Okay, good afternoon and welcome to the San Francisco Plan Planning Commission hearing for Thursday, July 23rd, 2026.

When an item is called that you would like to submit testimony for, 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 30 seconds remaining, you will hear a chime indicating your time is almost up.

When your allotted time is reached, there is a second chime, and I will announce that your time is up and take the next person cued to speak.

There is a very convenient timer on the podium where you can see how much time you have left and watch your time tick down.

Please speak clearly and slowly and if you care to state your name for the record.

I ask that we silence any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings.

And finally, I will remind members of the public that the Commission does not tolerate any disruption or outbursts of any kind.

At this time, I would like to take role, Commissioner President Campbell.

Here.

Commissioner Braun.

Commissioner McGarry.

And Commissioner So.

Present.

Thank you, Commissioners.

First, on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance at the time of issuance and to date.

There are no items proposed for continuance.

So we can move on to your consent calendar.

All matters listed here under constituted consent calendar are 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 these items unless a member of the Commission, the public or 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 one, case number 2026, 002693 CUA and 580 Hayes Street conditional use authorization.

Item two, case number 2026, hyphen 003545, CUA at 2101 Chestnut Street Conditional Use Authorization.

Excuse me.

And item three for case number 2026, IP-002920, CU8 1780 Fulton Street conditional use authorization.

Members of the public, this is your opportunity to request any of these items be pulled off of consent and considered under the regular calendar today or at a future hearing.

You need to come forward.

Last call, seeing none, public comment is closed, and your consent calendar is now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner McGarry.

Second.

Thank you, Commissioners.

On that motion to approve items 1, 2, and 3 on consent.

Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Aye.

Commissioner Braun.

Aye.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

Aye.

So move Commissioners that motion passes unanimously 4 to 0, placing us under Commission Matters for item 4, consideration of adoption draft minutes for July 9th, 2026.

Members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the Commission on their minutes.

You need to come forward.

Seeing none.

Public comment is closed.

And your minutes are now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner Braun.

Move to adopt the minutes.

Second.

Thank you, Commissioners.

On that motion to adopt your minutes.

Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Aye.

Commissioner Braun.

Aye.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

Aye.

So move Commissioners.

That motion passes unanimously four to zero.

Item five, Commission comments and questions.

Not seeing any.

Very good.

With that, we can move on to department matters.

Item six, Director's Announcements.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

Good to see you again.

In our uh summer tradition of welcoming youth interested in land use and other issues, we're excited today to have with us the Presidio Bay scholars.

So these are all at a team of folks looking at the real estate industry supported by one of our local developers, Presidio Bay, through a summer program in real estate.

So we'll all be on our best behavior so they see good progress in how land use works in San Francisco.

Thanks for being here, guys.

Also just a short one to note.

Yesterday we had one of something we try to do on a regular basis, uh lunch and learn for our team on communications, outreach, and engagement.

And it was uh it was open to all of planning and DBI members.

We are we have built up through our ongoing merge with DBI a really great joint communications team that now spans planning and DBI and a really great um community engagement team.

Um right now, uh kind of led by Carla de Mesa, one of our community planners, um, who's been working really hard with our teams to show everyone from our current planners to our historic preservationists to our customer service professionals at the permit center, how different levels of engagement with the community can really support in not only building trust but increasing understanding of our processes and you know building a pipeline so that when we have projects like the Shoreline Adaptation Project that you'll hear today, we already have a deep um history of working with the community on understanding.

So just really proud that we're continuing to deepen that bench of folks working on that and hopefully deepen our our participation with communities on the ground.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Welcome for City Obed Scholars.

Okay, if there are no questions for the director, item seven review of past events to the Board of Supervisors.

There is no report from the Board of Appeals and the Historic Preservation Commission did not meet yesterday.

Um the land use and transportation committee forwarded the hotels and RH districts ordinance to the full board with a positive recommendation, and the full board passed it on first read this week.

Also last week, the full board passed both the relocation and re-establishment of liquor establishments and cannabis cafe items on second read.

This week, the land use transportation committee heard about 20 landmark designations and forwarded them all to the board with a positive recommendation.

One of these items, the House of Latin Rock, was forwarded as a committee report and passed on first read this week.

Also this week, the full board passed the streamlining reporting requirements and procedures ordinance, as well as the inclusionary housing ordinance on second read.

Please note that the project application for 1200 Larkin Street was withdrawn by the project sponsor, and the planning department has rescinded the associated planning approval letter for the project.

Therefore, the CEQA appeal for the proposed 1200 Larkin Street project that was scheduled for this week at the full board is now moot.

That item was tabled and no action was taken.

Lastly, the full board approved Commissioner Sow reappointment.

If there are no questions, we can move on to general public comment.

At this time, members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission, except agenda items with respect to agenda items.

Your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting.

When the number of speakers exceed the 15-minute limit, general public comment may be moved to the end of the agenda.

Yes, hello.

My name is Ace Washington.

Mr.

Washington, if you could speak in the microphone.

My name is Ace Washington.

I'm the Philmore Corridor Ambassador for those that don't know me.

I've been at City Hall over 27 years, and some of y'all are new to this commission, some I do know.

But I'm here to complain about this issue.

If I could have uh some over here so I can see the overboard there of this new program that they put in my community, the Fillmore Community Action Plan.

The action plan.

So I got history of uh the San Francisco Planning Commission go way back to the inception of creating the Fillmore urban renewal.

We know it as the Negro Removal.

So none of y'all was around there, but I got plenty of history on the Planning Commission.

And I hear y'all coming back in my community in 2026 with some of this BS that I ain't gonna say.

Now you guys have put this commission together, you got your planning action subcommittee together, and didn't even include most of our community.

Not even me, Ace Washington, the Fillmore Corridor Ambassador.

Damn it.

So how on the hill are you guys going to bring the Fillmore Community Action Plan to my community again after all these years at the urban renewal and talking about you've got all the city departments here and this is what we're going to do.

And you haven't talked to nobody in the community.

So I'm saying you need to stop it to stop it and reorganize it again and call back the community.

Because I'm going to tell you right now, I've been quiet for you since y'all started it.

But how can you select to have a select action committee?

Who selected that committee, first of all?

And who selected pretty and turned down some of the names.

My name wasn't even submitted to it.

So I'm going to access planning commission to hold up, cease everything, bring it back to the table again.

All these meetings y'all had back then, hold up.

The scheduled four in May and then June, and now you're going to have a meeting on the 30th of this month to tell us what y'all did.

Well, I could tell you what y'all did.

You undermining us.

You undermining us, bringing all these city departments to our community without even explaining what's going on.

You may say, well, we had these little meetings where you could take off the ports and find out what's going on.

This bunch of BS.

I'm really tired of it.

So I'm asking y'all to cease and decisive right now.

You plan anyone on the 30th?

No.

We need community input.

We got Ella Hill Hutch, we got the Heritage Center, we got Buchanan Mall, we got coming that big old project Freedom West billion dollar project.

What in the hell do y'all think you're doing?

You didn't expect us to be.

I'm 72 years old, dammit.

I was around years ago with El Hill Hutch, but we're not taking it no more.

You need to cis and decease and sit down and talk to the damn community.

Thank you.

Particularly ACE on the case, the Fillmore Corridor Ambassador.

I'm not the mayor, I'm not the supervisor, but I am the ambassador to Washington.

That is your time.

Thank you.

My time, your time is over with.

Now you don't want me coming up here every week to talk to you.

Pay attention to what I'm saying.

Cease it and sis.

Any additional general public comment for items not on today's agenda.

Well, good afternoon.

My name is Eris Edward, also from the Fillmore.

As you can hear the deep frustration.

It's been so many years, you know.

As a young man now, a little older.

I've been doing this work for 25 years in the community.

It's been a promise to rebuild the filmmore before I got involved.

We've had so many meetings over the years, so many dots on the walls, so many posted notes, you know, in this action committee, you know, just when I went to the first couple of months, it was the same thing.

What do you want?

What do you want to see?

You know, we have the unfinished agenda was the first start of the Fillmore plan through the Human Rights Commission, and that was over 25 years ago.

We had the outmigration report that was done with Fred Blackwell and Mayor Gavin Newsom, which is now governor.

Right?

We got all these plans.

We just had the reparations plan that you know came out.

So somehow we have to fast track this thing and figure out exactly where we're going and not no more meetings.

You know, we're asking for the uh community to have businesses back, uh those that was displaced, certificate holders who need help and understanding with the the management companies that own the properties now in the storefronts, so we're having a problem all over San Francisco, you know, with the understanding of the rent and the lease agreements is a lot more than when we had it before.

You know, it's been years, so you know, and then like I said, the children, you know, family members of certificate holders.

We did it with the um the housing, you know, we need to pass down the certificates down to the children, the grandchildren, see if they want to open up a business.

We got so many storefronts that's empty that's been empty, especially in the Fillmore Center.

They haven't been a good you know community partner for years.

But I just think we need to revisit this whole thing and you know, bringing all these departments together is good.

But you've left out one department, you left out the redevelopment, this assessor agency.

You left them out somehow.

We have to get them back to the table to finish their job.

Why they're still over in Baby Islands Point.

They're building down here at the um, you know, the the center down the downtown, the uh the Muni station.

Um, you know, so uh somehow we have to leverage and get them back to the table because they're the ultimate responsibility.

Then everybody else in the city and county of San Francisco, but the state, you know, redevelopment needs to get back to the table so they can finish their job.

So thank you.

Okay, last call for general public comment.

Seeing none, general public comment is closed, and we can move on, commissioners, to your regular calendar for items 8, A, and B for case numbers 2026, hyphen 004685, PCA for the Shade Act legislation, local implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act and Administrative Code Amendment.

In case number 2026, hyphen 003496 CRV for the wind threshold of significance for environmental impact analysis consideration of a resolution.

Uh, you will hear both uh presentations from staff.

We'll take one public comment period, and then uh we ask that you act separately uh as these are two distinctly different items.

Good afternoon, President Campbell and and members of the commission, Lisa Gibson, Environmental Review Officer.

Um we appreciate the opportunity to bring forward two important items today.

A proposed ordinance from District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood to amend administrative code chapter 31, our local CEQA procedures, and a proposed resolution establishing a wind significance threshold for sequel wind impact analysis.

Staff undertook this work with care and rigor, closely examining where our local CEQA policies and practices exceed state requirements and where they can be made made more efficient.

Their analysis is grounded in law and solid science and reflects collaboration with Supervisor Mahmood to develop thoughtful updates to our CEQA implementation, including the removal of shadow from local CEQA review.

Throughout this effort, we've remained committed to the city's core principles of environmental protection and meaningful public engagement principles at the heart of CEQA.

Before staff present, you'll hear from Director of Community Planning, Rachel Tanner, followed by Rain L Cooper Cooper from Supervisor Mobmood's office.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

Really good to be with you here today.

We're about to head into your recess, so your addenda is pretty full today.

But you know the past few months your agendas have been pretty light, and that reflects both new state laws that have streamlined housing, but it also requests the reflects a slower pace overall of projects, whether it's housing or commercial development in the city.

And the policies that are before you today are really important steps that we're taking to make it easier to build housing and really to also reach our economic development goals.

And so it's really critical that we have your support today.

These two items that are updates to our environmental review practices, they reduce constraints on housing.

And that's something we've been doing over the last several years with the Board of Supervisors.

And this is another key step in that effort.

And what's important about these reforms is they really do strike a balance between maintaining our public engagement, protecting our environmental resources, and also meeting our housing and our economic development goals.

So just a little context, because you don't normally hear me talking about CEQA.

That's certainly the purview of our ERO.

But you hear me talking a lot about housing.

And in our housing element, the city committed to identifying and to adjusting our local CEQA requirements that go beyond the state law.

And we even put out a date on it that we would do it before January 31st, 2028.

So we're happy to be coming to you a little bit earlier than that deadline.

But in addition, the California Housing Department of Housing and Community Development, they also reinforced this in their 2023 policy and practices review, which was kind of like our report card telling us how we were doing on our housing production goals and permitting, and we weren't doing great, but they gave us some direction on how we can improve and these policies are ways that we can improve.

They specifically actually asked us to look at wind, to look at shadow, because these are two topics that are pretty unique to San Francisco in terms of our environmental review here compared to other other cities.

And so we're making these changes not because environmental review isn't important, because we all know protecting our resources is incredibly important.

But often over the years, CEQA has been used to delay delay projects and delay housing, which I is ironic because info housing is one of the best ways to protect our environment, to keep our wild places wild and to make sure that we're reducing our reliance on cars and GHG emissions, which itself is driving a lot of the climate change.

So with these um these policies that are being brought forward today, and really grateful for the supervisor's support, we're able to meet our own commitments that we've made as a city to do reforms that help to reduce constraints on housing, but we're also meeting our state obligations.

And so we look forward to the discussion today.

Thank you.

Yeah, and thank you, Lisa.

Thank you, Rachel.

Uh, and thank you, President Campbell and the rest of the commissioners.

My name is Rainell Cooper.

I'm a legislative aide for District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud, the lead sponsor of the Shade Act.

Uh I'll let the planning department staff get into the specifics of the legislation, but I want to highlight a few points you'll hear about a little bit later and talk a little bit more in detail about why Supervisor Mahmood partnered with the environmental planning staff to bring this legislation forward.

San Francisco's story is the story of a diverse communities who have come here and created a culture of inclusion, invention, and imagination.

However, we cannot continue to be a diverse and welcoming city if we do not build more housing.

And we cannot build more housing if we continue to have a system that slows housing down and creates uncertainty in our planning and approval processes.

As Rachel alluded to, we also cannot protect our region's environment or our planet's climate if we force population growth out from the city into the suburbs.

The California Environmental Quality Act is already one of the most comprehensive environmental laws in the country.

Yet the city has layered on extra hearings, new appeal routes, and extended timelines that do more to keep new housing and new residents out of our city than to protect our state's environment.

By bringing city processes closer in line with state law, especially around timelines and appealable documents, these changes can shave months off of projects, which means homes being built more quickly and at a lower cost.

CEQA environmental impact reports will still be appealable and documents will still be publicly accessible.

The procedures that are being modified will save department time and accelerate projects while still guaranteeing transparency.

It's still a major priority for this department and for the supervisor.

The most high profile change here involves shadows.

San Francisco has included shade as part of its environmental review process, despite shade not being part of CEQA at the state level.

Since 2017, CEQA appeals involving shadow analysis have led to delaying or stalling over 2,000 housing units citywide across over a dozen projects.

This late legislation would render such appeals invalid.

Notably, the SHADE Act does not affect the voter mandate in 1984's Prop K, now codified in Planning Code Section 295.

Shadow analyses will still be required to assess the shadow impacts on Rec and Park jurisdiction.

Supervisor Machmood believes that this is a common sense step to maintaining engagement around our environmental process while addressing some of the red tape around our housing shortage.

Our own housing element is approved by this body and guidance from the California Department of Housing and Community Development agree it's time to peel back the layers of local process and our local implementation of CEQA.

If we want to fix this housing crisis as a city, we can no longer be afraid of our own shadow.

Thank you to uh all the staff that worked on this, many of whom you will hear from a little bit later today.

Um thank you to the Commission for hearing this item.

I'll now turn it over to K Zushi and Ryan Shum, who will go over the details of legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Reynolds.

Uh good afternoon, President Campbell and Commissioners.

I am K Zuschi, senior planner with the planning department.

The item before you is a proposed ordinance sponsored by Supervisor Mahmood that would amend Chapter 31 of the San Francisco Administrative Code.

The legislation, also known as the Shade Act, is co-sponsored by Supervisor Dorsey and SATR.

Administrative Code Chapter 31 establishes local process for implementing the California Environmental Equality Act or CEQA.

CEQA is a state law requiring public agencies to analyze and disclose the significant environmental impacts of proposed projects and to adopt uh feasible measures to mitigate those impacts before approving them.

On July 8th, we sent you a report that includes a summary of uh the proposed ordinance and our detailed analysis of issues and considerations.

Today we'll cover the key provisions of the ordinance.

I'll make the first uh part of the presentation and then hand it over to my colleague Ryan Sham.

Um as Director Tanner mentioned, the legislation arose in response to actions in the housing element and the State Department Housing and Community Development's policy and practice review.

The actions require the city to eliminate local CEQA processes that exceed CEQA uh state sequa requirements.

Consistent with these directives, the proposed ordinance would remove local environmental review requirements that go beyond state requirements while maintaining compliance with CEQA.

By eliminating procedural requirements that exceed CEQA, the proposed ordinance would enable the department to conduct environmental review more efficiently without diminishing the quality and rigor of environmental analysis.

The amendments are expected to reduce the time and cost associated with housing development project in San Francisco.

In a moment, I'll describe what would change under the proposed ordinance.

Before I do that, I'd like to call out several things that would not change.

These are important because they ensure that the city continue to meet all applicable CEQA requirements while maintaining a robust environmental review process.

The ordinance would not change the city's continued compliance with CEQA, including including maintaining appeal rights established by state law.

The ordinance would not alter planning code section 295's independent sunlight protection requirements.

Similarly, it would not change priority policy review in compliance with proposition M as part of the permit review process.

Finally, the ordinance would in no way affect ministerial project review, uh.

given that ministerial projects are not subject to CEQA.

The proposed ordinance would reduce appeal periods for the three types of CEQA determinations that are appealable to the Board of Supervisors.

Under the current code, exemptions, final negative declarations, and mitigated negative declarations or negative declarations for short, and final environmental impact reports are subject to a 30-day appeal period.

The proposed ordinance would reduce this period to 15 days.

Appellants would continue to have the same amount of time to submit additional comments before the appeal hearing.

CEQA does not specify appeal periods.

The proposed 15-day appeal periods would be in keeping with CEQA appeal periods that are common across the state, as well as with the city's existing non-SEQA appeal periods.

Overall, the amendment is expected to reduce costs and timelines required for environmental review while continuing to preserve meaningful opportunities for the public to appeal CEQA determinations.

The proposed ordinance would also eliminate three types of appeals that are not required under CEQA.

First, the ordinance would remove appeals of preliminary negative declarations to the Planning Commission.

Second, the ordinance would eliminate appeals of no substantial modification determinations, which the code requires when the department determines that a modified project does not need a new exemption determination.

The last appeal that would be eliminated is updates to the published list of actions that are not a project under CEQA.

Under the current code, this list itself is appealable to the Planning Commission.

The ordinance would eliminate appeals of that list.

Please note that the underlying CQA rules that determine what is considered not a project would not change.

The proposed ordinance would just alter appeals of that list itself.

Overall, these amendments would align the city's appeal process with state law.

Importantly, the ability of the public to appeal exemptions, final negative declarations, and environmental impact reports to the Board of Supervisors would not change.

The proposed ordinance would also modify the appeal review timelines applicable to the Board of Supervisors to comply with Assembly Bill 1633.

AB 1633 amend amended the Housing Accountability Act to include in the definition of approval a jurisdiction's failure to complete SQL review within certain time frames.

The current code generally requires the Board of Supervisors to act on the CEQA appeal within certain timeframes.

Under the proposed ordinance, that time frame would be shortened to 14 days.

Chapter 31 currently does not specify a timeline for the board to issue the findings when the board reverses the CEQA decision.

Under the proposed ordinance, the board generally would be required to issues findings within 14 days over reversal.

The ordinance would eliminate draft EIR hearings at the Planning Commission.

A draft EIR is the draft version of an environmental impact report that's prepared for public review and comment.

Before the planning commission considers whether to certify the final EIR.

This amendment would reduce the cost and time associated with EIR review process.

The actual cost of a draft EIR hearing varies depending on factors such as the level of public interest or controversy as well as the length and complexity of the EIR.

However, the department estimates, based on recent EIRs, that the combined costs of the EIR consultant and department staff to prepare for and attend the draft EIR hearing can range from approximately 15,000 to 25,000 dollars.

Costs may be even higher when the hearing requires extensive coordination among the department staff, other city agency staff, environmental consultants, and other participants.

The amendment would align the city's EIR process with common statewide practices.

The planning commission and members of the public would continue to have the opportunity to submit written comments on draft EIRs during the public review period.

In addition, the Historic Preservation Commission would continue to review EIRs with significant and unavoidable impacts on cultural resources.

The ordinance would amend public notifications for CEQA determinations to align them with state law.

While our current code requires exemptions to be sent to decision makers, CEQA does not include this requirement.

So the ordinance would eliminate this requirement.

In practice, however, the department would continue to distribute exemptions to decision makers such as the Planning Commission and HPC through materials routinely provided in our case reports.

In addition, the department would continue to post exemptions on our website and provide them upon request, and they would be available through our subscriber-based permit notification system.

For mitigated negative declarations in EIRs, the current code requires that the department post notices on our website and provide three types of notices, whereas CEQA only requires one type of notice out of the three options.

The ordinance would continue requiring website posting and only require one of these three options.

In practice, however, this would not represent a major change in how we provide notices.

The department would select one or more appropriate notification methods based on the scope and nature of the project as well as community interest.

The department would continue to distribute M and Ds and EIRs to decision makers.

Overall, the proposed ordinance would provide greater flexibility to tailor environmental review notification practices to individual projects and as technology advances.

With that, I'll now uh turn the presentation over to Ryan Shum.

Thank you.

Thank you, and good afternoon, Commissioners, Ryan Shum Department staff.

The proposed ordinance would eliminate the requirement to analyze shadow impacts as part of the local SQL review.

While Chapter 31 currently requires shadow as a topic in our environmental evaluation, proposition K does not require shadow analysis to be incorporated in the SQL process, and the topic was not officially adopted into the local process until 2006 by the Board of Supervisors.

Furthermore, shadow is not required by the state, and San Francisco is one of two major cities that still analyzes shadow under CEQA.

Other major cities, including Oakland and Los Angeles, previously analyzed shadow impacts but have since removed it from their environmental review process.

In response to HCD and housing element policy directives, the ordinance proposes to remove shadow from local CQA analysis because shadow on balance does not create adverse physical changes to humans or the environment as CEQA defines it.

Both sun exposure and shade have varying effects on human health, and there is no evidence to suggest that shade is inherently harmful, as there are negative health impacts associated with both overexposure and underexposure to direct sunlight.

In cases where shadow may have an impact in the context of CEQA topics such as cultural resources, biological resources, or energy, shadow would continue to be addressed under those respective analyses.

I would like to be clear that the ordinance is not proposing to eliminate shadow studies.

Shadow studies would still be prepared and reviewed by planning and recreation and park department staff, and the public would maintain the same opportunity to comment on shadow studies at Wreck and Park Commission hearings as they do now.

While the ordinance would remove shadow as a topic under CEQA, it would not make any changes to proposition K and Section 295 of the planning code.

Furthermore, the proposed ordinance would not violate proposition M and its requirement for projects to analyze their consistency with the city's priority policies, specifically regarding access to sunlight in our parks and open spaces.

The department's current practice for determining consistency with priority policies occurs through the entitlement review process, and this process would remain unchanged.

Proposition M does not require that the findings need to be made as part of environmental review.

CEQA defines in its significant impact on the environment as a substantial or potentially substantial adverse change in the environment.

Based on CEQA's definition of an environmental impact and the facts presented, the department concluded that shadows should no longer be considered in the local environmental review process.

And that shadow is ultimately a planning and urban design issue, not an environmental issue under CEQA.

By removing shadow analysis from the local SQL process, the city would help reduce the overall cost and time required to approve and construct projects in San Francisco.

Remove a topic that does not meet CEQA's definition of a significant adverse environmental impact, and comply with HCD and the housing element actions.

Finally, I'd like to summarize how the proposed ordinance would affect the planning commission and comments made by the Historic Preservation Commission.

For the Planning Commission, draft EIRs at the Planning Commission would be eliminated, but draft ERs would be distributed to the Commission and the public for the same public comment period.

Comments would also be continued to be received in writing.

Number two, there would be no change to the final certification EIR certification hearings at the Planning Commission.

Three, there would be no appeals in appeal hearings of preliminary mitigated negative declarations at Planning Commission.

Four, there would be no change to the distribution of CERC documents to this body.

And number five, the NATA project list would no longer be appealable to the Planning Commission.

