'm going to give you a high level overview. if you have any questions afterwards. i'm happy to answer at the land use committee this week, the first considered changes associated with the port's waterfront plan. update these changes refreshed portions of the general plan they expanded the waterfront sud and they adjusted the dock. the waterfront design advisory committee commissioners, you considered these amendments on april 20th and you recommended approval. the committee echoed your action. they had no comments. they had no question as no one spoke during public comment. and they did recommend that the full board approve these items. subsequently, the board considered excuse me, the committee considered supervisor preston's planning code and zoning map changes related to the tower. at 98, franklin specifically the height of that tower and the associated off site affordable housing at 600. mcallister you heard this item in the spring. on march 30th, you voted to recommend approval

here. two members of the committee echoed your actions. no questions, no comments, and they are unanimous. we voted to recommend that the full board approve the item, which is also right now at the government audit and oversight committee with the board today. so that's making its way through the process rapidly. the committee subsequently considered president peskin ordinance that deals with health services and the polk street and cdd, as well as tobacco paraphernalia establishments. and it would do some cleanup on that front. the two of course, not being directly related. you heard this item on june 15th. you recommended approval at the committee. supervisor preston signed on as a co-sponsor and the committee recommended that the full board approve this item. it went as a committee report on tuesday. we'll talk about that in a second. last mostly at land use, the committee did take up supervisor melgar family housing opportunity sued. in broad

terms, this is a proposal that, you know, of course, it would increase housing density and ease restrictions in well resourced neighborhoods while also subjecting new enabled units to rent control. for the most part. you heard this item on june 1st and recommended approval with a number of modified occasions. i'm happy to say that nearly all of these modifications were incorporated by the supervisor. there was a good deal of discussion. there were some additional changes made generally to enhance tenant protections, to apply a bit more scrutiny, to demolish one of two unit buildings and also to protect historic resources. at the hearing, supervisor and guardian described his package of further amendments that would allow bigger, denser buildings on corner lots, just as he did at this commission earlier this summer. public comment was plentiful and it was a mixed bag. ultimately, the board voted to duplicate the file, the duplicated file will include supervisor and guardian amendments, along with some

other changes that will come back to you. commissioners the original file itself will be continued rather. was continued to next week's hearing to proceed through the board review process and with that the full board also heard two items of note to you. the first was the amnesty program for existing unpermitted awnings. this was sponsored by the mayor, by president peskin and by supervisors chan and preston in this past on second read heads to the mayor's desk for signature and on first read. the board also passed president peskin parks, street, tobacco and health services matter that we talked about earlier in the report. that's all i have, commissioners, thank you for your time. happy to respond to any questions. are there any questions? great. thank you so much. commissioners seeing no questions, we can move on to general public comment at this time. members of the public may address the commission on items

of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items with respect to agenda items. your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes and when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit. general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward and line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. come on up, sir. good afternoon, madam president. commissioners my name is mauricio chavez. i am one of the new organizers here in san francisco for carpenters local 22. i represent the 3000 plus members who live and work in here in the city, county. i grew up in oakland. i'm a bay area native and i wanted to come and share with you the importance of labor standards.

we'll call them labor standards, right? because we believe everybody should have these standards, apprenticeship, health care, retire payment, as well as a wage that one can support their financial responsibilities with, without having to go to the government for help, without having to reach out for a handout. our apprentices are trained at state of the art facilities throughout northern california for that being fresno, fairfield, morgan hill and pleasanton. they're trained in the most up to date. the most up to date technologies . building. i'm sorry, and as they progress their apprenticeship, they create these rules that last a lifetime and they learn things on the job site that one could never learn in a classroom. the health care benefits that prior generations have fought for and earned allowed my wife and i to get our

son the help he needed. we didn't know what was going on, but he has the adhd and we got him the help he needs and he's done a complete 180 in school. he's not getting sent home. he's getting a's, is only a second grade. we have a pension and an annuity and retirement system set up so that i know i don't have to work until i drop dead on the job site. i don't have to work until i'm 80 unless i want to. which come on, we know 55 and i'm out 20 more years. i know, but honestly, being able to retire with dignity and knowing that there's a light at the end of the tunnel is as the president said, it's a blessing. it's a true blessing. i will circle back next week when there are other items on the agenda that we probably will speak on.

but i just wanted to come and introduce myself. i'm the new guy in san francisco, so you'll be seeing a lot of me moving forward. and with that i say thank you. thank you. see no other members of the public coming forward in the chambers. let's go to our remote callers. oh good afternoon. hi. it's georgia. welcome back. commissioner ruiz. um, i sent an email for general public comment about the john king article about the sunset district contrast, which is very interesting. i would also recommend if you didn't see it and i recommend to anybody who's listening to check out the website and, and yes, i do read the sf website and they had really a detailed description of this contest winners in there. it was very interesting. i just

make a couple of comments. one of the contest winners was on the corner and they talked about it could be three units and that reminded me of something i've talked about repeatedly, which was 1647. sanchez which had demo calcs that were extremely, extremely close to the thresholds. and it's one of those things that is the exception that proves the rule that the couch should have been justed and things should have been torn down instead of a mega-mansion that still has not sold like 9 million, 8.5 million, i forget. still there's not sold three units could have been there and maybe they'd be occupied now instead of a couple who developed it and said they want to live there and didn't, they went on to another project. the other thing i'll talk about that i that i that struck me with looking at some of these, especially the one that the winner in the contest was the exposure. and if you look at the rendering in the in the paper and then the website, it helps it their next door to a single

family homes with just one story of a garage. um so they're taking advantage if you want to think about it and that they're taking advantage of the private property to get good exposure and it's kind of similar to what happened at the washington street thing with the ten units that people are upset about that has exposure due to the fact of the public space. so it's just something to think about going forward with all these these prototypes and contest winners and what's going to happen on the west side or what may happen on the west side. anyway, thanks very much. uh, take care. have a great day. bye. did you. okay, i'm gonna call. afternoon commissioners. this is anastasia of annapolis with san francisco tenants union. and the rates and equity coalition. i want to call

to your attention the fact that you know that there is a pressing need for 46,000 affordable units to be built in the next eight years of this cycle. um, it seems to me that when the last time there was general public comment, many people brought up the fact that we need more affordable housing the way that commission president tanner addressed this issue was to acknowledge, yes, affordable housing. she turned to, um, the director hillis, and says, do we have affordable housing in our inclusionary? he says, yes, we do. well, come on, give us a break. there is just a small sliver of affordable housing in the inclusionary formula which will be lessened

if you look at the agenda for today and this is not adequate and you need to balance each developer giveaways with make more affordable housing. and this is not being acknowledged by the planning department. thank you. okay. last call for general public comment seeing no additional requests, i want to acknowledge commissioner diamond. i think wants to speak as well. um, mr. comment about the sunset design contest reminded me that i should have asked this question during general public comment in that article. they juxtapose those proposed designs with the slow garden centered design and i don't know about the rest of you commissioners, but i am getting nonstop questions about that particular project. commissioner, director hillis is

that project going to be in front of the commission at some point? i i just not as it's proposed. so it's not code, it's not compliant with either local law or state law. we've let the developer know through a planning letter that it's not into revise the project so that the base project is code compliant and then they can utilize the state density bonus. they've yet to do that. so there is a hearing at the board of appeals on kind of questioning our analysis of what's compliant there. next wednesday. we're fairly confident that the board of appeals will uphold our our determination of that. and so, no, it won't be before you because it's not a code compliant project that needs your that you could approve. they appealed the plan check letter is that what they approved? the zoning administrator is determined on bulk kind of what they could build as a base project there. so that's that at the board of appeals on wednesday if they do come, assuming that that all proceeds as you're anticipating and they come back with a

redesign, it's still a state density bonus project would have come in front of us in light of all the new rules we currently come in front of you. if the rules change, it may not. but again, it's not a compliant state density as part of. i should also note on that george brought up the design competition. i was in the san francisco bay area that held that competition will send you a link. mr. winslow, who you've seen before here, sat on the panel to select the winners. but i think it was a great exercise and we can send you more information on it. yeah, it was a really interesting article, so i'd love to see the have the link access the rest of the documents. absolutely thank you . okay commissioners, with that general public comment is closed. we can move on to your regular calendar item 14. case number 2023 hyphen 005431. pca the commercial to residential adaptive reuse in downtown economic revitalization planning code amendment. good afternoon, commissioners president tanner lily langlois planning department staff. the item

before you is the commercial residential adaptive reuse in downtown economic revitalization legislation. this legislation was introduced on april 4th by mayor breed and president peskin board file number 23 0371. the legislation was heard at the planning commission on may 4th and the commission recommended approval with modifications. that ordinance passed on second reading on june 27th at the june 12th land use hearing for amendments were proposed, and since those amendments were not discussed at the planning commission hearing on may 4th, they are now before you today. those four amendments include waive off street loading requirements for commercial to residential adaptive reuse projects, allowing pre existing garage entries or driveways to remain on transit, preferential streets for commercial to residential adaptive reuse projects. third, exempting existing signs and c two zoning districts east or fronting franklin and north of townsend from planning code section 604 previously this exemption had

been limited to the c three zoning districts, so we would expand this exemption to also include the c two zoning district portion of the c2 zoning district and the fourth amendment is to increase the threshold for projects subject to the 2 to 1 commercial to residential use limits in the c30 sd district from. 15,000ft!s to 20,000ft!s. currently, the planning code, section 248 requires that in the transit center commercial special use district, all new developments on lots larger than 15,000ft!s shall include two square feet of commercial uses for every one square foot of residential uses . and this amendment would increase that threshold for projects for this requirement, the department recommends approval of these four modifications. there's just a technical modification that we wanted to clarify on the ordinance on page two to specify that the zoning district should be c three osd rather than c three zero. that concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions. thank you. thank

you. with that, we can take open up public comment through the chair. each member of the public will be provided one minute. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no one in the chambers coming forward. let's go to our remote caller. good afternoon, president tanner and commissioners, this is jake price calling on behalf of the housing action coalition, calling in support of this legislation with the proposed amendments. we know that office to housing conversion is not a silver bullet to solving our housing crisis, but it is definitely a part of the equation and we're happy to see this effort moving forward, especially we want to give consideration to the fact that our office buildings are some of the most transit oriented

locations in the cities, in the city. so we're excited to see this moving forward and hope that you move forward with it today. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. oh we have another caller. ms. natalie natalie, jane, natalie, this is jane anatoly with san francisco, yimby. good afternoon, commissioners. just also want to express my support and echo a lot of what jake said. there's no silver bullet to our housing crisis, but it's great to see that we're taking some proactive steps to rethink how we're using some of our commercial, and we think that this will be an important component. thanks okay. final. go ahead, caller no

, change their mind. okay. final last call for public comment. seeing no request to speak, public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. thank the supervisors again for sponsoring this and this legislation. thank you, ms. langlois, for the update. any comments, questions, motions from commissioners? commissioner diamond move to approve second. with staff's modifications. very good commissioners on that motion then to approve with staff modifications. commissioner braun. hi commissioner ruiz. commissioner diamond. hi commissioner. imperial high commissioner coppell high commission. president tanner high. so move commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. when will allow place you on item 15 for case number 2023 hyphen 005422 pca for the inclusionary housing and development impact fee reduction in planning code and administrative code amendments.

i believe you're in for quite the presentation. so buckle up. yeah just control it. just. good afternoon, president tanner and members of the commission. kate connor, planning department staff. you have before you an

ordinance sponsored by supervisor peskin and supervisor safai to reduce the inclusionary housing rates as well as impact fees for projects of a certain size during certain time periods. today we are joined by supervisor peskin ted conrad from the mayor's office of economic and workforce development and ted egan from the comptroller's office. before i begin my present in each of our guests have some opening remarks and the proposed about the proposed ordinance. and ted egan will provide a summary of the findings from the technical advisory committee or the tac after that, then i will start with my presentation with that. i think we'll start with ted conrad. good idea. yeah yeah.

good afternoon, commissioners. ted conrad from the office of economic and workforce development. thanks very much for having us. um, i will leave the discussion of the details of the proposal to the planning department staff here today, but just wanted to come and help provide a little bit of context. this is a really important piece of legislation. we see this as being complemented by the next item that you'll be hearing, which is focused more on impact fee reform. but both items we are discussing as the housing fee reform plan. both items here are really focused on making sure that our fee is action structure is appropriate for the economy we're in and helping to facilitate us meeting our housing goals and facilitating our economic recovery. the excuse me, the as you'll hear

from the city economist ted egan, this piece of legislation is implementation of the recommendations made by the tac. i'd like to thank all the tac members and staff on their work to make those recommendation lines. the analysis is thoughtful and the recommendations are sound. this this legislation is the biggest single, the biggest. this legislation is a reduction to the biggest single lever that we have to pull to improve housing feasibility. and i'm really excited by the potential impact of this legislation. i want to point out in particular the relief that this legislation provides for the pipeline projects. it will help improve feasibility for those projects and speed their delivery. this is the single fastest way that we can help meet our rina goals and stabilize housing costs in san francisco. thanks very much. i think with that, i'll pass it off to board president peskin. thank you. welcome, president

peskin. thank you, president tanner. commissioners aaron peskin sponsor of the legislation that is before you with a little bit of legislative and policy history and background sound dating to the beginning of this new century that we're about a quarter into a pretty quick which is that in 2001 the board of supervisors under the leadership of then supervisor mark leno, passed the first inclusionary law in san francisco, i believe it was then section 315 of the code that had a 10% threshold allowed for buildings of ten units or more. by the time i left office the first time, at the end of 2008, that had grown to 15% coming out of the great recession. as we now call it that number was

reduced to 12, which was probably the right economic move at the time. um, but unfortunately we ended up being put before the voters and frozen and made static in the charter where during good times the number could not be increased during bad times, the number could not be decreased. and in 2016, then supervisor kim and myself teamed up in a majority of the board, put a charter amendment on the ballot that took that out and returned it to where it should be as a dynamic ever changing number based on interest rates, the cost of construction, the cost of labor, the cost of land and what the residential market on the rental and for sale side looks like. that resulted. and by the way, at the same time, we passed a ordinance that the board of supervisors that for the first

time created some measure to the madness, put the controller in charge of overseeing a. an economic assessment and report created a technical advisory committee of experts, appointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors and that process went quite well. coming out of the 2016 election and the inclusionary rates that we have today are a result of that process. which process pursuant to the legislation that jean kim and i passed, was meant to last for a 36 month period. and were it not for covid in 2020, we would have undertaken this. we were very public that we were not going to undertake that in 2020 or 2021. the controller had bigger fish to fry, as we all did. so we reconvene on the tac process. the board appointed its appointees, the mayor appointed theirs, the controller worked with century urban to come up

with the study that not so shockingly tells us that not much, if anything, is feasible in today's environment, and that resulted in the recommendation from the tac. and more important , a series of very collaborative , very open, consensual conversations between representatives of the market rate housing development community, the affordable housing community. i want to thank and acknowledge those individuals that participated and representatives from the controller's office and mr. conrad and topia from the office of economic workforce development that ultimately informed the council central legislation that is supported by myself in my capacity as president of the board of supervisors and mayor breed, which we commend to you and has a number of process changes that ensure that this process actually will happen in another

three years. and i should also just say by way of full disclosure, that this is this inclusionary legislation that is before you is inextricably linked to something that is not before you, which is a march of 2024 affordable housing bond that this supervisor and the mayor support to bring before the voters of san francisco. that will more fundamentally address the 46,000 units or at least a small portion of the 46,000 units of affordable housing that we are mandated and need to build. so that that is the other part of this package. and i just want everybody be clear that we're all rowing together in the same direction on that. and i am available to answer any questions. but as to getting down into the details, you have a comprehensive and thorough staff report before you

and representatives from my office and your staff that can attempt to answer them and i appreciate your consideration and deliberation. thank you so much. and now we have ted egan from the comptroller's office. good afternoon, commissioners. ted egan from the comptroller's office. i have copies of the final report that summarized the research that our office did with the tac, and we issued at the end of last month. for your information, and i will briefly present some of the highlights of the work that we conducted with the tac during last fall. in the spring. if we could go to the slides, i apologize for my outdated technology, but that's how we do it in our office these days. as i figure, if we go to the overhead, the overhead, that's what it's called. thank you. so as you've heard, section

five for 1510 of the planning code requires the comptroller's office every three years to conduct an economic feasibility analysis of the current inclusionary housing requirements. and as president peskin said, this grew out of the revision to the process of setting those inclusionary housing requirements. that was set in 2016 and 2017. so last year our office contracted with century urban and we reconvened the technical advisory committee that we work with after they were reappointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors. we had four meetings with them where we reviewed the analysis that century urban and their subcontractor tbd consultants, who are a construction cost estimation firm, presented you have in front of you the final report that we issued on february i'm sorry, june 30th. so so our basic approach was to work with five construction

prototypes. we cannot assess what the maximum inclusionary required that every potential project in the city could could sustain. so we work with a variety of construction types and a number of financial scenarios and came up with essentially 20 models against which we assess the feasibility in the current market. given today's inclusionary housing requirements. and those prototypes were a low rise, type five at 55ft, a mid-rise type three at 95ft, a high rise, type one at 135, another high rise at 245, and a small low rise type five with 45ft cases, one through four were the same ones which we used in our 20 1617 inclusionary analysis. for each of those prototypes we looked at for potential ownership or financial scenarios, an apartment building as an apartment and not using the

state density bonus building as apartment. but using the state density bonus and similarly for condominiums, a non state density bonus and a state density bonus variant. so that gave us 20 scenarios to study for each one century. urban research. the current project revenues, current development costs and accounted for the fees and other exactions to estimate the residual land value is essentially the maximum amount of land that the maximum amount that the project could afford to bid for land and our methodology is essentially to compare that residual land value against the current price of land. if the project cannot afford the current price of land, it's said to be financially infeasible and that is again the same methodology that we have used in the past. so i'm going to share with you the findings of our apartments. the columns here,

abcd and e refer to the prototypes that i just mentioned. so we have four cases under consideration here. first, the base project that doesn't use the state density bonus. secondly, the state density bonus project and the consultants also has to act considered a couple of very high political examples, one in which there's a state density bonus, but there's no fee imposed on the bonus units. and then finally a hypothetical project. that's 100% market rate, which i think is illustrative in this case because of the results. the numbers shown in parentheses are the residual land value calculations for each case. you can see under both rows one and two, the non density bonus and the state density bonus. every prototype for apartments is negative, which means that no project is feasible. even if land was free. in fact, even under a situation in which there were no inclusionary housing requirements and the project was

