Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Commissioner McDonald. So thank you, Tate, and others for working on this. And it seems to me like this is a really straightforward proposal to align disparate elements of the codes that people have to deal with. And it seems to me that The proposed modification that staff is making makes a lot of sense because it aligns it better than the original proposal did. So I don't have any questions for you, but just to thank you for your thoughtful analysis of it and providing us with this modification. Thank you.

Thanks to Supervisor Mahmoud's office. And I've worked with TAPE before at TBI. It's refreshing to already see some of the positive results of Working together at times, you know, there's been a little confusion or misalignment between the two departments with a gray area to kind of like, you know, point fingers about. So it's good to see we're kind of lining things up to work a little more efficiently. So I'm very supportive. I'd move to approve.

Second. Anything else, Commissioner Coppel?

Welcome, Tate. Really happy to see how we actually work together in proactively than reactively. So welcome. My question is relating to working with making sure that there are areas that are inconsistent between a planning code and building code. Now, with this proposal from Supervisor Mahmoud, you have been skillfully using some of the exemptions in the building code that can actually make this more aligned just for particular use, in this case is retail.

So would you say it benefit a lot of the commercial corridors?

OK. I'm in support of this, and I think it's a really good step forward. And I would like to ask, what about the PDR districts with a lot of lift work loft?

So I would like to add just a recommendation to look into the PDR districts and the uses of work. So I think that will be benefiting a lot of residents and also live and work in their space. That might be helpful, just as a consideration. I'm supportive of this.

I think that's it. Ready to take a vote, Jonas?

This one I'm excited for. Construction back, new construction back in downtown San Francisco. It's been missing for a while. Residential units, basically retail, restaurant, laboratory, R&D, office. Basically, this project is, and then the local hire on top of it. I hope it's not just a... fleeting local hire. I hope there's teeth in it. Basically, I would like to see local people actually build the community. This one is great, and this could be the start of many more to come, and it's exciting to see it because basically we've been struggling on the outside construction-wise for the last fiv

Yeah, just one question for the architect. Is the lighting on the top of the building serving as the art?

Okay, great. I also think this is a great project downtown. Revitalization still needs to be a large priority. It's again like the intersection of jobs, business, commerce, and not just the the people constructing the job temporarily, but also the full-time employment of everyone who will be working in the office afterwards. And don't forget those local contracting businesses that will also be dispatching and employing those workers. This location is definitely appropriate. This is where the office belongs. This type of transit-oriented development is just going to put more riders on Muni. I'm

Hi. Thank you for this presentation. I appreciate the efforts that have gone into this project and the work between the developer and the designer and the staff to craft a project that I think is really well considered. And I appreciate the presentation that you gave today because it added a bit more to my understanding of the project. So I did have a few questions for the architect. So the block of Ecker Street that this project is going to design and manage, that's such a key link all the way from Market Street to the Salesforce Park. And obviously, it's a link that has been pretty rough for

OK, thank you. I appreciate that answer. I do have another question, but I think it's very appropriate to be using the landscaping in this case to help introduce that human scale. So I'm glad that that's what you were talking about. And my other question, if I may, has to do with Jessie Street and the pedestrian realm along Jessie Street. So that long row of the roll-up doors at the loading docks is unfortunate for the public realm. It's the only way I can think to say it. So I understand that the mid-block location of the site and the narrowness of Jesse Street creates some really big constra

Yes, I appreciate those constraints, and thank you, and I hope that whatever efforts can be made as you continue to do the design development to make it even more pedestrian-friendly would be, I think, very welcome for the

pedestrian realm. That's it for my comments. Great comments. Thanks, Commissioner McDonald. Commissioner So?

Thank you. I second and echo all my fellow commissioners' great positive remarks. I'm not going to repeat them, but I just say they're great. Thanks for making those statements. I wanted to have basically two other questions that I have. One, maybe the easiest one is relating to Popo's, or maybe perhaps the architect can answer that. Hi, Mark. Hi. And so just my understanding is that you're requesting to use the entire plaza area, not the entire one, but like all the Popo's access is on the ground floor, and none of it is happening in any of the sky lounges or rooftops.

And so in your current proposed schemes, the alleyway is vehicle access, right?

Oh, okay, so that kind of probably, I really appreciate your answer to that, because I'm looking at your vehicle diagram, so circulation and site access diagram. That's what I was not sure what the orange-ish dash arrow line is along the alleyway.

And then the dash one that is in the alleyway with the two rows of trees. Yeah.

And also notice that that's actually outside your property line.

So what is the extent of your proposals that you propose that actually meet the requirement of our proposed square footage requirement for the size of your building?

So is it, I'm just trying to get my self understanding, so you're counting your POPOs, part of it is actually outside of your property line? But that's actually not yours, so how could you count that?

Thank you, Rebecca. So with that regard, you had already reached out to, like, MTA and DPW and I don't know who else is part of this.

So there's no square footages actually tied into the requirement of POPOs?

Thank you, Rebecca. This is much more clear. I wish it was in that little table one. Then I don't have to put you out here to ask this question. It's good to hear that one version is closer to meeting the requirement. The other one seems like it's meeting, anyway, I can't do the math right now.

And then while you're here, that kind of dovetailed me to the next questions of what come in front of us today is make a motion to approve one of these options or just...