The proposed ordinance was heard at the Historic Planning Commission on July 15, 2026, and HPC adopted a recommendation to adopt the proposed ordinance with the following comments.

One, maintain the existing requirement to conduct a public hearing on draft DIRs.

Two, maintain the existing 30-day appeal period.

And number three, evaluate methods to improve public notification for environmental review aligned with racial and social equity plan and report the findings to HPC within three months of the ordinance's effective date.

Before we conclude, staff would like to note that 42 comment letters opposing the ordinance were submitted by individual members of the public and organizations, including the Telegraph Hill dwellers, neighborhoods United SF, Golden Gate Park Preservation Alliance, and the Golden Gate Preservation Park Alliance.

Apologies.

Additionally, one comment letter in support of the ordinance was submitted by the Housing Action Coalition.

In summary, the proposed ordinance would help facilitate the production of housing and other projects in San Francisco and further align the city's local process with state requirements without compromising the analysis.

The department respectfully recommends that the Planning Commission recommends the proposed ordinance for approval.

Thank you very much for your attention.

My colleagues and I are available to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, President Campbell and Commissioners Rachel Shutt, Planning Department staff.

The item before you is the adoption of a wind threshold of significance for the purposes of environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

A threshold of significance is simply the level at which the lead agency has determined that an environmental impact is significant.

Under CEQA, significant impacts require mitigation.

For wind impacts, this means the inclusion of wind reducing features.

Wind reducing features may include modifications to building massing, facade articulation, the addition of attached or freestanding wind canopies or screens, and additional landscaping, including treat tree planting.

The proposed wind threshold of significance would formalize the basis for determining when such measures are required.

On July 9th, we sent you a staff report that includes a summary of the research that led to our proposed resolution and our detailed analysis of issues and considerations.

Today we'll provide you with a high-level overview of that research, a brief history of wind analysis in San Francisco, and the key takeaways that led to our proposed resolution.

Please note, you will hear me refer to the one-hour standard and the nine-hour standard throughout this brief presentation.

I will explain that in detail when we get to the description of wind tunnel testing, so please stay tuned.

Wind analysis for new high-rise buildings in San Francisco has actually been part of environmental review since 1974.

In the early 1980s, the department worked with consultants to develop standard wind controls as part of the downtown plan.

Section 148 was added to the planning code in 1985 as part of the adoption of the downtown plan.

This memorialized a win threshold of significance we called the one-hour standard, which was then used as the CEQA threshold.

In 2023, Housing Element Action 8.5.6 and the State Housing Department's Policy and Practice Review Action 2.2 both required the city to eliminate local CQR procedures that exceed state CEQA requirements.

In addition, Housing Element Action 8.4.12 directed the department to update planning code wind standards.

That last action has been completed.

The questions these these actions raised are is wind impact analysis an appropriate topic for environmental review?

And do our analysis procedures exceed state requirements?

Which led us to another question.

So why do we study wind impacts in San Francisco?

The short answer is that once higher high-rise buildings began to go up, the increase in ground level wind speeds became quite noticeable.

This is because winds coming off the Pacific Ocean through the mouth of the Golden Gate that had once flowed over relatively uniform and low-slung development, were now encountering tall buildings and downdrafting, resulting in strong winds at the ground level.

The strongest effects were felt along the Market Street and Bannis Avenue corridors due to the prolifer proliferation of tall buildings.

Now increasing effects are also felt in the South of Market area, where the alignment of the street grid results in large portions of tall building facades being oriented towards the prevailing winds.

I want to pause to note that in San Francisco a hazardous wind speed is defined as a 26 mile an hour average or greater, which accounts for 36 mile an hour guests, which is quite a strong wind and enough to destabilize pedestrians.

So based on decades, decades of wind studies, the department has concluded that hazardous wind speeds that regularly occur in San Francisco adversely affect human beings, particularly vulnerable people, such as children and the elderly.

Therefore, wind impact should continue to be analyzed as part of the environmental review.

So once we determine that wind analysis continues to be necessary under CECA, we did take the opportunity to thoroughly review our methodologies.

A similar effort was undertaken in 2016 as part of the environmental review for the Central Soma Area Plan.

At that time, a round table of academics and industry experts was convened to examine the wind challenge that challenges that were expected in Central Soma based on the proposed height limits and the orientation of the street grid.

That effort culminated in three major recommendations.

To develop updated weather data, to expand the number of analyzed wind directions, and to change the threshold from one hour to a ten hour standard.

To date, the department has implemented all of these recommendations, including partially implementing a slightly more conservative nine-hour standard that was only applied to projects in the Central Soma area.

Our more recent effort involved interviews with industry experts, review of other jurisdictions' policies and practices, and analysis of wind studies for San Francisco projects again, spanning decades.

The only recommendation that came out of this effort was to change from the one-hour standard to the nine-hour standard for all projects citywide that are subject to CEQA.

I will explain why, but first let me explain how wind analysis works.

In San Francisco, projects above 85 feet in height are sub that are subject to CEQA require a qualitative screening analysis to determine if the project could result in hazardous winds.

If the answer is yes, then a more detailed one tunnel test is required.

In that case, a physical scale model of the project and its surrounds is created and placed into a machine called a wind tunnel.

Wind is simulated over one year period using local meteorological data.

Data is collected by small sensors which register the wind speeds.

If the wind speeds reach or exceed the 26 mile an hour hazard level, the number of hours of exceedance is recorded.

Currently, even one hour of exceedance in a year is considered a significant impact.

Wind reducing features are required, and the project must be retested in the tunnel until all wind hazard exceedances are eliminated.

Under the proposed resolution, we are asking to increase this threshold to a nine-hour standard.

So up to eight hours of exceedance would be allowed in a year.

Nine hours or more would require wind reducing features.

I also want to mention that the planning code already reflects the nine-hour hazards hazard standard.

Based on the research that I described, the department concluded that the nine-hour standard is the correct standard to use.

The planning code was updated accordingly as part of the family zoning plan implementing housing element action 8.4.12.

As such, adopting the nine-hour standard for environmental review would be consistent with the wind controls in the planning code section 148.

In conclusion, the department respectfully recommends that the planning commission adopt the resolution before you to adopt the nine-hour standard as the wind's threshold of significance for the purposes of environmental review under CEQA.

Thank you very much for your attention to my presentation and to this matter.

My colleague Deborah Dwyer and I are available to answer any questions that you might have.

Thanks again.

Thank you.

That concludes staff presentations.

We should open up public comment.

Members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on both items 8A and B.

You need to come forward.

Where are you?

Just on the screen side.

Right along the side here.

Thank you.

Um good uh good afternoon, Commissioners.

Um I'm here and speaking about uh keeping Prop K as is.

Public notification of potential shade impacts under Prop K is a center because San Francisco is one of the densest major cities in the country.

Where every square foot of open space serves as an irreplaceable role in supporting community health and well-being in a city where residents already compete for limited parks and playgrounds.

Keeping the public informed about new shadows ensures that decisions about these shared spaces remain transparent and accountable to the people who use them most.

San Francisco's naturally cool and overcast climate makes sunlight itself a precious resource.

When a new building casts additional shadow across the park, it can reduce the limited hours of warmth and light that make those spaces truly inviting and usable.

Preserving the opportunity for public review honors the original voter intent of Prop K to protect the quality of our parks so that they remain places where people want to gather.

This protection matters especially for families who rely on our public parks in practical everyday ways.

In Chinatown, daycares, for example, fulfilled their state licensing requirements for outdoors, outdoor space by taking children to the New York nearby parks.

These visits depend on safe, sunny conditions that allow kids to run, explore, and get the fresh air they need.

Removing public notification would silence the very voices, parents, caregivers, and neighborhood residents who can best speak to how shadow changes might affect these assistant routines.

In short, keeping this notification process in place is not about opposing development.

It's about giving San Francisco's a fair chance to weigh in on changes that directly touch open space and gives a good balance to the quality of life.

I forgot to mention my name.

I'm Terry Owning, and I'm a former co-chair of the Committee for Better Parks and Recreation in Chinatown.

I uh volunteered for over 20 years.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Jenny Liu.

I'm also a former uh co-chair of the Better Park and Rec Committee in Chinatown in the 19th century in the 1980s.

Before that, I was the chief planner at the Chinatown Community Resource Center now known as CCDC.

I think by virtue that you have 42 letters opposing this amendment, and also you got one letter in support that should speak volumes as to everybody here on the staff and everybody assuring you from the supervisor's office that this is not going to cut back on public comment and that uh you actually believe that uh shadows is not an environmental impact.

So I just want to ask, and and you have my written statements, and I have to apologize to the audience.

I'm not going to repeat my written statements because I only have two minutes.

But um, what I will focus on is that this is taken away public comment.

It's a bunch of agencies talking to other agencies.

You can challenge NAGDEC and so forth at the final EIR hearing, not at the draft.

You can have written comments or what about verbal comments, public comments given by people that maybe don't have access to typewriters and computers and you know, AI speeches and all that kind of sort of stuff.

Uh only adjacent property owners would be notified.

You take away the 300-foot notice.

Um all these little things that probably were brought up in the 42 opposition letters.

I also want to point out that it's I'm not an Asian tree hugger.

I am the person that actually uh brokered the Levi Plaza project uh with Gerson Baker to build the first affordable housing project as a concession to private development.

It's called Wharf Park now.

It houses seniors at the foot of Telegraph Hill.

I also was the project manager for First and Market Project, which was one of the first projects that paid into uh St.

Francis Square housing and also child care concessions even before they were required as part of the EIR process.

I also did uh assisted the Dominican sisters in building intergenerational housing on Rose Court, and also as a Kaiser Permanente project manager, I worked with the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation to build multiple housing.

So I I know a little bit about affordable housing, and I'm very supportive of affordable housing, but also not at the sacrifice of shadows.

The Bear Park and Rec Committee had numerous relentless battles with high-rise developers, and also our first fight on Chinese playground was actually on a housing project proposed by a Chinese family association that was going to permanently cast massive shadows on Chinese playground.

And also our first fight on Chinese playground was actually on a housing project proposed by a Chinese family association that was going to permanently cast massive shadows playground.

So I just want you to take all of this into consideration of the commissioners that came before you, the planning directors from Rayakamoto de Teen Macris, to the eight supervisors out of 11 that support a Prop K.

We crafted this very carefully to be rigorous, and we recognize shadow is an environmental impact.

Thank you, ma'am.

That is your time.

Please do not pass this.

Thank you.

I'm Alice Bacley.

For your staff.

The ordinance be for you, the current one, have a lot of the public notification requirements in them.

And I wanted, and they are very important from early nuclefication of new shadows on the park to all the various processes.

Will those notification requirements be changed?

Because they are really important, especially in Chinatown, when we have a lot of people and very, very few public parks.

I think we can make sure that question gets answered when the com when the commissioners discuss this matter.

We will get that question clarified for you when we discuss the matters.

Okay.

Ms.

Barkway, this is not a question and answer period.

Not yet.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, uh, Commissioners.

My name is Lance Gartley.

I'm a member of Telegraph Field Dwellers.

I live in North Beach.

I have lived there for over 30 years.

What brought me here today was a proposal by our supervisor, Denny Sauter, to put in a Sir, I need you to speak in the microphone.

Sorry?

Oh, okay.

Proposal by Danny Soder to put in a new building right here on the edge of Washington.

This is Washington Square Park, one of the major attractions of San Francisco, due to the number of tourists that go there.

And uh this is on a sunny day, and as you can see, it's filled.

Um they want to put in a new building in place of 659 Union Street, which will go up a hundred feet.

And I have the uh here's here's what's called the uh shadow fan.

And it shows that it covers up nearly all of the Lance speaking of the marketing.

Okay, yeah.

This is uh I'm sorry.

This is um not going to be used anymore, apparently, but it uh and this is for a 92-foot building.

So for a hundred-foot building, it's gonna cover 90 percent of the park.

And uh the um the problem here is that uh this building would cast a huge shadow.

Um right next to it, just up the street is called 1000 Green Street, which is practically empty.

It's where Charles Schultz used to live.

Um if we need new housing, put it in that building.

This building here is absolutely is not needed.

And uh and then uh we want to preserve the uh the park for visitors and the locals.

And Danny Sutter recently had uh new member of his family join him, a little daughter, when she wants to go out and play.

I hope Denny's listening on the TV feed.

Um, where are you gonna take her?

If you if you build this building and take her to the park, she'll freeze to death if you take her down there.

Um shadows and um.

So we want to keep this pristine.

It's one of the oldest parks in San Francisco, and one of the most most uh biggest tourist draws.

So that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioners.

I'm Apollo, a North Beach resident, and I urge you to reject the shade out.

This was never just about shadow analysis.

This ordinance is using shadow analysis to further the ongoing elimination of the public voice at City Hall.

It makes 28 separate changes to San Francisco's environmental review process.

It guts CEQA, limits Planning Commission oversight, reduces public notice, cuts public comment, and strips away appeal rights.

Shadow is an environmental impact.

The planning department has said so for decades in its own CEQA checklist.

Suddenly calling it something else doesn't change reality.

This is also an equity issue.

The people who depend most on sunlight in parks, sidewalks, and public spaces are often those living in the smallest homes with the fewest alternatives.

They're the people this leg legislation will hurt the most.

That doesn't sound very inclusive to me.

Please reject the Shade Act in its entirety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioners.

I'm Romolyn Schmaltz, a 20-year resident of North Beach, and I urge you to reject the Shade Act.

While it's pretty cruel to reduce our precious public spaces and our access to sunlight, shade is really about silencing the public.

Buried inside it are 28 separate changes to San Francisco's environmental review process.

Together they gut CECOA, our local CEQA.

We can plan in commission oversight, reduce public notice, limit public comment, and strip away appeal rights, regardless of what we've heard today.

That's that that's that is the truth.

This is not streamlining.

It is the systematic dismantling of public accountability.

The planning department has recognized environmental impacts of shadows for decades in its own local CEQA checklist.

San Francisco has established laws stronger than the state requirements because we are San Francisco, not Modesto or Fresno or anywhere else in California.

We're not LA, we're not Oakland.

We're San Francisco, and we have unique needs, unique architecture, unique topography, unique climates, and unique communities.

And this isn't just an environmental issue, it's an equity issue.

The people who depend most upon sunlight in parks, sidewalks, and public spaces are the very people who have the fewest alternatives.

Renters, seniors, families in small apartments, and lower income San Franciscans.

That's a remarkable outcome for legislation sponsored by supervisors of the city's densest and poorest neighborhoods to the thousands of such residents in Mahmoud's tenderloin, Dorsey Soma, or Danny Souter's Chinatown in North Beach.

How do you feel about your elected officials removing that from your daily life?

Your planning laws exist to protect the public, not to make development approvals more convenient.

Citizen oversight is a fundamental San Francisco right.

Please reject the Shade Act.

Do it for all San Franciscans.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Commissioners Whit Turner, on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition.

I'm going to try to keep it brief, but I'm very passionate on this topic, so I apologize if I go a little long.

And that we're talking all about, you know, the right to sunlight, which I agree is important in open space, but the fact that you know we're talking about the poorest families and people like myself who live in a tiny box apartment and can barely afford to live here.

It is because we don't have enough housing.

We do not have enough housing for people to afford to live in it.

That is the problem.

And what this is doing is speeding up the rate at which we can build housing and helping to get rid of a bunch of you know non-important oversight and systems of abuse, like uh using shadows to block housing that have long prevented people from living in the city and being able to afford to live here, because we are not building enough housing.

I live next to Washington Square Park.

I don't know why we're looking at a diagram that shows, you know, there's going to be a shadow from this building, and that's a separate issue when there's no sun that goes next to that building.

It's not how shadows work.

And I trust the work that environmental planning is done on this.

I really thank their leadership on this.

They've done a great job.

Thank you to Supervisor Mahmood for his leadership on this.

But I want to get back to the issue at hand, which is housing and affordability and a bunch of nonsense rules in tandem with CEQA that have long been used to abuse blocking housing.

Thank you.

Hello, Commissioners.

David Wu is Soma Filipinus, the Filipino Cultural Heritage District.

However, due to state laws such as SB 423 and the state density bonus projects are now able to bypass and waive the requirements of Section 295.

We saw this in SOMA with the 1025 Howard Street project that will cast a shadow on Gene Friend Rec Center, which under Prop K has a 0% limit for net new shadow and is supposed to be a protected open space.

But because 1025 Howard Street was using SB 423 and the state density bonus, it was able to waive these local requirements.

The South of Market has one of the lowest amounts of open space per capita in the city.

And it is also a park-starved neighborhood.

With this removal of CEQA shadow analysis and the ability for projects to bypass Prop K, we will effectively be ignoring the city's general plan and recreation and open space element, which specifically calls for preserving sunlight in public open spaces, especially neighborhoods near downtown.

For this reason, we are asking for two amendments to this legislation.

One to have the planning department do a study on what measures can be taken to protect access to sunlight for public open spaces and SFUSD schoolyards in SOMA.

And two, have the planning department do a shadow impact study analysis for any new project that would cast a shadow on a wreck and park property or an SFUSD schoolyard in SOMA if the project sponsor does not provide one.

And these amendments would help us to ensure that we continue to study and analyze potential impacts and continue to prioritize access to sunlight for SOMA's open spaces.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Honorable Commissioners.

My name is Bavette Brackett, and I currently live in Portola district.

I live really close to McLaren Park.

And I'm here to specifically speak on the Shadow Act.

I think that there needs to be more time dedicated to reviewing a lot of the issues that a lot of the previous speakers spoke about.

And I'd also like to include that a lot of the housing that's being built right now, if we continue to build enough housing that there's not enough open space, that also makes a challenge.

So as the previous speaker mentioned that he lives in such a tiny apartment.

That's what the city has been building a lot recently.

A lot of really small units and not enough open space for people to enjoy.

So shadow is a real issue.

It's not just an environmental issue, it's also a health issue.

We saw that during COVID when people had lack of access to vitamin D and open space and green space.

People were more likely to go through depression and other health symptoms for not being able to get outside and to enjoy enough sunshine.

So we are San Francisco.

We are a city that prioritizes and celebrates out our outdoor space and our sunshine and access to it.

And I just want to make sure that the Planning Commission is doing the best that it can to preserve those two key points.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, last call for public comment.

Again, you need to come forward.

Seeing none, public comment.

Ma'am.

This is from Julie Sue.

Ma'am, you've already spoken to the question.

Oh, can she speak on someone else's?

You've already spoken.

No.

Oh, I can't read somebody else's statement.

Okay.

She cannot.

Oh, okay.

But someone else in the audience can't be.

Someone else in the audience could use their team.

You want to hand your phone to somebody else?

Okay.

Final last call for public comment.

Seeing none, public comment is closed.

And this matters now are both of these matters now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner McGarry.

So point of clarification for the audience as well as myself.

Notification.

How is it deemed?

What form of notification is appropriate for projects going forward?

Hi, Tanya Shaner.

Planning Department staff, thank you for your question.

I would like to confirm that all uh notification required by CEQA, which is robust and depends on the level of CEQA document will be maintained if this legislative amendment is passed.

CEQA establishes different notification requirements based on the level of review.

And so for all documents, we would continue to post all of our documents on our website, provide them upon request to members of the public and decision makers, and anyone would be able to subscribe to our electronic notification system.

All of those methods would be available.

For higher levels of CEQA review, such as M and Ds and EIRs, CEQA says that you can choose one of the three levels methods to notify the public.

Posting at the site, distributing via um mail to a radius list or posting in the newspaper.

We the department will continue to post on the site, on and around the site, and mail notice to the radius list.

For some projects, such as those at SFO or in our HEDC watershed, it may not always make sense to do that.

So those sites may not be easily accessible or have any residents in the areas.

So for those we may opt to instead do the newspaper notice.

But just to confirm CEQA's robust requirements for public noticing, will it be and we will be in full compliance with them with no exceptions?

Thank you.

I think that the concern is notification for commercial versus resident residential versus open space.

It can vary so you're actually taking all of that into account, yes.

Commissioner McGarry, Lisa Gibson, environmental review officer.

Could you uh CEQA doesn't uh establish different uh requirements for notification based on the type of use?

So we wouldn't be discerning in that regard.

What we would be focusing on is uh the site conditions and the vicinity in terms of you know where are the surrounding um occupants, whether they're residential or commercial or otherwise.

Um, I believe that'll be the concern it's the other side is the people being notified or making sure that the vast amount of people that are everybody's impacted does get the notification.

That's actually built into it.

And the existing practice that we have and of the with the radius list, it is of building owners and occupants that are um uh yeah, building owners and occupants.

So whether that's um residential or commercial, those those uh individuals would be notified.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bronn.

I think this is a very tricky topic because it's uh it's there's some A details to the the sequence and flow of an environmental analysis and when documents are published and what types of determinations are made.

And so there's a lot of detail in the weeds, and I think you know one could spend well one literally does spend you know an entire class trying to figure this stuff out.

Um I'm gonna try to um get into a few topic areas and seek some clarifications too.

One thing I just want to say uh right up front, uh being very clear about this.

Uh there was varying uh comments about whether or not we are getting rid of proposition K as part of this.

That is not happening.

That's a voter-approved um requirement.

Uh Proposition K does require that um well, actually staff should check beyond this, but I believe it's buildings over 40 feet tall need to have an analysis done for potential shadow on properties under the jurisdiction of the recreation and parks department.

I'm seeing nods.

Wow, I got that right.

Okay.

Uh but just to say it again, um Prop K and its requirements is not being changed by this.

Um, you know, I uh I guess that leads to the question.

Uh I'm gonna jump around with kind of the flow I had for myself here, but you know that that inherently leads to the question of so what are we talking about when we say that that um shadow is not going to be part of the sequel analysis?

And so to just make that clear too, we really are this this change is solely about our uh local um sort of add-on implementation measures related to the California Environmental Quality Act.

Um and that is a separate matter from from Proposition K.

Um with that I'll get into some thoughts on uh shadow.

Um so uh you know, I think historically we identified that sh we we analyze shadow, but I see the department's really robust analysis of whether it's relevant under CEQA as a practice.

And I I think the department staff did a really good uh job of looking at this, and I I agree um that we don't need to address shadow under our CEQA analysis.

Again, Prop K still exists.

We have that analysis for wreck and park properties.

Uh and I think also um, you know it's this addresses uh our SQL related um requirements, but maybe uh just putting it out there, I would hope that possibly if there are some issues with um shadow impacts that need to be addressed more as a design and planning matter that if that comes up then our legislators could take that up as a separate matter related to to planning and design.

Um and it's probably more applicable to commercial properties and any residential properties that might still have some discretionary decisions to be made.

Um and I and I do want to raise that point just because I think the one gap or the one change that does happen with shadow analysis with this legislation is that uh the shadow analysis under our SQL requirements or or our local um implementation sequo uh does look at some public spaces that are not covered by proposition K.

Uh, you know, and it's so it does look at things like school district properties or other public open spaces that and so you know, if we determine in the future or or it's determined there's kind of a gap in assessing impacts on uh non-recreation and parks, public open spaces, uh then that's something that could be taken up separately and and and I think should be considered.

And I also want to say, you know, a lot of this is is being described as as um supporting housing development.

I'm very much in favor of that, but of course this is neutral on the matter of of the use uh and so uh it's possible that commercial prover projects or more discretionary projects uh could still have some sort of different local implementation.

Um but that being said, you know, I uh I'm in alignment with the changes being made to the shadow requirements under this legislation, again saying Prof.

K is not affected.

Um getting a little bit uh into some other topic areas that kind of came up.

Um I want to just clarify or put it out there on one one thing.

Uh so on the change in the appeals timeline, which has to do with uh appeals for CEQA exemptions, final negative declarations, and the final environmental impact report.

Um we're shortening the appeals um window from 30 days to 15 days if this legislation goes through.

Um but just to be clear, that that's just to put in place an appeal and further documentation can then follow, or is that all the time that's available?

Thank you for that question, Commissioner Braun.

Uh this would just shorten the uh duration of time that um after an approval or certification uh to file the appeal.

So um the initial appeal filing would state the basis for the appeal to the extent that the appellant is able, and if they would like to submit supplemental um information to expand upon their appeal, they're able to do that as they can now.