100% market rate, four of the five prototypes had negative land value would not be feasible. today even if land was free and the mid-rise project could only afford $8,000, which is well below land value. so this is a long way of saying none of the apartment projects are feasible with or without current inclusionary housing requirements. for condominiums. the story is a bit more complicated. similar structure here where the columns are the five prototypes, and we're considering non-sensitive bonus state density bonus, the bonus with no fee and a hypothetical 100% market rate project for the state density bonus and base non density bonus. none of the prototypes was able to approach the 60 to $70,000 per unit land cost. that is the current price of land, which means none of the projects would be feasible under today's inclusionary housing

requirements. eliminating the fee from the bonus units doesn't make very much difference. still, don't get to feasibility on any of the prototype apps. there is some feasibility, however, for 100% market rate project. in fact, the land residual there is significantly higher above. and so we pursued that for some of the projects that that could potentially support some inclusionary even at today's market conditions. and that's on this next slide. in this case, the columns are different inclusionary requirements and the first column to the left is the current inclusionary requirement . there's a lot of detail on this chart, which is also in the report i provided, but essentially it's showing what the residual land value would be for a base and state density bonus project under different levels of inclusionary housing,

starting with a low scenario at 12.25% on site and going up from right to left essentially to the 23.5, which is the current requirement. the easiest way to read this table is to look at the colors red light means not feasible, not within the 60 to $70,000 range. yellow means approaching or within that range , and green means sort of comfortably above 70,000. so what this means is only we only get to green. we only get to scenarios that appear to be feasible as. around 12.25. this scenario d the rightmost column given that split of the army levels there is marginal feasibility or yellow lights for some of the projects going up to scenario b 16.25. you'll also note that you only see green and yellow on this chart for low rise and mid-rise and that even

12.5, 12.25% on site is not enough to get close to feasibility for any of the high rise prototypes. and again, this is only for condominiums because we've already established the department are simply not feasible even as 100% market rate projects. but this is essentially the findings that drove our analysis that there are some on site requirements that do lead to feasible city for at least some of the types of projects that are proposed for construction in san francisco. and i will just summarize by summarizing our conclude by summarizing our recommendation, which is that we recommended and that first, the on site requirement for both an apartments and condos be set in the 12 to 16% range and that the in lieu fee percentages which were calculated by a financial equivalent basis, be set in the 22 to 29% range. so that

represents a reduction from the current levels. we also wanted to make clear that this is only should be true for a point in time and that we are conducting a triennial economic feasibility analysis and we are committing to completing another 1 in 3 years when presumably market conditions will be different. so we recommend that these conditions only be in place until april 26th, three years after the final meeting when they were adopted by the tac. and then finally we made a procedural recommendation that tac members terms in office should not expire, although they may be replaced at any time by their appointing authority. and that will make it easier for us to reconvene the tac to make sure we're timely about meeting the next three year deadline. i should mention that our final tac meeting all of these recommendations were unanimously approved by members of the tack. and on behalf of the comptroller's office, we'd like to thank both the members of the tac and century urban and the

consulting team for all of their work on this. i would also mention that the tac, as we detail in the final report, wanted to make it clear that despite the fact that the feasibility analysis point towards lowering the inclusionary housing requirements, the tac as a whole wanted to emphasize the importance of continuing to invest in inclusionary housing and recommended a number of policy options in addition to this that the city might pursue to improve the feasible city of housing development and the resources available for affordable housing. i believe we're going on to the next presentation, but i will be here if you have questions for me. thank you. thank you. kate o'connor, planning department staff. i'd also like to mention that my esteemed colleague carly grove is also available virtually. should we have any questions at the end of the presentation? and then at the

computer. so before you as an ordinance to reduce the inclusionary housing requirements and development impact fees at a glance, there's four buckets of changes. the first is to reduce the inclusionary housing requirements for large projects . these are projects with 25 or more units which have received final approval prior to november 1st, 2023, the second is to adopt a process for allowing these projects to reduce their rates. the third bucket is to reduce inclusionary requirements as well as impact fee reductions for projects that are approved between november 1st, 2023 and november 1st, 2026, provided that they secure a first construction document within 30 months. and finally, the fourth is to modify the inclusionary program moving forward from november first, 2026, before

diving into the details, here's a brief summary of how the inclusionary program currently works. there are four variables that can affect a project's inclusionary requirement. the first is the tenure of a project projects with 25 units or more have different rates, depending on whether they are rental or ownership projects. the second is the date that the department receives is a complete application. currently, there's annual incremental increases to the rates. this is what we refer to as the ramp. the third is the location of the project. certain zoning districts have higher requirements and the fourth is the project size, the number of units, and in some cases the height of the building can affect the inclusionary percentage. i did mention that the location of the project will affect the inclusionary rate. here's a list of the specific geographic areas that have different and in many cases higher inclusionary rates than the citywide rate. there's the

north market residential special use district, the mission area plan, the soma ct district, the arrow mkt district, and the urban mixed use district. to accommodate all of these different variables. the department has published the inclusionary affidavit for each specific geographic area. the zoning districts i referred to earlier. there are different rates depending upon the tenure and the size of the project. this affidavit also captures the annual increase or the ramp, so the project sponsor doesn't have to do these types of manual calculations. this is a very long document. it's currently approximately 15 pages, and this program we affectionately call no percentage left behind. so diving into the changes, the first set of projects are the pipeline projects. these projects must have 25 units or more and have been finally approved prior to november 1st,

2023. but they have not received their first construction document. the citywide fee and the off site rate are reduced to 16.4. and this is regardless of tenure, it's the same for both rental and ownership. the citywide onsite rate is reduced to 12. there is still that breakdown between the am i tiers . you're looking at 8% at the low income and then 2% at both moderate and middle income levels. these reductions result in rates that are 54.5% of the current rates. this discount is then applied to the specific geographic areas for instances where the citywide rate is higher, the citywide rate will be used. since pipeline projects have already received final approval, meaning either entitlement or approval of a site or building permit. if there isn't an entitlement that's required, we must establish a process to modify these approvals so we can increase operate these

reductions. the ordinance proposes that the commission delegate their authority to the department to make these changes administratively. instead of having each project come back to the planning commission, the modifications permitted would include modifications to the rate extension of the performance period, as well as making any findings related to state density bonus law. also, i did pass out a revised resolution which includes the specific language for delegating authority and those changes can be found at the bottom of page seven. there are limits to the types of modifications that can be requested should a project change the number of units by 20% or more changed the gross floor area by 10% or more, or change from dwelling units to group housing rooms? a planning commission hearing will be required for projects that receive these reductions through the modification process. each must obtain their first

construction document. no later than may 1st, 2029. if a project fails to do so. the inclusionary rates in effect at the time the first construction document is secured will apply. the second set of projects to receive a reduction in are the interim projects. those that receive final approval between november 1st, 2023 and november 1st, 2026. these projects also must have 25 units or more projects with 10 to 24 units are not proposed to have their rates reduced. the citywide fee or off rate is reduced to 20.5. again, regardless of tenure. so the same for rental and owner and the citywide on site rate is reduced to 15% on site units, we continue to be required at all three tiers, 10% at low income and then 2.5% at moderate as well as middle. these reductions result in rates that are 68% of

the current rate. this discount is then again applied to all the specific geographic areas an important timing requirement to note is that these projects must procure their first construction document within 30 months of final approval. the current requirement and inclusionary is to procure your first site or building permit within 30 months. this requirement is definitely more aggressive. another change to note involves the inclusionary fee calculation currently, when a developer pays the fee, the city calculates the fee by multiplying the off site inclusionary obligation, which is the number of units by what's referred to as the affordability gap. and this is the amount of subsidy that the mayor's office of housing and community development needs to finance the construction of a unit of affordable housing. this amount of subsidy is determined annually by most cdd. this ordinance would provide a cap of 2% for this fee determination.

there are also proposed changes to the technical advisory committee or the tac. under this ordinance, members may serve unlimited terms, but the tac also must convene again no later than january 1st, 2026. if you recall, the fourth bucket of changes involve modifying the inclusionary requirements after november 1st, 2026, which i'm about to kind of explain. but if the tac ends up adjusting those requirements prior to then, then those would potentially be in effect. so this brings me to future requirements. these requirements are incredibly similar in structure to what we have today. there are different rates depending upon tenure and the ramp is reestablished. it is notable that reverting back to a program similar to today's will add not only complexity to a more simplified program that will already be in place for the interim projects. so switching

gears a bit to impact fees, this will affect all projects that are approved on or before november first, 2026, but have not received their first construction document except for the inclusionary requirements which are already being reduced as they just described. all other impact fees will receive a 33% reduction projects must obtain their first construction document within 30 months of final approval, with the exception of pipeline projects, which will have until may 1st, 2029. if a project does not meet the deadline to obtain a first construction document, then the project will be required to pay 100% of the fees without any discount. now i'm going to turn to some of the planning department recommendations. i'm going to address each of these, as they're described in the report, just for ease during discussion later, the department recommends increasing the number of projects that are eligible for inclusionary rate reductions. the first is related

to small projects. these are projects with 10 to 24 units currently, reductions only apply to large projects, and we recommend that the same reduction be applied to small projects without applying these changes to projects of 10 to 24 units. these projects either have higher rates than the pipeline projects and with deeper affordability levels because they don't have to supply the units at all. three tiers. the second is to authorize temporary rate reductions for pipeline projects that have used the home program a temporary reduction in rates would increase the viability of projects that seek to use this local program. this would not only improve feasibility of development, but will also encourage use of a local program instead of state density. bonus . the department also recommends standardizing deadlines for the proposed ordinance. we propose establishing the same deadline may 1st, 2029 to obtain a first construction document for all

projects receiving temporary reductions. this basically applies the pipeline project deadline with the interim projects, so everybody will have to pull their first construction document by may 1st, 2029, 30 months to first construction document, which is what is being proposed for the interim projects, is incredibly aggressive. it also doesn't allow any time for potential regulatory delays. also we found it to be counterintuitive that pipeline projects which are further along in the process, would have more time to pull their first construction document. we wanted to be able to apply that to interim projects as well. and finally, consistency in any of these deadlines makes this program not only easier to implement, but also easier for the public to understand. we also propose establishing the same deadline made first 2029 for impact fees as well. if you're seeking to get that reduction in the impact fees, you would have to pull your first construction document by may 1st, 2029. and finally,

we also recommend removing the requirement that all projects obtain a first site or building permit within 30 months to vest their inclusion rate. this is again carried through on the future projects. it's what's in place now, but this all of our projects currently have a three year performance period. and so kind of cutting off the inclusionary rate at 30 months instead of 36 can just add general confusion. and it's also incredibly hard for us to track . we also recommend simplifying the program. recommendation number four is to remove the requirement for two or more people to occupy middle income units. the middle income units, which are actually at the highest tier, are notoriously hard to rent as well as sell, considering that they are so close to market and adding that two person requirement is yet another impediment to occupancy . recommendation number five is to remove the inclusionary rates of for the umu district. in almost every case, the citywide rates end up being higher. if

small projects are included in the reductions, there are only two instances for small fee projects where the rate for umu is slightly higher. removing this variable would will reduce the affidavit by at least four pages and removing unnecessary complexity in the planning code . recommendation number six is in the same vein. the nct distinguishes between projects that are received in ups owning further, it also distinguishes between projects that were submitted prior to october 1st, 2018. the department's recommendation is to remove this distinction and it does not materially change the overall requirement and would also improve implementation recommendations seven and eight speak to the future projects. number seven is to have the same rate for ownership and rental. neither the pipeline projects nor the interim project will have separate rates based upon tenure. this removes, again, one more variable is sound policy

and provides ease and implementation. recommendation eight is to remove the ramp. the ramp not only adds complexity to the inclusionary program, but also assumes that residential developers will be significantly more feasible in three years, which, if we look at the last three years, is not something we can necessarily count on. we recommend simplifying the presentation of the program to make it more accessible to staff developers and members of the public. further, in lieu of the annual increases or the ramp, we encouraged attack after it convenes in 2026 to recommend how the inclusionary program can respond more quickly and dynamically to economic shifts. and finally, recommendation nine the department recommends correcting the off site rate for interim projects to 20.4% instead of 20.5. this is an error that was just kind of carried through in the ordinance and we would just recommend making it consistent. the basis

for recommendation is detailed in the report, but in summary, housing element section 1.3 of the implementing programs set forth policy recommendations related to the inclusionary housing program. these policies support the recommendations that have been made by the department and the reduced rates stipulated in the ordinance. any effort that can be made to simplify this program is a step in the right direction. the overall complexity can be burdensome and the program can be difficult to implement. this also includes standardizing as many dates and rates as possible. the this concludes my presentation. i'm available for questions. okay. if that concludes staff presentations, we should open up public comment members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or

raise your hand via webex through the chair. each member of the public will be provided. two minutes. hello commissioners. mark babson with emerald fund. i think this is fantastic legislation. nothing pencils these days we're housing developers in san francisco. i do want to echo the first recommendation of the planning department, which is to include small projects, 10 to 24 homes, which are currently excluded. small project sites are important because they're actually more financially feasible in a lot of cases because there's more efficiencies. one great example is 1900 diamond, which was before you in february of 2022, a finely crafted 24 home project in a well resourced neighborhood. there's a safeway , a block away, two mta bus lines stop at the site for playgrounds and parks within ten minutes, we also in an area where there hadn't been housing

for decades of ten or more homes by diamond heights and up and away wide support. you all approved it unanimously. 40 of the 42 speakers on the small project enthusiastically supported it. it penciled financially feasible in february of 2022 and no longer is this this reducing the inclusionary fee to be in line with the 25 or more homes actually would be material. it would make it that much sooner that this project would pencil. and if we want to meet the rena goals, it's projects like this that we need to see happen in these neighborhoods that are well resourced. so yeah, i encourage you to make that first recommendation, including to 10 to 24 homes. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. john avalos from the council of community housing organizations. earlier this week, i had submitted a letter from chu chu

