the street. we want to welcome everyone in the neighborhood and in the city and in the greater bay area to come and discover emily joubert. [music] . okay good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco planning commission hearing for thursday january ninth, 2025 when we

reach the item you're interested in speaking to we ask that you line up on the screen side of the room or to your right. 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 are a lot of time is reached i will announce that your time is up and take the next person cute to speak. there's a very convenient timer at the podium that you can see your time tick down please speak clearly and slowly and if you care to state your name for the record i will remind members of the public that the commission does not tolerate any disruption or outbursts of any kind. >> also i ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings and at this time i'd like to take roll commission president so present commission vice president moore commissioner braun you're commissioner campbell commissioner imperial here commissioner mcgarry and commissioner williams here. welcome back commissioners.

i trust you enjoyed your extended break. happy new year to you. first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance item one case number 2024 hyphen 00281 6828 through 30 day street conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to january 23rd 2025 item two case number 2024 hyphen 005689 otoh for the final office conversion and inventory informational presentation is proposed for continuance of january 23rd 2025 item three for case number 2024 hyphen 00366 to see 1815 market street conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to february 6th, 2025 item four case number 2023 hyphen 007010 see wait 1310 ginebra sara boulevard. conditional use authorization is proposed for continuance to february 13th 2025 further

commissioners under your regular calendar item 12 case number 2024 hyphen 008053 crv the preservation design standards is requesting a continuance to january 23rd 2025. i have no other items proposed for continuance so we should take public comment. members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on any of these items that are being proposed for continuance only on the matter of continuance. good afternoon president so and honorable commissioners i am david greenbaum, the principal of saint thomas moore school. we are in support of a continuance while we await alternative sites from the project sponsor as directed by the planning commission on october 17th. we look forward to collaborating with the planning department and the projects sponsor again thank you commissioners. thank you for your service and the community. wish you all a very happy new year. thank you for your time.

>> good afternoon commissioners. i'm linda shaw from st thomas moore and i'm also representing the parish as the parish council president. we will not oppose a continuance in this matter. however we would like some input on a future date scheduled. >> thank you and have a good afternoon. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name's joe duncan. i'm a parent of a child at saint thomas moore and i am in support of a continuance until we find out where the other viable options are. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is alejandro leonard. i'm a parent of two children at saint thomas moore school. >> i'm not opposed to a continuance. we wait with much hope to see where a not another alternative location is for the building in

the future. thank you for your time. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is olga galvez. i have two children also at saint thomas moore and we have not yet had any alternative options presented to us so we would like to see a day in the future after we've had an opportunity to see other plans. thank you for your time. >> hi dear commissioners my name is marsha lee. i'm a pediatrician and a pediatric kidney doctor at ucsf benioff children's hospital and the concerned mother of a sixth grader at saint thomas moore school. he's been there since preschool i in our parent community are in support of a continuance for this proposal as we have not heard of any plans for the s.f. golf club for an alternate location for this industrial building.

an alternate location is desired as our current location proposes a health hazard for our students and staff. >> thank you. okay. last call for comment on the continuance calendar seeing none public comment is closed and your continuance calendar is not before you commissioners . >> it was an imperial move to approve move to continue all items as proposed and for the item number four i just want to mention to the public that it's dated for continuance to february 13th and so it will be on february 13 that this will be heard unless it is. there is a not a proposal for continuance but february 13th that's that will be it. >> it's a move to continue all items as propose second thank you commissioners there's a motion that has been circulated to continue items as proposed on that motion commissioner campbell. by commissioner mcgarry by

commissioner williams i commissioner braun i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore i would commission president so i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 placing us on your consent calendar. the matter listed here under constitutes your consent calendar is considered to be routine by the planning commission and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote. there will be no separate discussion of this item unless member of the commission the public works staff so 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 five case number 2024 hyphen 005551 see wait 331 west portal avenue conditional use authorization members of the public this is your opportunity to request that this matter be pulled off of consent and heard today you need to come forward

seeing none. public comment is closed and your consent calendar is not before you commissioners commissioner moore move to approve a second thank you commissioners on that motion to approve move item five on consent commissioner campbell commissioner mcgarry i commissioner williams i commissioner braun i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore and commission president so i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 7 to 0 placing us under commission matters item six the land acknowledgment the commission acknowledges this we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the rama to shall only who are the original habitants of the san francisco peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and accordance with their traditions the roman tution rub

to abalone have never ceded lost or forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory as guests we acknowledge 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 tution only community and by affirming their sovereign sovereign rights as first people. >> thank you. item seven consideration of adoption draft minutes for december 5th and december 12th 2020 for members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on their minutes and you need to come forward seeing none. public comment is closed and your minutes are now before you commissioners mr. lebron moved to adopt the minutes second thank you commissioners on that motion to adopt your minutes commissioner campbell i commissioner mcgarry i

commissioner williams i'm commissioner braun i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore and commission president so i so move commissioners that motion passes unanimously 720 item eight commission comments and questions. >> commissioner moore i'll give you the opening comments. >> okay. thank you. well welcome everyone. happy new year and i'm really happy to continue to be able to serve our city and county of san francisco alongside with you all. i'd like to give some update on what we had announced last. commission hearing where in respond to the project at 2588 mission street last time we we had our meeting we had talked about having a subcommittee hearing out in the mission with the communities as since december the 24th of last year

the day before christmas we have received emails from the community that january 14th is not not a really good day for them to organize and get together. so after a lot of conversations with the community in collaboration with commissioner williams and senior staff in the planning department and our secretary with the community, we all collaboratively decided that we will have the community join our commission hearing in city hall at a later date on february 6th with that particular time at 5 p.m.. and with that we have no longer needed the subcommittee and everyone will be heard and we will provide all the translation and a overflow room where is needed to accommodate everyone and it's agreed upon

with the community at 5 p.m. it's a good time for them to be able to have everyone show up and not to disrupt their daily lives. >> so that's kind of conclude my update commissioner so if you would be so kind dense to officially disband the subcommittee so there aren't quorum issues? >> yes i am officially disbanding the subcommittee as of today. yes. there's any anything else i need to state? okay. all right. >> and i. i think commissioner moore. yes. thank you. happy new year to everybody. a news you did you new day and new year. welcome to me ruby. we look forward to constructively working with you and we hope to have many forward leading conversations. this is a good commission and we hope you can contribute to making the city hall again.

on another hand i want to extend my thoughts and prayers to our city in southern california which is local war that i think scares all of us and while we are not in the same exact climate zone, this can happen at any time and anywhere. and as i follow it and as i see this incredible pictures how the fire marches down street by street, block by block i am paralyzed in fear and my heart goes out to the citizens of southern california and to los angeles in particular you and commissioner williams. >> thank you. i just wanted to say thank you to the planning staff and to president. >> so for working with the community for that important hearing and giving them a place to to voice their to give them

a voice and so i just want to say thank you. it's very important that we listen to our communities around the city and so i really appreciate that. >> thank you. thank you. anyone anyone else? okay. if there's nothing further commissioners, we can move on to department matters. >> item nine directors announcements. yeah. no, it is my yeah. happy new year to you all. i mean, as you know, the mayor was sworn in. mallory was sworn in yesterday . new staff in room 200 that will be working with i think you know it's been widely reported that there will be a chief for housing and economic development who i think we'll all be working most closely with but also on kind of the infrastructure side. so getting to know staff in the

mayor's office, also the board you know there was a lot of shifting in the at the board of supervisors. there's a new president president emanuel been in what we've yet to hear who will make up the land use committee where we do most of our our work so more to come on that as far as we know but just wanted to to recognize that and wish you all happy new year. there's nothing further item ten review of past events at the board of supervisors so i have no report from the board of appeals and the historic preservation commission has not yet met this new year but on behalf of aaron starr who was out ill, he wanted me to report that there is not much of a board report but that the board did hold its inaugural meeting on wednesday and unanimously elected supervisor mendelsohn as the new board president commissioners that will places

under 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 when the number of speakers exceed the 15 minute limit general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda. >> good afternoon george irish and happy new year to you all. i sent the pdf on 1647 sanchez street for several reasons. it's a project that most of the current commissioners probably weren't aware of. hopefully the commission scrolled through the pdf sent on january 3rd which illustrates the problem with the demo caps never being adjusted. >> this is not an issue of the fabric of the structure during an alteration. >> this project should have had a seaway project using the loophole of the demo counts never having been adjusted is housing that should be preserved per the original intent of section 317. >> however the project on sanchez is the exception the

exception that proves the rule because the demo counts allowed for a high end speculative alteration of a structure that should have been legally demolished most likely was not sound and certainly was not livable. look at the sales history in the pdf. it shows crazy prices that likely encouraged more abuse of the demo counts by other spec led developers further skewing the market in no valley and in adjacent neighborhoods. >> and the kicker is that it has been occupied for many years until the recent sale. never mind the second unit absorbed by the single family home. >> this is an issue the staff has recognized 80 use and second units in high end homes particularly alterations and using the loophole of the democrats are not likely to be occupied by tenants. 1647 was a demolition masquerading as an alteration sitting on a corner lot with 80ft of exposure and egress on day street that could have

facilitated at least three units perhaps four within the same footprint. the neighbors who followed the d.r. would have accepted this. several units could have been built and maintained the space existing between the original structure and the adjacent pair of flats. i want to be clear i am not advocating for something like the authority. the problem with the authority was that there was no attempt to preserve housing. the authority eliminated the definition of demolition from the planning code. the only definition of demolition would have been in section 103 a of the building code which deals with violations not preservation. >> as the commission and the public grapple with issues in 2025. >> here are three suggestions. >> adjust the demo counts per section 317 b2d to preserve sound livable relatively affordable financially accessible housing particularly in the priority equity geographies. can't apply the flat policy to

preserve flats in their original location and configuration within the structure. to further the findings as stated in the residential flat policy resolution 20024. understand the financial feasibility and marketability of second units. here's my hundred 50 words for the minutes and here's a copy for all of you. >> what i just said. thank you very much and happy new year again and thanks for thinking about l.a.. >> thank you. okay. last call for general public comment seeing none general public comments closed. and commissioners, we can move on to your regular calendar for item 11. case number 2024 hyphen 008953. okay. 499 rhode island street this is a planning code amendment. >> good afternoon commissioners. audrey maloney planning department staff. i have madison tamm here from supervisor dorsey's office to give a presentation and before

madison time comes up i also wanted to make sure that the newest version of the case support and resolution are handed to you in hard copy. there's no substantive changes to that. it's simply the change to the sica clearance language. this was emailed to you earlier this week but now you have it in hardcopy as well. happy to answer any questions about that. >> good afternoon president's own commissioners and happy new year. welcome to the new year. it's dusting off the cobwebs a little bit but excited to be here and looking forward to the work ahead this year. >> so the legislation before you today will enable a new educational institution at 99 rhode island street in the showplace square neighborhood by allowing both personal service and school uses to exceed the existing use size limits. today you are opining on the use size limit policy change not an entitlement. but i hope to explain the enthusiasm and practicality behind making this change.

