Remarks by Lydia So
112 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 5
- Play at 53:16
“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.”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 54:07
“So there's no square footages actually tied into the requirement of POPOs?”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 55:04
“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.”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 55:38
“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...”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 56:42
“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.”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 57:28
“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.”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 58:45
“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?”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 59:56
“OK. Thank you. That kind of concludes all my questions, so thank you. Commissioner Koppel?”
Planning Commission · Sep 10, 2026
- Play at 5:07
“I think Sarah wanted to talk about this a little bit in her director's report, but I just want to report back that this past, was it this past weekend? It's just Saturday. It feels so long ago already. Saturday, with the planning staff and myself, we attended the second inaugural Chinese housing summit, all in Cantonese, and it's out in TECHNICALLY THAT IS WHAT DISTRICT WAS THAT. ANYWAY, THE WEST SIDE. SUPERVISOR ELLEN WAS REMINDING ME THAT'S NOT HIS DISTRICT BUT IT WAS A BLOCK AWAY FROM THE OTHER NEIGHBORING DISTRICT. ANYWAY, IT WAS A GREAT DIALOGUE THAT WE HAD CONDUCTED LIKE FOUR DIFFERENT…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 47:22
“I really appreciate everyone, our staff, Supervisor Mendelman's office and Supervisor Mahmoud's office. And actually, specifically, I would really like to send my appreciation to Maggie and her team under the direction and leadership of Richard Sucre. I know like citywide survey is not a new thing. Citywide survey stemmed before COVID and it was We have very limited resource to conduct a very fast-paced citywide survey and also there were priority geography prioritizing neighborhood that has been systematically historically underserved to actually take on those survey. So you might have not…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 52:31
“Okay. So thank you for that. So it sounds like it might still happening depending on if they somehow, the property owner somehow missed the mail or the address is sent to somewhere. Okay. So then it's kind of lead to me, I really want to make sure that we have a very fair process. It is kind of, This is a double-edged sword, but I do want to have more conscientious outreach to specifically property owners that they fully aware of that this is actually even being considered instead of during that public notification hearing which has a running clock. Because I personally, like some of my…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 55:14
“Yeah, that would be really good to add that as a recommendation from our body because lately, as we all know, whether you're renters or homeowners, it's really not that easy to actually get your home insurance. And I was told and aware that some of these extra landmarking will trigger the inability for the property owners. I'm not talking about just homeowners, but like just property owners to actually getting their property insurance. or they just got dropped. So, it's not a very fancy time of San Francisco. I just don't want to add more to any property owner if we can avoid that. But in…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:04:15
“Thank you. I really appreciate that very I would say juicy, but very informative, detailed explanation of all the nuances. I hope that it really also demystifies it a lot to the general public. However, it's in the spirit of really making sure that every one of us and my peers and my supervisors had the same information that they get so that they can make an informative decision when they cast their vote is very important. It's paramount. I'm not asking to go down the rabbit hole, but it's more just like with an assumption of the baseline zoning that we have. And this is the site that would…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:05:20
“I propose to strike down the nomination process to have the specifically call out cultural or preservation organization because they are practically Because does anyone, anyone who can breathe and human being can, like a legal age, I would assume, can nominate the initiation of landmarking? So any given special group? Yeah, I propose to do that, and I also propose to have that intentionally seek owner's consent on the property, and also... at the baseline zoning information to the historic preservation nomination proposal. Just the baseline, the one that we already have, like easily available.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:07:14
“Well, I mean, no, I think it would be a recommendation because pretty much the historic preservation destination would not really come in front of the planning commission. So the time that we have to specifically ask for it is more like then become a reactive than proactive. It's my purpose of this is actually being more of a proactively tell all the policy makers to have the same information. at the beginning, not like at the end, like, oh, can you show us what if this project A, if we become landmark, then what are the potential tradeoffs? I wanted to kind of like when any project that we…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:10:01
“Similar, but except that supervisor's recommendation has been disregarded at what level, right?”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:11:05
“Well, partially true. I do not like to have our planning commissioner review landmark destination. I would like to keep it the way it is. It's as a recommendation from our fellow amazing historic preservation commissioners that it's not where I'm going at. I just want to, in the spirit of reading Supervisor Mahmoud's letter and their recommendations recommendations, and also just sitting as a former Historic Preservation Commissioner with the experience of looking at it, how can we better be informed of all the all the costs and consequences of our voting on a given project to be landmark or…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:15:16
“To me, yes, but I would like to open my floor to the rest of my planning commissioner after hearing my really, I don't want to hoard the whole spot here. I'm going to pass it. To me, it is, but it's just in understanding. I know that there are also, we can do more, but that's just for now. That's where I stand.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:28:20
“I THINK YOU MIGHT WANT TO JUST CONSOLIDATE THEM AND MAKE ONE NEW MOTION TO HAVE THESE THINGS IN IT. MAYBE OTHER COMMISSIONERS LIKE TO VOICE THEIR OPINION.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 1:57:50
“Do you mind if I kind of elaborate a little bit why I kind of feel like this is more like meeting the middle? meeting the common ground of there's a desire to be more informative about how we vote on any given property to landmark the property. And the way it is now, Only very few really industry expert can immediately know where to look for these baseline zoning information or special interest group that know how to do it. And if the governing body has a very different diverse group of expertise, that might not be necessarily historic preservation driven. So we don't have a way to share with…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 2:02:21
“That would be really nice. Yeah, that would be really nice. In addition to this, yes.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 2:02:32
“Yeah, because it's giving us like in a layman language term of what it could be, right?”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 2:03:03
“OKAY. I THINK THE POINT, THE MESSAGE REALLY ENCROSSED THAT WITH THIS MOTION.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 2:03:48
“I don't mean to cut you off, but that's the point here is we are talking about amending planning code. So, it's not, and then there's no interest for us to go in deep with like your specifically landmarking any single property, but we're talking about we have, my understanding is like the planning commission has a jurisdiction responsibility to anything that amending the planning code. And today what's asked in front of us today is a recommendation for proposal to amend planning code. So, again, would like to appreciate being something more proactive than reactive on case-by-case. I really…”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026
- Play at 2:18:17
“Asking people to show up to a hearing is very different than asking a property owner to actually give his consent. So I think we'll refer to the people who had trained as lawyers to add that into our code language. I just want to chime in. This is speaking of experience as well. I've seen so many owners come in front of me and said, I don't want this, and you still make me do it. And I really do not want to see that happen again as much as we could. That's many times I've seen it.”
Planning Commission · Sep 3, 2026