to the planning commissioners about the tac recommendations. first of all, we really appreciate the work of the comptroller and the tac and understand the need for changes to san francisco's development fees and inclusionary housing programs to help jumpstart overall housing development. the current rena cycle, with its mandate of 47,000 units of bmr, requires san francisco to change its practices of housing production. we should see rina as a huge opportunity to completely transform how we produce housing to ensure that working class bipoc community residents have standing in our local economy. san francisco has inclusionary housing programs should be only one out of many local tools for affordable housing production. unfortunately, it is the main local tool outside of the inadequate housing trust fund and the city's periodic periodic approval of affordable housing bonds. under the inclusionary program market rate, housing outpaces bmr production at a rate of four market rate units to every for every one affordable unit to meet our rina

goals. san francisco will need to invert that approach so that we're building two below market rate units for every one market rate unit. chuchu understands that under the current market conditions, adjustments need to be made to stimulate housing development. however, the city, if the city lowers the inclusionary levels, it must in a parallel process, also identify and increase other sources of bmr housing productions. we ask that the city take on this task seriously . in addition to finding new resources above and well beyond whatever loss in development fees is approved, we ask that the city approved changes to the development fees in a nuanced way, in accordance with affirmed affirmative, furthering further fair housing with a housing element goals ensuring that we're incent devising development in high resource neighborhoods and stabilizing with higher levels of inclusionary in priority equity, geography. the rest of our recommendations are in the letter we sent to you. thank you so much. thank you. president

tanner. it's an honor to speak in front of you. i just want to reiterate what you heard from the first speaker. i think this is fabulous. i think kate connor and everyone at the planning department did such a fabulous job with this. i will leave it to them to speak about the details, but i know there's going to be pushback because whatever anyone does, there's always pushback. and i just want to open up the idea or the conversation that more more housing, more abundant housing is tenant protection is affordable housing. and so even though it seems like we're lowering it and some people might be upset about that, we're actually allowing housing to get built, not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. and this is going to be good for the city. and i'm so proud not that i'm in a position to be proud of people, but i'm just proud of all of us for responding so quickly. we're a city of dreamers, which is fabulous, and

i don't want that to change. but this is a real world response to a real world situation that we're all in. and it's such a good step in the right direction. thank you. and thank you, guys. and good job. okay okay. seeing no other members in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers. good afternoon, commissioners. jake price, the housing action coalition. again calling in support of this item. we are really appreciative of all of the efforts that went in from century urban to the tac members and all the city officials involved in this process from the outset, we wanted a deal that promotes feasibility and predictability in the development process because, as we all know, if we have too many fees, too many ornaments, layered on top of the process,

we end up getting nothing. 50% of zero is zero. so we look at this deal as an important first step in promoting financially feasible projects that will, on the whole result in more affordable housing, getting built because more housing overall will be getting built. but i want to caution us to not get complacent as the presentation showed and as century urban analysis repeatedly demonstrated at all of the tac meetings that we were present at the projects will mostly still not be financially feasible. even with these meaningful reductions. so this is not the only step in promoting financial feasibility . it's an important one, but it is not the end all deal. so we need to continue to promote financial feasible city and also i would like to give a shout out to the planning department for their very thoughtful,

recommended as well. so thank you all and please approve this. thank. the commissioners. sorry, commissioners, this is lorraine petty, affordable housing advocate for seniors and others on fixed incomes. i'm here to urge you to continue indefinitely this is inclusionary and developer impact fee reduction package. i believe there's no justifiable reason to cut fees to build affordable housing and infrastructure. there are already more than sufficient cost reductions for marketing housing being enacted in other legislation. the inclusionary housing program. it's a crucial contributor to san francisco's affordable housing. it's responsible for thousands of affordable units. we wouldn't

otherwise have the housing element and the people of san francisco have said affordable housing is the city's number one need. it's number one priority. and they must now not in two years or more, inclusionary affordable units and requirements are not the cause of a building slowdown. market rate developers are just waiting for high income people to come flooding back to san francisco so they can resume charging the highest prices they always man regardless of any cost reductions we offer. similarly development fees are not the reason developers are sitting on their hands. but if we offer to eliminate some developer, developers will gladly accept they will stabilize the fee collecting process, but don't choke off the fees even temporarily. we know that temporary can become a permanent at the whim of future politicians in the larger sense

to reduce the portable housing and impact fees now is to break faith with the voters and the residents relying upon them a breach of cultural and community agreements as well as property and social and equity compacts. so please, can you do this package indefinitely? thanks. good afternoon, commissioners. natalie san francisco organizing talk with action, calling in and support. appreciate the hard work that everyone put in. was that a couple of these tac meetings, all the staff members worked hard on it. i know a lot of folks at planning have appreciate president peskin moving this forward. we know that there's more that needs to be done. this is just one piece of it. and i think the presentation showed you that there's still a lot of headwinds when we look at getting new

homes built in san francisco. but this is a piece of it and we can't do it all with one piece of legislation in our one plan that's going to come in front of you today. so i really encourage you to move forward with this and to continue looking at all of this work. the same ones that you have is more feasible. it's very, very difficult to get anything done in san francisco. and a lot of that is self-imposed and we've got to strike that right balance between providing good community benefits and not providing anything at all. if we're not building any homes and no one can live in them. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. again, if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. public comment is closed. this matter is now before you. thank you. i want to thank president peskin again. thank you, mr.

egan, all the staff. so many folks, attack members, everyone who's worked on this really robust package of legislation and even a robust package of recommendations from the department. so certainly a lot to consider for myself. i just want to say i think one of the challenging things, of course, is when we look at the math, you know, not a lot of things lighting up green, especially if we look even at the summary table, that kind of brings things together with the topic really of today, which is the inclusionary rates and kind of where they should fall. so i'll just say for my part, i think i support all the staff recommendations to the legislation and i think in particular, i want to just underscore that in an environment where nothing is really penciling, i do wonder if we should push the to push the rate to the lowest, especially since it is only going to be for three years. and i like that we're building in, i think, more robustly the three year report to really look at the number every three years because we think about the three year cycle, even hearing president

peskin say all the things that have happened since they instituted the idea of the three years, so much change so quickly, even within a three year cycle. so i do wonder if we're at a very, very cute low point, unfortunately, and if we should push the rate lower, that said, i know this rates have been worked out with a great deal of compromise, a great deal of collaboration, and so happy to just see us move forward. what we have here as far as the rates and there's a lot of complexity there with the math and with the working everything out with that, i will just call on my fellow commissioners as they have comments or questions. so first we have commissioner imperial. thank you for such a small program in the city. it is very complicated and hotly debated and very contrary. my question first is regarding the conversations with the tech community in terms of the and also the analysis that has been provided in front of us and

looking into the control recommendations in terms of the ranges of the on site and off site fees and also other comments provided by the public as well. how how has the how has the conversation around the army range am? i range has always been a hot topic when it comes to inclusionary housing. the usage of the army. you know, throughout the years, people have this. conversely, on the topic of neighborhood allies, how did that pencil in this conversation or in this analysis by the tac. commissioner, ted egan comptroller's office, i can just say that army were not one of the kind of policy levers that we modified when we were considering the scenarios i mentioned before. we were

looking at 20 different scenarios, and we simply prorated the army for different overall call percentage levels. so i was cut by a third. each of the army tiers were cut by a third, that of course, is a policy option that is available to decision makers. it's just not something that we wanted to model from a feasibility point of view. okay thank you. the reason i brought that out because those are always the conversations from the community and the public and also, you know, questions the purpose of the inclusionary housing program itself, who are accessing the inclusionary housing program. and i think throughout the years there has been debates, even conversation on the definition of low income, moderate income, middle income, and how this skip changing every year as well, depending on the economic landscape. unfortunately, even though, you know, the economic

landscape here in san francisco is not good, but they in my levels have not gone down at the same time, too. so i wonder how that project in the building of the again, when we are having conversation of the inclusionary housing program amis are very very important in this conversation and i would like to highlight that to the policy makers that this should not be ignored. so that's one of my initial comment on this. i understand as well that this is more of a temporary temporary proposition and then but i guess my other question with the planning department recommendation is that there is a limit. and just clarify me on this in terms of the cap that the department is recommending, i'm curious about the

recommendation number eight in terms of removing the annual increases from inclusionary housing program. is that something that being recommended as permanent or what is the. yeah. thank you kate connor planning department staff. now that's a great question. that recommendation was really for the future projects. so those are projects that would be approved after november first, 2026. the rates that are currently within this ordinance are proposed. and so what we were recommending was to not have that ramp, those incremental increases at that time for both the interim as well as the pipeline projects. there is no ramp. so for those two time periods, there are not going to be the incremental increases. we are recommending kind of removing it for the future projects as well. just to add kind of simplicity. okay. thank you for that clarification and another question that i would like to highlight is what the public comment in terms of

the equity geographies as well, how did i guess, how does that affect in terms of the equity geographies and financial feasibility of a project? because as my understanding that a project in embarcadero might not be have the same financial feasibility in the bayview, so i'm just wondering about that. does that also kind of part of the conversation? because when you look into a home ownership or a bmr, home ownership, a bmr , home ownership in the in the soma will be more expensive than the bmr home ownership in the bayview area. so how is this. thank you, connor. planning department staff. that was not something that we looked at too thoroughly as part of this legislative package. i will say that there are kind of specific geographic areas within the city that have different rates in the citywide rate. so i think it is something that's been considered historically. yeah. okay i don't

know if that's something i would try to recommend for the tac in the future to really look into the economic landscape, the financial per per geography. i think throughout the 2016 legislation or amendments on the inclusionary housing program, there's a lot of conversations about the different geographies on that and it doesn't seem like this is something discussed whether within the planning department or in this legislation. i would just add to that, you know, there are rates that are higher in specific neighborhoods which which are in tend to be in private equity geographies, right? the tenderloin or the north market study has a higher rate mission area plan. so men ct those each have higher rates, which will which will stay higher after this legislation is passed. if it's passed, you know, as proposed, those rates will

remain higher and thank you, director. and how would we ensure that this is this this legislation would sunset? what is the recommendation i, i believe, is that there will be reconvening of the committee on january 2026. yes that's correct. kick on our planning department staff. so you have kind of these sort of three time periods. if you receive your final approval before november first, 2023, then you have the interim projects between 2023 and 2026, and then the final part of the ordinance only becomes effective at november first, 2026. but the tac may end up meeting before then. those rates may end up changing or being further adjusted. thank you. i guess my you know, i would like to recommend amend and this is more advice for the tac. i mean, you know, i don't we don't have jurisdiction, but

the things that i noted in terms of the allies priority equity, priority equity, geographies and the financial feasibility should also be taken into consideration when it's being reconvened. again, inclusionary housing program, as far as i know, has has been a dynamic program. but . at the same time, it's the faster build of affordable housing than 100% affordable housing. so and this is also, you know, i guess as a city as a whole, as a policy makers, too, we need to also converse or we also need to question the purpose of the inclusionary housing program in of accessibility. and in terms of equity, and not just because of financial feasibility of the building. i would just say outright that i do not support this legislation nor the

planning recommendations of this just because i think the inclusionary housing program always lacks a conversation when it comes to equity. and we need to start having those kind of conversation altogether. thank you. thank you. commissioner rice. um, thank you. i just want to say that i found the findings on feasibility incredibly insightful. i think that's one thing that comes up quite often as a community organizer. you're working with community groups, you know, we always hear about feasibility, but we never have sufficient research to actually prove what's feasible and what's not. so i just want to acknowledge the amount of work that it probably took to come up with that research to kind of give us as a commission, the understanding of really what is not working right now. um, so that would, i mean, for me it seems like there's sufficient

research to support the legislation and it really just gives us this three year window of opportunity to see if things are going to move forward. um. to president tanner's comment about maybe pushing the percentage a little bit lower, i would be a bit hesitant to support something like that. i mean, i don't want to completely put affordable housing on the chopping block, and i just want to honor the recommendations developed by the planning department and tac and support that. and so i do support the recommendations from the planning department as well. but i do want to elevate the letter that the commission did receive from chu chu, that had a number of recommendations and would just love to hear more from planning department staff on what the conversations have been around racial and social equity , either with tac or other community groups or with chu chu

. thank you. kate connor, planning department staff. i think kind of the discussions more around racial social equity as it pertains really to this ordinance have really been looking at those specific geographic areas. as director hills kind of pointed out earlier and kind of ensuring that proportionally they are receiving the same discount, but you're not you're not necessarily just making everybody have the same rate. so those specific geographic areas are definitely still respected and intact. with regard, i don't know if there's any conversations at the tac about i don't i don't know if the tac ended up focusing on that particular kind of substance. i think there were much more concerned just on the actual feasibility. and i don't know if ted egan has anything to add or no, no, thank you. i have one more question for you, miss connor. um, there was one recommendation in the letter that discuss local neighborhood amis, and that's something that

i've heard come up in my work in the community is this idea that am i should be adjust dependent on the neighborhood and i know that would be separate from this legislation, not something that could be folded into this. but i , i am just curious about your idea on that. is that something that could be possible? kate connor planning department staff. i do think it is something that is possible. i think where we'd want to be really careful is just kind of creating a very complex situation because right now, even with having the different rates and specific geographic areas, it becomes a pretty burdensome program to really implement. so kind of getting into different army levels per different neighborhoods and how those neighborhoods may shift over time and having to kind of ensure that would definitely be a much bigger kind of implementation lift. and i think it's something that we definitely want to discuss with our colleagues at the mayor's office of housing and community development. i think that would be interesting if we could, um, have of at least maybe one

conversation to see where that goes, to see what most seeds thinking is around that maybe some conversations with community folks, if that's something that's really desired across the city, especially folks who are focusing on priority equity geographies, if that's something that they would like to see. thank you so much. just i mean, i think carla has her hand up to grab if she wants to talk on this topic as well. but i think, commissioner, this has come up in the past, especially around, you know, as you get to the higher amis, where then the kind of rents reflect market. i do think there are some there are some mechanism at those higher ais to like adjust the rents down from market. but i think it's a good discussion that we can continue to have with cdd. that's just the point i was about to make to charlie grove department staff joining virtually there is already a provision of the planning code in the inclusionary ordinance that allows the mayor's office of

housing to reduce rents or sales prices dependent upon the kind of median and market rents that exist in that neighbor. and those are set by neighborhood boundaries, although i think what you're suggesting as well is to kind of look at even lower amis than the middle and moderate income tiers. and so that's definitely noted. thank you. um the other comment i wanted to make was in terms of potential community benefit agreements that project sponsors have established with community folks in just, um, making sure that developers and project sponsors are doing their due diligence to communicate any changes made to projects, especially as they take advantage of this legislation. i know that's not something that we really have control over as a commission, but i just think

it's important that community folks are in the know from the very beginning. the sooner the better, and to just consider that going forward. so, i mean, i am in approval of the legislation. i think it makes sense. you know, i'm also, you know, hyper aware of the equity component and maybe that being something that the tech should discuss, you know, in their future meeting and us as a commission kind of hearing what the conversations around racial, racial and social equity is. um you know, but i'm also very mindful of the effects of not producing housing has on our community. and, you know, thanks to commissioner coppell and the folks that from the union that come here every day to express to us the effects that you know, no production of housing has on their work on their families. so i am in support of this legislation. and i just think

the planning department staff and tac and the comptroller's office for doing the incredible amount of research to give to us to understand the gravity of the issue, certainly want to support the comments around having a discussion around the neighborhood. and i know that came up quite a bit during the housing element discussions. and i think it speaks whether it's neighborhood level or more broadly to the lower army levels being needed in greater numbers. and how do we provide units at those, whether it's through inclusionary, be 100% affordable or other means having a sense at this commission, i think of how are we pushing to those lower incomes where, for example, most of san francisco's black population is at like 30 to $40,000 a year. they're not going to be at the 81 105 and 130, am i? and so there are other programs that make up for that. but i think having a sense of where those fall, looking in that with our arena and kind of just maybe in the fall as we come back from our recess, like looking at that and kind of thinking about the next, you know, eight years and counting

of our housing element cycle and how we achieve some of those lower those lower income levels that are really, really necessary with that, i will call on commissioner brown. thank you. um, so yeah, these are always tricky issues to grapple with. in my day job, i actually complete studies similar to the one that was done by the comptroller's office and work with technical advisory committees in other communities in trying to grapple and get their arms around some of the challenges created by figuring out the right balance of financial feasibility and the inclusionary requirements and it is a tricky balance. it's, you know, i'm not actually in favor of further reducing the inclusionary requirements just because, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, the studies are conducted for the financial feasibility analysis. there's a little bit of wiggle room in there because every actual site is going to have its own considerations and some can support higher requirements, potentially some support lower requirements potentially. and it's just sort of meeting in the middle for a generic scenario. so i think by not going to the

absolute lowest inclusionary requirement, it's we enable the projects that can move forward to still be providing a higher level of inclusionary housing. um, and at the same time, i do want to make sure that that as development conditions improve over time, we are positioned to ensure that we are still getting inclusionary housing units built and that we are still getting in lieu fee revenue potentially instead, and so i'm just i never want to push things too low because then you might foreclose future opportunities. but having said that, so the flip side of it with conditions being as poor as they are, i am glad to see us reducing the requirements. right now i'm in support of the new requirements and in support of most of the recommendations here or actually all of the recommendations here. i do think it's very important to restudy this in the three year time span roughly because i just conditions have been changing so rapidly lately. i don't see that

changing anytime soon. so let's make sure that the new study is being conducted in a timely fashion. i just had a couple of , uh, things i wanted to reinforce or thoughts on, on a couple of recommendations. so on recommendation one, from the planning department staff regarding applying the requirements to projects of 10 to 25 units, um, or the yeah, 10 to 24 units rather, you know, and there was a single prototype that was studied in the feasibility analysis. it had 13 units in the base case or 17 or 20 units in the, in the state density bonus scenario. so and what the study showed is that those, those small projects are also very much infeasible. so i'm very much in favor of applying the same reduction of inclusionary requirements to those those small projects. it makes a lot of sense to me. i didn't see a lot of it's not like they're performing a whole lot better or anything like that. uh, in terms of the third, let's see, i, i, i definitely

appreciate the alignment of the 30 month vesting period versus 36 condition as of approval period because fees or entitlements period, because it's not that big a difference. so making that alignment will just simplify things. and i'm trying to reduce headaches here for staff. and then finally, let's see recommendation number . number seven. uh to remove the annual increases from the inclusionary affordable housing program set to begin on january 1st, 2028. i believe this was the ramp again, i just hope and emphasize that we'll have a new study done by then and that we can revisit all the inclusion requirements and fees at that time. but that said, i'm in favor of all the recommendations and in favor of the legislation . thank you, commissioner brown. commissioner diamond. thank you