>> this building was reached recently purchased by the heber academy, an internationally renowned educational institution that plans to open a pre-k through fifth grade school at the site. the heber academy team has led extensive community outreach that the supervisors office has been a part of. this outreach has been incredibly positive. supervisor dorsey and members of the showplace square community are thrilled to welcome them and we look forward to continuing to build our already very productive partnership. >> the site located in the pdr one d district features a three story 60,000 square foot building that has most recently been used as office but has no history of pdr use. as referenced in the staff report, removing the existing size use limitations will help create a more complete neighborhood by enabling new amenities in this growing community. the showplace square patrol hill plan supports strengthening expanding non office uses and encourages family housing and family services to support residents attracting and retaining families. in san francisco was a central theme of remarks from yesterday's inaugural board meeting and creating amenities and conditions for families to thrive is one of supervised

dorsey's strong priorities. supervisor dorsey respectfully asks for your recommendation of approval of this legislation and i'm happy to answer any of your questions. >> thank you. >> thank you, madison. again, andrew maloney planning department staff. the proposed ordinance as mr. marty said, would amend the planning code to allow certain use types to exceed the pdr one d use size limits at a parcel at 99 rhode island street. >> so currently although both personal service uses and school uses are principally permitted in this zoning district they do have limits on their maximum use size allowance personal service uses are limited to no more than 5000 gross square feet measured cumulative daily with all permitted retail sales and service uses in that building and schools are limited to 20,000 square feet the building at 99 rhode island, as ms. tam already said, is approximately 60,000ft2 which means that in order for the desired use to operate at this site it requires a planning code

amendment to allow both of these use types to exceed current use size limitations and to expand a little bit on why they need to use types. so although the desired use for this parcel is a school in the traditional definition that we have when we think of a school, the va has previously determined that any business that provides educational services to students grade k through 12 that does not possess certification from the western association of schools and colleges is not considered a school for the purposes of that definition in section 1 or 2 of the planning code. instead they're considered a personal service use the school is seeking to locate at 99. rhode island is in the process of receiving their wife's certification. but this is a multi-year process especially because this is their first location in the united states. so once they receive that certification they will then be eligible to change their use to a school as we define it in

section 1 or 2 of the planning code. as always myself and miss tam are available for any questions. >> thank you. okay with that we should open up public comment members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. again, you need to come forward . good afternoon president and members of the san francisco planning commission. my name is jackson up here speaking on behalf of the san francisco chamber of commerce. the san francisco chamber supports the proposed amendments to the san francisco planning code. schools play a vital role in creating vibrant, sustainable urban communities by fostering innovation, strengthening neighborhoods and supporting families. san francisco's commitment to global citizenship, cultural connection and forward thinking development make it an ideal location for high quality educational facilities schools not only serve students but also enhance the broader community contributing to a balanced mixed use environment that attracts families and businesses alike.

expanding access to educational opportunities is essential for the city's long term growth and success. we urge our support for projects that bring these vital source of resources to our neighborhoods. thank you for thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. >> my name is celia schuman and i represent showplace east which is one of the design buildings in the design district. our address is 111 rhode island street and we are directly to the south of the 99 rhode island street property. >> over the past 25 years we've been in this location and we have observed the evolution of the community from a light industrial use to a thriving mixed use community which we see today. the introduce ation of the much needed housing to the area over the past few years has changed

the character of the neighborhood in positive ways. and although we continue to have our challenges the occupation of this long vacant 99 rhode island street property is what we consider to be an appropriate use and a logical next step to further establish our neighborhood as a welcoming and livable community. so we urge the commission and support to support this use as a positive addition to showplace square and the proper direction for our district and for the city at large. >> thank you. >> okay. last call for public comment seeing none public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners. >> it was an no more not having seen many letters in support or against in our email chain i'm

delighted to bring the public coming forward and to a strong organization speaking on behalf of the project. indeed this area has changed rapidly over the many years, particularly when all of us still went to someplace square to look at our fabrics and our material choices. as architects interesting transformation i'm very encouraged to support the project. >> i just have one question and although that's not really in front of us i want to make sure that it's the proper infrastructure for a school is in place and that is proper sidewalks in proximity to the building open space is was a school which itself does not seem to have any outdoor playing fields etc. are always in reach for this school to be successful successful in its operation and either of the two could answer that question for me. >> thank you for the question, commissioner moore. so the good news is that in

terms of the the way in which the school will operate, there is a school child care drop off and pick up management plan that is required to be submitted with this proposal and that is reviewed by staff and approved by staff to ensure that during those peak hours of the time when parents and caretakers are dropping off children and then picking them up at the end of the school day, those potential congestion issues are being mitigated as to open space. there is a i believe again this is not necessarily before the commission today but the project sponsor for this particular school has a plan for that in their project application and i believe they are planning to address that and and utilize space that was previously parking spaces for some of that open space for the the students. and i also just want to emphasize that this neighborhood has changed quite

a bit and the showplace square and potrero area plans really encourage this mix of uses and the reduction in office space which is exactly what this would do. >> i'm delighted to hear all of this add up and i'm in full support of this project. i think it's very timely and i think a very positive shot in the arm that indeed people are coming to support the community in a major way. so i move to approve uh adopt a recommendation for approval second. >> and commissioner bryan, do you have come in this i just have a few thoughts on this so i of course i can deny the motion so i am in support of the project. there's a couple of reasons that i'm in support. so there's the base reason that this is a kind of unique neighborhood as a place that is pdr but also a residential community. so there was a great explanation. mr. maloney i appreciate that and i'm also in support because

this does not displace a pdr use which i would definitely hesitate more if that was the current use in this situation. i think the only reason i hesitate a little bit is that for this site in particular if the score to go away it might actually be is a question am i correct understanding that the personal service use would remain allowed with no size limit should the school close? >> is that right? that's correct. so that is the difference between this ordinance being before you as a planning code text amendment versus versus a specific project entitlement. so the ordinance as the way it's currently written. personal service uses at this location would not have that same size cap no matter if it's a school awaiting their mosque certification or another use that falls under that umbrella. >> thank you. yeah. so i think that was the one thing i was thinking about because in theory this could reopen as a spa. >> commissioner brown great question. >> heber academy does own the

building. just wanted to clarify that. i think i mentioned that in my remarks. >> so it's not really that great a concern for me because it's not like there's a lot of personal services uses that want to occupy a gigantic amount of space like this. so this absolutely has my support and yeah, i'm happy to to approve. >> commissioner williams thank you. i won't be supporting this this this project it there's there's a lot of pieces missing. it feels to me like there's not enough information for me to to to say yes to this. it's a it's a big deal putting a school here for these age children. and i'm not i'm not convinced that this is the best thing to do for this site. so i'm not going to be supporting this today. >> thank you. i think you so i am really

familiar with this neighborhood. my child actually is going to a school that is the neighborhood west of it. and i do recognize that this whole area south of market has been dramatically increase in the housing and the need for keeping the family here in san francisco where they have their kids go to school. other options of school of their choice. it is vital for the future of san francisco to have our residents to have more options and simply also they don't have to drive or take muni all the way across town to go to a similar language school for younger children. it is very appropriate i in my personal perspective in this and i support of this project

and i also recognize that really nearby this location there is a daycare. and i always wonder where are these kids going to go after they get older and i am happy to see that there are options nearby so we can keep our family in place and have our neighborhood thrive and continue to be much more robust. mixed use community. and thank you for all the sponsor coming up here to speak today. i do have one questions that i would like to ask if this is a school that will provide financial tuition assistance to families that are with different financial needs. >> >> thank you.

i it's not what's before the commission today. i just want to make sure we understand that this isn't an entitlement application but i do believe that the sponsors for the academy are here if they would like to answer that question. >> good morning. it's a pleasure to be here and have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the academy. my name is jane hamblin. i'm the founding head or founding director of heber academy bay area. we believe strongly in an inclusive presence in the city and we plan to make every effort to offer financial aid to those who qualify. we've always run our schools that way. we are part of a network in china and beyond that in europe where financial aid is a commonly supported approach to really achieving the community

and the network that we wish to achieve for the school. so yeah. so yes. thank you. thank you. >> if there's nothing further commissioners there's a motion that has been seconded to adopt a recommendation for approval on that motion. commissioner campbell high commissioner mcgarry high commissioner william nay commissioner braun i commissioner imperial i commissioner moore and commission president so i so move commissioners a motion passes 6 to 1 with commissioner williams voting against commissioners that will place us on item 13 is item 12 has been continued so case number 23 hyphen 00038 for c w p for the san francisco rail yards planning program informational presentation commissioner braun yes before we hear this item i do need to make a disclosure so

my employer strategic economics previously completed work on two of the projects that are referenced for this item. so the first project related to the portal strategic economics performance of role analysis from 2021 to 2022 as a sub consultant to era under a contract with the s.f. cta that was related to the portal. the second project related to the caltrain 2040 service vision and preliminary business case strategic economics performed related analysis for caltrain from 2018 through 2020. i did not personally work on either project and both those contracts are closed out have been for a number of years. there's no reasonably foreseeable material financial benefit to me or my employer from any action i take here today and i'm able to be fair and impartial in my consideration of this item. >> thank you. and before alison gives a presentation i want to make a few remarks. first of all, happy new year commissioners. it's good to be with you all here in 2025. we're very excited to discuss the railroads project today and

you may have read just a few days ago the chronicle and the business times reported on the forthcoming proposal for development on the rail yards. i want to be really, really clear today we are not talking about that proposal. so instead today's presentation is really focused on five interconnected yet interdependent independent projects that involve rail and they intersect and literally kind of come together at the fourth and king rail yard site and it's because of these intersecting projects as the city was looking at wow, all this investment is going to be happening in the area. the planning department and our partners who alison will enumerate we launched this effort to really think about how to leverage these projects and how to enhance the surrounding neighborhoods so it can not only welcome the new rail infrastructure but welcome the commuters, the visitors who are going to be using the train and infrastructure as well as benefiting the current residents and current businesses that are in the area. >> so we spent a couple of years with the rail yards working group and today we're kind of marking the culmination of that group's efforts to design and think about improvements that can be made

as we prepare for these these other projects. >> so we do anticipate in the coming months soon this later this year caltrain and prologis ,we anticipate they'll submit their project to the planning department and we'll actually bring that for you all to get some preliminary comments and feedback from you all. and if you can't wait until then there is a march 4th i believe community meeting that the developer is holding on that specific project. but today we're kind of looking at that bigger picture overview. >> and lastly before i hand over to alison, i want to just thank the members of the railroad working group. they met frequently over the last two years and so i'm just going to give them a little recognition by name. bruce agard, don cecil, tammy chan, j.r. eppler, rob jacobs, paul leone, jessica perla crute singer michael walker. >> cliff barker. dylan fabris. vanessa gonzalez, mike hawkins, christian martin erika walter mead and liz kirby. and we want to thank them all for their dedication to the projects and their service and their continued stay engaged with things as they develop. with that, i'll hand it over to alison. >> thank you, rachel and good afternoon commissioners.

alison alberici with the citywide division of the planning department, the manager for the s.f. railyard planning program i'm joined this afternoon by my planning department colleague tam tran as well as dylan harvey, deputy director of engineering and land ecology project coordination manager with the transbay joint powers authority jesse koehler route rail program manager with the san francisco county transportation authority council. cheeta director of systemwide planning and navid dhaliwal, government and community affairs manager both from caltrain and genevieve cadwallader, vice president and investment officer with prologis and lee lieutenant state deputy director of joint development in the office of economic and workforce development. >> so the s.f. railyard is a 20 acre site at the nexus of soma

mission bay and showplace square. the site is located between fourth king seventh and townsend streets and functions as caltrans northern terminus as well as an active service and maintenance yard. prologis owns the underlying land and caltrain holds a perpetual easement to operate rail on the site. so we're here to brief the commission today and the public not on a single project but on a suite of parallel efforts all at different stages in their respective processes which have transformative potential and implications for the future of this site. and the surrounding neighborhoods. these efforts include but are not limited to the portal which is also known as the downtown rail extension or d.t. detects that's led by t.j. pierre. the pennsylvania avenue extension project or pax led by s.f. cta, the preliminary business case or pbc led by

caltrain and prologis the s.f. rail yards, neighborhood and community engagement planning effort led by the planning department and the s.f. rail yards neighbor sorry development project that is a potential public private partnership led by prologis. >> okay so the reason that we're focusing attention and effort on this on this area is related to the major infrastructure projects and investments principally the portal and the pennsylvania avenue extension that intersect at this critical junction and which create opportunity to shape the future for the railyard site and the adjacent neighborhoods formerly known as the downtown rail extension project or detox. the portal is a project of the transbay joint powers authority

. >> the project includes a new underground rail station along townsend street between fourth and fifth streets and a tunnel under townsend and second street that will extend caltrain service and ultimately california high speed rail to the salesforce transit center. >> the currently proposed tunnel alignment and station infrastructure encroach onto and expand the transit capacity of the s.f. railyard site and require close coordination and collaboration with other efforts. the portal project is environmentally cleared pursuant to the requirement of nepa and secure t.j. has completed 30% design of the portal and secured up to $3.4 billion of federal funding. the portal has a target revenue service date of 2034. >> the pennsylvania avenue extension led by s.f. cta is a proposal to extend the portal's underground rail tunnel south of the planned fourth and townsend station along seventh

and pennsylvania streets to the 22nd street station area. >> pabst would eliminate the existing surface tracks and the at grade rail crossings at 16th street and at mission bay drive projected increases in surface frequency along this rail corridor would require substantial gate down traffic stoppage during peak commute periods and the california high speed rail authority has further indicated that at grade crossings are not acceptable along its surface alignment. >> barring reconfiguration of the rail infrastructure, these two critical road freight roadway crossings which are the only access points to mission bay along its western side would need to be either submerged below grade or closed. >> s.f. cta is beginning a pre environmental bridging study to prepare the project technically and organizationally for potential advancement to environmental review. this phase of study will include refinement and analysis of alternatives public and

stakeholder engagement and elaboration of an implementation approach. it brings us to the preliminary business case. caltrans adopted long range service vision directs the railroad to plan for substantial fully expanded rail service that will address local and regional mobility needs of the corridor while supporting economic development. >> this entails a doubling of peak period service from 4 to 8 trains per hour with capacity for an additional four california high speed rail trains per hour led jointly by caltrain and prologis the pbc see assessed caltrans operational needs under the service vision and evaluated technical constraints to develop concepts for combined rail service and mixed use development at the s.f. railyard site. >> the pbc concluded that development of the s.f. railyard site is physically feasible and could further support caltrans goals.