So that would not change.

And regardless of that, um would so we would still need to respond as a department to material submitted that comes in all the way up to the appeal hearing, basically, is that the other thing.

That's correct.

That is um pursuant to state law.

Okay, so there's still okay.

So it's just the timeline for for filing the appeal.

Okay.

That that's helpful.

Um one of the other changes that uh that's being made here is the elimination of a planning commission hearing on the draft EIR, so that catches my attention since it's the planning commission.

Um, I I'm I'm I had to think about that one.

I'm in favor it in favor of of it just because at the planning commission hearing, we we really tend to get some pretty um higher level comments that are typically followed up with or preceded by much more detailed input and all those those pathways for providing input on draft DIRs would still exist.

Uh and so I I think it's a it's a reasonable change.

Um, but it it actually leads me to a question that has more to do with what Commissioner McGuerrilla is asking about with public notifications.

One advantage of having the draft DIR planning commission hearing is that it ends up on our agenda and raises awareness of a project through a different pathway than just you know the standard kind of posting and and sending out the existence of the DIR notifications about it.

And so I am just I'm wondering if the if it's possible to walk through kind of how the draft EIR is communicated when one is made available for public comment right now just as the starting point.

And then I'd like to get into a little bit more about our broader public notification processes after that.

Tanya Schener again, thank you for your question.

When we publish a draft DIR, we send out a notice of availability of the draft DIR to by the three methods that I described.

Posting at the site, newspaper notice, and um mailing to a radius list.

In addition to that, we post all of our CEQA documents on our website, provide them for anyone who's on our list for that specific project, so we keep um lists of interested parties, and we also have an electronic notification system that anyone can send out to receive any CEQA document.

So they would get um so actively we would send out by those three methods and post on our website.

And actually, there's also a requirement to include a hard copy of the document at planning department offices currently.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

And if I may, uh Commissioner Braun, I just like to add to that that at the start of the environmental review process, we issue a notice of preparation to uh let the public know that we're preparing an environmental impact report.

So that same notice happens at that early stage before we prepare the draft AIR.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um I think where this this leads me, and kind of following on to Commissioner McGarry's uh questions about the notice for those sort of broader notice questions.

I we have some recommendations from the Historic Preservation Commission that were referenced during this presentation.

And although I'm not I'm not supportive of two of the three of them, I would say on the third recommendation that they had, it's to evaluate the methods of public notification for environmental review to assess their impact and identify opportunities for improvement, and then there's some additional details there.

I I think that's that's a reasonable recommendation.

I think that uh as we sort of you know reduce a few of these appeal windows and you know, if we're not having the draft DIR hearing, and uh I I'm in favor of and I'm okay with eliminating that.

Um I I do think again we need to more broadly communicate when there is a draft DIR that is available for for comment.

Um so I I would support that that recommendation in any um motion about this.

And then let's see.

Got in the weeds there.

Um, broadly uh these seem like pretty common sense changes given our our urban environment and the prior policy commitments that we've made as as a city and under state law.

Um I think that SEQA still is a powerful tool with these changes for ensuring environmental protection, and there's still quite a lot of um maintenance of um notifications and appeals and hearing processes.

We can always do better on the notifications part, as I said.

Um, I I it generally it's in the city's best interest to ensure that our environmental analyses are really robustly done.

And that's been sort of my my metric for this, and that's why it is important to get this feedback to make sure that's the case because that to me protects us.

It makes, you know, doing this right the first time and getting all the right information is what you know, in a way that's his own form of of streamlining.

That is a way to um ensure that we are really covering the project robustly and and our analysis is done well.

Um but you know, at the same time, I I recognize that these environmental analyses are technical efforts to identify and mitigate um specifically defined categories of environmental impacts.

And so there are lots of other impacts one could consider as part of a project, and those could maybe be dealt with outside of um the administrative code that's being changed here, such as if we want to look at shade um separately, then that makes sense to me.

Um but otherwise uh I'm I'm generally in favor of the legislation, but with the notes about um potentially uh revisiting and and our overall notification processes for for environmental review.

President Campbell.

May I uh respond to one point?

Thank you so much for your remarks, Commissioner Braun.

Um I wanted to uh address the uh point you made about the uh type of open spaces that are evaluated under Section 295, which is properties under the jurisdiction of the recreation and parks department versus those that are evaluated under our local SQL review under the current Chapter 31.

Um it is the case that in the past we had had uh some scope uh expansion on the type of properties that had gone beyond properties under rec park jurisdiction as part of our CECRA review.

Um when we conducted this uh review of our our local practice to see does shadow belong as a CEQA topic, and we concluded that it did not.

Um we we didn't scale back um we had started to scale back on uh to just align with section 295.

So our current practice is to be uh looking under CECRA at Section 295 uh rec park properties only.

So just wanted to correct that uh with regard to our current practice.

I see so current practice is just to translate that Section 295 essentially the Prop K Sunlight Ordinance.

We have been basically doing the analysis in the same way as that.

Yeah.

In terms of the type of properties, that's correct.

Yes.

Oh, okay, thank you.

Commissioner so thank you.

Um I just wanna just first and foremost, I wonder if um what my fellow commissioners had right had brought up these questions about notifications has satisfy um Miss Alice Barkley's question.

I wanted the public comment question about all the different notifications.

You you good as uh we made this candidate.

Okay, thank you.

Um I I think that there's a lot that my colleague had covered.

And I am looking at there's a lot of people coming in today and talked about the evolution of the special uh San Francisco procedure chapter 21, the local procedures on CEQA, the evolution of it.

I really appreciate the history, and a lot of you are clearly community um uh advocates for dedicated your entire life to serving our community and to bring housing to our community.

And we would like to take that also continue to bring housing to all San Franciscan moving forward.

Uh right now is 2026.

A lot of things have evolved, and we clearly have housing crisis, and that's really not what we think.

It's actually something given to us with the data.

Um both from the government, from nonprofit sector, and from just private uh businesses.

So what we're simply doing right here isn't I personally don't think is out of the out of reach here.

Um it is quite more like consistent to other cities within California, whether they actually require um shadow impact analysis.

And I'm seeing a whole list of ten counties that are in the similar size of San Francisco metropolitan area, uh San Francisco appear to be the only one that require uh shadow analysis in our current CEQA document.

That's kind of very interesting and helpful data referencing point for me to come up with what I'm thinking today.

Uh why we evolved to the way we why are we the way we are right now?

So I do respect Prop K.

I do believe that the process that we have with the parking rec department, we actually serve together with them in one of our hearings, that's a joint hearing for one of the project right at the waterfront across from the ferry building.

And that process will not disappear.

That process is robust.

We saw a full shadow study report from Summer and Winter SOS and to the every single hour of the day.

Those are still exist.

And we stack our room like really packed that day with seven of us and seven of our fellow parking rights commissioners and all the department has we hear everybody who talked about all their concerns, and then we also make our determination.

And I wanted to make sure that my understanding is correct, and I'd like to staff to confirm that that process is still exist.

Yeah, everybody's nodding.

So on the record is yes.

It is consistent with what Sarah Dennis Phillips earlier talking in her director's report, talking about investing more in our community outreach effort, because when in doubt, we should look for the source that is coming from the people actually know how to write CEQA and do these things.

So instead of listening to other different types of news avenues or not news avenues.

Pretty much everybody else in California, but we still have something special to us.

We still have the Prop K.

We still have the joint commission hearings on some of these projects.

So I would like to ask my staff and from the planning department to take some time to work with Supervisor Balar's office to do more community outreach to make sure that the real action version that actually really truly understand by everybody because it is decades long of the uh local um chapter 21 local procedure.

So people understand what has been done in the past 20 years.

It needs some more time to really get to the same level of understanding of what we're what what you guys are what we're about to do.

Um I do think though, in terms of that um in terms of number of days of notifications.

I am also in line with Commissioner Braun and about taking the recommendation from the HPC because I am looking at our department in all the majority of our notifications.

Um it's more mostly around 10 to 20 days.

Um the only thing that is 30 days is the CU appeal.

That's the only one anomaly.

All the other ones are 10 to 20 days.

So putting this to 15 days notification with what but has not changed the number of days before they can actually send in all the written comments is consistent with aligning again to me is like what can we do to get our planning commission all these well planning department department about these uh grace period of time of uh uh expectation.

I think I would prefer to have them in a similar range than having two off 30, and then maybe some somebody, some other supervisor supervisor coming the next day would say, I want another one for 70 days, you know.

So I I I want it to be more consistent.

I think right now we need to streamline the understanding of how the process works and also make sure that we um encourage people to invest back in San Francisco, um county of San Francisco, not our neighboring county to build more housing.

Because I do really want to have invest interest of really having uh everybody's children and everybody's aunties and uncles and grandmother and grandfather to be able to age with dignity and keep coming back and graduate from wherever they are and come back and be our workforce and um that's how we can grow our city.

Um so with this, let me see if I miss anything.

Uh enough about the shuttle.

Um I think the next thing I wanted to talk about is the sh the wind.

Oh, we're gonna take this to the second item or we can we're taking them together, we just wouldn't separately, so I can make comment to that.

Well, I've done a lot of shadows, I mean wind tunnel studies in my previous time working for a corporate architecture firm on skyscrapers, and I did not realize that San Francisco is quite unique, that we are really looking at the ground level, which is great.

I really appreciate that.

But then counting the making the threshold to be only that one hour within the 400 hours to to make the threshold like that with the I don't know when that threshold was created, honestly, because I do know that the world is warming up.

We have global warming, sea level is rising, and then um we do have a lot more unfortunately extreme weather conditions that did not happen uh when I was born.

So when I walk around um at Bacadaryl, I keep being reminded by the port that um by the time if I am still healthy enough to retire, this I would be below sea level.

So I'm like, okay, well then when can't come hand in hand with this.

So I I personally believe professionally as a trained architect, proposing to um make the threshold to nine hours over 400 hours uh window a wind tunnel study is really reasonable.

We've gotta adapt to our environment, unfortunately.

Um everything is rising, warming.

So I am in supportive of that, and I am really proud that we as a city, San Francisco, still have an adequate wind tunnel study in our CEQA process, especially looking at places that has heavier pedestrian activity.

So appreciate our environmental staff.

Uh yes.

And that kind of concludes my uh comment.

Thank you, Commissioner.

So CEQA is incredibly complicated.

I'm an architect.

This is like I'm in the orbit of talking about CEQA, and even I had to spend a ton of time um with this, um, these amendments.

I spent a lot of time with staff.

Thank you.

Um it's easy to get confused.

You need a glossary um a cheat sheet just to understand what a lot of this means.

And it's clear to me, even from a lot of the public commentary that there's a lot of confusion.

So I really appreciate a lot of the the time we're taking here to get that clarification and um really get on the same page about what these changes are and are not.

Um I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this, these amendments.

Um there this is like surgery, right?

There we're not getting rid of things, we're just getting rid of redundancies and trying to find opportunities to um get things done a little bit faster.

But by no means, in my analysis and that from what I understand, are we losing um opportunities for the public to be engaged, for the public to be informed, um and really just finding opportunities to um to shave time.

And I think we all are in agreement that we want to see projects happen uh quickly and we want to um we want to get things built.

We want to be a city that's growing.

And I I really feel confident that um the thoughtfulness um and this surgical-like approach to these amendments is gonna get us there.

I don't want to repeat everything that I'm I'm in uh I have a lot of alignment with my fellow commissioners here.

Um I'm really glad we took some time to get some clarity.

Um see if there's anything I can say that hasn't been said already.

I do appreciate that we're um this really fulfills an obligation we have in terms of HCD and housing element.

Um it was good enough uh for that that we've it's it's time to get alignment there.

So that's a little bit overdue, but I think we have a ticking time, we have a deadline on that as well, correct?

Yeah.

Um I think most of my questions have been addressed.

And I do agree that HBC's recommendation around um making sure that we're doing the best we can in terms of um and I and I recognize that notifications vary depending on um what it is uh in terms of the CEQA outcome, but making sure that we're um giving that the we're giving it a closer look.

So I I would just pile on and second that that comment and recommendation.

Those are all my comments.

Commissioner McGarry.

There's no doubt that in my career here, my lifetime in San Francisco in 95 and construction, put people to work in a daily basis.

Shadows have been weaponized to basically kill, delay uh abort, get rid of, and just slow down the cog and the wheel that things just don't happen.

Uh the picture we saw earlier on, that was 17 that was 1750 Taylor.

I worked on the on that project for maybe almost two years of my uh construction.

Above that is uh 999 Green Street.

One thousand one thousand is basically the other side of the road.

And the building of question there that something is gonna go up is the Verde, and that's a burnt-out building.

That basically is laid uh in disrepair for quite some time.

It's actually a day it's a danger to the occupants of uh basically Washington Square on Grant Avenue there.

Uh we are special, so my mother says San Francisco.

You're special, but the trick is not to be too special.

And getting an alignment with basically the State of California is not a bad thing.

Uh San Francisco, it's extra, it's extra, it's extra.

Uh basically nothing's gonna change here.

Everybody who wants to lodge a complaint on any project is going to do it within 14 days.

You know, so bringing it from 30 30 days on the 14 days is not going to 15, sorry, is not going to make any difference there.

Uh but what we do have to do is basically we have to clear clutter to try and we have a deficit of a year ago, 82,000 units that we have to build.

That's basically my seven-year-old, my ten-year-old, my thirteen-year-old.

They have to live somewhere.

As much as I want to keep them forever, there's just not enough space, and they're getting bigger, and the space is get is going out.

So where we are, it's just untenable.

So like we have to find the one solution to do something or fix a problem, not find ten reasons not to do it.

You know?

And we seem to be perfectly capable of finding 10 reasons not to do something, because the one thing we have in mind is we don't want it in the first place.

So we kind of have to get out of our own way on that.

Uh I think we have to realize that we're getting out of our way.

Nothing's been taken away here.

The timelines have been brought down.

Nobody's going to be affected.

Everybody who basically is in the game of wanting to slow something down is basically not going to be held up.

Just their timelines.

They're going to do it straight away.

They're just not going to sit on it for two weeks before they do it going forward.

So on that happy note, I'm happy to remake uh to recommend uh promote uh approval of this going forward.

That would be a motion.

Thank you.

And that was for item 8A.

The Shade Act.

The Shade Act legislation.

Uh sorry, the shade yeah, uh shade and wind.

Uh we're asking that we take these matters separately.

Oh, vote.

So yeah, definitely.

Shade and on wind, one hour is over a year period.

I think uh moving that to nine is uh nine hours is perfectly plausible.

Uh over a year study and we're not good, as Commissioner Sow just pointed out.

Uh we're going to be living in a different world uh year by year, six month by six month.

We've I just watched the news this morning and we've got wildfires in the West of Ireland.

You know, the world's just changing.

We have to adopt with it.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Commissioner Braun?

Uh I do note that the HPC recommendation of approval of the ordinance included a direction to the department to report back on within three months on the methods of public notification.

Um since that was already adopted by that commission, I would just say um I think it would be helpful for the planning commission to also see the results of that effort under their direction.

If there's nothing further, Commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to adopt a recommendation for approval on item 8A for the Shade Act on that motion, Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Aye.

Commissioner Braun.

Aye.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

So move Commissioners and motion passes unanimously four to zero.

And if I understood correctly, Mr.

McGurry, you made a motion as well for the wind.

Correct.

And then second.

Commissioner Braun.

Commissioner Sow will suck in that.

Very good.

So if there is no further deliberation on that matter, uh there is a motion that has been seconded to adopt a resolution for item 8B.

Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Hi.

Commissioner Braun.

Aye.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

Aye.

So move Commissioners.

That motion passes unanimously four to zero.

Commissioners, it'll place us on item nine for case number 2026, hyphen zero zero six two six three OTH for the open gov contract resolution.

This is again a consideration of a resolution.

All right.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

Liz Wadi.

Today wearing the hat of director of Permit SF.

We're here today for two reasons.

One, we realize as we're approaching our first year of Permit SF accomplishments that we haven't actually come to you guys with a full comprehensive overview of Permit SF.

I know the Commission has seen a lot of individual, especially pieces of legislation that you guys have taken action on over the last year, year and a half.

But we haven't done the whole kit and caboodle for you, and we felt it was timely given that Permit SF as of July 1 is officially in the planning department's budget from a personnel and a program perspective.

We thought this was a good time to both give you that overview.

But also it's timely because we are also looking forward to what we're calling our phase two contract on the technology side of Permit SF and are before you today to seek a resolution of support.

So first I'm going to kick off an overview of Permit SF if we can have the uh slideshow.

Great.

All right.

So first up, wanted to get into a little bit of background on what is permit SF.

Um I think a lot of folks are familiar with the term.

Anyone who follows the mayor's Instagram has been seeing a lot of the posts.

But basically, Permit SF was the mayor, Mayor Lurie's first initiative in office in great part in response to issues he'd heard on the campaign about how broken the permitting uh process was for folks trying to build housing, open small businesses, or just re renovate their homes.

Um so we initiated a multi-departmental uh effort um with the planning department at that time.

It was Director Rich Hillis being the director of Permit SF, but really a convening process of sort of executive level or deputy levels across every single agency that touches permitting.

Um so the agencies on this slide um, I believe are the comprehensive list of agencies that touch permitting.

And so as you can see, these are a lot of separate disparate agencies.

These are agencies with their own department heads, many of whom have their own commissions, their own set of codes, their own regulations, their own staffs, their own applications, their own technologies.

Um as you can imagine from a customer's perspective, that is a very daunting process to navigate, especially if it's not your full-time job to do so.

Um so we really embarked on an effort to think uh differently about permitting and how we can focus uh on permitting from the customer's perspective.

So we have built out, as shown sort of on the left-hand side here, um, really, and this has been a work in progress and something that has really evolved over the last year and a half, but an org structure that starts to tackle this very issue.

So permit SF again now is living with the planning department.

Um big thank you to all of you on that so that we can have stability and growth from a personnel perspective.

I'll just take this moment for a quick plug for several members of our core team who are here today.

That are some faces you've probably never seen, but we have Kevin Lowe, who is the Permit SF project manager.

We have JP, Jessica Posey, um, who is our new permit SF portal program manager, uh, and we have our intern who has been doing an amazing job, including helping me on this presentation today, Jordan King.

Um so anyhow, we've built out this structure and reporting up to this core team where this is what we are living and breathing every day.

We also have a lot of engagement within departments of other agencies who are clearly have their full-time day jobs doing the work, doing the permit processing, but really having that gate engagement and buy-in that we need to think about things differently.

And I think it's important, and I think this is something that really the planning commission especially can appreciate.

But what is our why?

Why does improving the permitting process matter, other than people have just complained about it?

Um, as you all remember, HCD identified San Francisco in 2023 as having the longest permitting timelines in the state.

They issued their policy and practice review, and they gave us a lot of very firm directives with consequences attached to it, including both adoption of the housing element that includes many objectives that we have to accomplish that effectively roll up to fixing permitting.

So it is very much tied to our to our housing production, but it's also timely with our um our economic recovery that we're still working through post-COVID.

Um, so moving on.

Um now that we know what our why is and we really know what's broken, um, it's also really important that we have a vision for where we want to go.

Um the vision that we have is a very ambitious one.

But we thought that it was really important for us to set out and think, again, the planners in us, and I think this is why it's great to have this housed in the planning department, but to really establish a vision for what a permitting experience should look like for our customer.

Um as a part of the work that we are kicking off with Permit SF and that we are really going to be kicking off in this next phase two, is what we're calling a permit rationalization process.

Um, I'm actually immediately after this hearing going back to the office and meeting with department heads to kick off a working session on permit rationalization.

But really, what we mean by that is instead of filing a planning application and then a building application and then a public works application and then a public health application and then a fire department permit, how can those things, if they are part of one building, their one development project, how can they maybe be one application with different workflow steps?

Um things like that is what we're talking about when we're talking about permit rationalization, so that the customer's experience is simpler.

They give us their project data one time and it gets loaded into the system once and can get distributed on the back end to multiple agencies rather than filling out five different application forms.

Um that's a bit of our vision for where we're going and an end state.

And within that, we also wanted to sort of peel back the onion one layer deeper and really talk through what should the key principles when we come to Permit SF has been filled with thousands of tiny decisions that we've had to make, tiny little changes, but all of these little changes are what lead up to big change.

But we wanted to have some guiding principles as well.

And so these were the four that we really focused on when we kicked off Permit SF in early 2025.

First, that we need to have a holistic and programmatic approach to permitting.

Um, and we need to really challenge, I think this was really important, challenge some of our cultural orthodoxies and practices that we have just assumed are the way we do things and the way we should do things.

So, really this question of, and why do we do that?

And really asking that question sometimes two and three times in the same conversation, because oftentimes, you know, speaking for myself who's been here for two decades, um, we sometimes actually don't always know the why.

It's just how we do things.

And so, really, the challenge is challenging those things to make sure that every decision that we're doing is both necessary for achieving life safety or planning policy purposes, but also is factoring in sort of customer experience and feasibility.

Um, secondly, customers should be the center of our work.

Um, I don't think this has ever been the center of our work in permitting to date, and so as we're reforming this, that needs to be a primary focus and principle.

Um, defining our uh and measuring success.

Um again, I think as as we've really gotten under the hood in this project, we've realized that our ability to access data and make data-driven decisions is very challenging.

Um, we have some data to make decisions, but candidly, to be able to leverage that data and access that data and manipul, you know, manipulate that data to understand hypotheses and conclusions, is very difficult in our antiquated legacy systems.

The systems don't talk to each other, so being able to piece together data from the fire department, the building department, the planning department, and public works, some of these agencies don't actually have databases that house this information.

A lot of our permit processing information is still sometimes in more antiquated methodologies.

And so moving forward, we need to have a system where we have clear data inputs so that we can actually use data to change our behaviors.

Um, and again, not expect to get everything perfect on the first tried, but to make sure we're building those systems where we have that evaluation capability moving forward.

And last but not least, which I very much appreciate again, is sort of the principle of no band-aids.

Um we have been historically pretty good as a city fixing individual problems.

So if a project gets stuck or broken and somebody is complaining about, you know, somebody's dropped the ball somewhere, we've usually been able to clean up the mess pretty quickly and get the project back on track.

But we've never taken that next layer of evaluation to say why did that project get off track?

Why did it fall through the cracks?

Why did it not get assigned for months and months, things like that.

And so really a big part of this is not just solving sort of that whack-a-mole individual projects, but looking at the systemic reasons of how something could be falling through the cracks and how can we fix that moving forward.

All right.

So then taking it to the next phase, how we're approaching Permit SF, we've really broken it down with those principles in mind into three primary buckets, or three legged stool, if you will.

One is customer experience and operations.

And I'm going to go through separate slides of some examples of things we've accomplished over the last year that fall into these three legs of the stool.

First is customer experience and operation.

I really put these as things of this is just good government.

No one has to give us permission to do these things.

These are not legislative in nature.

These are just making decisions to change how we do business to improve how we're serving customers.

The second is legislation and government accountability.

I think this is probably what the commission is most familiar with because we've been before you with a lot of pieces of permit SF legislation.

And lastly, is technology.

And we really see that we can't fix permitting without addressing all three of these items.

First up, um, just I'm gonna only highlight a couple of things on the slide, and there are even more items that we didn't put on the slide that we've accomplished in the last year, but these are the highlights.

Um, you know, one of the items that I really wanted to focus on, um, and again, permit SF as a whole, none of these are really major, major items in and of themselves, right?

But permitting part of the problem has been like death by a thousand cuts.

So the first one that I think is really great, um, and even predates this administration.

These are things we've been working on for a while.

Um, but historically, we didn't have a queuing system when people would come in in person to get a permit.

We literally had old Delhi ticker tape and people would pull numbers, and we had no information.

We had no information on who was coming in, the frequency of those customers, how many people are repeat customers, new customers, or how long were they waiting for services.

Um, starting in about 2019, right before COVID, we implemented a new software system where we started collecting data on our customers so we could say our service levels.

Um, flash forward in this first year, we now had several years of collecting data, especially sort of regularized for a post-COVID world when everyone was back in the office.