. like all of us, i'm sure there was a great deal of frustration with the fact that we have all these pipeline projects and nothing's being built. we have been approving virtually everything that's come in front of us for the last several years, and yet there's almost nothing being built. so it is clear that some adjustments need to be made and as a result, i am in favor of the legislation and all of the department's proposed modifications. but even with that, i'm worried that it's not going to produce all of the units that we are required to produce or anything close to it. under the rina goals and even without the rina goals, we need the housing to house people entitlements don't house people, the units do. and so i am concerned that we're going to a lot of trouble for, as

commissioner tanner says, very little. green so i have a question for mr. egan, which is , you know, what would it take in order to push some of those additional categories into green? if i'm reading it correctly, that the rates that are being proposed would help with condos that are low and mid-rise, but not really with high rise condos and not much with apartments, is that and did i understand that correctly? yes. ted egan, comptroller's office staff. you summarized it well, commissioner. essentially, all of our prototypes are in the red for apartments with essentially no inclusionary requirements. and under our proposed range, all of the high rise condos are also in the red range. so i'm pretty concerned about that because the high rises are where we would get the most units and makes me

uncomfortable that what we're doing will help ownership units , but not necessarily rental units. and so i'm wondering if you looked at what it would take , how low would we have to go in order to make some kind of dent in these other categories? um well, again, commissioner, inclusionary housing is one lever that the city controls to affect housing feasibility and our sort of guidelines in this study is to look at how simply adjusting that one lever affects housing feasibility with respect to high rise condos, we really don't get anywhere close to feasibility or and certainly with apartments with even a market rate project. and so essentially you can dial that requirement all the way down to zero and still not have feasibility, at which point you need to start looking at other things and you know, the tac at

our final meeting, did consider a list of other actions that could affect housing feasibility outside of setting the inclusionary level, which essentially and i provided the list in our report is a combination of deferring or reducing other fees or requirements or providing loan subsidies or other kinds of abatements to make projects work , essentially, you know, projects or expensive in san francisco through a combination of labor costs, land costs, other exact actions and financing costs. and anything the city can do to any of those things could, could potentially move the dial. but as i said, we're mainly looking at just, you know, our task here is to only look at what can moving the inclusionary requirement do for feasibility, right? so if i'm understanding correctly that commissioner tanner question and really mine the same one is that lowering the rates isn't really

going to produce much more green in and of itself. i think that's a fair characterization. yes. thank you. that's very helpful to understand that. but i'm also understanding that there are other actions the city could do, notably the affordable housing bond which president peskin referenced and these other actions. and i'm curious where the city is in terms of some of these other actions that could help move us forward, particularly with the high rises which have the greatest possibility of producing, you know, significant numbers of additional units. i might defer to that one to my colleagues. thank you, connor. planning department staff. so we do have the reduction in the impact fees. that's also part of this. so that's something that's another tool kind of in the toolbox that we can use. and you're looking at that 33%

reduction. and then i think even like the item after this, as well as far as being able to defer the fees, that's also going to potentially have an impact as well. okay i very much appreciate the comments. does answer a number of questions. as i said, i am in support of the legislation and all of the modifications i'd make a motion, but i see that commissioner koppel wants to talk, so i'll wait. maybe as he's coming on. i just want to offer that. we also had the income earned infrastructure financing district ified or whatever the acronym is that's supposed to help with our big projects. so hopefully that will also unstick some of those. we're also a lot of our units are kind of locked away, so hopefully that takes place. mr. koppel i will make a motion to approve with staff's recommendations. second, commissioner, there are a couple of late hands that were raised for public comment through the chair. we'll take those now,

let's go to those callers. hello. hi. i would like to speak about a proposed construction on at 4199 mission street that's looking to i'm going to interrupt. hello i'm going to interrupt you. unless you're using that as an example for this particular planning code amendment. oh, no, i thought it was all open public comment. no, that's not no. let's take the next caller, please. this is sister. i found this conversation very illuminating. i was particularly illuminating. is the directive that there is only two minutes of public comment allowed. so one of the things that we need to do is support the planning commission, need to say to everyone this

amendment to the planning code needs to have two weeks staff report, give the public enough time to a read the staff report and be submit written comments so you're not able to do that with this current practice of staff report being read basically east on friday afternoon. and so you have a lot of uh, planning code amendments coming through that are major planning code amendments. and you have two of them right after you're breaking for all august 1st. so i would ask you to please say that now, two weeks off, of course, for major legislation like before you today, uh, especially. on september 7th, because there's no excuse. you can't have the staff report done in august.

thank you very much. hello, this is anastasia. annapolis. thank you, jonas, for recognize me? um i am thinking along the lines of sue hester that we don't have sufficient time to read this stuff and digest it and come up with an assessment and bring it to our group. like the tenants union, the rep coalition for, uh, for an analysis and see what we think about it. basically, you're, you're giving a 68, giving a 33% just count to developers. you're taking away the impact fees to the mayor's office, which funds affordable

housing. and you know, the affordable housing advocates are upset. thank you. very good commissioners with that public comment is indeed now closed. we do have a motion that has been seconded and commissioner nice commissioner diamond, though. so i'm reading the revised motion that was handed out this morning or at for the hearing. and i see there's a new addition where this motion actually delegates the authority from the commission to the department to do these administrative modifications and to include any then standard current conditions of approval. so harkening back to the earlier comment i made during general public comments, i would appreciate it if in doing the extensions on existing projects when you're working, you know, thinking through what the maintenance procedures are that you develop a standard condition that can be approved. yeah i agree. and just to be

clear, commissioner koppell, you did intend for these late modification to be included as part of your motion and staff recommendations as well, i believe. great and the seconder is fine with that. very good. then commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve this piece of legislation with staff modifications, including the one submitted to you at the hearing today. on that motion, commissioner braun. hi, commissioner ruiz. hi, commissioner diamond. hi, commissioner imperial. no commissioner coppell and commission president tanner. hi. so move commissioners, that motion passes 5 to 1 with commissioner imperial voting against commissioners. that will place us on item 16. case number 2023 hyphen 005461 pca for the development impact fee indexing, deferral and waivers. adoption of nexus study planning code amendment.

president tanner, members of the commission. good afternoon again . for the record, dan snyder with department staff introduced by mayor breed. this next item is a companion piece to the piece of legislation you just heard. thankfully, it is a bit more straightforward. i'm going to give you a very high level overview of what this legislation would do and then turn it over to my colleagues. ted conrad from the office of economic and workforce development, from whom you just heard, along with director katie tang from the office of small business commissioners. this piece of legislation is designed to lessen the burden of the impact fees that we as a city impose on housing and on other development projects. the goal here is to increase housing production to stimulate job creation, to increase tax base and to grow the economy. as we

talk about the specifics, i'd like to put two slides up on the screen. here's our first slide just to frame things for you a bit. this legislation deals only with development impact fees. we are not talking about application fees. we're not talking about the fees paid to the city to cover the costs of review. secondly, you heard a few minutes ago about how the inclusionary housing legislation will make an across the board one third reduction to all impact fees. this legislation is inclusive of that. it reflects that. thirdly, there are some kind of tendrils that go out from this piece of legislation into the building code. we'll talk about those in particular in just a second. but i wanted to highlight the inter jurisdictional aspect of this piece of legislation. and lastly on this slide, commissioner is just on tuesday, two days ago, the mayor introduced some substitute legislation for this ordinance that new piece of

legislation is nearly identical to that which is in your packet today. and in just a minute i'll identify the specific changes. if you'd like more paper, i have more paper and i'm happy to pass up copies of that reintroduced piece of legislation. just say the word got. we got one taker for your paper. let me send up the paper. thank you. thank you, mr. sider. while our commission secretary is doing that, let me jump into the for substance of changes that are in this ordinance. and by way of that document, it is a red line. so you can see the changes in well, technically, it's a blue line. i think it's blue ink that displays the changes. so you can see what's being proposed now, the first, as you can see on the screen, the first change contained in

this ordinance relates to annual indexing every year impact fees go up. today they are indexed by something that we call the i cce . that stands for the annual infrastructure for construction cost inflation estimate the mouthful over the last few years that number has ranged typically between three and 6. this ordinance would replace that somewhat unpredictable and variable number with a flat 2% figure, 2% at a at a fixed rate is stable. it's predictable. it would help create an environment more conducive to getting projects built. the next item on your on your screen, it deals with how fees get locked in. right now, impact fees are indexed every year, even past the moment at which you approve a project. so right now, something that you approve. for example, later today on your agenda won't know its final fee

amount until sometime later when the building permit for that project is approved. this ordinance would lock in your impact fee rates. at the moment at which this commission approves the project in other words, the annual increase that we just talked about would only apply to new projects and apply to new project rates. once you're approved, you would have the certainty of knowing exactly how much it will cost to get your permit issued. the third change and a significant one that you can see it on your screen right now, relates to fee deferral. president peskin earlier harkened back to the great recession back in 2010, the city created an impact fee deferral program that was on the books until 2013 when it sunset did that program let builders defer payment of their impact fees until post-construction immediately prior to occupancy? most recently, more recently, the city is economic recovery

task force has actually recommended that we reinstate that program. of course, owing to the current state of our of our local economy that is exactly what this legislation would do. it does propose to do that along with two modest changes. firstly, it would eliminate the original programs assessment of interest and secondly, it would not allow it would not include the deferral of any housing related impact fees. these changes reflect both how important it is to actually get projects underway and how critical it is to preserve and bring online money for affordable housing. right now, commissioners, earlier i mentioned that this ordinance does extend into the building code fee deferral is where that happens. that program actually lives substantively in the building code. yesterday, the code advisory committee of the building inspection commission heard this item. they weighed in on it and they voted to recommend that the full building

inspection commission similarly recommend approval of those associated changes to the board of supervisors that that meeting for that vote will occur next week. lastly, on your slide, the ordinance would boost our cultural and our industrial base by exempting for a three year period two kinds of projects from impact fees. the first exemption is for large industrial or retail projects that are located on underdeveloped or undeveloped lots. in pdr districts and secondly, the legislation would exempt most new hospitality uses in either c two or c three zoning districts. this second exemption is where the substitute legislation comes into play, particularly in addition to making some technical changes that substitute legislation, legislation broadened the exemption to include a bigger

range of projects, not just in the c two district, but, as i said, also in the c three district. i can get into details if you'd like, just to wrap things up though, commissioners, this ordinance, as you've heard, is really about our economic recovery and meeting our housing goals. it provides certainty. it's meant to provide predictability and it helps with project feasibility. it's going to spur development, it's going to unlock the pipeline and these things mean more jobs and more tax revenue and a faster recovery overall. this was mentioned by some earlier speakers today, but i think it's important to mention that exactions in particular are the single biggest lever that the city can pull when it comes to project feasibility. we think it's time to pull that lever. this this is the moment we're urging you to draft. i'm sorry to adopt the draft resolution result resolution related to this legislation that's in your packets. we do have some minor adjustments that we'd urge to reflect the substitute legislation. these are purely technical amendments and we

again, wish that you recommend the full board adopt this and make it law without delay. with that, we're going to turn to ted conrad from wd. and i thank you very much for your time. we'll be available for questions later on. thank you. good afternoon. commissioners ted conrad from the office of economic and workforce development. thank you, dan, not too much to add. i think that was a really thorough summary. i just wanted to offer our support for this. thank you for your consideration and urge your urge, your approval. this is something some of these changes we've had our eye on for quite a long time, really in the spirit of adding predictable and stability to our development impact fees. that's both for project sponsors as well as for city staff that have to project revenue plan for capital budgets and then spend that money again. we see this piece of legislation as a strong complement to the inclusionary item that you just

heard. both are designed to increase housing production, improve our chances of likely of meeting our goals and facilitate the economic recovery. i want to mention in particular the potential impacts that this has to our downtown recovery through facilitation of all development. but especially the particular impact fee exemption for the hospitality uses that that mr. cider just mentioned. that's all of my comments. i'd like to pass it off to katie tang from the office of small business. we'll be presenting on a potential amendment. thank you. thank you . all right. good afternoon, commissioners. katie tang from the office of small business. and i also have some paper to send forth. thank you very much . so i'm here today to discuss some potential forthcoming amendments to this impact fee legislation and really hope that this commission can open up discussion regarding these proposed changes. so it is

widely known that given the global shift to retail, online disruptions caused by the pandemic and a reputation for being an inhospitable city to do business in that we do have to make changes to the way that government operates and of course, our laws to welcome economic activity, spur innovation and fill our many commercial vacancies. so during a recent merchant walk where i spend time talking to small business owners about ways that we can better support them, i learned about a fee imposed to businesses that i had actually long forgotten about. it took me by surprise. a business owner had approached me and complained about having to pay $14,000 in impact fees because the space that they occupied went from one use to another and just for context, this business spent already about $13,000 on just permit fees alone and this is for a small business. so i thought the business owner was

wrong because they had not constructed any new anything new in the building. they had just taken over an existing space. turns out that the eastern neighborhood and also several other planned areas impose impact fees for change of use projects. again, no new development. it's just change of use in an existing space. in particular for small businesses. these change of use impact fees are beyond burdensome and you know, in san francisco, where small businesses make up more than 95% of the businesses here, we particularly want to pay attention to this and see what we can do to help alleviate that burden. so the proposed amendment, which i think was flash on the screen earlier, i apologize that it's really small font on the screen, but hopefully you can see it more clearly in front of you. it will be considered at an upcoming board of supervisors land use committee meeting and the proposal is to eliminate the impact fees that apply to change of use projects. and under the

following impact fee areas. so i'll just read it into the record, but i know you have in front of you the eastern neighborhoods infrastructure impact fee, balboa park, community improvements impact fee, central soma community services facilities fee central soma infra structure impact fee market octavia community improvements impact fee market and octavia area plan and upper market and affordable housing fee ring hill community infrastructure impact fee visitation valley community facilities infrastructure fee jobs housing linkage fee. there are some sections in the emu housing requirements under the transit center district, open space transit center, street improvements, ness and market community facilities. deficit zero net affordable housing fee and lastly, eastern neighborhoods. affordable housing requirements. so you know, as the city has been making a number of significant changes to better attract