>> the pbc also identifies the rail infrastructure investments needed to enable full site development and provides a foundation for advancing towards a funding strategy. >> based on the results of the pbc, the caltrain board endorsed a cooperative agreement with prologis to advanced further technical work in november of 2024. >> so that's a lot going on with the portal and high speed rail making progress and perhaps moving towards pre environmental analysis and caltrans pbc setting the stage for assessment of development potential on the railyard site . >> it was crucial that the that the city understand the community's needs and priorities for the broader neighborhood neighborhood and establish a shared vision to guide transformation that can connect soma mission bay and showplace square. support economic vitality,

resilience and social equity goals and provide a safe, comfortable, active, inclusive and green public realm. >> with these broad goals in mind beginning in 2022, the planning department undertook the s.f. railyard neighborhood planning and community engagement effort and i'll go a bit more into detail on the scope and work products of this effort which was assisted by consultants from a common in common. >> so we began of course with existing conditions analysis to understand the assets and gaps that exist today for example where transit service is abundant versus more limited, where connectivity in the pedestrian network is broken and active frontages lacking. >> we also looked at where areas are underserved by the existing open space amenities and where risks from flooding and sea level rise are concentrated.

>> we then undertook a public realm needs assessment to understand where the existing rights of way are not up to current standards and best practices. >> for example at townsend street there are several areas that lack basic sidewalks and dead zones under the freeway ramps as well as poorly maintained pavement at king street. >> here you can see we find extra wide travel lanes and crossing distances and a lack of vegetation all signaling to drivers that this is an extension of the freeway rather than a city street. >> and at seventh street we have a designated bike lane but with uneven pavement, no sidewalk and an abundance of inactive frontage. >> so the deficiencies in this area are very evident.

>> as rachel mentioned to inform and shape this planning work from 2022 to 2024 the planning department convened the rail yards working group to establish shared community priorities and develop public realm improvement concepts for the neighborhoods surrounding the site. the 15 member group was comprised of nearby residents and major employers community association and cultural district representatives, local service providers and transit and housing advocates. the rw g met quarterly to provide perspective and develop community priorities. review neighborhood planning materials and give input on project updates and public processes. identify potential synergies and opportunities for public benefit. >> and solicit feedback from and share information with their networks. some consistent themes emerged through our quarterly conversations with the wg members. >> they included the need for a public realm that is safe and comfortable connecting active, inclusive and green.

>> these goals and themes were then translated into a series of 20 improvement strategies which the project team then mapped onto the neighborhood area and translated into a concept plan with a few key focus areas to visualize the potential impact that could be realized if the strategies were implemented. >> the series a visualization shows the change possible with consistent application of best practices like added sidewalks where there are none or widened sidewalks where they are narrower than better streets plan standards dedicated and protected bike facilities bulb outs and shorter pedestrian crossings and planting areas for stormwater management.

>> here you can see the additional added benefit of facade improvements and seating for active uses and even the potential role of repurposing and activating vehicle storage space like the one currently under the freeway off ramp for public use. >> repurposing such spaces could greatly improve the experience of walking and cycling downtown st street for example and perhaps the most ambitious public realm opportunity. >> this could be created if the pennsylvania avenue extension is implemented. >> a new park at the termination of mission creek that connects the creek and the existing existing mission bay park network to the showplace

square neighborhood. >> this has the added benefit of allowing the connection of berry street to seventh street and regularizing the street grid which is currently blocked by at grid rail infrastructure . >> this relatively small parcel has an outsized potential to alter the experience of seventh street and finally at king, king and fourth streets. here we're showing narrowed traveled lanes, curbside loading and parking bob outs and protected crossings all along with some planting to work to slow traffic to city appropriate rather than freeway speed. >> the railyard working group and the public realm visioning process concluded this phase of work with an in-person workshop in october 2020 for rail yards.

working group members generally explore expressed conceptual support for site development at a scale commensurate with the s.f. railyard regional importance and the investment in infrastructure planned for this area. >> members articulated high expectations of potential development projects based on the needs of the existing and planned context and the experience of successful nearby projects such as mission rock and the transformational potential of an infrastructure investment in this location to deliver substantial public benefit. >> for many, establishing visual and physical connectivity between soma mission bay and showplace square remains a fundamental priority and foundational rationale for development of the railyard site. as the site is currently a half mile barrier to all pedestrian bicycle and vehicle connectivity limiting access between these now densely developed neighborhoods and

their amenities rail yards working group members consistently reiterated the importance of comprehensive planning and close coordination of the array of related projects in this area to integrate well and to facilitate decision making that maintains the long term opportunities for connectivity . and with the completion of the rail yards working group process. members sought reassurance the city will continue to support the holistic integration process transparency and accountability which brings us to discussion of the rail yards development project. as you may have read in the news, prologis has begun public outreach to receive input on the future of the railyard site. >> to date they have held two focus groups two pop up workshops at the existing station two in-person open houses and two virtual open houses.

>> the project is currently envisioned as a major regional transit hub with a modernized rail station and mixed use development which would include housing office retail spaces, community facilities and open space as well as new connections between soma showplace square and mission bay. again prologis owns the underlying land and caltrain holds a perpetual rail operating easement on the site so any development will have to benefit both parties. >> an initial project application for development of the site is anticipated in 2025 with environmental review to commence later in the year. prologis anticipates additional workshops and events following submittal of the project application to inform detailed project development including a presentation to this commission before environmental review begins. >> so each of the major

projects discussed today have their own dynamic processes and timelines. the chart here reflects the current understanding of the temporal relationships between these ongoing processes. >> it's important to note, for example that the portal is out ahead of these other efforts. so just for example while utility relocation for the portal is scheduled to begin the middle of next year, people may start to see some construction for utility relocation. the site development project will still be under development and going through environmental review at that time. >> so as you can see with the complexity and scale involved here, we anticipate increased public conversation and inquiry surrounding all of these projects. >> in anticipation of that

department staff are updating our public information assets. we're updating the project website. we're planning to begin regular quarterly quarterly email newsletter updates. we're also updating the multiple lateral cooperation mou with all the parties involved in these efforts and we're scoping continued neighborhood planning in collaboration with caltrain. >> i should emphasize here that the work that you've shown the renderings and visualizations do not reflect a plan for the public realm. >> what we've shown today is a visualization of the priorities expressed by our community members for pedestrian and cycle emphasis and to upgrades in the public realm. >> but we have further work to do to determine what can be implemented, how on what timeline and by which capital

improvement effort. so there's there's plenty more work to be done. also in collaboration with our city family with mta and public works. >> and then of course we're working with prologis and caltrain towards their submittal of their project application. >> this concludes the staff presentation and we all are available to answer your questions. >> thank you. thank you. we should open up public comment. members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. when? good afternoon, commission members. >> my name is brianna morales with the housing action coalition as their staff organizer. >> we're excited to see the continued progress of the s.f. rail yards planning program.

this site presents a critical opportunity for san francisco to enhance its regional transportation infrastructure while addressing our much needed housing needs. >> the team has worked closely with surrounding neighborhoods achieving i think a meaningful engagement with the people that are actually going to be benefiting this process through planning in this area. can unlock really significant possibilities to transform an underutilized space into something truly beneficial and beautiful for the community. this planning strongly supports transit oriented development, strengthens neighborhood connectivity and advances our shared housing goals. it also enables and empowers and gives residents a chance to contribute to the richness and diversity and economic vibrancy of the neighborhoods and businesses along the train routes. limit areas that were quite limited before. >> so we're really excited to

see progress continue with this project especially as we're approaching a lot of changes in san francisco and a lot of vibrancy and additions and to family structures in the city. >> we look forward to seeing this project move forward and really appreciate the collaborative approach to and for integrating this infrastructure with neighborhoods. thank you very much. last call for public comment. >> seeing none public comment is closed and this matter is now before you commissioners there is no action required on your behalf. >> commissioner imperial. >> first of all thank you staff and also other city departments in working with this. this is been this this is a big project and i it's going to take probably more than a decade for for this project.

>> but it's really good to see the starting point in terms of first the funding. you know 70 7% funded at least in the portal. >> and i guess we're going to look for other projects as well. >> so for me i think i also want to applaud the department in terms of doing the community the neighborhood engagement. and you know, my only question is that as as the year it's going to go by and of course there's going to be changes along with it in terms of the strategies that are being named here and there is i how are we going to identify whether these strategies are really going to be implemented and how is that going to be communicate to

again for big projects? i always think that the communication part with the public is really important because you know ten years ago people were involved with this with think back like geez what's the first thing that we talked about? and it has changed along the way. so how are we doing the transparency in terms of the different strategies? there may be change depending how the economy other factors to me contribute to it. >> yeah. so i'll start and then i may toss to lee to elaborate further. as i mentioned, although we showed a couple of maps with strategy is mapped that resembles a plan, some of those strategies could be implemented with development of the railyard site if there's sufficient nexus with the improvements there. some of those strategies may be

implemented in part through the portal or through the pennsylvania avenue extension. some of those strategies may be implemented along with the mta embarcadero connectivity plan that is mentioned in the staff report though i didn't touch on it in the presentation. some of the strategies may have to wait on other efforts and potentially the development of some of the other central soma key sites. >> so i think the work that staff have going forward and we have some funding that we were able to secure with our partners at caltrain from the fta for a transit oriented community strategy grant where we would like to take the visualizations and the ideas and work with our city family partners at mta public works

and others to see what can happen when with which effort through which funding mechanism. and so that is some of the continuing work that we can do to try to take these ideas into implementation. >> some of them will not be able to be implemented or there may be other competing priorities that we need to sort through. >> so that is the additional work to be done. >> thank you very much. that's my question. thank you. thank you. commissioner brown, i also just want to open with sharing my thanks to all of the staff across many different departments and agencies who've been involved in this process and also to the railyard working group members who were so deeply engaged along the way. it's a very exciting project. i'm excited to see also the role of the planning department doing what in some ways it does

best as a coordinating body and a public interface and you know bringing this all together into into a long term vision for a very long term project. so i think it really helped coordinate the entire project as it unfolds. i'm really supportive of this project. you know, it's this is a massive infrastructure investment and to me that merits very well-planned development intensity and ensuring an outcome that's going to be that will benefit the community in terms of having a functional healthy and affordable community outcome for the space. um, i will say i think my one um comment is i'm very excited about the update to the materials for the public that will you know communicate the complexity and status of this project as it keeps on unfolding in some ways i found the the staff report a little more illuminating than the community brief. and so as we kind of bring together the right level of

