mr. teague, and we also have mr. lee hepner from the supervisor's office to speak on the item today, so i'll go ahead and invite mr. hepner to say a few words, and i will follow up with staff presentation. >> thank you. hello, president koppel and commissioners. thank you for allowing me to speak to you today. these are targeted amendments that are responding to community concerns. far be it from an omnibus bill or sweeping citywide changes, every once in a while, we come forward with a bill like this that are addressing needs of the community, all of which are set forth in the really great staff report by planning staff veronica flores. thank you so much. the amount of context and analysis in there is really something. i want to address just a few matters before turning it back to commission and staff. in the staff report, one of the staff recommendations is to increase the abandonment time in the chinatown district from 18 months to three years. abandonment provisions are really important to our zoning district. th

mr. teague, i just wanted to have a couple comments about this project, as well. commissioner moore might remember there was a project a decade or so ago, 555 washington, that was not approved. i think this project, as related, has come through with some solid projects that will help our community as a whole come back from this depressing period. i ran into rodney fong the other day, c.e.o. for the chamber of commerce, and what this is going to do related to the comments that it has made is enable more local contractors to be involved with the project and more local workers related to the construction of the project and then later on, when the project is complete. this project will be able to help the bars and restaurants and coffee shops and night clubs and help them come back and succeed, so they're in favor of the remainder of the items that we're looking at for this project today, and let me call on commissioner tanner. >> commissioner tanner: thank you very much. we did -- i want to -- just before all the comments that president koppel just made, i did have a