businesses to start, stay and grow in san francisco, these changes include proposition h from november 2020. that was to reduce the burden for change of use projects by removing the neighborhood notification and also the small business recovery act, which you may recall built on those changes shortly thereafter. we have also been waiving permit fees for new and expanding businesses through the first year of free program. so those cover permit fees so all of these combined these programs and changes, they've been really critical for us to attract businesses and fill commercial vacancy in san francisco and i know it goes without saying, you all know how important that work is eliminating these impact fees that apply to change of use projects will have almost no impact on the community and infrastructure improvements, which are entirely based on fees generated from net new development. but it will make a significant difference as to whether business owner decides to locate in san francisco or

choose to go to another city. so thank you, commissioners, for considering these proposed amendments and hope that you'll consider them in your recommendation on the pending legislation. thank you. is that concludes staff presentation. thank you. okay. if that concludes that presentation, we should open up public comment. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no members of the public in city hall coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. afternoon commissioners jake price on behalf of the housing action coalition calling for the third but not final time . you'll hear from me once more. we're calling in support of this

item. obviously predictability is one of the most important aspects in the development process as we hear from our members routinely that not knowing how much they are going to have to pay down the road is a big inhibitor to both pursuit and projects in the first place, as well as receiving financing. so we look at this legislation as a way of telling folks that san francisco is open for business. we are looking at getting more investments in our downtown and throughout the city. and this helps promote that. so we are very supportive of this legislation and appreciate all the effort that has gone in to making this possible. thank you. okay last call for public comment, seeing none public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. thank you staff, for being here. thank you. miss tang as well. and for

all the work that went into this and also to the sponsors of the legislation, very much in support of the proposed amendment, including those that were presented in blue line to us, as well as the additional recommendation to adjust the change of use fees. i think the way i think about it is these fees are big enough to stop a small business from opening, but not enough to build a park or pave a road or really make a big difference in the ways that we think of our impact fees having positive impact in our community. but they're certainly weighing down some of our other policy goals and objectives. so thank you, miss tang, for bringing this forward. with that, i will call on commissioner diamond. thank you. i too am supportive of the legislation as presented today, but i do have some questions for ms. tang, if you wouldn't mind coming forward. yes, hi. i just want to understand more fully what your proposing you list in the left column 15 different

districts, but in the right column there are only six where you are proposing a change elimination of the fee associated in general with a change of use project. is there a reason why you listed so are you saying you're not proposing anything additional for those that i apologize, i might just be a formatting issue or i don't know if you could tell with the color differential instead of repeating the same line many times on this table where it's darker shaded blue, all of those are to eliminate the change of use impact fee. so i apologize if i was not clear on the table. thank you for that clarification. so for all 15 fees you are proposing, all 15? that's right. you are proposing eliminating fees associated with the change of use project. that's correct. and then the second question is, are you proposing the elimination of the fee no matter the size of the project that's being changed? so

in i would say almost all of them, there is no size indicated currently in the planning code. and so we would just be striking out wherever it says change of use under the list of fees that would normally be charged. okay. so there are a couple that are, as you could tell from the bottom of the table, there are a couple that are structured a little bit differently. so those amendments are currently being drafted. so i apologize. i don't have that exact language in front of me right now. okay. so i don't think it would matter to me actually what size they are. but you presented this as a small business desire and but in actuality it would apply. no matter the size and the change of use. is that correct? that's right. in this planning code context, i know that there's our definitions don't match. we consider small businesses businesses with 100 or fewer employees. but i know that that's not how planning code treats that definition. so

again, just understanding that there isn't quite that same like for like definition of a small business. okay, so you are saying no matter the size of the business, you want to eliminate the change of use fee? that's correct. in these 15 district. thank you for that clarification. i am supportive in this economic environment of that. thank you. all right. thank you, commissioner brown. uh, i'm also supportive of the legislation and the amendments and additions. i just want to comment more broadly on just to recognize that whenever we are reducing or deferring or eliminating whatever it might be, impact fees, one of the things that we are adopting is the nexus study that was prepared for the city attorney's office to back up the relationship between development and the creation of demand for city infrastructure. and so given current circumstances, i'm in favor of these efforts to reduce the fee burden. but i

also want to recognize that this is the city really putting some skin in the game here and in a way, taking on some of these expenses itself for this infrastructure as a means of trying to spur economic activity in the city. and so i think i just kind of i don't want to give a too big a pat in the back of that, but it's a helpful thing. it's something that should be recognized. these are not just hypothetical fees that sit out there and somebody sort of made up. they do have a relationship to demand on infrastructure in the city and it would be reasonable in the future to again, sort of revisit what these fee levels ought to be. but regardless for this legislation, i am in support and i'll leave it there. great. thank you. commissioner imperial . thank you. i have a question to the planning staff. is there a sunset language for this ordinance or no? uh dan snyder with staff commissioner imperial. there is a sunset for the fee waiver portion of the ordinance. there's a three year

sunset on the hospitality uses and the pdr and retail uses. okay um, just hypothetically, i mean, i'm looking at this as a different impact fees, districts . so, you know, we're, we've had conversations here about the change of use, let's say of office to housing. so how, how let's say there is a building right now or a developer trying to change an office asking they will not be affected by this. they will be affected by this impact fee deferral or the change of use or that would be different as currently drafted, a project it hasn't yet paid its impact fees could avail itself, for example, of the fee deferral program. should this ordinance passed by the board and be signed by the mayor. yeah, like and it has to be after construction, not before the construction. the deferral program would be open to projects that haven't yet paid

their fees. so under today's law, fees are paid prior to permit issuance, prior to issuance of first construction document. so were that payment not to be made then? yes. in general terms, that that project could enroll in the fee deferral program and not pay those fees generally until immediately prior to occupancy. okay. okay thank you for that question. um yeah, i'm, i understand that this is a temporary and this is there's a sunset language, and i believe this will be the another nexus study of this after the sunset language or after the sunset. i guess that's my question. will there be a nexus study after the sunset part of the ordinance that you're adopting right now? would memorialize in the planning code, the most recent nexus study that was done for the city that's done, that's complete, that's adopted, but it's not yet enshrine in the planning code. so that and forgive me for not mentioning this earlier, that's an important technicality, but

it is relevant to this ordinance that it would be memorialized in the planning code. i don't believe this ordinance does not bind the city to any new or change schedule for future nexus studies. okay. i guess i get again since there is a sunset language, how what is the next process in order to reevaluate the fee waivers and the deferral fees? how what is the process for that? there's no new process outlined in in this part of the code or any other part that in the planning code, at least, i can only speculate that when the tac reconvenes as part of the legislation you just heard that the impact fee and sort of the exact conversation in general would be reopened. okay that will be part of their conversation. okay. thank you. i am again, we are in such a thank you, mr. snyder. you can you can sit. i will just say that i am

very cautious and very wary of this deferral impact fees, although i do understand in terms of the small businesses. and i think when there are conversation about the elimination of impact fees and that's why i highlight the conversation about the equity and the my issue with this in a way, kind of like a blanketed type of planning change and planning code like this, it doesn't really we don't have enough analysis and i in terms of let's say we have in issues of say, affordable housing businesses, the how big the small businesses would be, the change of uses. this is the type of things i'm kind of worry about in terms of when we are trying to change something in the planning code as well. a lot

of these the area plans has been vetted out in the community and many of the times this area plans were presented that there will be high impact fees that will be received by the city in order to improve the infrastructure. so i just want to say that so for me, you know, i recognize that the impact fees for different sectors may be vary, but i think as in planning department, we probably need to look into and reassess in terms of how equitable this impact fees or the changes in the impact fees will be. thank you. thank you. commissioner koppell yeah, i cannot think of a more opportune time to implement these tools. we need to give developers the tools to build their projects that we've approved. ideally and we need to give these business owners the tools they need to stay open,

stay in business. so i'm going to make a motion to approve of including the small business amendments. does that include, um, the blue line version? we also received? yes. okay. a second. very good. commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with the amendments submitted to the ordinance as well as the small business commission recommendations on that motion. commissioner braun. hi, commissioner ruiz. hi, commissioner diamond. hi, commissioner imperial. no commissioner koppell hi. and commissioner. president tanner, i so moved commissioners, a motion passes 5 to 1 with commissioner imperial voting against commissioners. it will place this on item. 713 for case number 2020 hyphen 0048068. hb

for the property at 4199 mission street. this is a project authorization. good afternoon, commissioners. jeff horne planning department staff. the item before you is a request for home housing opportunities mean equity or the program project authorization pursuant to planning code section 206.3 and 328 for the demolition of an existing one storey commercial building and new construction of a six story 40 unit residential building. the project authorization would also grant zoning modifications from dwelling unit exposure and exceptions to rear yard and ground floor use requirements. subject lot is developed or is located in the excelsior outer mission neighborhood commercial district within the outer mission neighborhood adjacent to ocean view and the excelsior

neighborhoods. the project is located on a triangular flatiron shaped lot which is bounded by mission street and north street and is developed with a gas station, including a mini mart, pumps and canopy and a window tinting accessory. use the proposed project would involve the demolition of the existing one storey commercial building, removal of the underground storage tanks and associated utilities for the gas station and the construction of a new 60 foot tall, 45,000 gross square foot six story residential building. the building contains 40 residential units, including 14 one bedroom, 22, two bedroom and four three bedroom units. the 7000 square foot basement is accessed via a curb cut on north street and an automobile lift within the building and contains 13 vehicle parking spaces at the ground floor level. the mission street frontage contains four walkup units with direct access from the street. the main street

frontage contains the main lobby transformer room, mechanical and building services and the basement access door and the internal area of the ground floor contains the bike parking room. bike repair room and mail room as amenities for the tenants. the project provides common, usable, open space at the rear yard and roof deck as well as on private open space decks and patios adjacent to some of the units. street improvements include the removal of four existing curb cuts pedestrian pulled out added to the intersection, sidewalk street trees on site landscaping and two class two bicycle racks to accommodate for biking, biking, parking spaces. the homeless program provides benefits to projects that designate on-site affordable dwelling units at below market rate rents. this project would provide 30% or 12 units of the of the 40 total proposed units as permanently affordable on site units in exchange for zoning modifications. exceptions

and development bonuses in addition to the form based density. and two additional stories of height provided by the homeless program program. the project seeks zoning modification for the 11 units facing onto the non-compliant rear yard. the units do, however , face onto an open area with more than 25ft. that is more than 25ft in openness in every horizontal dimension. the project also request exceptions from the planning commission for active ground floor uses and rear yard pursuant to planning code section 328. the commission may grant minor exceptions to the planning to the planning code in addition to the development bonuses. such exceptions, however, should only be granted to allow building mass to be appropriately shifted to respond to the surrounding context, and only when the commission finds that such modifications do not substantially reduce or increase the overall building envelope permitted by the homeless program, the project does not provide ground floor commercial uses along the mission frontage.

however, the project does provide ground floor residential units with raised units recessed entrances with porches and direct connections to the street, providing activation of the building frontage. additionally, mission street has a downward lateral slope towards the north, creating difficulty in developing ground floor commercial spaces with uniform residential floors above within the existing height limit for the site, the inclusion of ground floor commercial uses that meet section 145 would likely likely necessitate the increased height of the building , which would result in an increase in the building envelope. the subject development lot is approximately 10,000ft!s for planning code section 134 corner properties may provide a 20% of their lot as an interior court on the property. the project provides a 1340 square foot rear yard at the corner of the lot, equal to approximately 13.5% of the loss area. the project, as developed, could have with full lot

development at the ground floor, which could be could occur at this site. should commercial had been provided because the zoning allows for a lot development on the ground floor. the building could have had a total area of 61,345ft!s. however, the projec, as proposed, provides a 1340 square foot rear yard control to the existing mid-block open space of the surrounding properties. the relief and relocation of the building massing sought with the exception results in a building area of 54,000ft!s, which is not an increase to the size of the building that could occur through homes at the site. a preliminary mitigated negative declaration for the project was prepared and published for public review on may 17th, 2023, and public comment lasted until june six, 2023. no appeals were received and the final end is included in the case report. the

mitigation monitoring and report program will be included through the conditions of approval within the motion before you today. at the time of the case reports publishing the department had received five correspondence on the project site. two are in general support of the development and two express concerns with the scale of the development and increased street parking demand resulting from the project. the owner of the gas station also expressed opposition to the loss of an independent gas station. since the case report publication. one letter in opposition has been received concerned with cumulative street parking issues and 13 emails in support of the housing development were received. the department finds that the project is on balance consistent with the objectives and policies of the general plan. it meets all applicable requirements of the planning code. the project will maximize the use of a currently underutilized lot and construct a new six story residential building within close proximity to public transport, commercial corridors and jobs. additionally, the project will

increase the city's housing stock by providing a total of 40 new dwelling units, 12 of which would be designated as on site affordable units. of the 40 units, 26 dwelling units will be family friendly units and that they will contain two or more bedrooms and contain amenities like usable open space in unit laundry, walk in closets for greater storage. this concludes staff's presentation and i'm available for any questions. thank you. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. oh oh. five minutes, not ten. oh, sorry. i'll speak quickly. hi, my name is amy lee and i am here on behalf of ron magnolia who is here as well, and he's the project sponsor. mr. melia started his auto shop in 1982. he has made many improvements to the project and its underground tanks and eventually he was able to purchase the property. at that time, he also lived nearby. the project utilizes a large, irregular shaped lot to create new residential uses the project is compatible with recently constructed residential projects

in the outer mission and excelsior neighborhood and is within walking distance to the glen park station. given my reduced time, i just want to make a couple of notes as well and won't go through my entire presentation. i just want to emphasize that this project site is well served by the public transit 4449, and 14 muni busses run within three blocks of the project and the glen park bart station is four blocks from the project. our initial submission in july 2020, we had 39 residential units and only nine off street parking spaces, an l-shaped building with 20% at grade was allowed at that time for home projects and it was at that point 65 foot height instead of what we see here. after meeting with the neighbors early on and working very closely with planning, we actually made significant changes. we try to increase to parking spaces to 18 in response to the neighbors concerns. but given the city's transit policies, it was reduced to 13 off street parking spaces. the

project also includes 40 class one bicycle as well as 424 class, two bicycle spaces. several revisions were made to the design, the massing, the massing was shifted at the rear of the building from may to mission street to provide relief to the neighbors, the open rear yard, open space was shifted to the northeast corner of the parcel to be consistent with the adjacent open space property. the sixth floor was set back to add architectural detail and provide a change of plan to the upper story. the entire project was set back at the ground floor for about nine inches to accommodate new street trees and on the sidewalk. the curb cuts were consolidated and eliminated to provide a safer pedestrian environment and to preserve the existing trees. and as the architect will, i think we benefited from additional off street parking street parking because of the consolidate option. we understand that the community has a desire for more off street parking, but given the city's policies and planning guidelines, it is simply difficult for this project and

it would not be viable if more off street parking was required. we did receive some signatures of support, but generally people were reluctant to put their name out there in terms of supporting this project. notwithstanding, we do hope that this commission and based on the staff recommendation, will approve this project. and i want to introduce gary gr architect to provide more details rather than to repeat what the staff said. excellent presentation. just briefly, if we go to the second slide, this site actually has four large curb cuts, the smallest being 24ft and the other three at 28ft. we will eliminate those curb cuts as you can see in the dotted lines on some of these images right here. and then by eliminating the curb cuts we have probably created eight compact parking spaces at the street level. we have an auto driveway, which is a trade off. so really we've created about seven off street parking

spaces by eliminating this gas station, the other items that this should be noted to is of the 40 units they mentioned earlier that 14 units are one bedrooms, which is represent 14% of the units, two bedroom units. we have 22 which represent 55% of this project. normally we see either 40 or 50% and we have three bedroom units, which are family units which are about 10% for units. one of the things that we have recently done is we've been hired to remodel an sro in the city, especially in chinatown. and one of the things we notice in these type of buildings and it's kind of a heartwarming experience. we went in there in the evening to see how the families and the single people and elderly use the buildings. we found children in the stairway doing homework. okay. it was only quiet spot under fluorescent light, maybe ages third grade to sixth grade. so one of the things we talked about, mr. malaya, was can we create common rooms on different floors in this building for

adults to interact privately and for children who can do group homework studies? and that was one of the features that we did in this project on floor two, five and six. the other floors are community washer and dryer rooms, right now. so we also envision at grade at the rear. i think i see if you saw on the plan, it was a small children play area and then the adults could use the roof deck. that's okay. and so that that's one of my closing. i'll be available to answer any questions regarding this project. it's within walking distance to the glen park bart station to thank you. thank you. with that, we should open up public comment. members of the public. this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you're calling in remotely, you need press star three or raise your hand via webex again through the chair. you'll each have two minutes. hi

commission in order to speak in front of you. i just want to voice my support for this great project and also for the project sponsor a local small business owner who is part of the recovery of san francisco and part of our growth. when things are so, so hard and complex and expensive that only billion dollar corporations can compete, it pushes guys like this sponsor out of the way and it's so heartwarming to see this project , which i think is thoughtfully designed, has a great planner. i urge you to support it as well. thank you. okay. seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote caller. good afternoon, commissioners. jake price with the housing action coalition. an we have not officially reviewed this project