detail in the public facing materials and the website update and the newsletters, i think that's going to be really helpful. and i'll certainly be signing up for the newsletter and checking the website a lot personally. um but yeah i appreciate this update. i appreciate this coming the planning commission and i'm eager to see this project to unfold and to provide any feedback as needed. >> thank you commissioner moore and i just like to thank everybody who was involved particularly looking towards, if you will, your working group. it's extremely important to be ahead of the curve when three dimensional development occurs without having the public groundwork done. it mostly limps behind. it doesn't get done. we have several experiences in san francisco having actually in good faith started with developed vertical development and not been able to drag the public realm improvement along with us. this is actually set up in a very, very strong way and i hope that public realm improvement as you phase these different parts of this huge

project will not only occur in but in the beginning almost even before major construction starts in order to heal the neighborhoods and we connect so necessary missing parts between the affected neighborhoods. so it's clear mission bay etc. . my mike my question is the funding stream for the public realm improvements are they dependent on contingent on the major infrastructure projects or do we have enough local support, enough local necess ity to create these improvements because there are other larger project in the community which will definitely have to rely on these connecting pieces in order to be successful. i'm looking at looking at pieces of central school etc. and i think it would be very encouraging. we know that these projects don't only take ten but they can take 30 years or longer that we have the streets and

the public realm in a more functional way than what we currently have. maps are going to be developed . >> my question uh to mr.. yeah i think that's a great question. i see more i think as ms. albury she was kind of indicating the answer is it depends on what improvement we're talking about and where it's located. so certainly there is a bundle of improvements that are proximate or adjacent to the railyard site and that might be timely with that project. there are other improvements that were in other parts of the neighborhood that might not be proximate to any development site or at least not one that we're aware of that the city would have to look at its capital funding and say can we you know, can we make these upgrades, can we make these improvements? and again, even other projects that might come along in terms of street paving or other opportunities where we can leverage hey we're we're investment making an investment can we make it improve when we put something back there? so it really depends on what improvement we're talking about and where it's located and that's where we have to be i think opportunistic as a group about, you know, knowing collectively that we have these

ideas and so where do those opportunities come and we can bring them forward and they can be implemented. >> i think it will take baby steps. we know that we cannot build build all kickball and have mature trees over miles and miles of where they're currently missing but to reestablish to reconnect a clean well-lit functioning environment where missing sidewalks are not just bollards where you kind of duck cars which may hit you but connect to what is a basic functioning infrastructure. i think that would be an encouraging first step and i think would even inspire others to consider this general area as an expanding connected world. well design part and work well stewarded part of the city. >> uh i have one design question if i may. i hope i'm not overstepping something here because we are in the public realm the public realm connections that start to break down the elongated piece of the rail yard side over

which we do not have much say. are we taking a shot at creating what i call desire lines to break this site down into block sizes that are more conducive to a residential versus an industrial wheel related of use? the site is as long and non broken because there used to be real rails or trains parked etc. etc.. that use is changing and we're changing to a finagling site which i hope will respect and connect into the desire lines of what the city has in all directions in north and south direction. >> when you look at a larger scale into the alley and small street network that exists actually to the north who can draw desire lines with block sizes that really pick up on a reasonable residential pattern . what i'm trying to say here is that i would like to avoid it

and i'm sitting on a dangerous edge. i know i do that we just only look fitting extruded maximize sized development on this sensitive site. >> but that's a parts of this site connect to a change in land use but is tending towards mixed use and residential and that is a different block pattern that connects to the idea that we have use along smallest weeds to perhaps mission creek or something far beyond. >> and i hope to encourage us to dash in some of these do like desire alliance and i'm looking for the really hard working group to continue to engage in that because ultimately we want to connect the entire area that you have studied to the city at large and that is a modest question but i hope that you will be

able to draw some of us desire some of those desire lines. >> yeah. thank you, commissioner moore and i'll refer you to page 16 of the slide packet. >> so while we don't have a numbers on there, if you would mind bringing it up. >> oh yeah. thank you. so while we have taken a hands off approach and tried to be respectful of prologis property boundaries, we have been of course coordinating with them closely. we understand at least their intention to begin to subdivide the very long frontage so the dimensions of the site are approximately 8020 640ft. that's just about half a mile along townsend by 275ft along fourth street. >> the dimension is

approximately three blocks long by one block wide. we've been working with the sponsor and we understand they do intend to subdivide the site to normalize the block pattern but also to further subdivided not just with connections at fifth and sixth but potentially with some mid-block connections at well. so we look forward to the sponsor being able to come before this commission and show you some of their design concepts and the intention that they have for subdividing the site. you thank you and commissioner williams, thank you so much for your presentation. it's exciting to think about this might coming to fruition. >> i have a question about your working group.

who exactly was in this working group that that you guys have had? >> yeah. >> so rachel name the members at the top. but for example we had represented from some of the major employers ucsf giant the s.f. giants and the warriors. we had some local neighbors, people who live adjacent to and look out over the railyard site. among those i think don cecil and bruce edgett i think along with michael walker. we had representation from soma ,filipinas de dent desi was a member of the working group as was some can and i'm sorry i'm blanking on the name but so we

we had a range of people who live and work in the area the service providers, the cultural district members, the major employers and the residents and the transit users. so the transit advocates and also mission housing. so housing advocates as well that that seems to me like a good broad array of folks. >> i just want to stress that this community that the south of market has a robust community engagement and and it's important to listen to their voices and so you've you've mentioned a few there that i'm aware of that i just want to make sure and emphasize the importance of the people that actually live there then them being a part of this process and how important it is

for organizations, community organizations like someone filipinas and etc. that have been there for decades. and so i want to appreciate that you've included them and i hope that that continues. >> i have heard that the conversations always haven't been fluid from some of the organizations in that neighborhood. and so i just want to put that out there because it's important to keep everybody in the loop and to keep them engaged. so that is it's a real process that that gives everyone a voice. yeah, absolutely. okay. thank you. >> thank you. i first would love to apply for our projects sponsor projects for continue investing in san

francisco and taking on this probably perhaps will be one of the last few hopefully the last few not the only last one mega large scale transit oriented development project that is viable in our city and county of san francisco. so thank you for your collaboration with all these agencies that alison nicely put them all they'll all go in here you know the our new mayor daniel larry, yesterday in his inaugural speech that he makes sure that moving forward san francisco we shall collaborate more fluently among our city agencies and project sponsor and developers and not developers but developments of any kind to really bring housing and in our city more rapidly but more appropriately. so with that being said, i

think this is a very exciting project. this is going to be one of those successful for case study for many generations to look into a multimodal transportation oriented development of mixed use. i am very pleased to see that the portal is having now secure 73% of funding. so this is really happening which is exciting and that besides all the other really important elements that my fellow commissioner had mentioned i love to actually emphasize one point that this is a massive undertaking. king and and that require lots of technical studies on the feasibility and viability of actually building large scale mixed use development over railroad tracks let alone on

top of also tunnel called the portal. so i am just very excited to see how this project will rapidly move to the next step in securing entitlement and development and i also really love to see a much more robust inter agency work to make sure that we do have no surprises. what our public realm coming out of our planning really matches what s.f. mta is in their works on their active community plans or whatever we call it now the vision zero initiatives, all the other speed cameras and all those special traffic calming mitigations that we have. and so i'm really happy to see mr. luchita from s.f. mta

showing up here today. i actually love to hear oh is it he he's now with caltrans caltrans okay i move from assistant here to contract. >> what's in your brain is you have a knowledge from s.f. mta and now you're representing caltrain residual i think yes. okay. well i, i actually will whoever like to answer these questions ? i like to know how is it looking like with what we see here because we're looking at today we're looking at horizontal so i want to make sure that we're looking at really is public realm which is streetscape which include pedestrian sidewalk rolling paving including different wheels, different number of wheels. you know unicycle is included and also rail and train. so i like to see how where are we and now we have two brains in one person that representing mta and caltrain.

>> yes. and i, i will note we also have alena and anna in the audience who are former planning and now with t jpa so not in the audience today though they were invited are our friends from mta we have been working with them and they are involved in these interagency meetings and we have previewed this work with them and we're working from better streets plan standards as well as subsequent development with mta standards. so we're very much in collaboration. mta is part of the mou working group, the mou that is described in the staff report and so yes we we endeavor to set a new standard for inter-agency see and entity

collaboration for this effort. >> maybe i'll pick up on that president so just to emphasize these agencies are here maybe folks and just raise your hand if you're here for this project because we have quite the group of folks who are here. >> so these are all the folks from these agencies who are here who have been not just here today to like say okay, we've been working together but i've worked together month in month out, week after week together and we actually have a memorandum of understanding between all the agency heads to collaborate and to work together on these projects so that as we're going forward we are staying coordinated so we're not doing something in one project that forecloses an opportunity for another and vice versa. and i think it's been a really a testament to what the city can do and other agencies as well when we have that collaborative spirit and working forward. >> so it's been really it's been really great experience. this is really reassuring. i love it because each these agency carry the responsibility of moving massive number of our population around and i am a pro transportation oriented city development person so i, i also really knowing really well

each of these agency their technical constrains and ability so i really love to see who is actually driving this well just to say there's no this right there's five projects so we are driving the really large working group that presented in prepared the kind of public realm improvements will use as a general catchall term. but we have the office of economic workforce development that's helping a lot along with our shop working with prologis and caltrain on their forthcoming development proposal and we have caltrain that's been leading their electrification work of their rail of the actual train tracks we have the jpa that is handling the portal and i'm missing somebody who i'm missing, said everybody. cta, cta, the county transportation authority that's continuing study looking at parks which is the pennsylvania avenue extension. so we have each of these agencies they each kind of have maybe some primary responsibility piece and then again intersection with other projects that other agencies

are managing and how often do you guys meet? often do we meet so the formal meeting space for the mou working group is monthly but we meet in various configurations of groups weekly good. >> yeah i do also want to acknowledge in addition to the people that i listed at the top of the presentation we're also joined by adam vander water. executive director and lily majeste woo the tgp communications and legislative affairs director. >> so we have a we have a huge commitment represented in our audience today. >> thank you very much. this is really reassuring. i think for your willingness to show up today. it sends a message to everyone in not just san francisco but our bay area that this is you. we are serious and we really

want this to happen and i hope that continue you to talk to each other as frequent as you can and update me on where you moved around between all the different horizontals agency it's nice to share brainpower. nice to see you again. cancer so yeah that's really kind of concludes my comment and my one last thing i have is i mentioned it to allison earlier and is the addressing climate change so this is sea level rising in this area it is no joking is very serious and i love the electrical rain. i really love it and so i really want to make sure that everything here is done as a state of the art as safe as it could be for the future of my be my great great great grandchildren. >> so thank you to continue to keep us updated. thank you.

okay, commissioners, if there's no further deliberation we can move on and through the chair we're going to call the next two items together items 14 and 15 as they are adjacent to one another for case numbers 2024 hyphen zero ones 0667 piece in 2024 hyphen 01666 p.s. for the properties at 134 porter street and 113 roscoe street respectively these are both sb 423 informational presentations

ten minutes i don't need that much time. >> well there are two projects we would get five minutes for each but all right. >> i appreciate it you meeting before it before you start would you mind explain your reason. walk us clearly and slowly why you would request to have these two items. >> sure. together? yeah. so we're on the same page. >> thank you. so these are a total of seven parcels that are all on one block. next to each other are the first project on porter street is designed as one kind of tower structure and then the two projects on roscoe street are more typical they look like single family homes but sorry. >> so they they do interact with each other although they have separate entitlements that we're seeking.