Um, and we realized that our hours of operation of when our permit center was open, which were the same hours pre-COVID, um, were no longer perfectly aligning with our demand from our customers.

And what we realized is that customer behavior shifted after COVID.

Um, people used to come in really, really early.

A lot of contractors, they would come in at like 7 30 and be done, you know, 3 34.

And what we realized is there was we were starting to close queues really early.

We would have no customers in the morning, and we would have to turn people away in the afternoon, that people's behaviors have clearly shifted a bit.

And so using this data and being able to see that, we changed our permit center hours.

And so we shifted it back an hour to be able to accommodate when the bulk of our customers were there, a more efficient use of staff time in the morning, so people aren't sitting twiddling their thumbs, and then on the back end, not having to turn people away in the afternoon.

So I think that's a great example of how we've improved operations with data.

Um, second, sort of pivoting in a different direction.

In this first year, we spun up a digital special event permitting portal.

Um, the way it used to be is if you wanted to throw a special event in San Francisco, you really had to navigate this in large part on your own, especially if you're one of the sort of smaller mid-sized special events, not like the marathon, things like that.

But if you wanted to do like a doggy get together at Dolores Park and you wanted to have an event, you didn't really know where to start.

Um so you would have to sort of figure it out, go to all these different agencies, figure out do you need police, do you need public works, who are you renting space from?

And so we created a standard permitting portal where you just have to tell us about what you want, and we as a city figure out which agency it needs to be routed to, and then all the cities provide that feedback so that we give really clear advice to people of, you know, this is the date that's available, here are your processes, here's the total anticipated cost, um, to again make it easier for people to do like the cool things in San Francisco that what we want people to do and that are that are, you know, create that place making that's only in San Francisco.

One more example on this that I wanted to highlight, um, again, in a completely different direction, which is sort of the theme of permit SF, we're kind of all over the map here on the things that we're focusing on.

Um, one of actually the um uh uh employees at the building department who's one of our frontline staff noted that it was a real pain point for the clerical staff when people were ready to pull their permits, um, that when a permit scope triggered uh unified school district fee, which is a pretty high volume of projects trigger unified district school fee, um, they had to refer the application physically to the school district for them to do the calculation of the fee.

They had to refer the application physically to the school district for them to do the calculation of the fee.

And she was saying, you know, if we could just do it ourselves, it would shave off often, you know, 10 days to two weeks worth of time because it's it's just basic math.

It's X number of square feet at a certain rate, but I guess historically there wasn't trust between the school district and the building department for the building department to do that calculation.

And so instead, the school district insisted on doing it.

Um but as you can imagine, there's a handoff, there's a transition time, it goes in somebody else's queue, they do calculations, they come back.

Um so we initiated a conversation with Unified School District, had a conversation, created a new MOU, and now the building department is doing those calculations, and they're able to do it instantly in real time when the applicant is ready to pull their permit.

So again, another example of where you're shaving off a little bit of time and kind of no substance is lost in the meantime.

Um next up on legislation, a few to highlight.

Um, and I wanted to highlight just a couple that the commission hasn't seen that weren't planning code amendments.

Um the first, this is one of the earliest items that we did, but it's been incredibly successful, is we heard from a lot of our small business owners that the process to put out sidewalk tables and chairs was really laborious and cumbersome and costly.

And for a small business, especially if you only own one shop, even just the requirement to prepare a site plan to show where your tables and chairs are feels daunting because they're an expert in making a cup of coffee or a sandwich, not necessarily knowing how to navigate obtaining an architectural plan set.

Um so we turned the permitting process basically into a digital attestation form where we I outline the really critical important um requirements, as in you know, keep the sidewalk free and clear for ADA purposes, things of that nature.

Um, and we just make somebody attest to it.

We we put very clearly in that attestation the enforcement process.

You basically get one warning, and then you get fees, fees will be applied if you don't comply.

Um, but we we took away the permit fee as well, because in reality, the permit fee was for us to review the plans.

If we don't have plans that we need to review, we don't need to charge a fee.

So we both reduce the permit obligation, the cost for the small business to prepare the plans, and then the cost for the application itself.

It also has reduced staff time and having to review those plans.

Um this has been incredibly successful, and we've seen a lot of small businesses say that this has increased their ability to be solvent and be successful.

Um, there's one business in particular, we got a story back who is in Japan town who didn't have a strong ground floor presence.

They were sort of tucked away a little bit more, and they said being able to do tables and chairs has made their business really visible and has dramatically increased um their revenue.

And so that was a great example.

Um the second was as it relates to minor encroachment permits.

So, as you guys know, many of the new buildings that are getting built in San Francisco are built up to the front property line, and that's something we really encourage to maintain a strong urban street wall.

However, pragmatically speaking, on all of those buildings, there are often little features that have to go on the front of the building, things like an ADA push button, things like a fire standpipe attachment, um, features that encroach, you know, two to four inches projecting from the facade of the building in a very small discrete space.

Technically, though, those encroach over the front property line, and we're triggering the requirement for a minor encroachment permit, which both A required a separate permit application, took a fair amount of time because as you can imagine, there's a very high volume of those types of applications that come through public work, so they had a bit of a backlog.

And then third, um, these all required annual fees to maintain that ongoing in-perpetuity encroachment.

And so one of the pieces of legislation that we passed was to basically identify a universe of things of that nature, those small encroachments, and just said that those were exempt from needing minor encroachment permits wholesale.

Um lastly, one other thing that we've done from a government accountability perspective is aligned permit processing timelines across all of the permitting agencies consistently.

Um this was not something that previously existed, even though a building permit is one building permit, it gets routed to the planning department, building department, fire department, public health, et cetera, multiple agencies.

Um, all of those agencies previously did not have a standardized expectation for how long it would take to do key milestones of the review, like a completeness review, first plan review, and revisions.

Um everyone kind of did their own thing.

Um so we came together and aligned on performance target for each of those three, and we are now tracking those and have those visible on the Permit SF website.

So, anyhow, that is a touch of what we've done from a legend government accountability perspective this first year.

Um lastly, um moving to technology where we're gonna focus the rest of the presentation today.

And I would say primarily in some instances, we entirely lack technology.

So the picture here in the pink form, that is our current building permit application.

It is pink, it is double sided.

You can't use one of these pens terribly well because of the texture of the paper.

You have to use certain types of pens.

So the interface is outdated, they're different.

They are on legacy software systems that are no longer being supported by the software companies in many instances, so pretty much being held together with duct tape and bubblegum.

And it's just a disparate and they don't the systems don't talk to each other on the back end without a lot of gymnastics for our data and analytics staff on the back end.

So with that, we are moving to and have now we are approaching the end of our first year of having contemporary software to fix the permitting process.

So this first year was really tackling a lot of different things, moving from this legacy system into a contemporary world.

Um I think most importantly, the the permits we've identified on the left hand side are the permits that are part of the first year scope, um, most of which have been delivered, um, although some are literally uh basically being launched almost as we speak here.

Um but it I would say an even more critical part of this first year is that it's a been the beginning of the culture change of we are changing, we are moving into one system.

Um in doing that, it requires agencies that have been able to sort of design systems their own way.

We've had to make a lot of compromises to standardize how we talk about things, how we refer to things, um, and how we function.

We we now need to all do digital plan review in the same way.

We all need to collect fee payments in the same way.

So it's a lot of what I kind of think of as this sort of under the hood work that we've really needed to do in this first year that will be transferable as we move forward and can scale into more and more permit types moving forward.

So we started with what were relatively simple permit types because we knew we had this really difficult work of these fundation uh foundational items that were gonna need to be tackled.

And so a lot of those um items are highlighted here.

I won't go into each and every item, but as you can see, uh in and of themselves, they aren't permits, they aren't permits at all, but this is the background work and honestly the really difficult work that is necessary to resolve and have questions and work through so that we can release permits in an easy and streamlined manner.

Um within the first year, a couple quick stats that I just wanted to highlight, and we're we're almost done here, don't worry.

Um, but one of the um uh most interesting stats that I think I have seen within this first year is that um our customers have really told us they don't like coming to the permit center all that much.

I mean, some people do, but 27% of our customers from this first year have filed permits outside of business hours.

So this is telling us that you know, people are running their small businesses, they're leaving living their lives, they're filing permits on you know, night at nighttime or on the weekends when it's convenient for them, not when we're open for business.

Um, and obviously there are costs, um, although some people do it for a living and get paid while they're down there.

A lot of people actually have to take time off work and are not getting paid in order to come down to the permit center.

Um over 1,500 permits have been issued in the first five months since we've been live with the portal.

Um, so I think in part that shows that it works.

Um, it doesn't mean we haven't had any bumps along the way, um, but to me, this first year was really the proof of concept.

Um, a few other interesting statistics, I think, to be expected in part as we've moved online.

It's also made things faster in person for those remaining scopes that haven't yet gone into a digital space.

Um, and the last point that I think is really really interesting that's an important thing to keep remembering is that our um over-the-counter process that we currently have that we do get a lot of praise about, a lot of people do really like our over-the-counter permitting process.

Um, it has an artificial volume throttle associated with it.

Um, and in part, um, if you can think about this, we have a lot of folks who maybe run a sign company for their business.

Um, historically, they would maybe come down with 10, 15, 20 permits all at once.

And as you can imagine, that one customer could just like overwhelm our staff for their entire shift, and we'd only get through one customer, and other people would think they're number two in line, but it would be you know three hours later because they're processing through all these.

So we've established sort of a maximum number of permits that you can process at any one time at the permit center, which has sort of artificially capped what the market wants to submit at any one time.

In the digital portal, the you know, the sky's the limit, submit as many permits at any time that you want to.

Um so with the fire department alone, which has been the easiest for again with the data that we have to do an apples to apples comparison from year over year from pre to post digital platform.

We've seen over a 9% increase in permit volume.

Um, and so that's not insignificant, especially when in the previous world our our staffing really met the demand.

And so we now have more demand in part than our staff capacity at the moment.

Um, and what's coming next?

So that was our first phase.

That's what we're doing right now.

Phase two, in addition to this permit rationalization process, um, it's really thinking through what do we want to bite off next?

Um, what are the types of permits that make sense for us to move forward into a digital space next?

What do we want to cluster together?

And what do we effectively want to reform or you know, lack of a better term, smoosh together for an improved customer experience.

Um it involves a lot of other agencies, and so that's the um difficult work that we are hoping to kick off as soon as our next contract is approved, which is in part why we are here today.

Um, although not required legislatively, we are asking for the commission's support of a resolution for a five-year multi-agency contract.

Um, again, multiple agencies will be paying for it, but it's being housed in the planning department since we are sponsoring it as permit SF.

Um, and it is uh approximately um 32, 33 million dollar um five-year contract.

We really anticipate that the bulk of the work will be completed in the first three years for most of the work that I think this commission is most interested in.

Um, as I noted on one of the earlier slides, there are a lot of um agencies that are sort of uh adjacent to uh construction permitting, but our primary focus is really to get through that construction permitting in the first three years.

Um with that, that wraps my presentation.

I could go on and on, so I'm gonna spare you.

Um, but we're doing a lot of exciting, difficult things, um, and we love your support.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you for that presentation.

And with that, we should open up public comment, members of the public.

This is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter.

I have uh handouts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, I'll just close this so it's easy for you.

There you go.

Okay.

My name is Jerry Dratler.

The OpenGov implementation started in October 2025.

Why extend the contract for five years when there is a two-year extension option and many of unresolved issues?

This would allow the city and open gov to complete the 36-month review of the 150 types of city permits before making a 2031 commitment.

You can see from the table, um, there are three levels of complexity.

My question is how many of the 113 medium and high level or high complexity permits have been reviewed?

And virtually none of them.

There are 12 city departments in the open gov project.

How many of the 150 permit types are DBI permits?

And most importantly, when will the DBI open government implementation be fully operational?

This is a critical question because the building code revisions that were approved last year became effective June 21.

And the existing permit tracking system does not support that.

Reasons why the open gov contract should not be extended to 2031 at this time.

And most importantly, has not completed the project fitness analysis for the 12 city departments.

How much of this work has been completed?

Does the project executive steering committee recommend extending the contract for five years?

And will the building inspection commission also be asked to approve the five-year extension?

And has the project comprehensive roadmap been completed?

Henry Kernilowitz is a permit expeditor, a contractor, and he also serves on two advisory committees that advise the planning department and the department of building inspection.

He wrote an article in Beyond the Cron, a dated June 8th.

He called out three important concerns in this article.

And this man expedites permits for a living.

The city is proposing to eliminate over-the-counting over-the-counter permitting.

Trade permits for windows, doors, siding, fire alarms, and sprinkler systems will no longer be issued with same-day review over the counter.

Sprinkle or and fire alarm permits are currently requiring seven to forty days for approval.

Permits that require plan drawings that are not submitted over the counter are rarely approved in less than three to four weeks.

OpenGov will not provide the existing permit tracking functions in DBI's PTS system, for example, monitoring special inspections.

So why extend the contract five years when there's a two-year extension?

Thank you.

Any other public commenters?

Hi, everyone, it's me again.

And now it's a better experience for small business owners.

So I'm really excited to see the work that has been done to at least start this process.

This city is very vast, and a lot of as the speaker mentioned earlier, a lot of departments have their different way of doing things.

And it does take these really heavy conversations to kind of break down why do we do things the way that we do in the city and to create better efficiencies, lower costs, and free up time for the staff to take care of really sensitive items.

So I know that this is probably the first and second year that they have been doing this, but I really would like to see this work continue.

I would really like to, as the other gentleman said, um, there be some more reporting out to the public on some of these matters.

I think they really matter to people.

People want to know how this government and specifically city and county is responding and how they're making some of these um measures better for um people who are going through the permitting process because just my own experience, even doing things during the pandemic, working with SFMTA for street closures and stuff, it was hectic.

And um through working with in a complimentary way with different department heads and staff, we were able to come up with more efficiencies.

And this will lead to also um being able to build housing quicker.

I mean, I think that's what everybody is here for and talking about.

Several people have talked about the importance of housing, and so we need systems like this in place that can bring us up to the 21st century.

Thank you.

Last call for public comments.

Okay, seeing none public comment is closed, this matter is now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner Brown, um Thanks, Ms.

Boddy, for the pretty comprehensive overview of the permit SF efforts.

I really appreciate seeing everything that's been going on and the examples that you provided.

Um, and kudos to the whole permanent SF team, this just to think about this.

It's such a big lift, and there's so many pieces to this.

Um, when it comes to the overall broader permit SF efforts, setting aside the open gov contract for the moment.

Um, you know, it's I I have a couple of just kind of open-ended questions.

I don't know if you have answers, but whatever you might be able to share would be helpful to me.

Uh and so I'm curious about what has what has been learned from this initial implementation, both in terms of specific types of permits and also broader lessons that could be moved forward now into the next phase that that you described.

Absolutely.

Um, and I will probably not hit on every lesson learned.

We've had a ton of lessons learned.

Yeah.

Uh, and I actually think, you know, one of our lessons learned is just our strategy as a whole.

We're really approaching this in what they call sort of this like agile way of doing work of not, and I think this is a real shift for the city, not doing work behind the scenes to try to strive for perfect and then launching perfect, but really trying to get things out there, iterating, using things, tweaking, making adjustments so that we really get, you know, it's not just our best guess of what does perfect look like, but we actually get things out there and see how the real world and our both our staff and customers are using the tools and iterating.

And it is a bit of a change for customers.

I think one of our lessons learned is we can do a better job, I think both internally and externally talking about both that type of approach so that when people see things, if they aren't perfect, sometimes that's actually intentional because that's the best way for us to find out exactly what thing do we need to tweak when people are using it rather than us thinking we know best behind the scenes and sort of having that analysis paralysis and never actually delivering progress.

So I think though, we do need to do a much better job on our communication strategy.

Um we were moving with mock speed this first year, and I think what came at that cost was um uh a fairly poor um internal communication plan.

And so, in large part, Kevin is now taking the lead on this, so he's joined us as of June.

Um, and it's one of the primary focuses is really going to be thinking around again, our customers and our staff, making sure we do a better job, talking about where we are, what we're doing again on all three sort of branches of permit SF, but especially in the technology um side of things because people just care about how do they get their permits.

Um that's I think one of our biggest lessons learned.

I think the the second one that we've really had has been one around decision making internally.

Um again, there have been hundreds, if not thousands of small decisions that have actually for sure thousands of small decisions that have been made over the last year.

Um and I think early on in this first phase, um, we were still kind of getting our C legs for how we escalate, you know, when we think something is going in the wrong direction, or if we don't have alignment across executives across agencies, how do we grapple with that?

Um and I think we've really made a lot of progress in how we're dealing with that now.

Um we kind of have a better sort of like SWOT team of dealing with things, working through things, and then pulling together better sort of like pro-con arguments for us to ultimately escalate decision making on.

So I'd say our decision-making process and our lessons learned around internal communications and external communications, I think are probably our two biggest takeaways among many other little little ones.

Sure, that makes sense.

I mean, I I was sort of thinking about that too in terms of um there must be so many things that involve leadership in order to actually move some of this forward because it is such a cross-silo kind of effort.

Um why it's so difficult.

I'm curious about the first example you raised of the intern of communication.

Is that where you're referring mostly to the processes for communicating internally or externally to the permanent customers or I think it really spans the gamut.

Um, certainly internally, um, you know, we've we've been moving so quickly that we we forget that our own staff um, you know, even if they are not directly touching permits, because obviously we've we've kept folks who are working on permits closely abreast to, you know, how is this change you know for planning staff?

Like how are you gonna actually navigate the open gov systems, software technology for this subset, you know, we've got door siding window permits.

How are you gonna process those differently now than you used to process them in the paper?

We've done a, I think, a good job talking with those on the ground staff.

Um, but I think we forget that like our broader agency um cares.

They care about these changes, they care about what's going on.

Um, and so I know in large part um director Phillips has really taken this on as well of us doing more listening sessions, but also I think doing a better job sharing out um just progress updates, um, decisions, you know, so that folks have visibility into, you know, something is delivered um in the new software in a certain way.

Um and we maybe haven't done a great job saying why.

Again, those that escalation of decision making process.

So being a little more transparent with all of, again, all of these little micro decisions, and that the fact that they are made, they are being made thoughtfully and with good debate.

Um, and so we're we're trying to do a better job of being um structured and documenting our decisions and keeping them in a centralized place so that folks have access and can view and can ask the questions and we can share out in more real time.

Um that's you know, a variety of different things from listening sessions to having a SharePoint page to doing more regular e-blasts with updates to staff.

Um, but then also with our customers knowing that we have a, you know, we have a really vast um set of customers, right?

We have customers who are gonna be a one and done where this is the only time they ever engage with the city, um, some of whom are very tech savvy, some of whom are not.

Um we have monolingual uh customers, a very large population of people who don't speak English, and so how can we support them?

And then we have folks who do this for a living.

Um and so I think we also, you know, as one of the examples highlights, there are people who have who have made their business by knowing how to navigate the existing system.

Um and we're changing that.

Um, and that change is difficult for folks.

Um and so we're really trying to factor in all of those different perspectives and use cases and making sure though that we're doing communication to all of those people the best that we can and kind of meeting meeting all of those different demographics of folks in different ways.

That's helpful and and certainly change is probably hardest for people who know the old ways the best.

So that makes sense we just said about um that range of users.

Do we have a follow-up um survey or means of collecting user feedback?

Absolutely.

We have a QR code, it's probably in the deck, but it's on the permit SF page, both email address for permit SF that can be anonymous as well as a QR code that people can click and fill out comments.

Um again, open to both staff and external customers, and we are collecting that feedback.

Um as you can imagine, we have a massive parking lot of um to do suggestions.

Um again, ranging the gamut.

Many of those are not technology related, many of those are legislative in nature or process improvements.

Um our team as a whole is trying to make sure that we're picking off a few kind of from every category routinely and doing these hundred-day sprints of um reforms that kind of again touch on touch on the whole gamut.

Great.

And that's actually a good segue kind of to something a little bit more related to those processes versus what's happening with OpenGov's um sort of interface and database kind of um transition.

So first of all, you know, in public comment, uh we we heard you know they're the the idea that maybe some permits are taking longer or not being processed the same day, um, which you know I don't know if that's necessarily something to do with the open gov transition so much as the the changes in workflows.

I I don't know.

Do you just have any I guess I'm asking both what is the tracking of our improvements in timing, you know, sort of timeliness of processing permits, and then also what's been the experience uh so far.

Yep, absolutely.

So we absolutely again, the nice thing is we now actually can track.

So we for sure are tracking our performance and have performance metrics for everything we've gone live with.

But I'd say a couple things.

One that I noted is our volume is up.

Because as I was mentioning, we we no longer are artificially limiting the number of applications that are able to be submitted, which was the case for over the counter.

Um we are now opening the floodgates.

So we have more permits coming in than we did before.

Um we have not commensurately increased the number of staff.

So there's already a, there's that tension point right there.

That's just a reality as somebody who manages a team who do permits when your staff go down and your permits go up, backlogs happen.

Um but secondly, there's also the change element.

Um and I think the the change um sort of bell curve.

Um, maybe it's not a curve, the the the change line um on the graph.

Um, change is hard.

And especially I would say, you know, they brought up the fire department.

Um this is a a group of uh of folks that we are really focused to to help support.

They were some of our first agencies to go live with permits.

Um digital plan review being sort of a new thing integrated into the system.

There's absolutely a learning curve.

There have been a few things that we've had to fix along the way.

Again, as we kind of expected, um, nothing is usually perfect when you launch it on day one.

So there have been a few things that we've been we've been fixing, and we've got um, I would say a pretty focused um game plan for bringing those review times down.

Um, my goal is that the process will ultimately be more efficient, that we can make accommodate and increase in volume with the same staffing levels and have the same performance.

We aren't there yet.

Um, but I think we know what we need to do to get there, and we're tracking it and fixing it.

So there were a few um software issues that actually wasn't with um OpenGov, the software, but the third-party plan review system that we had to connect in with that did cause some of our backlog delays.

Um but again, these are all like details within the system that I think are to be expected in this first launch.

Um, you know, I think what what I always think about is um we're in this transition building phase.

This is when it's gonna be the worst.

Um we have to think about where we're going and where we need to get to.

Being in two different systems or at some level three systems, still an over the counter in-person process, an old school in-house review process that's not in this software, and then this new software, that's hard.

Um there's really no way around it, but there's no magical way for us to snap our fingers and go from the old system to the new system in any kind of comprehensive, logical, thoughtful way.

We're going to have to do this in an iterative way.

Um which in part one of the reasons this contract kicks off it it gives us sort of the capacity to do that thoughtful work of what should we back package next so that we can have the best experience for staff and customers.

So when we're talking about permit rationalization, it's not just about what permit types could should get sort of smushed together.

But it's also thinking about, you know uh what will it take to get the fire department entirely into a new system so we can fully deprecate their old system.

Because as soon as we can get rid of one of the three variables the better and we can get people like an agency fully in one.

And so those are some of the strategies that we're going to be thinking about a lot this summer is what is the fastest way for us to get sort of like the bulk of a customer's experience or the bulk of an agency's experience fully in one system.

So they're not you know pivoting to three different systems which inherently is gonna, you know, be an inefficiency.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah that uh yeah the teething problems certainly sounds sounds re reasonable.

I think the one um note I would make is just you know I I feel like as we transition more permits to being online, which we should, that's just you know that should be our modern practice while still having an in-person option.

Uh it's a little harder there's a little less pressure maybe to to to solve a problem right now when there isn't somebody standing there right in front of you.

I think they would be at the permit counter.

Um so hopefully these processes you know we can we can work out the kinks and still manage to keep you know a a sense of urgency and priority and and um just a seamless process for staff to be able to do to do their work very easily uh as this gets implemented.

But uh yeah it's really it all sounds like it's on the right track with a lot of challenges along the way.

Um my I just have one um last question which is uh there was the question that Mr.

Dretler raised about you know why extend for five years at this point instead of a two year contract extension and I'm just curious what the thinking is about that.

Absolutely so the two year contract extension that we actually have right now is just for the licenses.

So the contract is usually two parts a little op oversimplification but basically it's professional services to help us build and be strategic and think through what should come next, how do we design it, how do we like build it?