. however, we are incredibly supportive of projects like this . and when i say that, i'm referring to projects that utilize the homes program, which we should be incentivizing and encouraging project teams to do. additionally this project converts car oriented infrastructure into much needed housing, something that the hack was to see as well. so we love these types of projects and we need more of them to meet our goals and we should be promoting the use of our local density bonus. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. seeing no additional requests to speak, public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. thank you. i just want to echo the kind of what a great project to see a property owner transforming your property into something new. and i think commissioners, even though we were looking earlier and still i

know this clouds kind of hanging overhead of this chart, this charge is going to be kind of hanging over us for the next few years. there are opportunities, i think, as you kind of mentioned, commissioner brown, all projects that are prototyped aren't reflective of all the scenarios. in reality, folks who own their property who if we get our mix of things right and our requirements right, can bring forward their property, that may be used as one thing now and decide to transform it into housing. so there are opportunities like this. i think it's a great project. i really want to thank you. i heard so many instances of refining the project, working with the community and with staff, and so commend staff as well as the project sponsor for being responsive to what you heard. definitely understand having worked in this neighborhood, the sensitivity of parking. but i think you made a great point of creating some more on street parking and as well as the parking that's in the building. and we know trying to get to a car, more car free society is a transition that we're still in. and so it can be hard in communities where folks still are using their vehicles or need their vehicle for work in school and may not always have designated parking spaces at

their homes. and so they can be challenged to welcome new neighbors because they know there may be more vehicles associated with those residents. but hopefully we can get to a point where it's not as much of a crunch. so again, really supportive of this project and very happy to be supporting it today. commissioner koppell i was going to make a motion to approve. i'll second, but then i'll call on commissioner brown if he has any additional comments or questions. um, nope , nothing lengthy. just wanted to say i also am in full support of this project and i want to echo the comments about the challenges sometimes with transitioning towards away from very auto centric uses, but at the same time there's a real benefit to this project. i walked by this site on a regular basis and gas stations are always tricky places to walk by. so i appreciate the contribution to the pedestrian environment and safety in the area as well. and i support the project. great. thank you. seeing nothing further, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion. commissioner braun i. commissioner ruiz. hi

commissioner diamond. hi, commissioner. imperial high commissioner coppell and commissioner president tanner. i so moved commissioners and motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and we'll place this on item 18 for case number 2022 hyphen 009099 for the property at 1111 california street. this is also a conditional use authorization . good afternoon, commissioners to spicer planning staff. the item before you today is a request for conditional use authorization to amend the conditions of approval of planning commission motion 19020, which was approved by the commission on november 14th, 2013, to conditionally permit a general entertainment use. the nob hill masonic center, specifically, this request

proposes to amend condition number 48, which would increase the maximum number of large live events as defined with 250 attendees or more from 79 to 91 events annually. subsequently condition number 49 would also be amended to reflect the increased number of large entertainment events. however, the annual limit of 50 for large entertainment events that are music events or concerts as imposed by condition number 4849 excuse me, would be retained and the 12 additional non music large entertainment events are contemplated to be primarily comedy community and other speaking events. no other amendment to motion number 19020 or propose and all other conditions of approval in that original motion would remain in effect on november 14th, 2013. a final eir or environmental impact report was certified by

the planning commission through the approval of motion 19019, the final eir analyzed 95 live large entertainment events annually and found it would have no significant environmental effects. to date, the department has received three letters in support of and four letters in opposition to the project, which include one additional letter of opposition and two letters in support of the project that were received prior to the publishing of your packet. opposition to the project is primarily centered on an increased congestion and emissions around the masonic limitations on existing street parking and safety concerns regarding concert attendees as part of the project is centered on economic and cultural importance of the masonic. the project sponsor held one community meeting on

march 28th, 2023. the department supports the request to increase the number of large live entertainment events from 79 to 91, which would allow for increased flexibility with non music events. the department also finds the project to be necessary, desirable and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and not to be detrimental to persons or adjacent properties in the vicinity. this concludes my presentation. i'm available for questions. thank you. thank you. project sponsor. you have five minutes. so it's going to hand out. good afternoon, commissioners. steve vettel with farrell, o'brien and martel on behalf of the project, sponsors the masons of california and live nation. the 3200 seat masonic auditorium opened 65 years ago. the top of nob hill. since then, the masonic has operated continuously as an entertainment and culture of

venue, hosting concerts, comedy shows, speakers, ceremonies, banquets and corporate meetings as well as the masons of california's annual convention. on the top of the top of nob hill is a mixed use neighborhood , includes hotels, restaurants and bars, institutional cultural venues and high density residential. the zoning is also mixed use in 2013, as dakota stated, this commission approved a conditional use to clarify the masonic legal status. the commission opposed 50 conditions of approval that were negotiated with the community in which implemented the ers improvement measures. these conditions address a range of potential impacts from traffic to noise and parking, litter pickup, alcohol sales, operating hours and limit on an a limit on the annual number of large events. as i stated in the presentation , this application is to modify only one of those 50 condition to increase the annual number of large entertainment events from 79 to 91, while retaining the annual limit of 54 concerts. there's additional 12 events would be primarily comedy shows

and speaking speaking engagement , such as book tours, not concert. the other 49 conditions would remain the same implementation of the 2013 conditions of approval have proven to be highly effective in ensuring that the masonic operates is a good neighbor. minimizing impacts on the area. over the past nine years of operation of these conditions, there's been no record of complaints to or any enforcement actions taken by the police department entertainment commission or planning department and comedy shows and speaking engagements. we seek to increase are the least impactful . the capacity for these events is reduced to 2300 seats. these shows tend to be tend to let out earlier than concerts, and there was no need for equipment load in and late night load out or for performer busses. patrons traveled to and from nob hill to attend events at the masonic, just as patrons traveled to other entertainment venues throughout the city, such as oracle park, bill graham auditorium and shea center. and the presence of these people in

the neighborhood is experienced in the neighborhood. many of our neighbors welcome them, but not everyone is happy about this presence and you may hear from some of them this afternoon to address these neighbors concerns. the masons and live nation have ongoing discussions with them and other neighbors. we continue this hearing twice to accommodate more of these meetings as described in the documentary just handed up to you in response to these meetings. we continually update the operations to address new issues and they arrive in addition to complying with the 50 conditions of approval. for example, one one recent issue not addressed by the conditions of approval is unauthorized street vendors selling food, beverages and merchandise in the area. we have no authority to prevent these street vending on public sidewalk beyond our perimeter. but we have requested the public works on the department of public health and do have jurisdiction address this issue. we'll continue to seek help from these departments on issues, on this issue, as well as adjust any other operating conditions to address other new issues of may arise. a successful masonic auditorium

helps implement the policies of the arts element to the general plan that calls for live entertainment opportunities throughout the city. since live nation began operating, the masonic in 2014, it had it associated over 500 events with over 1 million guests contributing to the city's cultural life and providing an economic boost to nob hill, an increase in the number of comedy shows and cultural shows by 12 events annually will add to these contributions to the city . at the same time, given our compliance with the 2013 conditions of approval, the low impact of excuse me, the low impact of comedy shows and our ongoing dialog with the neighborhood, we do not believe these 12 additional events non concert events, will change in any way. the masonic history of being a good neighbor to the good neighbor, to the nob hill community for all these reasons, we urge your approval of our application represented lives of the masons and live nation are here and we are available to respond to any questions you may have. thank you. thank you. okay

members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward and line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. go ahead through the chair. you'll each have two minutes. again, if you're calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. good afternoon, commissioners. thank you for allowing me to be here. my name is stan llanfair. i am a past president and presently the director of the nob hill association. i also live at gramercy towers, which is next door to the masonic. our position is very, very simple. the net change of the motion is granted will be on the average one additional non musical event per month. given the nature and the small number of these additional events, the incremental change will have only a diminished de minimis effect. if it has any effect at

all. i'd like to speak for a moment. the reliability of the masonic to mitigate any adverse effects that might arise. as noted above, i've served as director of the association for over ten consecutive years as well as living next door at the gramercy. i can personally attest to the cooperative ness of the applicant at the masonic . to respond to any. to respond to any concerns. finally i'd like to ask everyone to take a tolerant attitude with any application submitted by the masonic. they are truly a good neighbor. i'd like to remember the pandemic and how the neighborhood has suffered. the whole city, all the major hotels were threatened. we lost restaurants. the masonic helped us to hold on. if that won't be

said elsewhere, we'll say here, thank you. masonic that concludes my remark. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is joanne desmond and i'm here on behalf of iet local 16. the stagehands union who work up at the masonic i am here in support of live nation requests to increase from 79 to 91 live events at the masonic auditorium. these will be small events that will result in minimal if any, disruption to the neighbors. a live nation has been a good partner and a good labor partner for us. we asked for confirmation on this matter. thank you.

good afternoon, commissioners. thank you so much for being here and providing such service to the city and county of san francisco and all residents and visitors to this great city, the greatest city in america. and i am the president of iatse local 16, the stage technicians union. we represent stagehands, film workers, music workers, whether at the san francisco symphony, the opera on film production, event production. we for 128 years have represented workers doing extraordinarily difficult work under adverse circumstances stances. and i'm very happy to say that live nation is one of our best partners. they preserve, they provide working conditions for our members that

are without pa in the industry. they provide opportunity for san franciscans for whom opportunity is sometimes only a dream. we are able to provide for san franciscans coming out of the public high schools from san francisco state, from city college people with associate's degrees in theater technology or broadcast engineering from sf state or from ruth asawa school of the arts. after four years of theater, technical technical work at the high school level, we are seeing members of our community being given the opportunity to have jobs with health care and justice for 12 small shows that the neighborhood, the bulk of the neighbors don't oppose. it's a simple ask for us and we really hope that we can count on each commissioner to vote yes for this modification. thank you for

letting me go a little over in my time and thank you so much for your time. you're welcome. and you actually have six seconds left, but thank you for your comments, sir. good afternoon. thank you. commissioner my name is keith nobler. i am a sound engineer, member of local 16 and a san francisco resident. i live in hayes valley. i speak in support of this mixed many good comedy shows and book events. and as katy couric's book book tour and andrew schulz, chris rock, dave chappelle, major comedians have come through this venue. we are very lucky to have it. and i am a i participate in the load ins , the production crew, every day. so i may ambassador to the neighborhood to make sure that the sidewalks are, in fact, clear. the volume is kept

mitigated, volume level and i, i hope that we can keep this venue moving with the keep these, these shows coming in the city can cannot afford to lose these type of things. it's a it's a great great thing to have so i speak in support of this thank you. hello my name is aaron cole. i'm a partner at stuckey's club moderne. we're one of the bars and that are close to close to the masonic. and i'm here to speak on behalf of the business owners, bars and restaurants that are in the neighborhood because the masonic and the guests from the masonic have a material impact, a positive material impact on our business . so i'm just going to read a letter which i believe you have, i sent in earlier today, signed

by ten of our local businesses, and i'll just read it. dear commissioners, we are business owners in the lower nob hill district and we'd like you to know that we're in support of the masonic auditoriums request for 12 additional comedy type events per year. these events can attract up to 2000 guests per night from across the bay area, across the state and across the world. these are people who typically will eat, drink and otherwise patronize the businesses of san francisco. give even the current economic conditions, not to mention the negative press about our city. we are now more reliant than ever on the outside influences influx of visitors since so many people aren't coming to the city that normally would and basically what i'm saying is, is that these are visitors. additionally that are going to replace visitors that normally would be here. we hire san

franciscans, the 1010 businesses here probably have 50 to 100 employees in all. all added together, we support local vendors. we pay our taxes and we try and do the right thing by our neighbors and remember that it's food and drink. entertainment is one of the main reasons why people live in san francisco and visit san francisco. so we urge your support on item 18. thank you. hello, i'm claire hughes. i've worked at masonic in the concessions field for over about 11 years, so i work for a global gourmet catering. we have done both the concession ins for all the venues and for conferences. i'm in support of increasing our shows. 12 more. that would be great for us as an employee. we

also have about 40 of our employees work every show, so you'd be continuing to help us stay employed and continue to be able to live and work in this great city. thank you. hello, i'm robin carter. i also work for global gourmet catering. i've been working as a bartender at masonic for the last decade and also in support of adding the 12 shows on. it'd be very helpful for our staff. i do work every show there, and i also live in the nob hill neighborhood and i just walk. i'm a couple blocks away from the venue and i walk there and if you really helpful to have these extra 12 shows a year to help with the income and also to be able to afford living in san francisco. so it'd be great. thank you. hello, i'm barbara

fink. i live at 1200 california street, the corner of jones. i'm speaking as a resident, 1200 california management and some of the residents met with live nation and masonic just last week. and they've assured us that they are addressing our complaints. and i would like to list those complaints. so that they can get into the record. number one is traffic before and after events difficulty getting in and out of garages and blocking residents access. yes, they live nation has stated that they have a traffic officer pre and post events to help with the entrance and the exit of the events and that they hire san francisco police department traffic officers to oversee this

event. we'd like that to continue noise 2013 agreement stated that nothing before 7 a.m. but there's nothing listed and hours after the events are done. and as an example we hear beeping from a loading truck at 1 a.m. it's difficult for us to sleep. they said they would look into this. we don't know if it's a safety issue, but we would like to have a limit as to when they can load trucks at night. excrement people are relieving themselves on grace cathedral in the alleys and sidewalks. they have two public toilets as medicine garage. but this is not generally noted by the public, and we would like this to be known. they hired doing things that are letting people in

earlier so that they can go to the bathrooms. but we would like this to be of record. the food trucks that have been described, the events goers are congregating in 1200. that is your time. well everybody's good if she she can go next. hello commissioner hours. i'm marilyn brenner. i also live at 1200 california, which is across the street from the masonic bar. barbara had some different points to make than i'm reiterate a few of them, but my big concern is, is trash. and these have been described as small events. they're not small. they're the non music events are in the neighborhood of 2300 people. the music ones are 3300,

more or less. but the sheer level of trash and we did have this meeting with the masonic and live nation and they very nicely agreed to extend their. supervision or whatever you want to call it, of cleaning the sidewalks, not not to limit it anymore to just in front of the masonic, but to extend it at least on our side of the street, which is the north side of california, down to 11 north. so we would really like them to hold to that because it was simply a verbal agreement. but also we have people loitering in our entry. it it's no looks convenient to have uber and people pick you up there, but it's disturbing to us. and they did say that they would do their best to keep traffic, keep keep people moving down the sidewalk and not to eat their hot dogs. in our entry. was that my time?