so thank you. okay. so planning president so and vice president for commissioners good to see you all today. my name is jeremy schwab shively architects representing the owner of 134 porter street and 1132115 roscoe street. thanks for hearing from us today. just for bit of a preamble we've been working on creating housing at this location for over seven years now this burnell south that you can see in the foreground contains a couple dozen can we have can we go to the computer please? is it not on the computer? >> yeah, it's up here. >> the computer laptop? yeah. yeah, it's up for i'll have

paper documents if we want to use the overhead. yeah why don't we do that until us of course can figure out what's going on. can i get the overhead please? yeah. great. thank you. all right, so as i was saying, bernal heights, south is the kind of barren area you see here. >> it's got a couple dozen vacant parcels. our project site is the bolded area here and i've outlined some of the other vacant

parcels that are all subject to the bernal heights south controls that are introduced about 15 years ago. so as i mentioned at the top this these two projects are a total of seven contiguous lots. one project is on the five parcels on porter street. one project is spans two parcels on roscoe street. for the most part these two roads are undeveloped with the exception of porter street has about 25ft of frontage that does have a road access. there's also unfortunately a neighboring structure that encroaches about nine feet onto our property. a long story short, the neighbors unwilling to remove it. >> legal remedies have been sought and unsuccessful so so here's a rendering of the or rather bird's eye view of the two sites the show the streets

and the right of ways the porter street right of way is about a 60 to 60%. so it's extraordinarily steep. that's why there's no roadway that goes down it. roscoe is a little less steep at about 40%. and here's the combined renderings of the two projects as proposed right now you can see the the building on porter is fairly large. it houses 20 units and the two buildings on roscoe would be six units total. >> and here are the kind of combined site plans. >> so a lot of the work that has gone into this project over the past seven years is regarding fire department access as you may know, all the streets throughout bernal are quite narrow and that's been a

main concern. so in talking to the fire department there are various aspects of their code that frankly cannot be met just because of the existing built conditions. you know they they don't want a road steeper than 10% which doesn't exist. so not much we can do. so we're working with them on various aspects to increase life safety protections and they came up with it. we originally proposed seven buildings on the seven parcels fire department came up with the idea of one large building. they find that to be safer. it has the elevator in case of medical emergencies. it's got higher standards for construction types. it has and one thing they were very adamant about was you can see the fire truck here. they're adamant that they be able to reach the farthest corner of the site within a hose length. so that's what has determine the shape of this building. and then at that point we've used the five parcels here are

arch two zoning at last for ten units with density bonus we were able to get 100% bonus and make that a 20 unit project and then get the height we need to allow for that to be built and this might be the final one or so for right now showing the diagonal dash line is about the existing. as i mentioned it's about 60%. so even a typical staircase that's the kind of zigzag line you see a typical staircase is not as steep as it so we end up needing to build that up so we have a basement and the the two lower units span the basement and the lower two levels and then as we go up and we can get access to more windows and

natural light, we get more multi bedroom units in total it's 12 three bedrooms i think five one bedroom and five two and three ones. however that works out ahead. and that just to skip ahead this is the roscoe street project which is there each three dwellings which is to principally permitted and 180 you again this is meant to look like a more typical residential home that you would see in bernal heights and at that i will stop my presentation and ask for your feedback because we're eager to hear what you have to say. >> thank. >> before we do that we should open up public comment members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this or both of

these items. only me it's only say hi georgie shoes good afternoon. i saw this on the calendar and i was reminded well i know that site and i didn't it was 60 and 40 but i knew it was over 25% and i looked on the palm and i saw these two maps of the overhead and i looked at that and you can sort of see it there. >> so you see that that's all greater than 25% and a few years ago few years ago i noticed that on the catwalks is where it used to be greater than 20% they'd have a geotech report was required and then a few years after that it became 25% and so that always that piqued my interest and i guess my concern is because this is a four 23 project there's no sequel review. so what does that mean for the geotech for this project? when i looked on the pem there is a geotech from 2021 for both

sides but it's for a different project. it's for a bunch of single family homes and so i just want to raise the issue of the cycle review and the geotech and what's going to happen because i was reminded of edgehill and stone ridge during that construction above and there is the housing below the bernal house. so that's my only thing i want to raise that question that that i hope that it comes up for discussion since there's no sequel. and the other thing is no neighborhood notification obviously which no one here but me because i read the agenda and the other thing i want to ask about this and i appreciate the memo that the staff put out because it's pretty detailed but the line where it says more recently however san francisco has failed to meet its housing production goals for both market rate units and

affordable units to low income households. now we all know about the lower income households but i think that the sentence does not take into account all the housing in the pipeline and i think that does a disservice to the staff and the commission and the city because i cannot imagine that everything is in the pipeline and everything that's even been built does not meet those goals, those arena goals. >> but maybe that's another issue. but i do hope that that if there's not a formal seek a review that they'll be really stringent looking at this site and this construction goes 60% and 40% that's that's pretty scary so thank you very much last call for public comment seeing none we'll go to our reasonable accommodation request or good afternoon

commissioners this issue as to who lives in the bernal heights trust well i we really believe this needs more attention than you're giving it to us. i go down the street repeatedly a couple of times a week and this is so an area that has affordable housing they has pushed me i have affordable housing on it and it's been developed by the people in bernal heights to have mixed use housing not approved common housing and getting away from that high is a big change. and so some of the things that are happening because of sb

4423 are quite are destroying neighborhoods and i think this is one of them putting housing those next to this down at the bottom of our many is housing authority housing and they're going to build new housing next to housing authority housing which hasn't been normally a site for upscale housing. but georgia was right the screens up for they were on notice. i don't see anyone here and the audience formally put in a hard tokens ation or in hearts has traditionally had built affordable housing. it was a hard priority for the people in the neighborhood and so questions should be raised by the planning commission and those what is going on here? we're changing the area intentionally. i think that's a concern.

thank you. >> okay. final last call for public comment seeing none public comment is closed and these two informational items are now before you commissioners, commissioner, vice president moore and the project is in front of us is an sb 423 project which gives us the ability to to ask or make forward leading comments of issues that should be considered and i'm prepared to do so. i am surprised for openers that we are considering to build on as steep aside as it is i'm sure we have the insurance add stability soils erosion etc. all being considered because we are moving into tricky territory. there is no no doubt about it. so these are just comments of observation i am very interested in having the

architect not at this moment but consider the sensitive sensitivity of construction phasing most likely we will work from the top of the upwards rather than the other way because one we do not have the street and four choose a grade is pretty difficult for construction and excavation etc. to take things uphill rather than coming downhill. but as we all saw in the staff report there are some sensitive housing issues at the bottom of the hill and i want to make sure that the construction itself including reasonably significant excavation are handled in a way that they are not affecting the downslope neighbors. that is of big concern to me. i know myself these projects will take a long time given the amount of excavation shoring and stabilization that this will require and i hope that we are as sensitive as we possibly can can be on people of lesser

means who cannot just kind of move into a hotel and come back when everything's done. >> i want to try to be careful of our phrase that the one question that i did not see in your presentation about both projects is a collective attitude about open space. there's no real description that the street extension that will be necessary or has any landscaping or that there is an attitude towards shared open space within the current block pattern that's east to to project share only comments i don't need an answer but i would like the department to very carefully look at that. so balconies i think are fine. however there needs to be a little bit more of a public green attitude particularly when we're going into a that is at some point just being on land. so i would very much appreciate that to be a consideration.

>> i was a little bit concerned about steep stairs particularly when we're talking about housing offering that has multiple bedrooms inviting families. there is an excessive amount of steep stairs not excessive lawn but a necessary amount of steep stools that exceeds what we normally do. >> and when it comes to families, mothers with strollers and the elderly having managing stairs less easily as younger people do together was potentially mobility impaired people. i'm wondering of how we are addressing that because this is supposed to be a rental housing market with rental housing together with a small number of affordable housing units. who are we catching here and the stairs the the amount of stairs necessary to make the building work a little bit of concern to me to not limit this just three particular segment

of the population but making it as accessible to everybody because the site is exciting. i think it will be interesting to see this finally building out but i think there are certain consideration about the inclusiveness of how this can be can be done. one second i may have one of the point. no, i think that captures generally my concern about the sensitivity of the site and who occupies it together with really a very carefully considered phasing strategy is always important to me. >> thank you. commissioner williams thank you for the presentation. when i first say that you know good luck on the it's it's going to be pretty challenging

. i, i you know i've lived in that area for, you know many, many years and have looked at that mountain going down the freeway and going home on alameda street and so very familiar with with that particular hill. >> but i have a question about it but the community notice and like how that's working with sb 423 and this might be a question for for rich and for the planning department because you know the state bill limits a lot of things and but one thing i think is important is that at minimum we could be giving some kind of notice to the neighbors that have to live and they're going to be your neighbors or you know, they're

your neighbors and they deserve a little notice and and know what's going on especially with the development of that size. and so i think this this came up before which mr. hillis director hillis i appreciate that. thank you. so i don't want to call your name of course i got a lot of respect for you so but but anyway, i am concerned about, you know, public notice around these particular sb 423 sites and i'm wondering, you know, if there's no plan in place now moving forward, is there something that the planning commission can do to help further that?

>> you know, i think you're right. we did talk about this before. i don't think there's a there isn't a requirement for a notice under 423. we i don't think it precludes us but i think we've we've got an answer for you on that. >> could we say in a 423 or it probably it would be on the city to put out that notice to adjacent neighbors if we you know if we chose to to do that, i don't think it can be required of that of the project sponsor but could the city say hey there's a notice in set it out to adjacent property owners? >> you know at the time of application or perhaps even at the time of construction when a project supposed to start. db i do. it does have some or some of their own noticing that they require so i think we owe you kind of more of an answer on that on the first question, yeah i'd appreciate that you know only because you know again these this these the state law has taken a lot of

jurisdiction away. >> matter of fact, all of it are from we zone right so these are code compliant projects so we say no no no i guess the zoning on this parcel you can take it over i get that but you know the neighbors are are equally important and folks need to understand when something this big is is happening in their neighborhood. >> you know, i think that the city has a responsibility to step into that gap because obviously there's there's a gap there and so i don't know what the answer is. yeah. but i think it's worth, you know, moving forward and try to come to some kind of a solution because these projects are going to keep coming and they're going to be more and more prevalent and it's not fair to to the citizenry the people that live in these neighborhoods that are you know, one day they're going to wake up and there's this big building being built next to next door.

>> i don't think that's right either. and and just one piece to add on to that and this is what i think we chatted about last time for these reasons we've created a dashboard on our website so every time one of these is filed sort of at the you know, day one of an application being submitted to us we have a public dashboard on our website. i can certainly send out a link to all of you guys after this hearing on it. it's called streamlined housing project dashboard but it has all of the information on the project description, the address, all of that and so that's a great place for folks to sort of bookmark and be able to come back to and that will you know, let you know you can start tracking it. we then have another online tool called that that i've also sent out before that lets people sign up for alerts basically in their neighborhood so that they can get a push notification so they don't have to necessarily go to the website every single day and track it but they know they can get an alert however they want to define what they want to be alerted about and they can get

an alert and it's you know, fairly regular statuses things like filed a you know, approved date, things like that so they can kind of track it along. so there's that second option for sort of being made aware of things and then thirdly as as director hillis mentioned department of building inspection before construction can begin, especially a new construction which is really what we're talking about here. there are notices to adjacent neighbors posters put up front so there shouldn't be a surprise that there's about to be construction happening so folks who are interested in what's going on in their neighborhood, we do we have built these tools up so that people can have a way to not be surprised when a building goes up next door to them. i just wanted to share that and i'll send out these links after the hearing. >> i appreciate that. mswati and you know i understand that and that's great that that that's available again you know not everyone is checking every day to see if there's a building being built in their neighborhood.

but thank you for that. i'm glad that there is something. but again i just want to stress that i think some kind of notice really i don't know if it goes against the state law. >> it does, huh? >> okay. why yes. i mean we yeah, well then i think that's where we owed you answer i think is what is whispering in my ear like but i think the city you know i don't think there's any there's any issue for the city to say hey we're going to send out a notice to adjacent property owners when somebody files a 423 application i would imagine. but it's something we have to look into. okay. it's a question of whether that's the policy we would want to undertake to let folks know there's a project that's has been applied for adjacent to you. >> there's not much you can do. it's a ministerial project, right? so exactly avenues that there were in the past maybe to ask for the planning department to take discretion on that

project. so i think that's where it gets into like what is the what's the policy goal if that were allowed to happen i really can't do it now i appreciate the director hillis i appreciate that. again, i just want to like i'm just taking putting myself into someone's shoes and and you know, it's be pretty exciting or you know, frightening maybe to to understand that there's something that's being built and we have no no, no notification. >> right. and so anyway, i'm going to stop there but i think it's worth, you know, looking into. right. i think it's worth, you know, exploring and if there's a way that we can get some kind of notification, establish i think i think you know and it doesn't violate the state law which which is you know, whether you love it or you don't love it,

we can stay clear that if i may i would like to point out that we did have a neighborhood meeting granted pre-pandemic so a lifetime ago but we had five neighbors attend. it was frankly a different project at that time. but most of the neighbors were on bay street or rather porter and we even went into a couple of neighbors homes and at that point it was a three story building at the street level which is more or less what it remains now. it's obviously taller towards the rear but at the street it's three stories. that's what they saw. >> yeah. thank you. i appreciate that. thank you, commissioner campbell. >> thank you. thanks for the presentation. i do think it's exciting to think that we've got these 20 units coming plus the six units

coming to the market. i think 10% of those 20 units will be affordable based on sb 15%. okay. so that's great. just to address this, the caller's concerns it is a challenging site no doubt about it and i couldn't help but get a little tripped up myself when i was looking at the plans as to how you access the buildings, especially for the 113 and 115 roscoe roscoe and i wonder if a is there a relationship between access between the two projects and could that be better reflected in a site plan? i might come up when the city's reviewing it and if i lived in 134 porter i would want a place to park my bike or my stroller so maybe something to think about a little bit as we try to promote those kind of alternative ways of getting people around the city specifically with the bikes.