And then there's the just straight up software license cost to like you know it's like the license we have like Microsoft suite to like have Word or Excel.

Um the two year extension extends the license it does not give us any more dollars in professional services.

So it would literally just keep the existing lights on for what we've already delivered.

It would not let us scale or expand to anything new.

Um so basically that puts a big pause in progress.

So to us that didn't seem like um useful in any way we want to move as quickly as we can to again stop the teething phase.

We want to get through teething as quickly as possible and fully in the new system.

So that's the reason for it.

And again as I mentioned earlier too so five year contract I think our our goal is to really get through the bulk of the construction permits that are again relevant to I think what the commission mostly sees in the first year three years, which is our goal.

Okay.

Thank you very much for answering my questions and the contract resolution has my support.

It's uh I think it's important for ability to keep this process moving forward and knowing what we have to work with.

And so yeah thank you very much.

Thanks thank you Commissioner McGarry.

This Wadi and you and your team thanks for bringing this into the 21st century uh San Francisco it's kind of ironic that we're holding up or we even know what carbon copper uh carbon paper is but you you showed an example of it there.

I recognize it because we also have it as a backup backup backup in my daily uh daily day job uh we have to pull out this paper that basically has no pain pen in the world can fill it in.

So thanks for that past practice.

Uh nothing will get you in trouble the company I work for, the organization I work for, nothing will get you in trouble faster than using the term past practice because you lose why you were doing it in the first place.

You're just doing it because basically that's what we always did.

So changing it from a start I see the continuity in five years as opposed to extending for two you need continuity, you need buy-ins, uh you need basically everybody on board.

Change is hard, you know there's but change is good as well.

But it's it's it's hard, but it's basically it's inevitable.

It's happening.

Everybody's getting a new role in your you know the if you're if if you're going from a a paper pushing organization to the digital world and the forefront of the digital world of Aronda Sterling there Sterling Miller.

He needs to be on site making money uh basically not down at the permit office over the counter might work from a times but business construction uh contractors, subcontractors all need to be uh basically on site making money to stay afloat, not standing in line and I remember the day pulling that ticker and seeing the people, why are they pulling three tickets?

Why are they pulling three tickets?

They're pulling three tickets because they don't want to talk to that person or that person, and they're basically deciding who they want to tell.

So taking all of that out of it is actually uh and is can only be a good thing.

Um bring this in 21st century where we should have been ahead of anybody else because we are San Francisco is great.

So uh I wish you well on it all.

We should all well on it, and I'd make a motion to adopt.

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Sow.

So um I really appreciate that.

I didn't time how long it took you to um tell us everything about what you and your team have gone through since um like a whole year gone by, right?

And also especially since the um the mayor addressed the city of the state of the city earlier in the beginning of this year.

Um also need to thank Sarah Dennis Phillips to allow the staff to have such a great collaborations across so many different agencies.

I really personally thought it was just really try to get the building permit and the planning permit, but now we adopt a so many friends from our city, including the SFM permit.

So that's that's uh really huge um effort, but I think for the long run, it will put San Francisco above everybody about every city, because currently I personally had also experienced some interesting permitting experiences in our neighboring counties that is very, very antiquated to borrow your word.

So I look forward to have this a robust um really working system for the entire city families, not just planning permit or building permit.

It's we're talking about every permit sounds like there is under the sun.

Um however, though I do wanted to um ask a few things about because we just keep kind of uh a lot of our friends keep kind of joining the the this what do you call that joining the movement.

And so how do you prioritize what is gonna need to focus first?

Because at the end of the day, we are the planning department and now we are joining forces with DBI and Permine SF.

We have our agency are prioritizing on improving the land use related matters, right?

So how do you uh help us out here?

How do how do we prioritize what comes next?

Yes, yes, you know, and then how can we uh help our public to get a better understanding because knowing that this upcoming few years gonna be a lot of pivoting and learning and we are definitely very nimble and agile, um seeing your contract amount and now knowing what you're actually your scope is like kind of when like this, like a fireworks, um exp explode it.

I mean, like uh so it's a two-party question.

How do what are we prioritizing and how do you inform the public moving forward?

Absolutely.

Um so certainly at a macro level, what we're prioritizing is is housing and small businesses.

Um but also we have to think about what are the actual permits that lead to those.

Um, you know, to build housing.

It's just a new construction permit.

Um in San Francisco, we right now don't have a housing new construction permit and a commercial new construction permit.

We have a new construction permit.

Um so our approach is a um starting small.

Um so I think part of our process is going to be for those two industries, small business and and housing production.

What's kind of the easiest, as we we say a lot, like what's the happy path?

What's sort of the easy version of both of those?

Um let's not try to think about the worst case scenario first.

Let's just try to like iterate off of like the simple use case.

Um but let's also weigh those factors.

So we have those policy factors of what permit types we're interested in going next.

But there are also other factors into this.

There's um what agencies have no system right now.

So for example, the planning department, we're actually kind of the best of the bunch.

We have a contempor relatively contemporary software system that actually collects data and we can report off of.

So although we are eager and ready to pivot off of that system, we also have a functional system that does work for us.

There are other agencies that literally their software is either non-existent or no longer being supported by their software vendor.

So that needs to take a level of priority, right?

Of who is kind of what agency is in the most urgent place technologically speaking.

So that needs to be sort of part of our rubric, if you will, of thinking about prioritization.

And then we also, you know, I think there are a handful of other factors thinking through, you know, for example, looking at what the software product is and are there things that we would want differently available in the product in order to reimagine a certain type of permit.

And so we want to make sure the tool matches our desired future state need, but is also aligned with like the agency's most urgent need.

So there may be instances where an agency's urgent need involves permits that maybe aren't housing and small business, but but they literally have no system, and we need to get everyone into contemporary systems.

So some of these things basically don't have a perfect answer for you as part of this.

This is the literally the work that we're gonna be kicking off end of August, early September to be thinking about this.

But these are the things that we're gonna be talking about, um developing kind of like weighted scores on this, and likely it will be a package each um how we've broken the contract up is into what we're calling project charters.

But I think of them as like little phases of delivery.

Um and within each phase, we are gonna sit down and think about like what should come next policy-wise, and then think through in real world that of like do we have everything we need to succeed?

Do we have the right team partners?

Does the, you know, we're gonna work through that and make sure that everything we want to deliver aligns with all of those priorities.

Um we also would love to hear from people.

Um if our customers have strong feelings about what should go next and are really, really excited, uh, what you know big pain points are, we would love to hear from them as well.

Um I'm sorry, that was the first part of your question.

I forgot what your second part of the question was.

The second part was because things are ever, but things are evolving, right?

Um you mentioned phase one, we took care of a lot of the low-hanging fruit, the basic uh plumbing permit things, right?

And then you have an you have a set that set of data.

But then moving to phase two, you are gonna expand to uh more complicated um permit applications, then your set of data will be different.

But my second part of the question is like, how can a general public keep up with understanding of where things are like you know, like if I have to answer an auntie asking me, you know, what to do about her coffee shop, you know, in this in the like in the middle of Chinatown, like I'm I'm not sure.

Like should just open to a particular website and just gonna change overnight, or it's uh So we would say a couple things.

We uh we are, and we can certainly always do better on this, but we are really focused on having our permit SF web page be very transparent, and we've got a great landing page for what's accessible digitally and a lot of details on on how to permit pull different types of permits with like direct links into the system.

Um so that will be maintained.

But one of the things again, part of our we are improving how we're communicating part of what I was talking about earlier, uh, is that I am um we are planning on publicizing um what's coming next a little bit better so that you know we may not know what's coming in a year, but as we're focused on each charter, each next phase, we will be publicizing that so at least folks know you know what to expect over the next you know three to six months for delivery so people can plan accordingly.

Um most people aren't actively working on their permit applications for a year out, right?

They might be thinking about their project, but they're not as concerned about form of paperwork filing.

Um but we will be giving as much lead time on our website as possible, doing things like the um customer service or the customer forum, for example, we had one yesterday that's open to the public, um, in-person workshops with folks, smaller focus groups, that sort of thing.

Again, really tailored to what we're planning on launching.

Okay, I do have my one last thing is the I really agree with you, and um we are definitely need to do better or already we're doing pretty good, but we can do better, and now we have um other we collaborate or um you know group with three departments, so good customer service is very important.

How many times I more I personally multify just to get a permit from DBI?

I can't count how many times I personally got multify and like really being treated not as professional as it could be.

This is not when I was serving on this particular commission.

But I just want to make sure that whatever we're doing had a way to incentivize our own staff to have a good customer service.

And also I do believe we can streamline a lot of things with an electronic portal and all that, right?

But what really at the end of the day, it's a human touch.

Like they wanted to at least get to talk to someone like what's wrong with my comments?

Like what how how can I answer this comments?

Or maybe how can we how can the project sponsor explain better to any given plan check reviewer what is the real issues?

You know, because I just want to make sure that that doesn't go away.

Um it just the inception of accepting the project is becoming more uh agnostic and automatic, but at the end of the day, there is a human touch there, and that human, our staff better be professional and friendly, not being like whatever they used to be, um try to absolutely discriminatory to people of color.

And what what I would say is I I think the vast majority of instances that I've seen in my experience working for the city where there's been frustration um from customers um in terms of our customer service, a lot of times the genesis of that frustration is that a the materials that were submitted were not complete, didn't didn't sort of um address the the items that were needed because we weren't asking the right questions, and then our staff um weren't communicating what's wrong clearly because we don't have standardized um comments, we don't have a um a clear way to communicate, often graphic issues.

I I find it's very difficult to verbally communicate things on architectural plans.

It's much easier when you can talk from the plans.

Um and so I would say through technology um and smarter questions and more intentional prompting of customers for information about their project, and then a more strategic way for us to do plan review and standardize our comments and our feedback.

I do think that's gonna address you know, 80 plus percent of some of that frustration of cust the customer service frustration.

But I agree with you, you know, part of this effort is to also make sure that our staff are able to focus like the highest and best use of their skill set.

And I agree with you.

There will always be the need for our staff to be able to sit down with customers and have like detailed policy conversation about the substance.

Um but I do think it sometimes helps tape the temperature out of the room when that substantive conversation can be the first interaction rather than like round five because they've been going back and forth on you know, details that really should have been, you know, there's a frustration on both sides that sometimes comes from that.

And I think that's where we can do a better job building the right questions, building standardization into the tools to sort of bring down that temperature to have that initial conversation be more structured.

So I do think that, and at the end of the day, um in a digital system, communication will now be tracked, it'll be visible and it will be part of the record.

Um and so I do think there's a level of accountability that also will be there for managers in those um hopefully very one-off cases of somebody not having appropriate customer service.

We will now have the data as managers to be able to leverage that and really have more focused conversations as well.

Great, thank you.

And then that ties into the QR code, right?

Um that's just like give us your feedback.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, thank you, Liz.

I'm I'm done with my comments.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

SF permit is something we've been hearing a lot about, but getting a window into what you all have accomplished in the last year and where we're heading is um is fantastic.

And I love that there's vision, right?

That there's I loved hearing as someone that is, you know, my side, you know, my other job is um I am one of your customers, uh, you know, and my my colleagues are your customers, and I think approaching it um not for what's easy for us, but what what's the customer experience I think is gonna be game changing and this permit rationalization, one permit, separate streams is like is gonna be amazing, and I and that kind of broader asking why um I think will go a long long way.

Um this there's always this like instinct to want to add to solve problems, but like subtracting and really trying to get to the bottom of it, I think kind of like what we just talked about with the sequel amendments, I think is gonna go a long way.

So great work.

Um I do find I think this is something we talked about um not that long ago, how ironic it is that here we are in like the epicenter of AI and adjacent to Silicon Valley, and yet we we you know we have so much work to do from a technology perspective, um which is you know, this open gov contract is um is what's before us now.

So um I guess one question, uh and that's what's gonna help us get there, but um one question I had was you know it's a it's a a large sum of money that we're talking about over five years.

Could you talk a little bit about um should things not go as planned over the next couple of years, you know, things start to come off the rails.

What you know, what does that look like?

Do we have options to um pull the ripcord and and change direction?

Absolutely, yes.

Um and I would say uh one of the biggest structural focuses that we weaved into this, that the the balance that we were or the needle we were trying to thread on this is a um, you know, we haven't yet done all the permit rationalization and we want to s we want to get going on that.

Yes.

So we don't yet know exactly what permits we want to design in what way eighteen months from now.

We haven't figured that out yet.

Um so how do we structure a contract that will be effectively deliverable based without knowing the exact deliverables?

And that was the needle we tried to thread.

So the solution that we came up with is creating project charters.

Um and we have the first two fairly well baked because again, those are sooner.

We kind of have an idea of what we want to tackle, you know, straight up in the next few months.

Um but these project charters are are effectively each phase.

Um and within that, how it's going to work is we are basically going to work together as a city of what we want to tackle first.

We're then gonna work closely with open gov to make sure that that's feasible, understand all of the the you know interdependencies that are necessary for that to be successful, and then the payment structure is structured within that phase.

So we're not releasing funds just you know, willy-nilly, the f the funding is released for that phase and within milestones within that phase.

So the bulk of their payment um effectively doesn't come until we have a product delivered.

Um and so part of it will be when our testing is done, and then part of it will be post go live of those deliverables is when the final payment of that phase happens.

So if the if the testing doesn't go well, we don't we don't pay.

If the you know, if there's something broken along the way, if the product doesn't get delivered, um we have not sunk much money in.

You know, we've got some initial funding to do the kickoff and the discovery work, you know, appropriately so as their professional services are being used.

But we will not pay if we don't get a final product delivered at um that sort of is as defined at the beginning of that charter.

And then when that's successfully done, we kick off the next one and that same protocol sort of rinse and repeat throughout the full term of the five year contract.

And again, we really hope that within the first three years is what our current plan is, that we won't actually need their professional services beyond um year three, because also as part of this is sort of the knowledge transfer plan, where um you know, at this stage, um we are building up our knowledge, but they still hold more knowledge to how we build out new permit types.

By the end of the three years, we hope that sort of those lines have crossed and we have um enough knowledge to basically handle this ourselves.

That's super helpful.

Um to understand the project charters are or ones that is that something you just saw as part of your presentation.

Do we know what those are um phases?

Um they're embedded in the in the uh scope of work that's associated with the contract that the board of supervisors will act on.

Um that framework though, that framework is what the contract is all about, and there's greater detail around um the first, and this is where probably my level of detail ends, Rebecca Mayer, who's handling the contract is here who who helped draft all of this and and negotiate it.

Um but we have that level of details there, and I can follow up with you separately if you'd like to see what those are.

Great.

Um without creating more this is so informative.

Um without creating more work, is it possible we could do this at some healthy cadence whether it's annual or you know, just to kind of understand what what happened in the last year and where are we headed now?

And I think it would actually be really appropriate as we kick this off when we wrap um either when we kick off every phase or when we wrap every phase, or and or um that we can do that.

We're happy to come back.

Fantastic.

You meant you mentioned an invitation to the public for feedback and there's workshops and things like that.

Is there an easy way for customers to provide feedback uh on on the website?

Again, if you go to permit SF uh, just Google Permit SF, I don't know the exact URL, but it's the first hit.

Um there's an email and uh uh a form where the where the public can give us feedback and we've gotten a lot of feedback over the last year.

Great.

I'm curious.

Um maybe I don't know, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, but like in my organization, we often talk about big hairy, audacious goals.

I'd be curious to know what yours are for SF permit in the long run.

I mean, my my personal goal, and I'm not exactly sure.

Well, I'm sure somebody can measure this at the end, but you know, HCD said that we had the longest permitting timelines in the state.

Commissioner Braun.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

Okay, good afternoon and welcome back to the San Francisco Planning Commission hearing for Thursday, July 23rd, 2026.

Commissioners, we left off under your regular calendar on item 10 for case number 2025 hyphen zero one two one five one PCA for the 100% affordable housing planning code amendment.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

I'm Baby Vernon de Scarcia, planning staff.

I'm joined by Lisa Gluckstein, Carly Grabb of the Planning Department, and Sheila Nicolopoulos of MOCD, who will be available to answer questions at the end of this presentation.

We are also joined by Charlie Shamas, who will speak on behalf of Supervisor Chen with some considerations.

Thank you for having us to consider the proposed 100% affordable housing planning code amendments.

This legislation was introduced by Mayor Daniel Lurie on December 9, 2025 as part of Permit SF initiatives to support housing production in San Francisco.

I'll start by laying out key challenges facing 100% affordable housing and residential care facilities.

From there, I'll walk through the proposed ordinance package and highlight feedback we've received.

San Francisco continues to face major barriers to delivering 100% affordable housing amid scarce and highly competitive funding sources.

Development costs remain extremely high, averaging upwards of a million dollars per unit.

Projects often spend five to seven years in pre-development, during which holding costs can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

Commercial space requirements add further complications.

MoCD's preliminary analysis of 332 commercial units in affordable housing buildings found rate vacancy rates of 25% in the tenderloin and 19% across District 5.

Affordable housing developers report that ground floor spaces can sit empty for years and require costly build-outs, diverting limited resources from housing.

MoCD's vacant commercial spaces funding program aims to offset these expenses, but leasing them continues to be very difficult, and resources are limited in what they can support.

Mid-block alley requirements also limit feasibility by reducing developable area and introducing additional infrastructure cost.

In some cases, such as 1234 Great Highway, these constraints make 100% affordable housing infeasible without seeking additional waivers.

Residential care facilities face rising operating costs and evolving care needs, leading some to close and being sold on the private market.

Converting these buildings to 100% affordable housing requires a conditional use authorization, adding yet another procedural hurdle.

These examples represent only a portion of the challenges facing affordable housing production, but they illustrate the broader context in which this ordinance attempts to address key pain points and improve feasibility.

The ordinance focuses on three key goals.

First, it streamlines processes and reduces uncertainties.

And third, it creates a path for converting unviable residential care facilities into 100% affordable housing.

Together, these changes make delivering affordable homes in San Francisco easier, faster, and more predictable.

It also exempts 100% affordable housing from mid-block alley requirements that can reduce developable area and add infrastructure cost.

These changes led affordable housing developers focus scarce funding on producing housing and improving project feasibility.

In addition to removing these use and design requirements, this ordinance would also allow temporary uses on future affordable sites as soon as they enter MoCD's pre-development pipeline rather than waiting until a development application is submitted.

Allowing earlier activation creates opportunities for interim revenue generating uses, such as a parking lot or a small business that can offset holding costs and support local economic activity.

Without an interim use, holding costs can be $500,000 a year, which is paid from affordable housing funds.

Sites could also host community serving uses such as tiny homes or other services that deter property damage and improve neighborhood safety.

Overall, these changes keep long inactive sites productive and activate community serving uses during multi-year pre-development periods.

In addition, the ordinance creates a new adaptive reuse program to convert unviable residential care facilities into 100% affordable housing.

The program exempt these conversions from standards that never applied to RCFs, such as certain design requirements, density controls, bike parking, and impact fees, and allows essential enlargements and modifications to support feasibility while retaining the existing structure.

Overall, it provides a predictable pathway to transform aging RCF buildings into long-term affordable homes and ensures they continue serving vulnerable communities.

In short, the ordinance removes costly ground floor commercial and midblock alley requirements, allows temporary uses earlier in the pre-development process, and creates streamlined pathways to convert older residential care facilities into 100% affordable housing.

These updates improve feasibility and make delivery of affordable homes more predictable.

Our outreach included conversations with affordable housing developers such as Mercy Housing, TNDC, and CCDC, RCF providers such as Self Help for the Elderly, and community organizations, including SF Safe House, which is currently converting a former RCF building to affordable housing, CHUCHU and United to Save the Mission.

Overall, the feedback was supported, supportive, and provided important revisions that help shape many aspects of the ordinance and will continue to discuss.

We heard meaningful concerns from representatives of the Mission Action Plan 2030 Land Use and Placekeeping Committee reinforced by CHUCHU.

These community advocates highlighted that removing commercial space requirements could reduce opportunities in neighborhoods such as the mission, where immigrant-owned businesses and community-based nonprofits have relied on and leveraged these spaces to provide culturally specific services.

We continue to be in conversation with these advocates, especially in the mission to consider exemptions for mission, Calle 24, and parts of Valencia.

And we will continue to work with District 11 to address some of the concerns that Charlie Shamus will bring up in a moment.

We value this engagement and support and the continued presence of community serving commercial spaces through leasing support and funding opportunities.

It is worth noting that the ordinance does not prohibit such spaces and allows them where they support feasibility or meet community needs.

We'll continue to connect with community organizations, RCF operators, and affordable housing developers over the next few weeks.

We expect this to be heard by the Board of Supervisors in September 26th.

Staff recommends approval of the ordinance, which removes key barriers, supports adaptive reuse of RCFs, and strengthens the production pipeline for 100% affordable housing in San Francisco.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

We're happy to answer questions.

Before that, it's a pleasure to introduce Charlie Shamus of the District 11 supervisor's office to share some concerns.

Good afternoon, President Campbell and members of the Commission and Charlie Shamus here on behalf of Supervisor Cheyenne Chen.

Thank you, David, and for the opportunity to speak before the Commission.

I just want to start with the basic framework that fostering active community-serving ground floor spaces in 100% affordable projects has delivered some outstanding outcomes for building residents in the broader community.

One example is in District 11, where in recent years, new 100% affordable projects have created opportunities to leverage a new child care center, a youth arts center, a neighborhood cafe, a bicycle cooperative, and a full-service community health clinic in our neighborhood that has is very underserved.

Of the seven ground floor spaces that were created, only one has resulted in a vacancy.

Citywide affordable housing projects have also anchored vital neighborhood services, cultural hubs, and economic infrastructure.

This model has created strong, stable, and mutually beneficial partnerships that are often much harder to achieve with private storefront spaces.

Providing these ground floor partnerships has not come without challenges as affordable housing developers have to compete in an increasingly cost-constrained environment, and there is insufficient funding and incentives to deliver the community development outcomes the requirement intended to produce.

A related aspect is ensuring that affordable housing developers and local communities have the tools they need to make this program successful.

This includes the extent of support, investments, and incentives, such as those that the Mayor's Office of Housing Community Development and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development can provide.

Supervisor Chen would like to work on amendments in partnership with community stakeholders and the department that would leave the legislation unchanged citywide.

And in the priority equity geographies, they would provide for affordable housing developers that meet certain objective standards for due diligence in seeking to fulfill the requirement to qualify for a waiver.

We're aware that there are discussions to completely exempt commercial corridors in the mission district from this legislation, and this amendment would not impact those corridors.

Thank you for your consideration.

Okay, that concludes staff presentation.

We should open up public comment, members of the public.

This is your opportunity to address the Commission on this matter.

We need to come forward.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Annie Chung with Self-Help for the Elderly.

So I'd like to make uh also just a very few comments on the proposed uh resolution.

First, self-help is a nonprofit provider for both 100 percent affordable housing as well as affordable RCFE, which stands for residential care facilities for the elderly.

We are support the staff's recommendations on making the transition from RCFE that are faced with closures into affordable housing units, which are acutely needed for San Francisco's low-income and aging residents.

We also strongly support the new proposed project that would allow projects to include community serving users, such as child care centers, as Charlie have mentioned and also David, but also senior and community centers and service centers on the ground floor rather than mandating that the developers have to rent it for commercial use.

These recommended changes would reduce barriers and help streamline the production of more 100 percent affordable housing units, which are so desperately needed in San Francisco.

We also like to recommend that the Commission and the planning staff continue to study and find ways to support existing small to mid-sized RCFEs, facilities that only have six to say 30 beds.

These facilities are facing tremendous pressure to stay open and provide essential 24-7 housing as well as care services for a very rapidly aging and frail seniors.

We have discussed this with David and the planning staff and some also some supervisors regarding the urgency of preserving and strengthening this viable service and making this type of long-term care affordable to seniors on fixed incomes before all the small and mid-sized RCFE facilities start to disappear.

Self-help memory care, RCFE that takes care of 15 seniors that have Alzheimer's and dementia, charges only 50 percent of market rate.

And we could only do it because we have a secure housing subsidies and the grant from DAS to subsidize our operation.