Your recommendation, the staff recommendation, is with the office allocation of that $555,390 square foot. Yes. And that would get them to be able to use both in your table. However, the project sponsor shows very strong interest to get the $813,214 square foot. That's correct. For 100% commercial.

It's good to clarifying it and also for anyone who are interested in the project can get a better clarity of what are we talking about and what are we doing here. I would probably like to have a question to the project sponsor. I would like to hear maybe the people who funded this. I'll spare the architect for now. How do you, can you explain to us, like, why do you really, really need the 800,013 square foot? What are the challenges or upside? Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Brendan. Maybe I just have one more question before you move away. I don't want to make you walk back and forth. For the other versions, you get to build shorter or slightly shorter, and then you also have about over half a million square foot. How likely would that project be able to actually shuffle ready?

OK. Thank you. That kind of concludes all my questions, so thank you. Commissioner Koppel?

So I'm correct. Reckon Park did approve or bless the shadow findings. Yeah.

Great. I was going to ask maybe Mr. Kevlin to just give us a little context on maybe office allocation has a little bit of a stigma in kind of the sense that way too much often vacancy. Is there a way you could maybe come up and just put this topic into context a little bit? I myself track a lot of the leasing activities. There's been... a big uptick in leasing primarily smaller firms with AI companies. But I have heard from a number of leasing brokers that the larger tenant leases are starting to materialize. Do you have, like, this isn't your only client. Do you have a sense of just where of

Thank you. Yeah. With that said, I again do want to acknowledge these developers take on a lot of risk. I don't know how many years they've been putting into the project already and how much money they've already spent to get just here today. So I want to approve both the variance and the full amount of office allocation. I was going to move to approve item A.

And item B and C. And that's for the staff recommended amount of allocation?

No, I wanted to recommend the full amount.

Is that correct? 813, I think, whatever it is.

That is not the staff recommendation. Yeah.

Thank you, President. Just one, going back to the POPOs, sorry, there's a lot of questions about the POPOs. So there is one section that is, and this, I don't know if this is a staff or a project sponsor architect question, but there's a, the section that is Jesse Street, it's a public right-of-way, so that is going to be public access 24 hours. Is that correct? Okay, I see nods. The section that is on the property, the section that is on the property, are there any conditions on the hours for that POPOs?

Thank you. And what are those, just for the record?

OK. Thank you. Great. For the item, I don't know if there's anybody on staff who can talk about the office allocation currently. I know that the commission recently approved changes to the process. And so I think trying to forecast what that allocation will be coming up and and also giving staff some time to maybe explain like their reasoning for for their recommendation for the 555 sorry the 555 000 and um and just the and looking ahead because i think also in the staff report it says that there are there are currently applications requesting more than two million what exactly is that how how

Thank you. This is very enlightening. And I think as a reminder, and I'm sorry I didn't request this beforehand, because of the changes to Prop M in 2020, I think this year's Prop M allocation was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 square feet. It was less. And so by asking for 800, by asking to increase the allocation from 555 to 800,000, then that is essentially one to two years of probably future allocation that we'd be authorizing and we would not have available to us in the future.

Thank you. Yes, so I think in my head what I'm trying to think of is if we, so the staff recommendation is just rounding 555,000. If the motion by Commissioner Koppel is 813,000, so if we draw down all of our office allocation, it would take It would take some time to refill it back to where, if we took the staff recommendation, we would have 260, roughly. And if we drew it all the way down to zero, it would take us at least one year, maybe much longer to even get back to that same level of of square footage, right? Plus revocations, plus whatever else might happen. Is that?

if that makes sense. So to repeat what I've heard, I think in terms of net new allocation, I think one number I heard was this fall, October, we will get somewhere around $200,000. But actually, because of these prior commitments, it's actually more like net new $20,000.

Understood. Thank you. Sure. Thank you to staff. My one question about the POPOs, I'm inclined to support the staff recommendation. The motion, I think, currently by Commissioner Koppel is to modify it with the $800,000. I am disinclined to support that at this time, but I'm open to hearing the rest of the commission.

Thank you. Yeah, my knee jerk reaction is to also support the motion. But I appreciate all of the added insight and the careful math that's happening. I think one challenge is we don't get to see that math. But we sort of abstractly know that it's happening right in terms of the revocations and all of the gymnastics that are happening behind the scenes. I guess one question. So in that sense, I want to make sure that we're not in a position very soon when 50 Main Street comes before us and we have emptied the kitty. So I guess one question I have is around what a project like this has to go th

Yeah, that helps. This project otherwise has my full support for all of the reasons that we've discussed today. I mean, this is an enormous investment in downtown, and I think Eckhart is such a gift. Back to the city, the Popos, everything about this. As much as I would love to grant the 813, I do respect the math and time that's been put into the recommendation that staff's put forward. So I would support the staff recommendation be put into a motion. Commissioner McDonald?

Yes, I just wanted to discuss one more thing. It's really for the record. So I want to make sure that my understanding about Ecker Street is correct, that this is not a street vacation. And even though it's called a popos, in fact, so that's privately owned public open space. That's what that stands for. In fact, it's really a... PMPOS, which is a privately managed public open space that the developer will manage for the life of the project. So I wanted to verify that my understanding is correct, and then also to ask the question, will Ecker remain open 24 hours, even though it's considered to

I'll move to a move for the staff recommendation. Do I need to say all the downtown project, all the stuff? No. Okay. Move to approve the staff recommendation. Is there a second?