but i also think that sometimes we have these challenges on projects that are also kind of opportunities too. so when i first looked at this when i opened this package 130 for porter especially like those stairs are so intense and so brutal and i just would welcome and don't hate you for saying this but if there's a way to you know, create a better solution there i think that would be worth another look at yeah and then the accommodations for the bikes and strollers and then i totally agree with commissioner moore's comment about a thoughtful approach to common open space on the project and maybe there's a maybe there is an opportunity between the two projects on roscoe and porter for for that those are my comments and good luck with the project. okay commissioners if there's nothing further we should move on to item 16 for case number 2024 hyphen 00829 to see way for the property at 4100 third

street. >> this is a conditional use authorization. have you already? >> good afternoon president so commissioners general bento of department staff the case before you today is a conditional use authorization pursuant to planning code section two 121 .23033 17 and some 52 to convert an existing mixed use building with a restaurant use an eight group housing unit into an approximately 6000 square foot social service that includes outdoor activity area and this will be for friends of children s.f. bay area the subject property is an approximately

8200 square foot lot located on the west side of 33 within the three zoning district 65 j home district and is developed with a two storey over basement mixed use building which consist of a restaurant at the basement and first floors and group housing at the second floor. the group housing at the second floor includes eight rooms, a common kitchen and a bathroom. >> in 2013 the property was purchased by the current property owner and former tenant. we are a church and for approximately ten years the former tenant illegally used the second floor for a social service that provided mentorship for formerly carcer rated men and as clarified in the letter i emailed you guys yesterday they also occasionally provided housing but the space is currently vacant. >> the tenant friends of children as a bay area is a nonprofit organization that

focuses on providing mentorship to children in underserved, underserved communities who face the biggest challenges and the proposed tenant is in contract to purchase the subject property. >> to date the department has received no letters in opposition and has received four letters of support. the department recommends approval with conditions and finds the project on balance and consistent with the objectives and policies of the general plan and baby 200 point area plan and is necessary and desired desirable for the following reasons the project will legally establish a social service use that is a desired land use compatible with a mix of the neighborhood and serves neighborhood. the project will advance the cities and location of the community facility element by providing a desired community use that introduces new patrons to the area and reinforces the existing commercial corridor along third street. >> this concludes staff presentations and am available for questions. the project funded does have a presentation for you guys as well. >> thank you project sponsor

you have five minutes larry bradner from banner urban planning i'd like to introduce michael rubin who is the founder and on the board of friends of the children. i think it's important that you understand what a great program this is. >> afternoon. >> good afternoon. thank you. i thought i'd tell you a little bit about our program and the services that we offer to the children of the bayview. >> larry do you know we are a5a1c3? >> we started working in san francisco in 2016 and we're a mentoring organization. >> our mission is to break the cycle of generational poverty. >> we do that through mentoring but we do it in a pretty radical way much different from what you think of as normal mentoring. so first we work with our partner schools in the bayview area to identify the children

who face the biggest barriers and we identify those children in kindergarten and we enroll them in kindergarten and we commit to stay with them for 12.5 years all the way through high school graduation no matter what we say. and that's we mean it. there's nothing a kid can do to get kicked out of our program. >> we hire full time salaried mentors not volunteers, full time salaried mentors to work with these children. each mentor spends four hours a week with each child half that time in the classroom, half the time outside the classroom and we're intensely evidence based larry let's go on to the next one. so we are part of a national network that has been employing this same model for over 30 years. and as i said, we're intensely evidence based and what that evidence shows is that 83% of the youth in this program have graduated from high school or going on to get a ged. 98% of the children have avoided teen parenting.

93% have gone on to enroll in post-secondary education, serve our country or enter the workforce and 93% of our youth have remained free from the juvenile justice system all the way through high school graduation. so we say our goal is to help children break the generational cycle of poverty and i think that's what these numbers on the screen show that we do with them. >> our current facility is a warehouse on quincy street. we've been leasing it for about seven years. >> it's totally inadequate for our purposes and it's also up for sale. so we are on a month to month lease. we are subject to being evicted at any moment. i've literally been searching for three years for a property to purchase. we got our grant from nancy pelosi's office at about 2002 of $750,000 for the purpose of established running a youth

center in the bayview and we've been looking for a place to use that money and i've literally this is the first place we've found that serves our purposes as gabby said, we are in escrow. we have no remaining contingency. so if we if we use permit is not granted, we will not be able to go through with this deal and we will at least lose our deposit. and as i said, we're at risk of being evicted at any time from our current property. we submitted letters of support that were submitted to nancy pelosi's office in support of our grant application and that was from our founding board member cecil williams whose wife janice mirikitani and he were founding members of our board of directors. sherman walton submitted a letter which we've sent to you scott wiener also submitted a letter and former city attorney louise ranney submitted a letter.

so i think those show that we have a great deal of community support. larry is prepared to talk about the the use issues but i guess i'll just say a few things. number one, this property has not been used as red residences for over 11 years. it's been used sporadically for men who are enrolled in a social services program who slept there overnight. but it's there were no leases. they never paid rent and they were not tenants in any meaningful way. >> and as gaby said, there's a condition in the proposed grant that if we ever sell the building the new owner has to come back and address these residents issues again with you. so we don't believe that we're losing any residents spaces by approving this you would be losing any by approving this application and again there would be a chance to revisit that issue if if and when we were to sell the building. we don't plan on selling it.

one of the great things about this building is has a huge garden next door which will be an amazingly good thing for children who have no space like that. it's a i don't know if any of you know this building but it is a unique property in the bayview and for our kids who live where they live to have that garden every day is going to be spectacular and it also gives us room to expand because our goal we serve 200 i'm sorry we serve 120 kids and our goal is to serve 400 so that property gives us room to expand as we expand to serve more and more kids. >> thank you. that is your five minutes but commissioners maybe thank you. yeah you to call you back up for additional clarifying questions. with that we should open up public comment members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item. >> do you need to come forward? oh i'm seeing none. >> public comment is are you all done with your presentation? >> we have a couple other points.

>> okay. i think we understand the five minutes. okay. with that public comments closed this matter is now before you and as stated commissioners you're more than welcome to call them back up for clarifying questions. commissioner vice president moore uh, i'm delighted hearing you making your presentation. unfortunately some of the support letters somehow failed to appear and it makes it much, much easier to really understand the breadth and necessity of your mission. so i appreciate even last minute hearing a summary of who's supporting you and i'm delighted to see that this type of community activism is indeed still possible. i hope that i know there is no shortage of children probably more than you can accommodate but who needs this guidance? it's almost like taking taking over. i don't have the right word. it's like taking foster care but on a different level it's basically extending your parenting skills, your caring skills to somebody who

ultimately will actually in a difficult part of their life will be on their own. hopefully established relationships will maintain that they will rely on your continued guidance beyond the program that you're providing. >> i'm delighted to hear that that is still possible and i'm in in full support because we need more institution like this particular in a time when there's a lot of uncertainty particularly surrounding these issues. >> thank you. thank you. thank you commissioner imperial yeah i'm also in full support of this of what we have in front of us and also applaud the the organization in and different approach of in terms of education but at the same time i mean i was kind of impressed that you're approaching it in a trauma informed lens and it's very very very important i think in in the early early child development also, you know, i also sympathize in terms of,

you know, you purchasing this building and congratulations for having that grant through nancy pelosi's grant. >> but i do have a question to the to the staff because i need to have some clarification in terms of what we have in front of us in terms of the unauthorized group housing conversion that in a way we will need that will need to be eliminated. so what is actually so say and authorize legalizing the unauthorized group housing but at the same time where conversion converts so is that part of the process in order to kind of like to convert the group housing to institutional use? correct to us although the space was used by we are a church which is a social service to us we still look at it as the group housing still existing at the site. >> so what's before you today is the conversion from group housing to social services.

>> that's what you call it legalized because technically there was one already there and they've been using it that way. >> so but when we lose group housing or a dwelling unit that will come before you and that's why this is before you i think yeah it was just the wording that i was like kind of i guess confused and i don't know what happened to that why you know there is an authorize and authorized conversion of group housing in the background i think i hope we don't get to it seems like dawson illegal going to correct so the current property owner had use the space and use the space for social services which is the legal component of it. >> they never came forward like they are today to ask for the conversion of that space to a social service social service in that zoning district is principally permitted at all floors. so really what's before you is the actual conversion and loss of the group housing. yeah, thank you for that clarification and but i'm full support i thank you.

>> i love this building. i actually been in there they used to run this incubator for culinary experiments for the local emerging small businesses owner so they make phenomenal barbecue and tacos and we have a great time in the back garden and courtyard. it's really pretty and i am really pleased to see that this building is going to be use in the hands of your organization which really helped to bridge that demographic demographic, demographic and economic trough for our children that are much needed a safe and nice decent place to hang out outside of school. so i'm really happy that you finally find your building even though it's many, many years and this is a location that i

believe it's the best we can have in the bayview hunters point because it is right outside of a muni train track the t line and also the number 15 bus. so are you can have access to a lot of different amenities wherever they are from wherever the school that they are attending they can come back here. so this is a really great place and i am in full support of this project and i'm positive. >> commissioner mcgarry i'd just like to say i'm still also did what everybody multiple and full support you do fantastic work and you couldn't if i worked down the roads on 18 third for the last 30 years you could say you probably have the nicest building in the neighborhood that is truly a beautiful building every time i drive by i think you know that berkeley up top just needs to

come out another four feet, you know and for a wrap around there but it's it's a beautiful building and it's great to see that it's going to go to such great use good look at everything commissioner brian i have i have no reservations at all about the the the program i think it's a wonderful program that's being operated for a long time now in the bayview. >> i think i struggle with this a little bit more than what i'm hearing from some commissioners just because i'm typically not in the habit of allowing conversion of housing units subject to the rent stabilization arbitration ordinance in this case eight group housing units to be removed from our housing inventory even though they are even subject to rent stabilization. i, i am curious to hear from the project sponsor. >> there was an allusion to the struggles to find a building and find a space that worked for your needs. would you mind just kind of expanding on some of the

efforts and and what you saw or didn't so that was out there on the market and why this building is the building that ultimately worked out for you? what were some of the challenges? did you identify other sites that kind of didn't work for some reason? i'm curious one more so we made a commitment to the value community a long time ago as part of our start up and if you know the bayview it's mostly warehouses in this building as several of you have alluded to is really special because of the historical nature of it because of the garden i was the former executive director for five years for our first five years and i literally spent three years looking throughout the bayview and there just other than sort of you know, metal roofed warehouses there just isn't that much available in the bayview and we were thinking of buying the building we're now in but when we thought of spending a million and a half dollars to buy a warehouse with a homeless encampment a block away and it

just wasn't a very appealing option and it's too small for us anyway. so this literally was the only thing we could find now real estate agents kept trying to push us out to other parts and i said no, we're we're committed to the baby and we want to be here so we could either go up near chase center or somewhere in dogpatch or we could get a warehouse or we could get lucky and get 4100 third street and we got lucky but it took us a year. i've been negotiating with the owners of 4100 for 12 months to make this deal happen. so it's been a it's been a work of love and it's been a been a trial. >> thank you very much for that explanation and i really appreciate the service that you bring to the community. you know, so like i said, i have reservations about this and some level but at the same time i think that you know, part of my job here is the planning commission is also to weigh the tradeoffs between decisions and in this case,