We understand and experience the intense pressure for owners of small facilities and urge the Planning Commission to work with us and work with the community for more sustainable and affordable RCFE.

So we're in support with uh David's recommendation.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh good afternoon, President Campbell and Commissioners.

My name is Jessica Rubio.

I am the policy director at Mission Economic Development Agency.

While we're here to support the streamlining of temporary uses for affordable housing developments, we are here also to request two simple and targeted amendments for the mission district.

One is to continue to apply the ground floor activation requirement on mission uh NCT and 24 street NCT and to do the same on Valencia Valencia Street, only for uh corner lots on 16th Street and 22nd Street.

Ground floor activation is essential for street safety.

Byron cultural corridors and wealth building for immigrant businesses and entrepreneurs.

Removing this requirement risks creating dead zones on our most vital corridors.

We fully recognize as a developer as well that funding and managing ground floor commercial spaces can be challenging for affordable housing developers.

But when we address this in collaboration with designated resources and community involvement, the positive impact on neighborhood safety and economic recovery is immense.

For example, through our collaboration with our business development program at MEDA and with uh OEWD resources, we have been able to activate most of our small sites and large sites ground floors, bringing back organizations who were displaced, uh, or allowing business owners to continue to stay in the neighborhood.

Um these include child care centers, beauty salons, nonprofit organizations on youth, arts, and other community services.

So we are here to please um ask you to approve these simple amendments to the to protect the mission district.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Alex Santiago, and I am a 21-year-old college student who interns in the mission district every day that I go to work.

I pass through the 16th BARTS 16th Mission BART station.

Um and I wanted to note how my sense of comfort is really reliant on those community members and small businesses that follow along the mission street as I make my commute to work.

Um it's the local store owners and the nonprofit organizations on that street whose open eyes and open ears make me really feel at ease and comfortable as I make my commute.

Um and we know that vacancy and abandonment are vessels for crime.

And without ground floor activation requirements, the mission distreet uh runs the risk of replacing a lot of its vibrancy with abandonment and a lot of its healthy commerce with dilapidation, which could potentially allow for crime.

This is why I urge you to continue to apply the ground floor activation requirements on mission and 21th fourth 24th Street NCT zoning, and to secondly do the same on Valencia Street, only for corner lots on 16th and 22nd.

I ask you to do this for safer streets and for a safer mission.

Thank you so much.

Okay, last call for public comment.

Again, you need to come forward.

Seeing none.

Public comment is closed, and this matter is now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner Bottom.

Generally, I'm uh I think that the changes in this legislation make a lot of sense.

They're reasonable, they seem like a really good uh set of steps towards accelerating and supporting the production of affordable housing in the city.

Uh I do I don't really have any concerns at all with the temporary uses, mid-block alleys or conversion of residential care facilities components of this.

But I did want to dig a little bit into the uh ground floor commercial and active use requirements change for affordable housing projects.

Um the arguments for supporting that change make a lot of sense to me, you know, and the difficulties in filling that space, the possibilities that the building could use it for something a little bit more uh supportive and helpful for the residents, even if it's not a public-facing space.

Um but I would like to understand uh if we don't have an active or commercial use on the ground floor, uh what controls do we have to ensure that that ground floor does not become just a dead space along uh potentially a commercial corridor?

Um, you know, if it just becomes a set of blank walls or or utility doors for most of the facade, that seems like a pretty worrisome thing that could really discourage people from continuing to make their way down the sidewalk or feeling safe going down the sidewalk.

And so what what are we talking about for ensuring that there's still um quality pedestrian-oriented design uh at those ground levels?

Thank you for that question.

Commissioner Braun.

Uh so part of the work that you all did in um reviewing and uh approving the citywide design standards are actually one of the key things that we rely on to ensure that the street level, whether it's a storefront or whether it's simply uh you know, space, uh a part of that um building is going to be meeting the pedestrians in a way that's both inviting, that is supporting um the pedestrian and public realm.

So those guidelines um lay out you know key, very defined objective standards that are both architectural and you know, talking about design, um different treatments that affordable housing um or any user who applies the standards can use.

And with ministerial uh projects, those are applied to all projects uh who go through those processes, so those will still be applicable.

So we definitely still care very much and and really appreciate the work and thought that you all went through when we um approved those back in 2024, I believe.

Okay.

And I think there's also a reference that currently it's a possibility for these or uh correct me if I got this wrong, but but basically with state density bonus uh some affordable housing projects have been waving out of these active use ground floor requirements.

Is that actually a track record of projects doing that or um just you know a possibility?

Um yes, and I could invite uh my colleague uh to add a little bit more detail on how uh how many projects, but there has been.

It's been a major trend.

Um but go ahead, Carly.

Thanks, Debbie.

Hi, Carly Grove planning staff.

Um many of the 100% affordable projects that we see do seek some waiver or incentive from a number of ground floor controls.

Um we're looking at active uses and also commercial requirements.

Um sometimes they are able to provide to meet some of those requirements, but the technical application to those projects can sometimes be very challenging to meet.

Um in some cases it's because of the site constraints.

You know, sometimes we get affordable housing parcels that are a little odd shaped or sort of the end of a block.

Um, so the requirements may be more significant, or it's a competition of programs.

So there's certain streamlining programs and you know, for example, permanent supportive housing often requires uh some of that space to be dedicated to services instead of commercial uses.

Um so we do see a significant number of waivers from those controls.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

Um I think just from my perspective, I could support the legislation as is, but I do think it's it will be important to continue to have this conversation uh as this legislation moves forward to determine if there are potentially locations where um this might not apply as has been raised.

Uh I don't think I necessarily would need that in the uh uh motion of uh supporting legislation, but um hopefully those conversations can continue and uh see what might come of them.

And I will say, you know, I I reside near a recently completed affordable housing project near Lency and Caesar Chavez.

And it's not, as far as I know anyway, it's not active uses on that ground floor.

Um and it is a high level of design.

Now that's not on a you know really active uh high foot traffic kind of commercial uh corridor right there, but even so um I've seen some positive results from a building that does not have uh active or commercial uses on most of the front, uh most of the ground floor on it.

So um but at the same time I I take the point um that you know the concern about um wanting to ensure the continued vibrancy and safety of our our commercial areas.

Um but with that said um I don't see any other commissioners thinking about comments.

So I um make a motion to adopt a recommendation for approval of the legislation I second it.

Okay, if there's no further deliberation, Commissioners, there is a motion that has been seconded to adopt a recommendation for approval on that motion, Commissioner McGarry.

Hi.

Commissioner Soye.

Commissioner McUh Braun.

I and Commission President Campbell.

Aye.

So move Commissioners, that motion passes unanimously four to zero, placing us on items 11A and B for case numbers 2025, hyphen 00, 4469, CWT CWP, hyphen zero two for the San Francisco Shoreline Adaptation Plan informational presentation and consideration of a resolution.

Good afternoon, President Campbell, Commissioners.

My name is Tam Tran.

I am the resilience lead and a principal planner in the community planning division.

I've come to you before to ask for some commission actions related to grant funding for the shoreline adaptation plan.

And today we're here to ask for one more commission action for the last piece of grant funding that we got from the state.

We also want to take the opportunity to give you a detailed overview of the shoreline adaptation plan as we begin to ramp up our work.

The last time I came to you, I came alone, and so I'm really excited today to come as a part of a team to complete this work.

This includes the project manager Danielle Gno, Amnon Ben Pozi, David Garcia, and Sarah Richardson.

Also part of our team is Alex Morrison and Eric Vaughn from the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning.

Both of us are here in the chamber today.

And with that, I want to hand the mic to Danielle Gogh.

Slides, please.

Great, thank you.

Good afternoon, Commissioners and members of the public.

I'm Danielle, senior planner in the community planning division.

Today I'll be sharing a high-level overview to explain our project's purpose and goals, kicking off our project's launch.

This item also includes a draft resolution, as Tam mentioned, for your review and action.

We welcome comments and questions from the commissioners and members of the public about what you hope this project achieves for the city's long-term resilience to sea level rise.

As we launch our project, we'll do our best to incorporate your feedback into both the process and outcome of our work.

We'll start with our project's purpose and goals, explain the regulatory landscape, and invite you all to forthcoming outreach and engagement opportunities.

Why do we need a shoreline plan?

Our top line message is that globally sea levels are rising, and here in San Francisco, we're already seeing the effects.

On the right-hand side, you'll see recent photos of how sea level rise can flood our shoreline, making spaces dangerous to visit, overtopping pathways, and inching closer to buildings and people.

Scientific projections suggest that over 10% of the city could face frequent and permanent flooding in the coming years.

The city's neighborhoods, parks, and critical infrastructure are at risk, and without coordinated action, the damages to the city will threaten our communities, environment, and the economy, and will be very costly to fix.

We must plan for coordinated action before things worsen even further.

So what will the shoreline plan do to address these needs?

The shoreline plan will guide how San Francisco prepares its shoreline for sea level rise, flood hazards, and extreme storm impacts.

It'll build upon past and ongoing efforts addressing sea level rise throughout the city.

In some areas, we need to fill gaps in planning.

In other areas, we need a pickup where we left off.

There will also be extra focus to areas that are most vulnerable to sea level rise.

Throughout the project, community input and the latest scientific knowledge will help determine what's at risk and what should be in our adaptation plan.

Our work will occur over the next two years, anticipating completion by late 2028, plus local adoptions and regulatory approval through early 2029.

As I mentioned, this is not the first time the city has tackled sea level rise.

We're lucky that we're not starting at square one.

We have over a decade of work to build upon.

Citywide, we have the sea level rise action plan from 2016 and the sea level rise vulnerability and consequences assessment from 2020.

The shoreline plan will update the VCA using the latest scientific information.

We also have a number of area-specific work throughout the city, led by numerous agencies, like the Ports Waterfront Resilience Program and TIDA's major development.

The Shoreline Plan will stitch together these efforts into a cohesive citywide plan.

Thanks again to Eric Vaughn for joining us in the room today.

We can't do this work successfully without the broad partnership and expertise of numerous city agencies.

We're convening a working group with the agencies you see on the screen, ensuring that our plan is enriched by their support and subject matter expertise.

Beyond the shoreline plan, the management and implementation of coastal adaptation is the responsibility of the city agencies with jurisdiction as owners and managers of shoreline areas and assets.

The shoreline plan is entirely grant-funded, detailed on the screen, and thank you to the state's Ocean Protection Council and the Coastal Commission for the planning grants awarded to us, totaling about 2.8 million dollars.

As Tam mentioned, this is we're here today for the third and last grant as a draft resolution in your staff report.

Adoption of the attached resolution by the Planning Commission is required by the Ocean Protection Council to secure the grant award of about $664,000.

Staff recommend the Commission to adopt this resolution.

Now we'll talk about the regulatory landscape.

In 2023, State Senator Laird passed Senate Bill 272 for sea level rise planning and adaptation.

Laird represents District 12 for reference, encompassing the counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterrey, and San Luis Obispo.

SB 272 requires local governments along the state's coastline to create a sea level rise adaptation plan.

The plan must use the best available science, include a vulnerability assessment, including an equity analysis for at-risk communities, analyze the economic impact, determine adaptation strategies and recommended projects, and identify lead agencies.

Once local jurisdictions complete their plan and receive approval from regulatory agencies, they become prioritized for implementation funding from the state.

So SB 272 set the requirement for local governments to plan for sea level rise.

Then local governments are directed to use the latest scientific understanding and the latest adaptation planning principles from the state's Ocean Protection Council.

And plans must be approved by their respective regulatory agencies.

For San Francisco, our shoreline along the Pacific Ocean is regulated by the California Coastal Commission, and our shoreline in the San Francisco Bay is regulated by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

Both agencies have published guidance to support efforts complying with SB 272.

The Shoreline Plan will be a substantive body of work for the city with numerous components seeking approval from numerous policy bodies.

This graphic outlines the anticipated actions, timeline, and pertinent bodies involved, informed by the policy requirements from 272 and the regulatory requirements from CCC and BCDC.

Additionally, the project team is available to visit other agencies' policy bodies as needed.

All things considered, here is a high-level walkthrough of our work.

First, the shoreline plan will identify what's important to communities and the city.

What's our long-term vision and long-term goals for sea level rise resilience?

Second, we'll identify what's at risk and what consequences we may face without concerted action.

Who's most vulnerable?

What's most vulnerable and where?

Third, we'll identify how the city can protect and manage future risk.

What are the specific adaptation strategies?

Who will lead them?

How much will it cost, and what other policy changes do we need?

Hand in hand, the project team will conduct public outreach all throughout to inform development of this work.

So on that, the shoreline plan will be a community-based planning process, meaning a collaborative process where people who care about the shoreline help guide every major step of preparing the plan.

Robust outreach and engagement will ensure that local knowledge informs development.

On the screen, you'll see a high-level description of how we're organizing our outreach and engagement so far.

We'll have general outreach, things like our website, our mailing list, we'll have targeted outreach based in neighborhoods and communities most at risk of sea level rise.

We'll have strategic touch points here and there, like key informant interviews, as well as a group of community partners, which I'll describe on the next slide.

One prong of our outreach will be a group convened regularly throughout the planning process.

And we're calling them Shoreline Community Partners.

This group will be comprised of representatives from affected and vulnerable communities, local businesses, property owners, the people most affected by projected sea level rise.

The Shoreline Community Partners will support our team, providing input on outreach, vision, and other plan components, as well as supporting us connecting with the community as far and wide as we can and addressing these community concerns as they arise.

We're forming the group now, so anyone is welcome to respond to our online interest form.

Please respond by August 4th, and we will follow up.

Again, robust outreach and engagement will ensure our plan reflects real community needs, your needs, our needs, and strengthens the city's collective response to projected sea level rise and shoreline change.

We welcome everyone to participate as much as they can in our forthcoming opportunities like participating in events, sharing your knowledge, as well as reaching out to the team directly.

We're happy to share that our website is live, sfplanning.org/slash shoreline plan.

You can check out our work on your own time, sign up for our mailing list and explore the fact sheet.

And you can also see our team's uh email address where you can reach out directly for your ideas and questions.

So thank you for this opportunity to share about our work, and we look forward to your feedback and review of our resolution.

Okay, if that concludes staff presentation, we should take public comment.

Members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Bivette Brackett again.

Um I just want to say thank you for the presentation about the semi-slow project.

Um, I also wanted to say that um I have the privilege and benefit of being here today at this one o'clock to four o'clock meeting.

Um, but many people in my community and in the community surrounding Yosemite Slow does not have that same opportunity and benefit to be able to come forth today.

Um, I would hope that the Planning Commission may think about equity in terms of meeting space as well.

Some other commissions have sometimes had their meetings in the evening when certain specific topics address a neighborhood that may be disadvantaged to be able to get more public comment or more response on issues and stuff like that, of things that they would like to see.

Um, I'm excited about the Yosemite Slow project, um, especially because I um did a lot of events in India Basin during the pandemic before India Basin was actually fixed, and we were part of the crew that did brunches there and um worked with um Phil Ginsburg with Park and Wreck to get social distance hearts drawn over in that area and seeing that whole area built up and being used as public space now and it being a beautiful park, especially further down by Indian Basin and stuff like that, where I've also done free cooking classes for people in community.

Um those projects and things happen, but a lot of times community does not get enough awareness, and we really need more investment and resources in these projects, not just in terms of community outreach, but resources so that people can participate in also planning some of these events in a collective manner so that people are more aware of what's happening.

I know a lot of people are concerned about kind of um what's going to happen along Third Street in terms of transportation issues with SFMTA and being able to get back and forth with the closing of the bridge and stuff like that.

So just wanted to give those few comments.

So thank you again.

Good afternoon, Commission.

Um, Evangela wanted to speak for Bayview overall.

Um as one of the colleagues just mentioned, we need to be at every part of things that are happening in our community.

Um, and when it comes to outreach, when it comes to having these type of conversations so we can know what's going on from the day to day, not only for us to be aware, but if there is something that we can help fix before it comes to y'all, so we are in agreement in an alignment as community.

And I know that it's important, and they believe in getting communities backing.

So I want to make sure that that is driven home today that if you want the community's backing, you have to get into the community and talk to the community and work with the community beyond the outreach when it comes to being partners, but also walking the walk with us.

Thank you.

Last call for public comment.

Again, you need to come forward.

Seeing none, public comment is closed, and this matter is now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner Sow.

Well, I always supportive of this effort.

I did mention early on, like we really is like climate resiliency.

We need to really adapt.

And I'm grateful to see that we have a really good team of staff to create that continuity.

And I would assume that we are doing the heavy lifting to kind of bring all the other uh city agencies together to do this effort with us.

Um as I remember when I was serving on the board of directors on SFMTA, we quickly identify like the there's this sea level rising, and everybody needs to work together along the entire shore line.

So I'm just super happy we are continuing this effort, and I greatly appreciate today.

Um staff uh mentioned that our website is live, and I hope that the general public will find themselves easier to reach the right group of people and get an immediate uh respond to kind of whatever question they have.

And again, I think it is a good approach to have our public directly seek information from our department.

Um so I'm in full supportive of that.

I think item A is just informational.

Item B, 11B is uh adoption.

So I motion to adopt Commissioner Bron.

I don't have extensive comments to share uh over my time and on this commission over the last four years.

I've heard um you know about this plan as well as some of the other um plans that were mentioned for foresea level rise adaptation, and it's just good to see over time how this work is moving forward and how we are identifying resources to keep it moving forward uh and to continue you know the prioritization to continue efforts to ensure that there is uh a lot of community dialogue and inputs to these these processes as well.

Um so this this has my full support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I echo the sentiment, incredibly important work.

Um it's a very long-term investment in our city that we need to be making.

Um and we do hear along the way um the other efforts that are um that have and initiatives that have um been going on, so it's really exciting to see that we'll be you know filling in the remaining gaps and coordinating strategies um and then coming out of it with a like a land use plan and implementation roadmap and funding strategies.

And I of course support um deeply the community um public and stakeholder feedback.

Um this work is highly technical too, so I do want to just make sure we're balancing that out.

Um, the community engagement with the technical work that um is is this is going to entail um all the assessments, flood modeling, adaptation strategies, evaluations.

Um, I just want to thank the staff for the work on this and what's coming up.

Um can't wait to see where we're we're heading with this and the outcomes and happy to support it.

And I think that's all of our comments.

I think that's it.

And we have a seconded motion.

So I can thank thank you.

Okay, Commissioners.

If there's nothing further, there is a motion that has been seconded to adopt the resolution on that motion, Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Hi.

Commissioner Braun.

Hi.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

I so move Commissioners that motion passes unanimously four to zero, placing us on item 12 for case number 2026, IP 001608 C UA at 230 ANSA Street, conditional use authorization.

Good afternoon.

President Campbell, members of the Commission, Jeff Horn, Planning Department staff.

Time before you has a request for conditional use authorization for Planning Code Section 317 for the demolition of a vacant two-story, two-family residential building at 230 Anza Street within an RTOC zoning district.

The product site is located on the north side of Anza Street between Collins and Wood Streets on a 2500 square foot lot.

The site is one block to the south of Geary Boulevard across from UC or USF's Lone Mountain campus and two blocks west of the City Center shopping center.

The demolished uh building would be replaced with a new 85-foot tall eight-story residential building, approximately 15,600 square feet in size with eight units allowed through the Housing Choice San Francisco program.

The proposed unit mix would include uh one one one bedroom unit, one two-bedroom unit, th five three-bedroom units, and one four-bedroom unit.

These would all be provided as ownership units.

The one bedroom unit, unit 201, and the two-bedroom unit, unit 701, would be provided as affordable uh replacement units.

The project project includes a basement level with three vehicle parking spaces and eight Class 1 bicycle parking spaces.

The project is fully compliant with the housing choice uh programs code and with the planning code as a whole.

The project will maximize the 85-foot height allowance and provides an 18% rear yard, which is a modified design standard that is built into the ROTC zoning district for housing choice projects.

The project is not seeking any discretionary modifications from the Commission under the housing choice program.

The project has proposed the demolition of two rent-controlled units, which have been vacant for nearly 10 years.

Per State Senate Bill 330 when rent controlled units are to be replaced with ownership units.

The units must be replaced with de-restricted units at 80 percent of uh area mean income.

As such, the project will provide units 201, a one-bedroom unit, and 701, a two-bedroom unit as BMRs at 80 percent AMI to replace the existing one-bedroom unit and two bedroom units proposed to be demolished.

The project received a statutory exemption from CEQA under State Assembly Bill 130.

Two correspondences were received on the project with concerns on the project's scale and impacts to the cost of housing within the vicinity of this project site due to the new units.

Staff finds the project to be necessary and desirable as the project would provide six additional family-sized units at the site within a building that is fully compliant with the housing choice program, the planning code, citywide design standards, and the general plan.

And staff recommends the commission to approve with conditions as proposed.

This concludes staff's presentation, and I am available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we should hear from the project sponsor.

You have five minutes.

Sure.

SFGov, can we go to the uh computer, please?

Thank you.

Yes, right there.

Okay.

Um good afternoon, Commissioners.

Um Chuck Wong with CM Wong Architecture.

And I'll just talk a little bit about the uh background and the approach to this project.

Um there's a shortage of housing in San Francisco and a new family zoning plan that was intended to address that shortage along transit corridors, adding homes without mega projects.

The new uh family zoning plan allows for much taller buildings than were previously allowed.

Uh there are other areas of the city that allow much taller buildings than our site.

Our site height limit went from 40 feet to 85 feet.

As one of the first projects, if not the first project proposed under the family zoning plan.

Our building will naturally appear much bigger than our neighbors.

There is just no way to get around that.

Um over time when other lots around us develop similar-sized buildings.

Our building will start to blend in.

So a little about this project.

The project fully complies with the RT RTOC zoning and the 50-slash 85 R4 height book limits enabled by the family zoning plan as well as the San Francisco design standards.

The project provides family-focused housing.

The mix includes four three bedrooms and one four-bedroom units to help families stay in San Francisco.

The project also provides two affordable units to replace the existing two units.

The existing two housing units on site have been vacant for many years.

This narrow parcel is exactly the type of infill.

The updated zoning unlocks efficient use of existing land to deliver high quality projects.

Some might ask, you know, why didn't we just try to uh copy or relate to the adjacent buildings?

Um we're surrounded by buildings in all different styles from nondescript boxes to Victorians.

Creating an eight-story building with, let's say a Victorian style wouldn't really be appropriate.

The architecture prioritizes livability and vibrancy over trying to mimic every other older building.

With the tall and narrow building envelope, the key to our approach is to articulate the facade to give it more interest.

So some of the elements of our design include offsetting the facade to break it up horizontally, uh the projecting balconies, break it up, break up the facade vertically, uh, the changing of materials and colors to further break up the facade, natural and warm colors and woodlook siding accents to blend with the surrounding elements.

The glass railings allow clear, unobstructed views around the city.

Along the blind property line walls, uh we emphasize the lines of the panel siding as well as adding accent color to the panels, which gives it further interest.

And also the the C shape and L shape.

If we go back to the previous.

So you see the C shape and L shape at the balconies add a playfulness to the facade.

And finally, uh beauty is subjective, but functionality matters.

This project turns vacant residential units into new family-sized units with balconies overlooking the uh UCS UCF campus.

Uh thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, if that concludes sponsored presentation, we should take public comment.

Members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item.

Hello, my name is Alan Cohn.

Um I've never attended a commission meeting before, so here we go.

Uh I live at 236 Anza, right next door.

You saw a picture of it just a second ago, or drawing of it.

Um, and uh I am here to request that you guys just think carefully uh about whether it really makes sense to put an eight-story building in the middle of a block that's all mainly two and three-story buildings.

Um it's not that I'm against building.

My neighbors to the left and the right, we talk about that property all the time.

Uh we're desperate to have something built there.

It's an abandoned property, it's covered with literally covered with a plywood box.

And it's been that way for like 10 years, and it's just the definition of an eyesore.

But we all thought it was gonna be like a three or four-story building.

That's what we were looking forward to.

Um I'm not an expert, I don't know anything about real estate or zoning coach or any of this stuff, but it it just seems kind of weird to me to put an eight-story building in the middle of this block where everything else is two and three stories.