let's see you got 25 seconds. what do you see? oh, and the other one is the original permit was to be reviewed in three years, i believe. perhaps we. i would really appreciate if we could try the additional 12 shows and review it, have, you know, reviewed at the end of one year, not three. so thank you. those are my comments. thank you . hi. my name is paul guerrero and i represent global gourmet catering. i've been with them for over a decade and i've been working with the masonic and i am in support of the additional shows because it brings traffic, it pays the bills for families. and a lot of people that i have worked with had made their own businesses and they've created families and i want to support

them. thank you. good afternoon . my name is david thompson. i live on sacramento street between mason and taylor. thank you for the opportunity to speak in opposition to masonic lives. nation application. i don't agree with the executive summary of the planning department to the effect that the activity is you're compatible with the neighborhood and furthermore, that there in fact, i think they're detrimental to the neighborhood. for examples we've heard about the honking of the t shirts and memorabilia that includes people in the middle of the street on california. at times we've heard about the food vendors performance busses are parked overnight on taylor street at huntington park. they appear to use their engines or generators to continuously run

the power accessories. there may be shore power on california street as required in approval condition of approval. number 25 for concert busses parked on california. but there's nothing on taylor. accordingly the neighborhood gets to noxious, noxious and offensive offensive emissions, along with the accompanying noise, are also performance busses on taylor have hit and damaged our beautiful trees along the huntington park side of taylor. these are a few examples on the burden on the neighborhood. what i'm looking for and i imagine what you're looking for is a balance, a respect for the various permitted uses in our neighborhood, including residential. we're not trying to reduce the rights that they currently have, but i believe that the requested authorization is a privilege, one that should be earned and that promotes the health of our city and the neighborhood and as they

operate, i don't believe they do. so thank you for considering my opinion. and i do appreciate your time. thank you. good afternoon. i'm retired army captain michael, gerald or mickey, a longtime san francisco resident. and i love this country. and i love this city. i know going through tough times, we know that i've lived here a very long time, with the exception of fighting overseas, have been in san francisco since 19 years old. so it's a number of decades. and i've seen all the challenges we've gone through currently as a lifetime member of the nob hill association with many of my friends present, i've seen a number of these concerts over the decades. while there are concerts and events at the chase center, there are events over at the civic center, at the auditorium. the same problems that we struggle with with noise

and litter are present at every venue i've ever attended in san francisco for the 20 plus years i've been here. truthfully, it's more like 30. but i understand respect that there's concerns. i just don't want to see another venue compromised with such a small addition to the programing which is a loss of revenue and also a loss of opportunity. i mean, these are non music events and i've attended both non music events and music events there. great. do we have a few people that get a little nuts? sure. but we have that in the financial district where i've lived for 20 plus years. i think just adding these 12 and i'm certainly not a member of and no financial interest in live nation, i think it's just a great idea to look at more opportunities for more people to come into san francisco. for those of us who live in san francisco and for those of us to enjoy the entertainment

opportunities the city needs and we don't need to lose another opportunity for people to come in and enjoy the greatest city in america. thank you. okay seeing no other members of the public in the chambers coming forward, let's go to our remote callers. so my name is james wall. i live at 1170 sacramento street across the street from the masonic, about one block, maybe 500ft away or so. first thing is, i did not receive notice of this meeting directly . i found out through others about the meeting, so i'm not sure if they're in compliance with their notice requirements because there may be others who had wished to speak as well. my concern is primarily with the compliance of by the masonic and

live nation with the conditions that were agreed some years ago . the masonic at their public meeting that they held, indicated they were in compliance, but they did not have any metrics to establish that they were in fact measured . those metrics and therefore we have no idea whether or not they were complying with them. so that is a significant burden. specifically for me, i'm concerned with the performer busses parking on taylor street running without a short tower running their diesels. despite the five limit limit that san francisco has for running such vehicles and that secondly, the performers are not staying in our hotels are apparently staying in busses, which is not supportive of the neighborhood which would be desirable. the other is there was a comment

that these are inconsequential. if they are inconsequential, then there's no need to add them . i do believe that the masonic would like to add these. we would like to work, i think, as a neighborhood together with the masonic and come to a very good conclusion about allowing them to have additional preferences for assuring that they are complying and being a good neighbor. thank you, sir. that is your time. hi, my name is diane thompson. i also live in the neighborhood. i live across from huntington park. i think what i'd like to propose is just a quid pro quo from live nation. it seems that there's a viable solution to this request. make the events compatible with our neighborhood lecture series. book tours are fine. the rock is

concerts are not. they bring an element of people that totally disrupt our neighborhood, trash our neighborhood, make me feel unsafe. i don't like the busses running. we have a security. you have security guards monitoring the busses. it looks like a police state and i'd never mind the 14 or 15 cars that can't park there during the day. that impacts our families and our neighbors. i'd like i'd welcome more business in our city. of course. i love our city, too. i love nob hill cafe and all the bars and cafes are filled, but not at the expense of our neighborhood. i moved here for a reason. i'd ask for respect for our neighborhood, for our neighbors, my friends, and live nation. you are welcome if you keep to placid events only. thank you. okay last call for public comment. seeing none

public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners, i thank you for everyone who spoke and many folks here in the chamber for that. and the product sponsor as well. generally supportive of the request for the additional events. i was curious if any of the project sponsors wanted to comment on some of the i know you spoke a bit about the negotiations. you have with the neighbors. sound like we had a couple of folks, ms. brenner and ms. fink, talking about some of the agreements that you kind of came to. if you could elaborate on your commitment to taking care of some of those ideas, those things. i think i heard traffic block and garages. people were leaving themselves. i think hearing some indication, trying to direct people to the bathrooms that are available as well as cleaning up trash, litter and things like that and making sure folks aren't maybe using other areas around the concert venue when they're trying to get their lifts and rideshares home. so whoever wants to respond to those conversations and kind of some of the agreements that you've come to thank you, commissioner.

i'm alan casserly with the masons of california. in our conversations with building managers and hoa president near us, we heard the same concerns that you heard this afternoon in terms of trash pickup. what we agreed to do is to pick up trash before and during the event as well as after the event, which is what the procedure had been up until that point. regarding guarding patrons that might gather or make noise outside of their building, we've committed to putting staff by their building to keep people moving along the driveway situation at 1201, california got a good understanding of that. we have offered to apply for and pay for a keep clear sign. there and to have staff there to enforce that. keep clear sign should it should traffic be congested in front of their driveway? live

nation has opened the doors or access to the building hours now earlier before the building so people can come in. there are there are dozens of restrooms inside the building. we do even have two public restrooms, restrooms that you can access, even if the auditorium is not open. and, you know, we've committed to directing people to those if they come earlier than the doors are opened. we have committed to work with the city, the health department and the department of public works to monitor compliance of the street vendors. and we continue to do that as well. great. thank you very much. are there other comments or questions, motions from commissioners, commissioner koppel um, yeah, very familiar with the area. actually worked in the gramercy towers installing a new fire alarm system about 15 years ago and had my senior prom at the fairmont hotel. so and attended

many shows at, at the masonic and also live across the street from golden gate park on a major entrance. so i'm very familiar with dealing with thousands and thousands and thousands of people in front of my house for weekends at a time, and i'm all for it. so i wanted to make a motion to approve of the extra, um, event nights. second, thank you. there's no further commerce or deliberation in commissioners. there is a motion that has been seconded to approve this matter with conditions on that motion, commissioner braun. hi, commissioner ruiz. hi commissioner diamond. hi, commissioner. imperial i, commissioner coppell high commissioner. president tanner. i so moved commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0. we're going to take a short break before we good afternoon and welcome back to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday, july 13th, 2023. commissioners, we left off under your discretionary review calendar on

item 19, case number 2022 hyphen 008877 drp for the property at 5020 eighth street. a discretionary review. thank you, jones. good afternoon, president tanner. commissioners david winslow, staff architect. the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of permit application. 2022 .0802. 9754 to construct a horizontal and vertical addition to convert a single family dwelling into a two family residential building . the existing building is a category c, no historic resource . built in 1900. the requesters sahana shetty and alexander simonsson of 4020 eighth street, apartment three, the adjacent building to the east, are concerned that the project will have significant impact on their units light and therefore the quality of life and their property values, specifically the proximity of the outdoor side deck would make the area

significantly darker and less enjoyable, affecting light into their kitchen and bath area as it would remain the tallest structure on the block and two buildings that are close to the subject project site have peaked. roofs facing the street, limiting their shadow and also providing more pleasing esthetics from the street. therefore, their alternative proposal is to a reduce the overall height of the proposed structure, provide greater distance between the two and include a peaked roof sloping east west, which in some ways is a combination of the other two. to date, the department has received no letters i'm sorry, one letter in opposition and 21 letters in support of the project that staff supports the proposed addition as it complies with the planning code and the city's housing goals. the residential design guidelines recommend matching light wells for additions when the situation demands to preserve access to light and air. typically, the maximum depth depth requested to

apply this guideline is three feet in certain cases where neighboring light well is large enough, it may not even be necessary to match light as the size of a neighboring light. well, is large enough to accommodate its own access to light. in this case, the size of the neighboring light, well, is just such an example of a large light. well, that would continue to provide adequate light and access access to light without corresponding a corresponding offset of any kind. however, the project, as proposed, provides a three foot deep side setback for most of the length of the adjacent neighbor's light. well, therefore, staff deems that this is not an exceptional or extraordinary situation and recommends not taking discretionary review. thank you . okay. requester you have a five minute presentation. with. hello commissioners 4020 eighth

street is made up of four units each, about 623ft!s. we are a family in unit three and file the dr. the two 2000ft!s plus gt grandson homes being developed at 5028 street has dramatic impact on a little homes on 40 in his response project sponsor lovely man ronnie says he worked with the city planners diligently. we may they may all have had great intent, but they have misjudged the impact on a building, including mistakenly judging a little deck as a light . well, a light well has stairs . so it's a deck and it's not a light. well they suggested the project sponsor and city planner have suggested that we do a shadow analysis and we did so. and my husband, alec will walk us through it. thank you. hello. can we use the overhead camera? oh brilliant. so on your handout, on page one, the first thing that we're showing is the

view, the existing view below. and then the proposed view above. what's interesting about this is that it shows that the in the existing view, right, that the building is currently one foot taller than than ours. if you turn the page over to the next side to page two, you can actually see that the that the one foot difference is like a thin line across. right. and throws like no shadow. today, the other thing that we wanted to point out is that in this arrow where it says 20ft to ground so that's the handrail we measured that from that to the to the ground, that's 20ft. the proposed building is 40ft. so if you picture this table here at the handrail, it's like a 20 foot wall going straight up. so on. on slide three, we wanted to show what our proposal looked like. this is a so the planned

structure is on the left and you can see the wall. and then on the right you can see that what we were proposing on page four, it sort of brings that to life, right? so the building that's almost directly opposite across the street looks just like that . so the floor is here, right? and it goes straight up to a peak. these are the only two 40 foot buildings that are on the street. they both have pictures . so we spent some time doing some light analysis. and i want to explain how we did the layout analysis and how we actually try to quantify how much light we are losing. so here in this view, at left, you can see that there's a wall here. this wall has two windows, one for our kitchen, one for our bath. and so the way that we're viewing it is that if there's shadow up to the top of that, then that is light lost at 1:08 p.m. this is on the equinox. you can start to see a little bit of light coming through on that middle wall. so that's the start of when we

start to get light. and at 7:06 p.m. on the equinox, sunset, right. it's still bright today. this is. on page six. so you can see today what we have at 7 p.m. we got 358 minutes on the equinox of sunlight at 344 with the existing proposed structure, we lose 202 minutes because basically this side gets dark at 3:44 p.m. and then moving along in our compromise proposal, essentially it gets extended to 5:20 p.m. so it's a we lose 106 minutes, but it's significant. in this view. on page seven, what we're showing is that actually the shadow keeps going on. so this is the equinox, right? and so as time keeps going, it's starting to encroach

on that rectangle that is that our skylight in the hall. so that skylight today, right, has sunlight until in this case 7:06 p.m. we start to lose it at 450 and it's sort of gone by. 522. slide to eight. i'll go by this quickly. this is basically like a snapshot of all three places, all three examples at 3:50 p.m. today, of course, there's plenty of sun. tomorrow it's gone by 344. and then our proposal is still allows light. i'll skip ahead to the final slide and the last. 30s so our summation is that essentially if you look at this chart on the last page, page 11, we have a 50 greater than 50% light loss, 275 days out of the year. and we think

that that's significant. we think that calling our deck a light well is not actually accurate. thank you. thank you. you still have a two minute rebuttal at the end. okay. project sponsor, you have a five minute presentation. hi good afternoon. i'm kate steuart. my husband rodney. most oh, i'm sorry. can you hear me okay? kate stole my husband. ronnie is where the property owners property sponsors. he's the contractor and drew the plans as you're well aware, san francisco faces a housing crisis on a widespread scale before you as a project to convert a dilapidated cottage between two large rectangular multi-unit buildings into two family sized units in no valley, a high demand area of the city, especially for families over the past year, we have diligently worked with the

planning department and with neighbors to ensure that the proposed project meets all applicable codes and residential design guidelines and is minimal impactful on neighbors while adding desperately needed housing. as the planning department's analysis notes, our proposed project meets all applicable guidelines and codes and with respect to applicants late well actually exceeds the recommend setback between the current and the proposed building applicants. respect excuse me request for discretionary review. far from raising any notable issues under either the planning code or the residential design guidelines seeks to protect the market value of their condominium from reasonable development of an underutilized lot next door. as such, it does not raise the required exceptional and extraordinary circumstances associated with a proposed project. san francisco urgently needs housing and we are ready and waiting to add new housing to our supply and to employ all the laborers, craftspeople and local businesses that go into building new housing. and we hope that you'll give us the go

ahead today to get started. we'll be happy to answer any questions. thanks. okay. just just one second. members of the public, if you care to this is your opportunity to adjust the commission on this matter. if you're in the chambers, please come forward. if you are calling in remotely, you need to press star three or raise your hand via webex. seeing no members of the public, i take that back. let's go to our remote callers. you'll each have two minutes, two minutes. hi, it's georgia jewish. hi. two points about this project, please. and i hope you got to read my letter. the democrats are requiring a warning letter, which mr. winslow didn't mention because they're so close to the threshold. and so please look at that matrix. additionally, the sheet in the plans are really sketchy, and they gave a really hard, hard time for the staff. i think that was very unfair. the

project illustrates why the cap should be adjusted, but the second point concerns the size of the upper unit. think about what just happened on mission street. you approve for three bedroom units that were about 1200 and 40ft!s. this upper unit is 2500ft!s. the first floor of this upper unit is about 1400 square feet, which is the average size of housing in san francisco. a typical unit. my suggestion is they put a family unit on the second floor, put three bedrooms, be affordable by design, which is what you said on mission street, especially since this project is so close to the threshold necessary and desirable seem more appropriate . i gave the comparison with the one on chavez that recently sold in june for 2.795. i don't think the cities another nearly $3 million unit with inefficient use of space. um so i just set

the fourth floor come off what you've done for other projects that i mentioned and you put a nice family size unit on that third level and that would be much better for the housing stock in the city, particularly since this is so close to a demolition. and i hope you asked the project sponsors is the project is so dilapidated, why are they using the tax to create this, which would be $6 million building eventually. thanks a lot take care be well bye. so my name is lasalle. i am also a resident of 4020 eighth street unit for i recall i am in support of the requesters in our previous. i know they were not in the unit when the proposal had come in, but i do recall the

neighbor that they had talked to had told us in our hoa meeting that they were considering a sloped roof and moving the building more closer to the neighboring building. and in the new proposal that they did give us, that was not the case. i am the i'm the resident on the upper level across from the requesters and the current proposal does cover three of my windows or sorry, two of my windows and it was told to me via our our representative who had went to that meeting that there would be a sloped roof. so i, i don't know, i cannot speak on what was actually said but based on the papers that i've read and the proposal that was not the case. thank you.