yes, we are at least for the time being sacrificing these eight group housing units. but i think the value that's going to be generated to the community through the conversion to a social service facility use is is really substantial and i also appreciate steps in implementation of the mandatory adr for any use after this besides the social service and residential so this does have my support and i wish the organization the very best. so my question in someone make a motion although he's going to try are you going to try i will make a motion for this to go forward. >> second, very good commissioners if there's no further deliberation there's a motion that has been seconded to approve this matter with conditions of that motion. commissioner campbell high commissioner mcgarry high commissioner williams i'm commissioner braun high commissioner imperial high commissioner moore and commission president so i so move commissioners that motion

passes unanimously 7 to 0 commissioners have a place to send you discretionary review calendar for item 17 case number 2023 hyphen 011348 drp for the property at 1932 through 1934 jefferson street this is a discretionary review discharge in exchange for a stretch so leaders okay good afternoon president so commissioners david winslow staff architect there that's better. the item before you is a public initiated request for discretionary review of planning application number 2020 3-011348 drp to construct a new one our fire rated wall to comply with an anova and

planning code complaint to a three story two unit building the existing building is a category b eligible historic resource built in 19 35 and the d.r. request for a torino portion of 1926 to 1928 jefferson street the immediate neighbor to the east is concerned that the proposed project does not comply with the residential design guideline related to privacy light and air. his proposed alternative is to set the roof deck and stairs and landing back a minimum of five feet from the d.r. requesters property. >> to date the department has received no letters in opposition and two letters in support of the project. >> the current owners bought the property in april of 2014 with the stair and roof deck in its current configured ation it became known that the as built condition deviated from the original permitted configuration of permit a permit issued in 2009 in that

the stair extended closer to the adjacent property to the east and the firewall was not built. this work was signed off as complete by tbe in march of 2013 when this was discovered the v to correct was issued and the owners pursued a permit to correct by correct it by proposing a one hour fire rated wall at the edge of the stair landing which is within three feet of the adjacent property line and the property line firewall at the roof deck that abuts the neighbors roof to the east. all that all this work is within the allowable building area of the planning code. the stair is tucked almost entirely within the existing light. well, the landing abuts the neighbors light well to the north at the north which also includes a stair but retains ample space for the continued functionality of the neighbors light well although the stair and deck did deviate from the original plans, this condition

of the stair and deck has existed for the past ten years at least and the existing deck and landing and the proposed guardrail height firewall do not pose a condition that rises to exceptional or extraordinaire with respect to privacy, light and air. therefore staff recommends not taking discretionary review and approving thank you. thank you for that concludes staff presentation. we should hear from the discretionary review requester. >> you have five minutes. >> okay five minutes not seven five. all right. we'll talk craig good afternoon, president so in commissioners i thought we'd have a few more minutes so i'm just going to take a few minutes today to sort of set the scene. this is a mess. this is a mess that we need to clean up. this is another example of gbi approving work that clearly didn't match the approved plans . >> my client relied on gbi to ensure that things were safe and when he found out in 2023 that the what was built doesn't have fire protection, wasn't

what was approved, he was really upset and he feels like he's really lost faith in the city and what's proposed is really a shot in the face of my client because it's actually worse for him than the existing condition. now he's going to have firewalls, towering firewalls at his property line. >> that's not what he agreed to in 2009 when the prior owners came to him and said they wanted to do a roof deck, they said we'd set it back five feet. they said there'd be one foot space between the properties so that he would have some privacy and security and we think this attempt to legalize the work is not honoring that agreement that they had before and makes conditions worse at the expense of my client has already suffered from having these dangerous conditions so close to his property. >> i'm going to pass it off to our architect to talk about some of the other issues with the plans that we think are not approvable in their current form. >> thank you.

>> good afternoon commissioners. i'm ambrosio long with gravelly architecture. can i have the overhead please? sure. >> so these are issues that set this up example yes. what i'd like to do is present a number of items that we believe support the dealer application the existing deck and stair or incorrectly filed construction is not in conformance with approved 2009 permit drawings the deck layout and construction along the property line is not as agreed upon between the property owners at the time of original approved permit. the a.v. drawings showing the the proposed correction does not show the complete existing condition nor the non compliant stair configuration at the light. well the existing wood stair as a non compliant shaped tread so

that it's so that the stair is not code compliant there you can see that there is a wedge shaped spread to the microphone please or can you repeat the whole sentence in the microphone because you were talking the existing wood stair is a non compliant shaped tread so that the stair is not code compliant and you can see there that the the tread is a wedge shaped which is not anywhere close to being code compliant. the middle flight of the wood stair is built over a functioning sheet metal flue and there you can see the flues are directly below the stair. now another code non compliant flue is routed to the property line and it just kind of wiggles around and comes up at the property line which is also non compliant. there is a wrought iron stair

that rises from the ground all the way up to the third floor to the fourth floor of the building. there is no permit record for that stair. also there is a kind of a weird non compliant transition from the landing to that spiral stair so you can kind of see how you come up to the landing . you have to step over the roof, curb onto the roof, up onto the once wooden block and then up on to the landing gears and up here is an up close view of that same condition. >> so if that spiral stair is intended as a means of egress

from the roof deck then the that deck must be limited to 250ft2 which is not. the space roster also allows both units access to the roof counter to what the current code allows. >> okay we just want the property owner to have at the last few seconds to talk about the impact this has had on him as well. well hi people. how you doing? my name is otto parks john also known as otto reno. >> years ago i agreed to plans to serve. i apologize but that is that your request was five minutes. you do have a two minute rebuttal where you can submit your testimony. >> okay. >> how long do you need? you'll have a two you will have a two minute rebuttal in which you can submit your testimony.

yeah. okay. okay. we need to hear from the project sponsor now. afternoon zero. i can i put this some drive in here? yeah. on the other side where the you might need to unplug the mouse . >> good afternoon. thank you for letting us have the opportunity to speak to this issue today. my name is jeff trimmer and along with my wife vivian we're the owners of 1934 jefferson street. >> we live in the upper level of this two unit condo and it is our primary residence and we are blessed in our opinion to be able to live in my hometown at this point. we purchased the property in 2014. the roof deck was a large part of our decision to buy as it

was the primary outdoor space allocated to our unit. fast forward to december of 2022 when we received a notice of violation for the d.r. request year our neighbor had filed a complaint with db either dec was not in compliance with the building code so we were shocked to find out that the roof deck and stairs were not built to the plan approved by the city. and then even more stunned to find out that dba approved the final inspection of this deck when it was clearly not built a plan. >> over the past two years we've met with both dba and planning multiple times. following a meeting with both departments on our roof deck to determine the best plan of action, we submitted plans to bring the deck into compliance . the plans were approved by db ii. they've also been approved by planning yet we're now here two years later and have not been able to move forward to this project due to in our opinion

frivolous complaints by the d.r. requester in an effort to make us change aspects of the joint properties that would be more amenable to him. we also note that he signed an agreement with the previous owners allowing him to build the tech as it stands today we're not happy about having to deal with this at all given this all took place before we even bought the property but we're certainly not trying to avoid being compliant with the requirements of the notice of violation. >> mr. winslow graciously hosted a meeting with the d.r. requester his attorneys and ourselves. alternatives considered included reducing the size of our roof deck and significant modification of the stairway. none of these options were feasible from our perspective due to high construction cost and the fairly dramatic reduction in the size of our roof deck. >> if i can show the photos

again a mouse moving here. there's no mouse on this. there's a trackpad you can use. yeah, i'm on and on that too and i'm not seeing anything here. i'm not seeing any. yeah, i don't know. curtis you want these two images? yeah, both of them if you can.

i'm not seeing but can you guys see the photo itself? can we go to the computer please? >> it's not coming up. cut or cut. >> i'm sorry. i don't. this photo is in the report that mr. winslow put together. maybe you have access to that report. it's in this case report? yeah. photos number three and number eight.

>> >> just just moving forward. >> you know, we believe the main reason that the deal requester is objecting to our plan is due to a perceived lack of privacy on the deck. the firewall that we have been proposing to build is a solid wall directly behind the railing that is in the picture that hopefully you can see. >> yeah. thank you. so at the beginning i wondered . >> there we go. the beginning as i said, the firewall we've been proposing to build a solid wall directly behind the railing that you see there. the project will clearly address the privacy concern while allowing us to comply with the notice of violation. we're very grateful for the thorough and thoughtful recommendations put forth by mr. winslow and his staff. we concur with their findings and look forward to seeing this

project finally completed so that we can move on. thank you. >> does that conclude your presentation? okay, very good. with that we should open up public comment. members of the public this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter. no. there will be a rebuttal as soon as we take public comment, ma'am. >> i understand that we need to open up public comment for any member of the public if there is any. if you'd like to do things out of order, we can do that too. >> no. if there's any one member of the public that has your opportunity to address the commission seeing nonpublic communist closed and your request you have now a two minute rebuttal. >> thank you. >> try this again. yeah. all right. my names are opposition. my family and i have owned that

property since i believe 1977. >> okay. >> we didn't live there. we lived there. then we get earthquake. then i left and eventually i moved to italy with my family and went back and forth. but speaking of the neighbors before them years ago i agreed to plans in an effort to be a good neighbor. >> i relied on the city to make sure it was done according to plans. >> i became aware that it was not built like the plans. i then went and then i got in contact with the inspectors to try and understand what happened and i do understand it

how they got final approval, how they got the inspection. final action. >> i'll let you guys figure it out. but what's been up there which built up there is nowhere near what was submitted. >> okay. this was it was built up there was built before and then they put in a set of plans to get it approved and never built. i'm in the process of building a deck to i'm going to stay five feet away and both neighbors do it legally. both neighbors don't. >> is that fair? i'm always on both sides. both property. both tax on the property line.

>> thank you, sir. that is my time. very much. >> guys. >> project sponsor you have a two minute rebuttal. hi, i'm vivian and one of the neighbors have been the one that's primarily been interacting with aldo since we moved in there. >> i think the most salient points today are the fact that we have documentation. i believe that david winslow has a copy of it that otto signed off on a copy of the the drawings and said it's okay. basically it says okay, stay one foot off my property line. and that's exactly what the previous owner did. the deck ends one foot off the property line and so he's known about that. it was built that way at least two years prior to the people that we purchased for from left

. and we had no knowledge that that agreement existed until a complaint came from him a number of years ago. anyways, we've inherited this. we understand that we need to fix it as my husband said but i think that otto is being disingenuous when he says that he had no knowledge of it. he had knowledge of it. he participated in it. he has told us ever since that he's regretted it but he's never taken action like he has here before. we're very grateful for david winslow's really clear, concise and fair evaluation of what's happened and we're hoping that you're going to vote unanimously with his recommendation and let us move forward with this plan that we've been working with them for two years on in and get it behind us with regards to the pipe that was going up the side of the building which is what prompted that the novi by

inspector grady they thought it was working. >> turns out it was disconnected many, many years ago, 40 years ago when the building was condemned. nobody bothered to look at that. so it's it's not a hazard it's not an issue. >> it can easily be taken down once we start the construction. so that's pretty much my. thank you, ma'am. that is your time with that commissioners. this matter is now before you. >> commissioner williams, thank you so much for both neighbors coming up here and pleading your case. >> this is this is a very unfortunate situation. there's going to be you know, no winners and i'll be because of no fault of your own.