I I'm afraid that my little house, two stories, is gonna end up looking like the little the little house from the movie up.

Um, but you guys all are experts, so just I'm requesting, I'd be very grateful if you all apply your expertise and think through whether it really makes sense to put an eight-story building in the middle of a block with mainly two and three-story buildings.

Thanks.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

Um I'm Ruth Levy.

I live on Ewing Terrace, which is a block away from the project.

Ewing Terrace is a cul-de-sac with actually we have a staircase that goes down from Ewing Terra to Anza Street.

Um we have a neighborhood association that includes 70 residences, 70 families, and a lot of children.

Um secretary, our association secretary wrote a letter to you, uh, emailed it several days ago, and I'm sure you have it, but I'm sure you've got dozens of other letters too.

Uh consider, and I will take up some of the points that she's made just so that they go on record, and I'd like to leave this letter so that it goes into whatever file it goes into.

Um this is it's a project that's incompatible with the character of the neighborhood.

It's just jarring.

We have a neighborhood where the people on Ewing Terrace uh 25 years ago, we planted, we did a tree planting on Anza Street.

We collaborate.

This will be this will kind of rend the cohesion.

You know, it just it it's inappropriate.

Um aside from that, this is a block away from Geary Street.

Geary Street does not have any eight-story buildings.

This stretch of Geary does not have any anything over the closest is a six-story building that was just built on Geary and Sixth Avenue for senior housing.

That's the tallest building, and it's a commercial street.

This is a quiet street that is, yes, USF is right across the street, which is lovely, and we've dealt with the building at USF.

We've been very collaborative, we've gone back and forth with them.

They've been helpful to us in considering our requests.

So let me get on with some.

I'm not going to read all of the the items, but there is a character to this neighborhood.

And when you walk down the street, it it creates tension to see something like this.

We have plenty of tension in our lives these days.

So when something is this jarring and the neighborhood is up in arms about it, I think that it needs to be taken into consideration.

Uh the proposed building will also dominate a just it it'll uh alter the neighborhood uh the skyline.

It's the architectural style has absolutely nothing to do with the neighborhood.

It is there are no really totally modern buildings of this uh type.

And we have you know, we is this gonna be a precedent where every block is gonna have some needle pointing up in the middle?

So it and we also have not been adequately informed.

We this only went out July 7th.

The neighborhood has not had enough time, and we've been furiously emailing to each other, trying to talk to each other.

But that is your time.

And we'd like your consideration for either continuance or just to scale this down.

I'm Christine Kim and neighbors of uh Ewing Terrace, neighbors of Ruth Levy and the Munzas back there.

Um we were informed about this, and we um in addition to what Ruth has shared, uh we personally will be um impacted because our views will be blocked.

Currently we um have these nice views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Um that will definitely be blocked.

Um the um beautiful views to the Rent Headlands and the Presidio.

It it's um it's it would be something that would uh change the way um a big, I guess uh something that brings us tremendous joy right now.

And do you have anything to say?

Okay, she doesn't have anything to say.

So I think that is um pretty much um in addition to what Ruth had said, what we have to share.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Betsy Munz, and my husband and I live on Ewing Terrace, which is across the street from the proposed project.

I wanted just to point out sort of graphically the scale issue that people have been talking about.

The footprint of this building is less large than this room.

And yet it will be eight stories high, which is taller than virtually any building here in the civic center.

It's taller than the library, it's taller than the courthouse.

It's taller than this building except for the dome.

And having something that tall and such a small footprint on a street where from the beginning of Anza all the way to the ocean, three miles away, there's nothing that's more than three stories high.

It's just not a beautiful part of San Francisco.

So I worry about what it looks like.

Now the building itself is well designed.

I uh appreciate what the architects have done.

I just wish the building were about half the size that it is now because as eight stories high, it's really going to dwarf everything else.

Even the USF Loyola Terrace buildings are not that tall.

So thank you very much.

Hi.

I'm her husband John Muns.

And I could go over all these comments, but one thing I would like to mention is they don't put, if you're going to put a big building in in a residential neighborhood, you should put in enough parking.

It's already a problem.

This is going to add a whole bunch of units without parking.

When USF put in their buildings, they put in parking.

Everybody has to put some parking in.

They're putting virtually none in.

And I would feel, well, first of all, I don't like the size of the building.

Let me be frank about that.

But I think it's even worse if you build a big building and then don't put parking in and then externalize all of those costs to your neighbors.

And that it there's it's just wrong.

The builder should take care of that problem.

And I could go on, but the points have been made.

Too big, too ugly on the sides, no parking, totally inadequate parking.

I shouldn't say no parking, that's wrong.

Totally inadequate parking.

It just is going to make the neighborhood, which is a nice neighborhood all the way around, up and down Anza, you can terrace a little mountain the other side.

It's just going to cause problems for everybody who's there.

And if the builder would put enough parking in, I still wouldn't like the size of the building, but he wouldn't be externalizing all of its costs to us.

Thank you.

A last call for public comment.

Seeing non-public comment is closed in this matters now before you, Commissioners.

I'll jump in.

I think this is the first time we're seeing a project here at the Commission at least that is part of the family zoning exercising the low.

Yeah, okay.

So it's neat to work through something for so long and then finally start to see the fruits of of that labor.

Um this feels like a poster child project in response to I think what we all imagine for family zoning.

So and the local program.

It's great to see um project sponsors exercising that option.

Um we're getting eight units in exchange for two.

It's a transit-oriented district, so we're really um I think that's why we don't have parking, right?

I think the logic there is that we're close to transit and it's not required.

Is that correct?

Yep.

Um I appreciate the mix of units that um this we could have done lots of studios, we could have done it.

This is a really nice healthy mix of units, and we get those two affordable units for the ones that we're losing.

It checks so many boxes.

Um, and I understand the concerns about the height.

You're right, it doesn't look like it fits in.

Um, and I think that that's the the truth is that's kind of the growing pains of executing the family zoning plan itself.

Um I would argue it's maybe not that the building is too tall, but rather that we've allowed buildings to stay so short for so long.

So this is our catch-up period, and I suspect this won't be the uh the tallest building in the neighborhood for long.

Um it's just the growing pains of the new zoning.

The properties code compliant with the new um HCSF program.

It's fully compliant with planning code and citywide design standards.

This has my full support.

Um Thank you, President Campbell.

Um, everything President Campbell said uh I I agree with.

You know, this was the family zoning plan was adopted in December of last year by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor, and we had worked through a lot of the details here as well along the way.

And you know that this is the kind of product that is now enabled by that.

And there's also a lot of by rightways that exist with housing and and um restrictions from the state level about uh ensuring that we are approving housing.

Um so I I sympathize with the point that it's jarring.

This is this is going to be a period of transition in many areas of the city in which now we are going to be potentially seeing taller buildings than we're accustomed to.

It's true in my own neighborhood as well.

It was also part of the rezoning plan.

Um and you know, so I think that's gonna take some getting used to.

Um but um you know, besides that, uh the I uh concur that you know this is a great trade where we are we have two vacant, long vacant units in a very distressed building that are now you know those will be replaced with affordable two affordable units at 80 percent of area median income.

Uh and then also six additional housing units above that, including housing units that are are of uh um size for families in many cases.

Uh so it's I I think about the long term with these changes that are happening and the the housing unit that's built today is a home for generations of people over the next hundred, hundred and fifty years, and so it's time for us to to really start moving towards catching up on that.

Um I to the developer, uh you know it's uh it's an ambitious project.

Uh this is a very narrow site for such a tall building.

You have a pretty high percentage of your four plates taken up by two stairs and the elevator core that has to be built at this height.

You have uh an underground level plus three levels of concrete, expensive concrete podium.

Um I'm curious to see if if the sponsor is able to move this project forward because it has a lot of kind of financial efficiency challenges, but that's not what I'm here to to weigh in on.

Um I will just be curious to watch this and see what happens ultimately with the with the property.

But um that being said, I uh I will make a motion to approve the conditional use authorization for uh the removal of those units.

Second.

Commissioner McGuire.

Oh, is that it?

Commissioner Braun, thank you.

Commissioner McGarry.

I'll echo my fellow commissioners.

So it starts.

The the Richmond is getting height, the sunset's gonna get height.

We put it off for years.

Everybody else has had to basically house every other district has has to had to house San Franciscans.

Um they're kind of run out of space.

And basically it's our turn.

This is the start of it, and there's gonna be more.

There's gonna be a little needles sticking up in every little neighborhood in the Richmond.

It's happening.

It's gonna happen.

Uh we've got a deficiency again, arena goals, 82,000.

That's over a year ago.

That can only be growing because we're not building them, because we've been saying no, no, no, no, no, uh, for years.

That basically, no, no, no, has led to a deficiency of basically it's probably more like 100,000 units we need, definitely like yesterday.

Uh but we're not we're not building them.

Uh yeah, this is gonna look weird.

Um it's uh it's gonna have look out of a lot better than it does right now.

It's just gonna be taller, you know, and it'll be shiny on the side.

Uh but it's it's unfortunately this is this is all of our own making, you know, and we have to we have to accept it.

So this is change is not coming.

It's actually here, and this is an example of it, and there's gonna be more.

So I'm sorry.

Sir, I'm sorry, but w public comment is closed.

Sir, I'm sorry, public comment is closed.

Sir, you're out of order.

If I may, I I the parking permits.

I'm on 10th agree.

We've got one block that doesn't require parking permits.

It's great when you're the top 90 percent.

Well, when you're the only block with two blocks left that don't require a parking permit, everybody comes to park in your and and the car outside my house is not in my neighborhood, or it's it's actually around the corner where they can have a permit, but my back garden goes there and I try and get a permit, but I'm not entitled to get a permit because I'm in a no-permit parking.

So it's it it's a catch-22.

There's a vehicle outside my house for two weeks and it only moves for street cleaning.

There's nothing I can do about it.

I the parking in the city, and hey, I got it good.

We're in the Richmond, we have it good for parking in comparison to the rest of the city.

So it's it's it's a mixed bag, and it's not gonna get any easier.

We're going to get bigger, we're going to get more dense, uh, densely populated, and basically there's going to be people moving to the to the Richmond and the sunset, the inner, the outer, and there's going to be more than two cars to, you know, there's gonna well, there's already more than two cars to each household.

Uh but it's gonna, it's this is just the new the new San Francisco.

It has to happen.

It should have happened gradually for the last few decades, and it just hasn't.

And here's where we are.

And this is the first, the first example of it.

So, Commissioner Sow.

Uh I really um second some of my I mean all my all my fellow commissioners, uh, a lot of your comments, and I actually really appreciate the this is the first one that we uh some your project applicant is utilizing our local program, which is uh like to see more of these.

Um again, I mentioned earlier we want more housing of all kinds.

And I noticed that you have two units here, are also below market rate unit, so that's a really good commitment.

I do, however, really wish that you do have a commitment to actually have it built so we can actually house families and people instead of being in as such as entitlement and then sell it.

Um as a so I really want to um make this clear that um we're all kind of watching.

Um permit has an expiration date.

So we do need to uh encourage you to grow um to build.

So thank you.

Um is it someone that wanted to maybe yeah, there may be a question that I would like to see if you have a commitment you want to come up and talk?

Yeah, yes, you can come on and speak in the microphone piece.

So I first want to say that very appreciate all the comments that um you know we received and um um I appreciate all the neighbor showing up uh here.

And it's our intention to have it built.

I just want to tell you all that.

And we're trying our um our very best because the building code is really standing in the way.

I'd appreciate you uh point out the difficulties we have.

In terms of parking, we can provide four, but because of the ADA requirement, we can only provide three.

So that's just an example of the things that we have to um consider building code is not really catching up with the the evolution we're making here if we're planning.

So, but we are we're trying to overcome all the difficulties and have a build.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate it.

I'm in support of this.

Okay.

Commissioner McGarry.

So there's a commitment to build it, and you're not gonna sell on the entitlement.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Very good commissioners.

If there's no further deliberation, there is a motion that has been seconded to approve with conditions on that motion, Commissioner McGarry.

Commissioner So.

Aye.

Commissioner Braun.

Aye.

And Commissioner President Campbell.

Hi.

So move Commissioners.

A motion passes unanimously four to zero, placing us on the final item on your agenda today, number 13, case number 2025, hyphen 010921 CUA for the property at 5300 Third Street, conditional use authorization.

Thank you.

I um star my good.

Okay.

Good afternoon, President Campbell, and members of the planning commission, Edgar Ortopesa, Planning Department staff.

This case was continued from July 9th, 2026 commission hearing to today's date.

Four use of request for a conditional use.

The project proposes a change of use within an existing 12,000 seven hundred square foot single-story commercial building located at 50 5300 3rd Street.

The applicant seeks to replace a formula formula retail tenant, Walgreens, with a new formula retail tenant, AutoZone.

No building expansion is proposed.

The scope of work is limited to a minor tenant improvement and new signage associated with auto zone.

To approve this change of use, the Plan Commission must grant a conditional use under pursuant 303, 303.1, and 786.

Autozone is a retail use.

It's not an industrial operation.

Its activities will not involve any mechanical work on vehicles.

The use is limited to the sales of automotive parts, accessories, and related goods.

The commission, as well as staff, have received a significant volume of correspondence regarding the proposal, including messages both in strong support and in opposition.

We appreciate the time and care the community members have taken to express their perspectives.

Opposition for the proposal has included letters and comments from the community, as reflected in the Bayvie CAC's letters.

The opposition centers on several key concerns.

The CAC noted that the proposal does not sufficiently advance longstanding community priorities such as expanding access to quality retail, neighborhood serving businesses, workforce development opportunities, health care services, grocery options, and cultural amenities.

They emphasize that Bayview residents consistently seek projects that contribute to a vibrant mixed use community.

The CAC expressed concerns that the proposed use offers limited benefits towards achieving these broader community goals.

The CAC encourages that the property owner and city agencies to consider alternative uses that more directly align with the community's priorities, strengthen the local economy, support local hiring, small business participation, and enhance the overall quality of life for the Bayview residents.

Support for the proposal has included letters and comments from nearby small businesses, particularly those involved in the automotive service, as well as local residences.

They note that the proposed auto zone would bring needed activity to a site that has been vacant for more than a year.

During this period of vacancy, the property has experienced excuse me.

Ongoing neighborhood challenges, including reoccurring graffiti, litter accumulation, and loitering.

Supporters emphasize that reoccupying the building with the stable daily operating commercial tenant would significantly improve site conditions, enhance the surrounding streetscape, restore consistent sense of activity, maintenance, and oversight that has been missing during the prolonged vacancy.

Public outreach.

The property owner has undertaken extensive outreach over several years to identify a viable tenant and ensure the future use of a site that aligns with both community and city priorities.

Beginning in 2020, the owners met with D10 leadership, including Supervisor Shaman Walton, and continued coordinating with his office through 2025 to explore potential city supported activation strategies.

However, no tenant opportunities emerged from these discussions.

From 2020 to 2024, the owners also worked with OEWD's small business and community affairs manager Larry McClendon on efforts to stabilize the site, exploring community mural options, tax incentives to address heightened security needs and strategies to mitigate increasing retail theft.

Following Walgreen's departure in 2025, OEW connected with the owners with Ibrahis Lee from the Office of Small Business, who conducted an on-site assessment and marketed the space to both local operators and regional prospects, including new pharmacies.

No suitable candidate was identified.

During this period, the owners also retained touchstone commercial partners for a 16-month private sector marketing effort.

And after more than five years of outreach and active searching, AutoZone emerged as the viable tenant.

Since July 9th continuance, the property owners have continued meetings with the community stakeholders.

And he recently emailed the complaining commissioners outlining those outreach efforts.

Any questions regarding the content of those outcomes of those meetings should be directed to the property owner and his family, as planning staff did not was not involved in those meetings.

Commissioners, the department finds that the project is consistent with the general plan and meets the required findings of planning code section 303 and 303.1.

There is no over concentration of a formula retail within 300 feet of the site.

And the proposed auto zone represents a citywide serving retail use that appropriate fits this transitional location between neighborhood serving districts and heavier industrial areas.

The project would not displace an existing business.

It substantially improved the condition of the property that has remained vacant for more than a year.

Reoccupying the site with a stable commercial tenant would enhance the streetscape, reduce ongoing nuisance conditions, and restore regular activity and oversight.

Importantly, the property owner has spent more than five years working closely with the city staff and agencies to identify a tenant that would complement the neighborhood and address community priorities.

AutoZone is the result of the extensive and sustained outreach effort.

For these reasons, the planning department finds that this project is necessary, desirable, and compatible with its surroundings and recommends approval.

I have one other thing to note.

Planning staff requests the opportunity to formally present an additional conditions or additional conditions should the planning commission decide to approve the proposal.

President Campbell, department staff would like to propose the following conditions.

These conditions have been reviewed in detail, are fully enforceable by the planning staff and reflect the agreements reached among all parties participating in the discussion.

Project sponsor shall collect all fluid and auto parts drop-offs inside the subject property, and the drop-off collection kiosk receptacles should be staffed and monitored by employees.

Project sponsor must screen or enclosed unsecured parking lot trash receptacles and or garbage dumpsters, dumpsters.

The proposed signage shall be pedestrian scaled and shall not include cabinet lights, internal illumination, high intensity lighting, or flashing LED lights.

The project sponsor shall work with the department staff on signage program.

That is sensitive to the surrounding community, and that blends into the adjacent commercial corridor as outlined in Article 6 of the Planning Code.

And finally, project sponsor shall incorporate a mural onto the subject property.

Project sponsor shall work with community groups under the direction of the planning department to incorporate the mural and determine its size content and material.

This mural should present on the subject property within six months of opening of the new business.

This concludes staff's presentation, and I'm available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we should hear from the project sponsor.

You have five minutes.

I'm sorry, sir.

If I if I could just add on the last bullet point regarding the conditions of approval, I've been instructed to say that we must scratch out content as part of that.

Thank you.

So that would be the project sponsor shall work with community groups under direction of the planning department to incorporate the mural and determine its size and material, not its content.

Oh no, there's no chair.

Okay.

President Campbell and Commissioners.

My name is Raj Kal and my wife, Vina Kal here.

We have owned this building for uh about 15 years.

Uh this is our family's uh nest egg, uh, family's uh savings.

Uh we have managed uh this building ourselves.

There is no property manager involved.

Um you may have received a letter from Supervisor Hubert of Alameda County, who may have mentioned that uh in his letter of support that we are not only uh a productive member of San Francisco community, but we have contributed to the economic uh vibrancy of the East Bay as well.

Uh Walgreens was going to vacate the building in 2020, and we have been looking for a tenant since 2020.

We formed a community task force and um and made Walgreens stay for five more years.

Only AutoZone came forward in six years of our research.

Uh there were few um warehouse applicate applicants that had expressed interest, but we did not pursue those opportunities because we thought that was not the proper use of the building, neither was in the was it in the interest of the neighborhood, nor was it in the interest of uh uh the guidelines that were given to us by OECD, whom we have been working very closely for the past uh six years.

So when AutoZone emerged, uh we did our own due diligence before signing up with them.

Three things stood out for us.

We we visited a number of stores, and three things stood out for us.

Each of their facility was clean and well kept from the outside and inside.

We did not go in the stock room and stuff, but we did see all the public areas.

They were very well kept.

And uh we when we spoke to staff, and most of the hires were from the local communities.

Thirdly, their employees were happy to work for AutoZone.

A lot of them had been with AutoZone for a long time.

They were not doing any auto repairs.

They were there in retail business and knew a lot more about the cars and the passion they had for their work.

And on the other side, cost of carrying empty building is very high.

I am not sure how much you are aware of that.

There is extremely high insurance costs that we have been paying for the last 18 months.

There is high maintenance cost.

Every week, large amount of garbage gets dumped in our parking lot, and we have an outside company that is regularly maintaining the parking lot and the graffiti and all that.

We, of course, have our mortgage and city taxes, property taxes that we have to pay.

Ironically, we are at the risk of getting hit by a city's commercial vacancy tax.

Therefore, they have put this commercial vacancy tax.

But how can we afford that if you would deny or delay our application or auto zone's application?

It has taken a year, actually more than a year with AutoZone to come to this point for this hearing.

If a new process has to be started, if a new tenant has to be found, it will take another year or more if any tenant is found.

So far, we have nobody in the back as a backup offer.

And what to say if there will not be more objections on that new application.

So we have spoken to a lot of people in the past 14 days.

We had voluntarily agreed to an extension, and during that time, we have been making meeting everybody.

So while we you know we have put the details in our memo uh to the commissioners.

Uh while I was sitting here listening to other applicants here, I I heard uh Commissioners say opportunities to work faster, don't delay, don't slow down, give all proper notices, and here we have we have uh a proper use of the building for proper zoning laws.

We have OEW uh OEWD blessing, we have Supervisor Walton's uh support, and we have more more importantly, we have planning department who has diligently looked at the application, has therefore approved it.

So my wife and I are here to to ask for your yes vote on this application so that we can move forward.

We still have months of work to do to get the building permits and uh and have uh autozone move in.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioners.

Uh 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.

Excuse me.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Aronde Sterling.

I'm a lifelong San Franciscan, a small business owner and vice president of the Baby Hunters Point Coordinating Council.

I understand the importance of activating vacant commercial spaces, but I believe we should be asking a much bigger question than simply how to fill an empty building.

The real question is whether this proposal represents the highest and best use of one of the most visible commercial properties in Baby Hunters Point.

For generations, Bayview community has experienced disinvestment.

Every major site that becomes available should be viewed as an opportunity to create lasting economic opportunity, not just another retail use.

Imagine if this space became a workforce development center where its residents could train for careers in the buildings, trades, health care, technology, or green energy.

Imagine a business incubator that gives local entrepreneurs affordable space to grow their companies.

Imagine a community innovation hub with classrooms, meeting space, youth mentorship programs, and resources for small businesses.

Imagine a mixed use development with housing above and neighborhood serving businesses below that creates jobs, supports local ownership, and keeps wealth circulating within our communities.

If this project moves forward, I ask the Commission to require real community benefits.

Apprenticeship opportunities, contracting opportunities for local and minority-owned businesses, partnerships with community organizations.

Those are the kinds of investments that strengthen neighborhoods and create generation generational wealth.

Baby Hunters Point deserves more than just more than projects than simply occupy spaces.

We deserve developments that invest in people, create opportunities, and leave a lasting legacy for future generations.

I respectfully ask the Commission to consider whether this proposal is truly the highest and best use of this property and to encourage a vision that reflects the full potential of our community.

Thank you.

Um daily walk.

And since this place has been vacated by Walgreens about 18 months ago, I have seen this facility deteriorate.

I have seen the garbage, it is stinky.

And when the Walgreens were there, I always felt this was a very nice neighborhood to walk into.

A little bit on auto zone.

You know, I'm I'm retired and I'm very keen on looking at the neighborhoods.

I was doing a little research on the AutoZone.

AutoZone with about 130,000 employees around the world, 7,000 retail facilities, uh has been doing phenomenally well in the stock uh market.

All the employees that they have at the retail outlets are the local employees.

And by having auto zone facility in uh on the 5300 3rd Street, we will be encouraging the local people to be hired by AutoZone.

Most of these employees at AutoZone have gained not only the wages, but have gained tremendously by the stock appreciation that has happened at the company.

I strongly would urge the Commission to look at uh approving the AutoZone facility so that we can have a vibrant and uh it there'll be a willful gain uh willful uh gain of the employment in the local community.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon all.

Uh my name is Thomas Fisher.

I have been a uh baby resident for over 12 years.

I also sit on the neighborhood's community advisory committee.

I'm pleased to be here today, so thank you for taking my time.

I'm here to urge you and plead with you to deny the proposed auto zone at the former Walgreens site.

I want to start with something you may uh that you should know that has not been visible in the materials before you.

Our community advisory committee voted 6-0 unanimously to oppose this project.

The vote was submitted, and it was buried in the documents presented in this commission.

We represent the community.

We heard from our neighbors, and their answer was unanimous.

Uh the fact belongs, this fact belongs to the center of the decision and not in a footnote.

In fact, the members of the CAC were taken quite off guard by this proposal and many actions taken behind the scenes without bringing us into the discussion.