residents of a part month number one in the 4028 building and i am in support of the request that has been done by the owner of the apartment number three. and now also from apartment number four. i do think there will be a reduced amount of light as they clearly demonstrated. and the additional floor from the new building will definitely impact also the site window that are on their on their side of the building. so i'm definitely supporting the request. thank you. okay last call. looks like one more. mr. gets. get your. can you hear me? we can. okay, great. sorry

yes. i also am a resident of 4020 eighth street, and i what i was presented with previously was that it would have a sloped roof and maybe i was misinformed . that's possible. but i do think it will have a significant impact on the light of the building and the garden in the back. there's many things that will have will be changed significantly about a place i love living and that's all i have to say. thank you. okay. last call for public comment. seeing none public comment is closed. request is you have a two minute rebuttal. thank you. i just want to echo the first caller's sentiment about the size of these units. san francisco needs housing. we heard a lot of that today because we were here for the whole session like there's not this i didn't hear today from

anybody that it was like, wow, we need 2000 plus square foot apartments. that's really the part that's needed. so what we're saying is that and i think what our compromise plan offered wasn't that we shrunk down anything. but i think that you can build two, two reasonable sized, very nice, in fact units, residential units in a smaller footprint without without taking up our light space. yeah. i go that and for the record, we don't really know who the first caller was, but that is really the fact of it. right you're building two ginormous 25,000 square foot buildings and 25. okay 20 500 square foot buildings and you're sort of doing this without sort of consideration for the four families who are living in 600 square foot buildings next door . and our deck is our deck. it's size proportional to our unit and it's not a light. well, and i disagree with the city planners on that. i think that that's an important point. you

know, it could have been a light well, except somebody filled it with stairs and then put a deck on top of it. so i hope this picture is a clear picture and shows that it is, in fact a deck. and not a label. thank you . deck sponsors, you have a two minute rebuttal if you care to use it. uh just to clarify, we did not ever present to any neighbors a sloped roof. i'm not sure what that person thought they saw. he's never came. we had. actually two pre pre application meetings with the neighbors the first time. one neighbor from this building came , his name is russell. i didn't

hear from him today. and he he's actually living in a in a rear bottom. he's was going to be the most affected one from this building. and he asked me if he said, look, i understand this development. it should be in the city. can you cut back, do something in the back, chop off the building a little bit. and i did. i took off seven feet at the corner. it's on the plan. it's quite a big chunk of the building. i had to redesign. the whole thing is submit another for a new round of. for of plans to for pre-application meeting and he was happy about it. nobody showed up. there's never a sloped roof. i wish you know all this concern came at the beginning and about their unit somebody sold them this unit and did not tell them that this construction is coming. so i don't know if they knew or they didn't know, but they got units,

i guess like a week or two before we were done with our 311 notification. thank you. thanks . okay. with that, the public hearing portion is closed and this matter is not before you. i want to thank everyone for being here. certainly understand the challenging circumstance of sounds like finding out about the project and you all working on the project probably for a number of months, if not years before it got to that stage. any comments, questions for staff or comments or questions for the project sponsor or did i request or motions from commissioners? commissioner imperial yes. i just want to make comment that i do not necessarily see an extraordinary circumstance around this. i understand that in terms of i think the i think the main argument that i'm seeing here is that there will be a block from the windows and it's more like view. but in

terms of the access to light, there will still be access to light in the area unless mr. winslow, if you would like to explain that more in terms of the access to light in general, but i do not see that as an issue. yeah. mr. could you comment on i mean, i think it's i mean, i would see the slope roof that would be proposed would be significant in terms of modifying the interior space of the second unit that's proposed . but maybe there's more of a carve out or like we see matching. and again, even though it's not a light, well, sometimes light walls are matched with a little a little cut out. and i don't know if that's something that you suggested or talk with the project sponsor about or kind of how those conversations went. if you could maybe just illuminate that for us. so yeah, sure. if you go to plan sheet a. three starting at a three is lower unit. basically all the plans they have a three foot side setback that extends virtually all the way to the rear,

starting at the line of the neighbors adjacent light. well as i was explaining, trying to explain in my report, it's like usually light wells start at three feet in depth and varying lengths. and we ask that those be matched by a reciprocal depth of three feet. in the case of the light wells such as this, which is as you can see in the aerial views and the plans, pretty deep, pretty, pretty wide as well, and even notches in it kind of provides its own self sufficient access to light from the sky above. so in that case, we wouldn't have necessarily even asked for reciprocating light. well project sponsor did that on all floors, three feet, not just the length of the neighbor's light. well but all the way to the back. and that was more than we typically ask for in a light, well condition, let alone a self sufficient

light, well conditioned. so i think that that was the basis of determining that. yeah there's always some difference when construction comes. that's to be expected. but this is kind of going with the intent of preserving light and air to adjacent properties. thank you for expanding on that. commissioner brown. yes i'll just say i, i completely understand the position of the discretionary review requesters and i'm sympathetic, but i also don't see any exceptional or extraordinary circumstances in this situation. it's a very high bar. and given that the cut outs , the notch in the requesters building will continue to provide light and air and that the neighboring building has been set back three feet, which would be the complimentary light. well, anyways, as has just been explained, i also don't see any exceptional or extraordinary circumstances. and so i moved to not take and approve second. there's no

further deliberation commissioners. there is a motion that has been seconded to not take dr. and approve the project as proposed on that motion. commissioner braun, high commissioner ruiz high. commissioner diamond i, commissioner imperial commissioner coppell and commission president tanner i so move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and we'll place us on your final item on today's agenda number 20. case number 2021 hyphen 002481. grp hyphen zero two for the property at 900 cherry street. also a discretionary review. good evening again, president tanner and commissioners david winslow, staff architect. the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of building permit application 2021 0107. 2240 to construct a horizontal rear addition at the

first and second levels of a single family dwelling. the existing building is a category c, no historic resource. built in 1925, there are two requesters. the first sarah glasgow of 1419 edith street, berkeley is concerned that the design of the proposed project is not responsive to the character of the neighborhood and does not conform to the residential design guidelines. her proposed alternative is to remove the side windows facing the open yard of the adjacent neighbor, the second request avila matsuda of 906, henry, the adjacent property to the west, is concerned the proposed location of the nine windows will affect the privacy and ability to build in the future, and the vertical addition is too high and invasive. her proposed alternatives are to one remove the nine windows facing 906 henry reduce the height of the vertical edition and that's that's their recommendation to date. the department has

received neither letters in opposition nor support of the project staff supports the proposed addition as it complies with the planning code and the residential design guidelines. staff reviewed the proposed property line windows with respect to impacts to privacy on the neighbor at 906 henry and the project proposes five new property line windows, three of which are clear story windows above eye level that serve. second floor bathroom kitchen and a first floor dining room. the other two are in bedrooms, one towards the front of the lot and the other closer to the rear , which would be closer to the 906 henry, which is located towards the rear of their lot. the view, angle and distances of the forward bedroom window does not enable any view into the requesters house. the window from the bedroom from bedroom three, which is closest to the dr. requesters front porch

likewise does not provide any substantial view into their house due to the porch roof and the plan view angle of the window vis a vis that facade at 906 henry the residential design guidelines. furthermore don't preclude windows from looking on to open space of private property, since that condition exists virtually everywhere in the city where rear windows look onto open rear yards, property line windows. furthermore are also allowed by dbi administrative bulletin with a caveat that acknowledges that the owner records and that acknowledges that they will abandon those windows should a neighbor decide to build in an adjoining neighbor build in such a manner that would render those windows unusable. because the above circumstance, because of the above circumstances, its staff's conclusion that the size number, location and height of the windows would not pose any exceptional or extraordinary

circumstances to the impacts of privacy or preclude future expansion of the requesters property. therefore the staff doesn't see any exceptional or extraordinary circumstances and does not recommend taking discretionary review. thanks okay. is the first requester. sarah glasgow present in the chambers? no. okay. let's go to a avila matsuda. you have. five minutes. ms. miss matsuda, are you with us. hello. you were just unmuted. so you should be able to speak to us.

okay. there's a person by the name of vivi will try that. let's try her. henry street. i would like to. first. i'm sorry, ma'am. are you one of the requesters? i am the resident. and my mother is the owners. these are the requester and the commenter. okay. so are you speaking on her behalf? apparently, she's having some sort of phone issues, so i'm. well i don't know what's going on. the phone. okay, let's. let's have. i would ask her to call back in just to give her her presents. and let's go to the project sponsors. if they're

in the chambers. yes. ms. matsuda if you're listening, if you can try to call in or maybe log back in and then we'll go to you after we hear exactly. i would log out and log back in because i don't even see a microphone next to your name anymore. thank you. project sponsors. there are two d.r. requesters. so you get ten minutes if you care to use them . sorry. and i just before the none of the other names reflect the names of the other requester, i believe. correct they don't. and none of them are raising their hands other than vivi who was, i guess, the other requester. so yeah, hopefully they can call back in. hi, i'm claire beasley. i am a principal at five design. we are the architects for the homeowners. this is carla robertson, one of the two homeowners. i appreciate the presentation that planning made and i appreciate all of your time. i'm not sure i have a lot to add beyond what mr. winslow already articulated. i'm certainly here to answer questions and just want to

reiterate that the project my clients as well are concerned with privacy and bulk and light and air and want to be respectful neighbors. and we have, i feel, improved the building and tried to remain sensitive to those criteria. i don't feel that this is a drastic change. it's not significant taller. it's less than three feet. we have tried to modulate, as mr. winslow described the property line windows to be sensitive around privacy and the property itself has a lot of deferred maintenance. and i think that in general it would be an improvement to the neighborhood. it will upgrade the building without radically transforming it and introduce a lot of detail at the front that will make it a more handsome member of its neighborhood community. and i think i would defer further comment until i can hear what the requesters might have to ask. thank you. thank you very

good. oh, okay. she's got at least she's got a microphone. ms. matsuda, are you able to submit your testimony now. you have five minutes. you already spoke. i already spoke. did you hear me? no we did not hear you. so you have five minutes. oh, okay. i will say it again. my name is sebastian matsuda. i'm the homeowner of the 906 january street. i would like to ask you not to approve any windows on the west elevation adjacent to my property. my house has only one interest, so it is. windows get approved. i will. privacy will be immensely affected. we will have to walk in and out of our property by the neighbors with new windows, which will be looking over us every time we enter and exit our home. this will be a very intrusive layout

that would affect our home privacy. this remodeling for the house, if i read it correctly, 20 windows, two french doors, five skylights plus two entrance door. this home project is excessive with so many windows that we grout the part of the best on my property. the peace and privacy, and also the volume of property and create challenges to build on my property in the future. no one commissioners who will we like to be in our situation in under surveillance 24 seven by the respectful of neighbors. we have issue we had we have had issues in the past with them since then moving. they have complained of our porch light demanding that we shut off our lights. they have shown that they are they are sensitive to any lights and we are concerned that there will

be continue issue forward, seeing more windows will be added. therefore, i believe you approve this. windows adjacent to my property. the 900 owners will continue taking complaints. we will make it a house environment for us. in addition to that, i would like to mention that the previous posting on the property, the. 900 property, was not adding for this hearing today. therefore i believe some other neighbors were not aware of that hearing today and i not be able to express their concerns. thank you. very good. if the second requester is online, please raise your hand. okay so not seeing any other not

seeing any other raised hands. let's go to public comment. to v.v. hi. yes, i'm the resident of 906. henry so in regards to the already like, proven light sensitive city of these neighbors, we have a porch light there are four safety. are building was broken to here before we moved in. and they had complained that the light they had a lights off time of 9:00 for two grown adults um so that we would turn our lights off in that preventing that weren't even their bedrooms. so i do say that this is a not one size fits all for code in the sense of the successful these, these neighbors have been nothing but

kind of nightmarish as far as welcoming over being pending or being light sensitive and adding more windows is not going to help the situation. and i would like to repeat what my mom said . no signage posted in front of the building about this meeting . and i would like to also add that this is not going to add any housing or any this is literally for their attic. that is it. it's not going to add any value to the neighborhood as the designer said. and i not ask for much. all we're asking for is for you requesting a redesign for you not to have any on the property. if you stick your hand out the current window to your wrist, your fingertips will be on our property. so that is how close and proximity you're talking about. we are not talking about any tree divides, any bush divides, any. i was a child. that room was occupied by a boy. we walk or walk past him

would see him naked and it not a good place for privacy at windows there and it's just not a good idea and i would request an exceptional circumstances for this property to close proximity and thank you that is your time . and just for the record, commissioners, the person who just last spoke occupies the same property as the requester. i afforded her the two minutes because as her mother left 2.5 minutes of her five minutes. so just for clarity. project sponsor, you left more than, you know, five minutes on your time. i don't know if you want to continue with your presentation now, i'll thank you. give them five minutes. they left like eight or something. so i would just like to reiterate that my clients care about privacy as

well. and that's a two way privacy. and we do still, while we respectfully understand that the neighbors feel differently, we do feel strongly that we have improved privacy in this respect because the portion of the lot that is being discussed just in this is the front of the adjacent property in the front deck and the side yard and side deck and side windows and doors of the subject property. we have modulated that to actually eliminate a deck that is active next to their active front deck. we have reduced the windows that are currently facing into that deck and an active stair and an active french door into minimal ribbon windows that would require step stool to look out of. from my client's property and the other windows that are being described as objectionable are well above their their roofline. it's looking, as mr. winslow pointed out, the closer one is looking at the roof, the front one is well at the front

of the property quite far away from from their home. so that's my position. and i think carla may also like to. yeah. and i would just as the homeowner i would like to address sort of the statement that we've been very sensitive to light. i think when our neighbors installed the lights, we inquired about, hey, could we put a timer on it? and they were like, no, we're concerned about safety and we left it at that. and it's been years and we haven't said a word about the lighting and so i think that longevity has proven that we are not overly sensitive to the light situation because we have allowed it to be and would just like to echo claire's points of clerestory windows. we've invited both both avila and viviana to view our plans. we would like to show them, hey, look, this is where the windows will go. here's how you can see

that you we will physically not be able to see into your property. we've either received hostile responses or no responses to those multiple requests. so my hope is we'll be able to move forward with the plans and they will eventually see that these windows are not visible, are not going to be us spying on their property. thank you. thank you. i'm going to give the second to your requester. one last chance to raise their hand. if you're calling in, you need to press star three or if you joining us via webex, you need to raise your hand. okay ms. matsuda, you have a two minute rebuttal. just well, i would like to mention about something that is very important to me. um, in case my rights as a homeowner is not respected as what i said about

my concern. and that is only one entrance. it's not as easy as they said that the windows just would be hanging in there. it just the situation is that we have to, in order for enter in and out from our property. i want to emphasize that it's not that just the streets or whatever, it's just there. i see that wall right now. and also, i would like to mention that it since we bought our home in 1981, we have had four homeowners and nobody have that incredible idea to have all these windows. that is really unbelievable intrusive to our property. and also, i would like to add to ask to you that in in a case that you decide to go forward and i respect my concern , i would like to get, um, according to the city bulletin number and 009 and then number

seven and to get an approved and recorded and signed document whether this document indicates that we covered those windows as soon as i'm ready to build adjacent to the property, this is very important to me and this has to be handled to me prior to any constructions of the windows. thank you. well. i'm going to unmute her. sounded like she had a couple of more comments. you have a few more seconds left. yes. in addition to the about the lights on, the probably the reason why was not commenting about how or saying anything about the lights is because we have a situation that it was caused by their property tree and all in a home in that home. this is why probably there

was not any more issues about our lights. so thank you. thank you. okay. project sponsor, you have a two minute rebuttal. if you care to use it. i mean. no, i'm good. okay. with that. commissioners the public hearing portion of this hearing is closed and this matter is now before you. okay. at the risk of prolonging this for no reason, i'll just say behalf of everybody, curtains are great for privacy because windows work both ways. you can see. and you can see out if you're exiting your home and somebody can see you, your exit in your home, usually on a public street where other people can see you. so i'm not really sure what the concern is. if you're entering and exiting, you're entering into exiting in a place that's quite visible. it sounds like the project sponsor made a number of changes to the project in respect and deference to neighbors. so happy to see that and hope that you all can continue to live together and sometimes of harmony. last thing to miss matsuda, i think mr. winslow did explain, but you may not have heard that the property line windows are subject to being essentially closed up or

kind of eliminated if development on your property or wherever they're adjacent to the property windows occurs and that will be a statement, i think you said that was recorded on behalf of the project sponsor, correct? or is that right? so it's a requirement. dbi when seeing property line windows in order to approve them, we'll make the, you know, here's the form to fill out. recorded the recorder's office. that's an agreement basically stating that yeah so that will be filed with the county recorder once this project gets to the department of building inspections. so still a few stops from now, but that will be a publicly available record that you could pull. that'll be part of their, their, their document. with that, i will call on commissioner koppel. i moved to not take dr. and approve project . seeing no further deliberation, commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to not take tr and approve the project as proposed on that motion. commissioner braun i. i commissioner diamond high commissioner, imperial high. commissioner coppell high.

commissioner president tanner i move commissioners. that motion passes unanimously 6 to 0 and commissioners, i apologize. i was remiss under commission comments and questions to remind you as well as members of the public that next week and the week after, we're starting at noon, starting at noon, and today we're going to close in honor of violet, who's missing her mom this afternoon. but we're glad to have her back here. we are adjourned.

take roll. welcome to the commission meeting for san francisco housing authority. commissioner president torres. >> present. >> commissioner lindo. >> present >> whether kim. >> and commissioner pikes. >> present. >> thank you. we can go to the acknowledgment. item 3. [land acknowledgment]