basically you bought the house prior or i should say after the work was done and mr. parseghian you know, he he agreed to something that apparently is totally different than what what what it is now. >> i have a question for for planning. the original plan that was a applied for in 2009 is that still up to code is is there is that still something that is that i'm just wondering because that was the original plan that was approved and obviously that's not what's there now. but i'm wondering is that still viable? is it still viable to go back there and have that is it still

up to code is is still relevant? >> so the plan that was submitted i think it's in your packets. you can see it in 2009 had the stair setback further from the property line. for what? unknown reason i'm not aware of. >> it wasn't constructed that way. might have been things didn't work in the field as they do on paper as often they do and a decision was made in the field and the contractor went for it and the building department signed off on it. >> subsequent to that in our kind of negotiated mediation meetings one of the ideas put forward was how impossible is it to kind of get closer to that situation and i think the project sponsor took that and worked with their engineer to see if they could kind of trim a little bit space off the landing which is i think currently four foot seven i believe only three foot is necessary. so it gave him like another

foot and a half. >> so you're two foot two and a half feet off the property line now and another idea was to simply turn the stair sooner and go northward as opposed to eastward on to the deck. >> and i think you know, look again it was a simple solution on paper i think when they took it and ran with it looking at all the details it would be required to execute that for the sake of complying with that kind of greater separation. it just you know, they can speak to it if you asked them. but i think it was reported back that it looked like it was just too cost prohibitive given the yeah, i understand magnitude of the change so so so the original plan was it set back five feet from from the property so and it's because that that's cold right well it's coded so first of all in 2009 is at least what three code cycles ago right i think in an r three occupancy my understanding back then it was at least three feet three feet, three feet for a fire protected

you know, for an unprotected opening or but and now it's five and i believe now it's five. okay so however there is and i don't think anybody presented it but there was subsequent follow up with jimmy chung of dvi on a proposal that would be acceptable given the you know, the plans that we have here basically to say look, we put a firewall at the landing of that stair which is less than three feet away i think it was like two foot seven and he said that could be approval and by firewall would i mean is not a firewall going from ground to top of guardrail height of this of the stair landing but literally just of that landing assembly itself so that's a minimal and that was in sync with what has been proposed for the correction of this novi so basically a firewall on the

deck overlooking the roof but also a firewall just at the landing of the stair if that were built today new if that were proposed to be a new construction today, my answer would be the same. >> it's a negligible portion of the entire um reciprocating light wells of both neighbors that we would say it's still not intruding into the functionality of the of the light. >> well i'm not i understand the purposes of the door were for the light right the they said it's impeding in the light but for me when i'm looking at this i'm taking the whole situation into consideration and i, i i'm having a problem with with like understanding how you know how it's how that one our firewall is really is is a real remedy for the

situation at hand you know and no no it there's no right or wrong here it's just it just feels to me like going back to the to the original plan that was approved in 2009 should be on the table and that's what i'm going to i'm going to suggest happens and so i don't know how to how to you know, how other people feel how other commissioners feel about that. >> but i think that would be it . it's i think it's the right thing to do. and so i'm going to propose that and maybe i can get some help putting that into to a into into language as so not not so in other words so we're

so what i'm saying is taking the d.r. right? that's right. okay taking the air and doing what and and proposing that the plans that were approved in 2000 the original previous to the previous plans be be be a part of the yeah and that's a motion that was your second i don't hear a second okay commissioner brownlee like to speak is mike winslow i'm i'm looking at the 2009 permit i think i'm on the right cheat sheet at two in the packet but um i'm a little unclear on what the setback was at that time.

a to initially what i'm hearing is that it was supposed to be setback three feet but in the drawing uh for the site plan here it doesn't look like that was what shown for the permit. sure i might be the wrong place. there's always a lot of variations on plans in these packets. it's this you go to let me know . >> is everybody on the same page to write a well i'm looking at a just one. >> it's the sheet that follows

the photographs at least my quick that's the two things it has this kind of permit number on it. >> oh okay. so we have we have this this is like the the actual that's the current permit. >> um to remedy the no but the previous permit for which the okay where would that be in the packet where would it be in the packet. >> it's not in the packet it i just download this and on the sheet just before that sheet one. >> okay i see oh this okay yeah like like this. >> yep it's the device i the for official copy stamp so yeah so that one that one chose the landing five feet away from the property line and it also shows the roof deck one one foot away from the roof of the adjacent neighbor. >> right. okay. so with the and so what it does show is a wider stair as opposed to the as built configuration which i believe

is not a winter. so okay. so with the one foot separation shown in the original plans that's still with the material it's constructed out of the deck railings is constructed out of that still would have also required a firewall, right? correct. so the reason we need the firewall now is because it was not constructed of the materials it was supposed to be originally. is that right or my misunderstanding? i believe that's correct. it wasn't there wasn't a fire rated parapet guardrail height at that location. okay. and so they're sort of okay. so there's two issues here. there's the deck couldn't have been built that close to the edge without the fire rated materials. and then the other issue is the stairs themselves being built in a different configuration. okay. um and then for the options that were explored if this was pulled back from the edge of the property line say the deck became a more standard practice

now of three feet from the property line or even five it's five now but you know three feet along the way. um at those distances from the property line does the fire rating of the materials do you still need the fire firewall? >> no. my understanding is if a deck itself occupy payable surfaces and are three five feet away you would not need a fire rated parapet. it could be a clear guardrail. okay. um and but either way with the boat condition yeah you need the firewall on both the stairs and also on the deck. okay. >> but was there as part of the solutions explored for the stairs part of this um, it sounded like it was economically very expensive to sort of rebuild the stairs. um, i was curious though. i mean but there is a pathway for the stairs to be able to access the deck even if they the well is is the current location of where the stairs access the deck actually an issue or is that okay one way

or another? >> could you be more clear on that? sure. but what i'm wondering might be the issue i mean so the the feedback i received from an email of jimmy chang and building currently was that if you um are able to put a fire rated wall within three feet that just raises to the level of the guardrail height above the landing. so basically more or less in its current configuration or even slightly decreased that would be an acceptable solution for from the building department's perspective um so one of the solutions that was proposed was a half measure which was why not decrease the size of the landing which is currently four foot seven inches about a foot seven inches greater than it needs to be and therefore bringing it closer to mr. passions property

. >> what if you could cut that back by a foot, foot and a half and put that 36 42 inch high fire rated wall assembly on that side? >> would that be acceptable? and the answer from a building perspective is yes. um it was rejected by i think the compromise was put forth maybe not officially but it wasn't accepted or acted upon by either party. >> okay i where i'm at on this is that i think there are exceptional extraordinary circumstances with this situation. um, but i'm not i'm having a hard time getting to what the solution is for this and so i am curious to hear from my fellow commissioners who actually have design and architecture experts to weigh in on this. i see they're waiting so i'll wait for that commissioner more as the exceptional and extraordinary circumstance is

not what is in front of us but that it happened in the first place. yeah we have indeed the experts we have a department to whom we pay a reasonable amount of money to get it done properly and there is a first submittal which is kind of basically chaperon to the construction and the interim inspections on these kind of things and then when the final inspection comes where you basically bring in the district supervisor that person should immediately know that one the one foot was proposed to be there isn't there because there isn't a foot and that indeed the stair itself sits in the wrong place relative to this three foot required thing. i mean i can send out an elementary school student to have a little measurement and do that. the what i find extraordinary is that this commission is supposed to decide not to judge what is wrong. >> what we're actually asked to decide what the department did wrong. let's just be clear about it. i'm sorry but i cannot push the

burden of compliance to somebody who bought a house which should also be properly inspected before it is sold like you roof claims to be done ten years ago. it looks to me it's done 20 years ago your drainpipe pipe was replaced. i see a hole up in there. that is what basic building inspection is. >> an inspector comes to clear a for sale house and they're very specific of what they're looking at and even in that particular transaction people are not noticing of what's being sold leave alone when the when the deck is suppose permitted and i'm supposed to judge on that i find that asking for significantly more than what i can do and i do not believe i do not believe that i can push the burden onto the current owner to pay for what is actually a complete rebuilding of the deck and the stair. i cannot do that as impossible

to do so if i need to be called compliant which is essential to our responsible allergy to look at life safety as a basic premise what we're proving then i can only say that the compromise to use a firewall is the only tool that i have available and since it is really not from my perspective and i say that very humbly i have not been on your property to see the visual impact. i personally believe given that a stay or sits in the light well indeed it does not affect the functionality of the light vessel as it relates to your openings and windows in a manner that is a quality of life issue. it's a safety issue not a quality of life issue. i believe that to fire rated addition of what is here shown to us is the only way to resolve it. but that takes a certain kind

of neighborly agreement that there is something that happened that is beyond anybody's control and i put myself into usage evasion thinking if i would be in that situation i would have to i would have to really think very hard. but it's in the mutual compromise that for everybody's safety this is the only way to go. and for that reason i do not believe that i should take the air and i do not believe that this is acceptable and extraordinary other than what i bracket it to be exceptional. >> extraordinary. in the beginning of my comment and over that i don't have any say so that is my mike my explanation thank you vice president lord commissioner campbell i think that is a beautiful summary and aligns exactly with how i'm feeling about this case. i do believe the project sponsor has done their due diligence working with ms.. mr. winslow and and debbie to right this wrong that they

inherited when they bought this property and i agree it's an unfortunate solution but if building the one hour rated wall it brings this to compliance and that that's i think what we have to do that's unfortunate i suspect nobody wants that because that's going to block everybody's views. but i agree with the assessment to to not take that discretionary review at this time. >> i will make a second motion not to take this question to and approve as mrs.. >> second, that um i like to voice a little bit of my comment here. this is a very interesting case obviously the gentleman was agree to a certain configuration of from the previous owner remodeling and then we have a current property owner bought it without knowing of all the history of it and then almost many years later

now this come back up um it really is hard to see how to figure out why now not then and why things are change but this is something easily can be mitigated if neighbors actually get along. obviously this is not the case and there are a lot of homes in our city that also if you would anyone would pick it. there's going to be something little bit off. so but also i am wondering if there's a way to well, i'm not really understanding the reason why there's adr. is it really concerned about fire hazard is it really concerned about the lack of light to your roof which is

also very, very subject to all of what why so i found that personally that the reason for the the r is very insubstantial and in the current expense of our course of constructions and the burden that we put on homeowners to repeat everything apart just to just to just to do this as somehow very inappropriate i felt impersonal level but that doesn't mean to say that it could be done properly yes could have been whole accountable 100%. is it our commission that render this judgment? absolutely not. we're not in charge of closing

our construction and giving you a certificate of completion. so i offer one thing here if you i really recommend you guys really be a good neighbors and maybe hopefully you can be cookies for each other and just be really good neighbors. there's another way to mitigate is really a fire hazard you can consider using fire retardant coating that is actually i has a whole list of what you can do to fire rate your deck into a fire rate. compliances i wonder if you i wonder if the dbi folks actually mention that to you you can download that copy and there's like ten different alternative products that you can actually feel apply to your decking to compliance with the one hour rating. yeah i've done that so but i am

here in in alliances when my majority of my fellow commissioners to in the position of not to take this d are and if there's no further deliberation commissioners there is a motion that has been seconded to not take discretionary review and approve the project as proposed on that motion commissioner campbell by commissioner mcgarry i. commissioner williams nay. commissioner braun no. commissioner imperial i missioner more in commission president so i so move commissioners a motion passes 5 to 2 with commissioners williams and braun voting against commissioners. >> that concludes your first hearing of the year a meeting adjourned

>> once i got the hang of it a little bit, you know, like the first time, i never left the court. i just fell in love with it and any opportunity i had to get out there, you know, they didn't

have to ask twice. you can always find me on the court. [♪♪♪] >> we have been able to participate in 12 athletics wheelchairs. they provide what is an expensive tool to facilitate basketball specifically. behind me are the amazing golden state road warriors, which are one of the most competitive adaptive basketball teams in the state led by its captain, chuck hill, who was a national paralympic and, and is now an assistant coach on the national big team. >> it is great to have this opportunity here in san francisco. we are the main hub of the bay

area, which, you know, we should definitely have resources here. now that that is happening, you know, i i'm looking forward to that growing and spreading and helping spread the word that needs -- that these people are here for everyone. i think it is important for people with disabilities, as well as able-bodied, to be able to see and to try different sports, and to appreciate trying different things. >> people can come and check out this chairs and use them. but then also friday evening, from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m., it will be wheelchair basketball we will make sure it is available, and that way people can no that people will be coming to play at the same time. >> we offer a wide variety of adaptive and inclusion programming, but this is the first time we have had our own

equipment. [♪♪♪] sheriff miomoto. thank you for coming. this will be amazing and iow