Now let me tell you why.

Bayview Hunters Point is not in need of more automotive retail.

There are three other auto parts stores within a mile of the proposed location.

We're in a state of emergency around food security, health care access, and environmental justice, and this project ignores all three.

Let's start with food and medicine.

When Lucky closed on Bayview Plaza in November, our neighborhood lost its last full service grocery store.

A proposed auto zone would take one of our last large retail locations and effectively turn it into a warehouse for auto parts that provides little access to the public.

If you look at the proposed floor plate, which in the documents which you received, it reflects this warehouse feel.

It is a stock room that the project the project sponsor has mentioned that takes up most of the available space and not available to the residents.

In a part of the city that is overwhelmed with warehouses, this takes away another opportunity to feed its residents and provide other local and vital services our community needs.

Two-thirds of San Franciscans near live near the poverty line are already food insecure, and in a district that translates into diabetes and hypertension, high hospital hospitalization rates are one and a half to three times the citywide average.

With both neighborhood Walgreens now gone, we have zero retail pharmacies left, save the niche smaller one that was just announced.

Replacing that site with an auto parts store is a direct threat to our residents.

Then there's the environment.

Baby Hunters Point also already carries the heaviest pollution burden in San Francisco.

80% of the city's wastewater treatment, a super fun site, and a 14-year gap expect life expectancy between our neighborhood and places like Noe Valley or the Inner Sunset.

This auto zone reinforces car dependent infrastructure and a neighborhood already choking on transit related pollution.

And then let's talk about the city's own planning goals.

Transit first is supposed to prioritize walkable corridors.

Corridors.

Only one percent of our residents bike and three percent walk to work.

That is your time.

Opposed to the afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Justin Saw.

I've spent the past few weeks with merchants and residents along Third Street.

Eight months.

That's how fast this neighborhood lost two anchors.

February of 2025, the last Walgreens in Bayview Hunters Point.

November 1st, the Luckies at Bayview Plaza.

Today's agenda answers with auto parts.

Your own SAF report classifies AutoZone as a citywide serving.

In plain English, the store depends on customers from outside the neighborhood driving in.

So here's what the record ignores.

The road they drive on is scheduled to close.

The Islas Creek Bridge replacement two years.

Third Street, severed between Marin and Cargo Way.

No cars, no T third.

Every customer from the north detoured.

This commission certified that project's EIR in November.

The owner's submission describes a 15-year lease.

The closure lands within that window, and nothing here shows that auto zone's numbers can survive it.

If the store fails mid-lease, the corner goes dark again.

AutoZone says it will serve Baby's auto shops.

So I went and asked them.

Lee Autobody, Capitalire, T21, Craig's USA Auto Body, Napa, Auto Parts Store, and others all strongly oppose it.

Last fall, this commission designed Club Pilates on Valencia Street after a year and a half of vacancy.

Vacancy alone didn't decide that outcome.

The community voices did.

Bayview deserves the same say over Third Street.

Look.

Continue this item or deny it.

Bayview asks for food, medicine, and opportunity.

This item answers with motor oil.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

My name is Dr.

Chad White.

I have lived in Baby for 10 years.

I also work in local government, preparing staff reports and advising public decision makers.

So I understand the importance of an accurate record and a fair public process.

Today I ask you respectfully to deny or at least continue, pending a more complete public engagement process.

This request to convert this prominent site from a community serving retail to a new, more niche formula retail.

This is not necessarily an assessment of auto zone as a business.

It's a question about whether approving this formula retail use provides a clear public benefit in a location on a corridor where the community faces critical needs.

I do not believe this project has met this burden.

There's been work with city staff, very little with the community.

This community has demonstrated real and sustained concerns.

After two public meetings, as was just mentioned, the Bayview Citizen Advisory Committee voted unanimously six zero against this proposal because it does not advance a neighborhood's long-standing priorities around groceries, pharmacies, healthcare, neighborhood serving retail, and other daily needs.

Not a single member of the public spoke in favor of the proposal at those meetings.

The Third Street Merchants Association has declined to endorse this option because they failed to see how it will boost the local economy.

In fact, they've not been meaningfully engaged in the topic.

Not even Barb Grotter, a local business owner across the intersection from the store was engaged unless except in the last 48 hours.

As I said, this is one of the largest and most visible spaces on Third Street.

It sits on a transit corridor in a neighborhood that remains underserved compared to the rest of San Francisco.

We have three auto parts retailers already nearby, and as was just remarked, we cannot eat auto parts.

Approving this permit would not simply uh approve a new tenant.

It would permanently reduce the flexibility of the site and remove one of Baby's best opportunities to secure the kind of community serving business residents have been requesting for years.

It anchors one ends up third street.

It would emphasize suburban style driving culture instead of a walkable community that other neighborhoods enjoy.

The report describes an exhaustive tenant search.

That was all news to us.

We didn't know about this.

It does not speak about the public engagement process beyond the CAC.

The task force like the property owners don't live in the neighborhood, don't live in San Francisco.

So I kindly ask and respectfully ask that you vote no until there's a demonstrated public interest or fit with the broader economic concept or at a minimum direct planning to undertake meaningful public engagement with the landlord and with auto zone to find the correct use for this space.

Thank you.

Help us get this right.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

And I am just want to commend all of the community folks who have engaged in this process.

Two weeks ago, uh we noted about 60 letters from community folks who wanted to be involved in the process.

Since then we've got an additional 30 letters that have been submitted to you all, uh again, mostly in opposition of this project.

And so what you're hearing today and what you have seen in those letters is a neighborhood who is quite frankly sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Uh we have literally been going parcel of land by parcel of land by parcel of land, trying to fight for our existence and make the case for what we need in this neighborhood.

And so as I said two weeks ago, I'll say it again here today that we need a community and economic development plan that allows for some of the real development outcomes that we have longed for in this community for so long.

I um also want to just talk about the the the last two weeks because I think it is very um telling uh in which uh uh a property owner or a big corporation comes into a neighborhood.

Um we've held uh this discussion in public twice.

Uh the ask has been time and time again to come in front of community groups like the Bayview Merchants Association, groups like economic development on third, uh, groups like the African American Art and Culture District, uh, and those requests have been denied.

Um we talk about a long vacancy.

Uh we talk about uh the opportunity that we have, and uh my hope is that we can dream bigger for this neighborhood.

My hope is that we can literally participate and build the neighborhood that we deserve.

Um the other thing that is really disturbing to me is this environmental piece, that this neighborhood has been asked to shoulder the burden of a wastewater treatment plant, uh, of the highest concentration of industrial routes, of a garbage facility, uh, and so much more that has plagued this community.

And so we have to do better.

And I think that you are hearing this.

We're asking our city partners uh to hear what the residents have to say.

Uh in respect to auto zone.

Uh I want to see firm commitments.

Uh I I see a PowerPoint presentation that's been passed around.

Um it feels like corporate speak to me.

It feels like they are not coming into the neighborhood uh in good faith or establishing a uh uh a precedent for wanting to work with community.

I think about the environment.

Uh I think about neighborhood beautification, I think about signage, I think about design review.

All of these things I want codified uh in writing.

And so as I requested two weeks ago, uh I am hoping that you all will consider a continuance uh for 60 days until we get hard details around a good neighbor policy uh in writing uh from AutoZone and the property owners.

Thank you.

Hi, I am back again.

Hopefully, this is my last time today.

Um, I just wanted to note that over the last 20 years, two decades, I've worked on various economic development projects throughout the Bay Area that deal with commercial corridor improvement as well as mixed-use spaces, housing, et cetera.

And I just want to note that four jobs for 13,000 square foot property is not economic development.

I respectfully ask that you continue this item or denies the proposed Auto Zone 5300 3rd Street.

Today's decision is about much more than a single business.

It's about cumulative impacts of environmental justice and whether City Hall will continue its pattern of disproportionately affecting Bayview Hunter's Points without our input.

If you would please look at exhibit one, which I'm gonna show you guys on the screen.

This image is pretty much the impact of auto emission as well as um large manufacturing um businesses in the Bayview that we currently have.

As you can see, our community is saturated, overly saturated.

I'm gonna switch the image to the next picture, which will show other neighborhoods.

This is specific heights in comparison.

Wow.

And if you want to look at other parts of the city.

I've done four other neighborhoods.

So as you can see, as other people have already mentioned, we already have three auto retail large corporate entities in our community already, including over 30 others.

Commissioner, this this proposal would further concentrate automotive-oriented commercial uses within San Francisco's Southeast sector, within roughly two miles of the society.

Numerous collision repair facilities, smog stations, tire shops, and none of them are planning on buying anything from AutoZone, as the previous speaker spoke about.

The issue before you is not whether AutoZone is a good business.

The issue is whether the neighborhood should continue to receive another automotive serving business while other commercial corridors receive grocery stores, pharmacies, neighborhood retail and community serving investments.

San Francisco's Justice, San Francisco Planning Commission's environmental justice framework recognizes that neighborhoods are already burdened by environmental hazards should not continue to receive a disproportionate share of land uses that reinforce those burdens.

Environmental justice requires us to look beyond the single application consider the cumulative effect of decades of planning and decisions.

First of all, I did not know the property owner did not live in Bayview Hunters Point.

And I just want to address one thing the property owner said that it was only AutoZone who came.

And AutoZone told us why they came to Bayview Hunters Point.

They said they've been targeting the this market, not a community.

They've been targeting the Bayview Hunters Point market for a very long time.

So I just wanted to say that uh there's 20,000 pounds of illegal dumping a day in Bay Viehunters Point that the city refuses to do anything about.

So suddenly dumping is a problem.

Um but more importantly, you know, just you know, other speakers have uh talked about why they should not be there, but purely from urban planning point of view, which is you know uh uh you know, I I see that that's your uh four days that the Southeast sector has a lot of auto body shops and auto pot shop.

So uh but the rest of the city, particularly the western and northern part of the cities like Presidio and Pack Heights, they don't have auto autobot shop.

Okay?

So if you're an urban planner, that's what you should be looking at.

We have O'Reilly.

If you approve this, what you will be telling us is that we should accommodate a you know a corporation who feels entitled to set up shop in Bay View Hunters Point, where there are a lot of other, including local auto port stores.

So I am not sure uh for me, I I personally feel like this is a waste of your time.

I don't know why the staff even brought this to you if you're purely looking at from a planning point of view.

There are a lot of stores there, including local stores.

This is a waste of your time and if you must approve this then I really forgive me I don't understand like if you have to approve the staff's recommendation then I I'm failing to see the point of the planning commission.

So I respectfully request you to reject this there's no need for this I welcome you to Baby Hunters Point.

And come check it out.

Please uh reject this proposal thank you hello my name is um Nick Hill call I'm uh um Vina and Roger's son and I think I there have been numerous amount of things I've heard today that have been getting lost in translation so I just wanted to kind of try and come up here to help clarify some things.

Some one of the speakers earlier had mentioned something about this being a standard for the baby area.

And I think I just one thing that really has stuck out to me because it's as my dad mentioned it's kind of our family nest egg so I've been very involved in this process and I think setting the for San Francisco as a whole I think setting the standard of that making it so difficult and for these businesses to come and kind of almost making it very difficult sets a dangerous precedent to any future business that wants to come in or developer that wants to come develop or kind of to see any real impact here I think to to put it bluntly I think it sets a dangerous precedent that is gonna kind of scare a lot of big developers and a lot of big companies from coming here and um I think a really um fitting quote for this is um I think it's a rising tide lifts all boats and I think that applies here because yes auto zone isn't the dream store for this location and for this neighborhood right now but I think with the investment that um auto zone is providing I think it will encourage a lot of other businesses to come in and be like hey look at them they're doing well we should come here too so I think it's not it's not necessarily the should I word this um it's not exactly the most ideal retail retailer to go in the space but I think in the long run I think it'll be beneficial to the Bay community um yeah and I think continuance or in my personal opinion I don't think I know some previous speakers have mentioned a continuance I don't know what continuance of 60 days would do when we've been looking for six years um personally I don't know where we're just gonna find magically a grocery store or pharmacy or whatever I don't know what's supposed to come of that.

Yeah that's all I have to say thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon Evangela um is my name I am born and raised in Bayview Hunters Point um also a board member of the Bayview Hunters Point coordinating council.

Okay.

So I'm just gonna if you call it DT and if you call it the Southeast corridor a lot of us call it Indian basin you gotta be a particular age to know what Indian basin is let me be clear.

Bayview Hunters Point we are not for sale okay so some of the previous um people on auto zone side and the family um who owns the space what I would say is if you're talking about a standing standard and you said y'all have been working this out for six years where was the community in all of that and what I mean by that is there was nothing anywhere near the old Walgreens except for when it was time for us to do a hearing and I'm talking about the two weeks ago hearing um I just want to make it clear that I am not only an organizer I am also um a person who loves to talk about things that will make this place better i.e my own home when I say born and raised I mean born and raised went to school and came right back didn't miss a beat.

When Walgreens closed, it has been really hard on this community.

It is still being really hard on this community.

The fact that auto zone autozone, no disrespect to them, but the fact that they try to swoop in is a problem.

When we're talking about food insecurity, okay.

If we had and I'm I'm saying myself, I will help the owners figure out who else could be a part of this conversation.

And if they feel like the 60 days or 90 days is not enough, how about we just cut it?

No auto zone, and you figure out what the communities help.

My hand is there, and I'm saying it in a public forum where it will be on record that I myself and other people in the community born and raised will help make sure that we get a proper use for it.

I would say um, I don't know a safe way, um, grocery outlet, something that has that's actually gonna help the community and not harm the community.

We do not need another auto zone or another auto part store.

We actually need things that are going to help the community thrive.

Once again, Bayview Hunter's Point is not for sale.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Tiffany Carter.

I am a fourth generation Bayview native.

I come from a family of Bayview homeowners with deep roots in Bayview.

I am also a member of the San Francisco Planning Equity Council for the last five years, and I hope that is not in vain.

I hope that my voice is valuable today and that it carries value.

I understand that this um auto zone is uh family asset, but Bayview is our cultural asset.

It is an African American cultural district.

We are here because this is about whether this is the highest and best use for one of the most important gateway sites into Bayview.

I was all I also want to recognize that the CAC again unanimously voted against this proposal, reflecting the community's belief that this does not align with the long-term vision for Third Street for the corridor.

I hope that our voices again is valued.

As planners, you guys are planners, architects.

You know that planning and design are among the most powerful tools to shape communities.

They influence public health, economic opportunity, climate resistance resilience, mobility, and quality of life for generations.

As the mother of a University of Southern California grad student at the Price School of Urban Planning, straight out of Bayview, that wants to come home and ride her bike.

When you guys just talked about the future and where we're going, AutoZone is the past, unless I I've yet to hear um the future of autozone, but like nobody we're we're not doing that.

Planners are taught.

Hold on, I lost my place.

Planners are taught to think beyond today's vacancies and towards the best use of land.

A temporary vacancy is a challenge.

A challenge, a permanent land use decision-shaped neighborhood for generations.

We would like some discretion as the same discretion as the Club Pilates.

I read that article because I love Club Pilates, and I couldn't believe that you guys didn't pass that.

San Francisco has adopted a transit first policy, a climate action plan, and a zero vision zero, zero emissions.

Bayview has some of the highest documented asthma rates in San Francisco.

Just last month, I spent the entire weekend in ICU at UCSF Mission Bay because my nephew, a baby kid, had a severe asthma attack.

Okay.

So when we talk about environmental and health challenges, it's not a talking point, it's not a tool to use to vote things in our favor.

It is a very documented thing in Bayview.

We hope that you guys will grant a continuance.

This needs more time.

It needs more time.

Ultimately, we don't want autozone.

I think we've been loud and clear about that.

I think if nobody is showing up except autozone, I think that also says a lot.

We have proximity, emission Bay, Golden State Warriors, we can do better.

Thank you.

Last call for public comment.

Again, you need to come forward.

If you're with AutoZone, I think you have a financial interest.

So you should have been you should have been given your comments under the project sponsors time, including the family member that spoke.

Final last call for public comment.

Seeing none public comment is closed, and this matter is now before you, Commissioners.

Commissioner McGarry.

This is a heartbreaker.

You know, I work out of D10, Hunter's Point, whatever you want, whatever we want to call it, go back to the butcher town, you know, whatever, whatever generation we are, we want to go.

Yeah, it's auto zone.

It's uh your national uh brand, you see a market and you're like you're the car version of Starbucks.

You know, I get I get it, people have their life.

Your corporate, it's a market at speak, it's corporate speak, basically you move.

I don't know if you knew Islas Creek is gonna shut down, and when it does, it's gonna shut down for two years, I believe, you know.

Uh I know that because we just built our new hall in Hunters Point and Third and Cargo will be one block the other side of that bridge.

So we'll be cut off as well.

Um it's also private property, you know.

It's not a co-op, it's private property.

And basically the people who own it uh need to rent it.

And it would appear they tried to rent it for quite some time.

They had the power of the city to try and help them, OEWD.

Uh I know they work hard and I know they didn't sit on their hands and just basically do nothing for the length of time they were working on it.

So we are we are where we are.

Uh so there's Odazone.

You're not I might ask you to come up and talk because I've been told there's been 25 jobs up to that will be will be incorporated with this.

With that, local hire, unfortunately, from construction point of view, will not be part of this because I don't think you would build anything uh union anywhere, um which I find odd because you are international and you're corporate.

Uh but the bottom line is the bottom line.

So then we're left to the people local hire within the community that you say you're gonna hire, and you're nodding your head as I'm talking, so I'm assuming that is the case.

Um you're gonna team up with the aircraft maintenance uh department at City College on Evans campus.

Is that a possibility for a pipeline or of workers?

I see you're nodding your head, so that's that's a possibility.

That's actually on the cards.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's young people within the community basically working in your store that are gaining skills and also going to school with cooperation with and partnership with AutoZone, the community and city college to train people going forward.

Yeah?

That is a good that is a commitment.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then basically they're asking for approvable conditions on top of that.

So we've got training, but we also there's oil use and collection.

Uh basically conditions include uh open and transparent all use collection logs, and that would be logged so we know what's coming in.

And more importantly, disposal logs, and we know what's going out on that too, because that's really important for this community that basically you heard all everything.

Um I get the community's anger.

There's been a flurry of activity in the last week into our emails as well, in support of this from the community.

Uh more so a lot more than actually against it.

Uh I really thought the continuance two weeks ago uh would basically do good.

Uh it it would appear that something did happen because we're in a better position now with a commitment for training and a commitment to partnership for training to with City College and the aircraft maintenance department are there.

And then I can't help but go back a few months and realize that basically SFO, we are going to build a new air uh maintenance mechanic division out there.

We had people here complaining about that.

They didn't want to see it.

Uh I could see the possibility of jobs and basically bringing uh mechanic maintenance for aircraft back to SFO.

Uh it's not the shipyards coming back, but it's the equivalent of the aviation equivalent of those jobs coming back because they're they're they're not here now, you know.

But there is a possibility.

I see possibilities down the line of this being a pipeline, a very miniature one, but a pipeline of a group of people, an ecosystem people that actually basically get the hands-on training and the stock, the stocking here, the educational training and city college, and then basically move move over to SFO in as maintenance mechanics down the road.

I see possibilities where there's none right now, and there hasn't been any for 18 months, and it would appear there's none going back further than that.

So is it perfect?

No.

Nothing's perfect.

You know?

Nothing's perfect.

And worse than that, they're gonna cut us off when they when they shut down that bridge.

That's gonna be an issue for them too, because that market is is not going to be uh as flourishable as basically they uh as they thought when they when they add when they ink that lease.

So it's a pickle.

Uh it's ours.

It's basically it's the neighborhoods.

Uh we have to basically do what we need to do to basically get out of whatever situation it is.

Yeah, it's a perfect scenario.

It's a perfect job.

It's a gateway site.

But nobody wants it.

Nobody's want and we have to figure out why.

You know, what do we do to create opportunities that basically uh there should be ten people lining up for that?

And again, it's private pro it's private property.

They choose who they lease to.

The community doesn't.

I can't.

I can't tell the store across the road from my house who they're gonna rent to when the lease goes out.

It's private property.

I just don't have that.

It's not a co-op.

I don't have I can complain about it, but I can't ultimately I can't say you cannot rent to this person.

You can only rent to this person.

You know?

So it I think that's not you can approve the right.

Folks, folks, you're you're out of order at this moment in time.

That is false.

We have we're in a situation here where basically nothing is happening and nothing's been happening for God knows how long.

Uh basically there's either activation or it stays it stays the way it is.

But if it stays the way it is, it's just getting worse.

That pro that property is not getting any better day by day.

It's not good.

It's not we're not in a good spot.

We can you know, we're really not in a good spot here.

And people are not like we're not living in an we're not in a c an economy where basically there's ten tenants to actually pick from.

Uh they're gonna activate the situation and basically what we're gonna do is we're gonna try and work with them to see what we can use the uh possibly use this as a stepping stone to actually better the situation going forward.

Or we do nothing and we just sit there, you know.

It's uh the the shipyard shut down in the eighties, you know.

It's it's a failure.

Well, the the Navy pulled out, you know, and things went it went into decline.

This is but bit by bit we have to basically we have to we have to get ourselves out of this.

I want to see the opportunity in this, you know.

I want to see growth, I want to see things actually turn around for the better, not just stay in stagnation.

So I'm I'm I'm gonna ask that comments from the gallery, please.

I'm not I'm not allowed to have a conversation back and forth.

So I'm gonna try and tee it over to uh one of my one of my fellow commissioners.

Thank you.

Commissioner, so thank you.

This is uh thank you for everyone to come out here and um also two weeks ago you were here and a lot of efforts, a lot of many years of um struggles, and I had to give appreciation to my planning staff, Eggert, actually carrying that torch to try to help to revitalize Third Street.

Um I've been to Third Street many times and through the pandemic and also all these recent years.

It is coming along, it could be better, but having blight on the street, personally, I don't feel safe.

And that's simple as that.

And recently I do recognize that the auto zone or the actually the Walgreen site has started to have encampment on the lot, and it's a challenge.

Like we live there, you don't.

All right, I'm gonna ask that the gallery please stop.

I don't want to be here.

Interrupting our commissioners.

Otherwise, we're gonna have to clear the room.

All right, and I don't want to have to do that.

Let's respect the process, please.

May I continue?

Yes, please.

Thank you, Commissioner.

So it is a huge property.

So it's not really easy to find a tenant that can fit in there.

And it is owned by just a family.

It is a challenging situation, and no one wants to be in today's world, right?

There's an Walgreen left and then left our community.

Your community without the um formula retail pharmacies.

But I'm also aware of that there's a new pharmacy coming up nearby that is actually closer to some of the major senior homes that allow them to have more convenient access to get their pharmacy fills.

One of them actually can just go down to the elevator and then there's the new pharmacy store.

And there are four grocery stores in along the Third Street corridor.

And I also recognize that this packet, I think it's coming from the AutoZone comp people.

I might want to ask you to explain to me a little bit about what is your store selling, because I do like that you have the free recycling services for community available to the community.

So I guess before I keep going on some of the community benefits, I might want to can AutoZone, do you mind come over here and I want to ask you a question?

Yes, it is.

Commissioner can ask questions from the public comment.

Explain to us what is your store provide.

Oh I'm sorry.

So it's a quick introduction.

My name is Vince Vinya.

I am the uh regional manager for AutoZone.

Um I cover from Berkeley down to the Fresno area to include Oakland and San Francisco.

This is Erica, our environmental specialist.

Okay.

That works for us as well.

So what do we provide?

We provide, and I have it on the slideshow if you're more than welcome to see it, but uh we provide jobs, we provide service.

If you're talking about commodities within the location, we also provide um the for the do-it-yourself customer.

What that means is when someone comes to an auto zone, um, we're not always we're not really there for leisure, we're there because something happened to someone's car.

And we've trained what we call auto zoners to help those um customers get through that process.

We're also like um they said earlier, we are retail, we do no mechanics.

So we don't do any of that.

So I don't know, a lot of the times because of our name, uh it sounds as if we're kind of a shop, we're not.

Oh, so you're selling parts?

Yes, we sell parts.