Archive for the ‘Zoning’ Category
Board of Supervisors Hears Appeal of 299 Valencia
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| 299 Valencia, present and future; courtesy of www.299valenciastreet.com. |
San Francisco is a transit-first city — officially, at least, according to its Charter — which means that actions taken by the city government, where they are related to transportation issues at all, should promote and prioritize public transit above driving. Given this background assumption, one might think that the Planning Commission would be disinclined to approve the inclusion of extra parking (beyond the stipulated limits) in development projects that it reviews. But the opposite is often the case, which forces citizens to step up to the plate and speak to the benefits of structuring planning decisions around people rather than automobiles. This particular defect of the Planning Commission is one that we have discussed here before, in the context of Folsom Street. The latest episode in the parking battle saga was fought yesterday over seven parking spaces at 299 Valencia, a 36-unit mixed use project slated for a surface parking lot at 14th and Valencia Streets. The five-story project provides four BMR units and about 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. The project is located on the very edge of the Market/Octavia Plan area, on land zoned NCT-3, and the site carries a maximum parking ratio of 0.5, or one parking stall per two units. 18 residential parking stalls would be allowed as of right, but the proposal contained 27 residential parking stalls so that the units would be more marketable to high-end buyers. The additional parking requires a conditional use (CU) authorization. In November 2008, the Planning Commission did unanimously grant a CU, on the condition that two of the 27 stalls be changed to car share spots, leaving 25 residential stalls. This falls within the 0.75 ratio permitted under the CU scenario. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA), which was a key player during Market/Octavia planning, has been a voice for limiting parking and promoting walkable neighborhoods. HVNA filed an appeal (joined by a number of individuals and local organizations, including the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Livable City) shortly after the CU was granted, and the appeal was finally heard by the new Board of Supervisors and its new President, David Chiu. In the end, the Board failed to collect the eight votes necessary to disapprove the Planning Commission’s conditional use (the vote was 7-4, with Supervisor Maxwell aligning with the six members of the progressive alliance).
Eight Years, Four Neighborhoods
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| Courtesy of SF Planning Dept. |
I have mentioned the ongoing rezoning plan of San Francisco’s Eastern Neighborhoods a number of times here before, although somewhat tangentially. Eastern Neighborhoods amends the General Plan to include four new neighborhood plans that refresh outdated zoning in the Mission District, East South of Market, Showplace Square/Potrero Hill, and the Central Waterfront. The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan is chock-full of discussion over exactions, affordable housing, transit-oriented development, and industrial land use. Some heights are increased while others are decreased, but at the end of the day, the plan strikes a precarious balance between increasing housing supply and creating dense, urban mixed use neighborhoods, while minimizing displacement and preserving space to support production, distribution, and repair (PDR) jobs. My intention, for literally months now, was to do more indepth posting on Eastern Neighborhoods, but the upshot is that I delayed posting too long, for at yesterday’s December 9 meeting, the Board of Supervisors — after a last-ditch squabble, and with a couple issues pending further discussion — gave the Eastern Neighborhoods its final 10-0 blessing. So how is it that the Supes managed to finally pass this thing before we got around to giving it the air time it deserves? I can only say, somewhat sheepishly, that while time available for blogging is in short supply, the topics to blog about are not; I do hope to get into more details about the implications of the plan later, post-hiatus, probably in smaller chunks or in the context of specific projects. The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan has formally been the subject of planning and community discussion for eight years, culminating in months worth of hearings at the Planning Commission and at the Board of Supervisors. While it may not be perfect — and no plan will ever satisfy everyone, no matter how thorough a review process it gets – we can, at least, finally say that it is done. With four neighborhood plans in place, previously stalled projects may finally come to fruition; and we can redirect our attention towards the transformation of the Plan area over the next couple of decades, to ensure that the zoning controls translate into neighborhoods that are at once dense and livable.
Excessive Parking Creeps Up Folsom Street
900 Folsom and 260 Fifth, two mixed-use projects that are currently up for consideration, would occupy adjacent parcels South of Market, at the corner of 5th and Folsom Streets, with the northern edge of the project just one-half block south of the new Intercontinental Hotel. Together, they promise 466 homes and 10,396 square feet of ground level retail, with spacious 19-foot ceilings for the retail storefronts. (I did not bother to add the renderings to this post, but if you are interested, you can check out this PDF, which has design details.) The two projects combined intend to pursue a LEED Gold rating, and the project website is eager to point out the many green benefits of the buildings. The graphics on the project website emphasize the plethora of nearby transit options, including pictures of a Breda LRV, a BART train, and an F-Market historic streetcar. There are also pictures of people looking quite happy while walking and biking. But let’s just cut to the chase. If this project is really so green and transit-friendly, why must the proposal include slightly more than 1:1 parking, with 470 parking spots for 466 units — encouraging future residents to drive and thus ignore all of the pictured transit options?
Thumbs Up For Market-Octavia and 55 Laguna
A busy week prevented me from posting about this earlier, but better late than never: as you may have already read in the Chronicle, there have been favorable updates at the Board of Supervisors concerning the Market & Octavia Plan, which I addressed in a post a couple weeks ago. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had articulated competing visions for the contentious issues of affordable housing, parking, and density in the Market & Octavia plan area: more details are provided in that linked post. But the two proposals have since coalesced into a single compromise plan. Thankfully, Mirkarimi’s stricter parking requirements survived, helping to ensure that the Market & Octavia Plan maintains livability at its heart; the compromise also adopted Mirkarimi’s affordable housing funding plan, which set forth a tiered impact fee (of $0, $4, or $8 per square foot, depending on the location of the development) and the opportunity for developers to contribute to the citywide affordable housing fund in lieu of TDR fees. However, the compromise incorporates McGoldrick’s density cap, which will apply not just to Duboce Triangle, but to all blocks zoned as Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), which includes most of the residential blocks deeper in the plan area, off of Market Street. These amendments were passed at first hearing at the Board last Tuesday, finally drawing some consensus on this comprehensive plan that has been highly contested in recent months.
Market-Octavia: Building a Vibrant Hub
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| Courtesy Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects, Inc. |
For several years, the City of San Francisco has worked to develop the Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan, studying neighborhoods centered on the pivotal intersection of Market and Octavia, bookended by Church Street on the west and Van Ness Avenue on the east. The plan was one part of the Better Neighborhoods 2002 effort — a sadly ironic name, because a mere 365 days is nowhere near sufficient to start and finish such a large-scale planning process, particularly in San Francisco. In some areas covered by the Market-Octavia plan, one has the impression of being in an unclassifiable neighborhood that is nonetheless quite close to favorite, well-established locales. The plan encompasses an area historically known as “the Hub”, so named for the Muni turnaround located there, and the neighborhoods contained within the plan area continue to evolve and come into their own, coining names like Deco Ghetto to reflect both an emerging identity and broader acknowledgment of that identity. Other parts of the plan area, including Hayes Valley, already enjoy established commercial districts but have been given a new chance to blossom since the retreat of the Central Freeway to the south side of Market Street.
It is also in this area that the slanted South of Market street grid curves and reorients into an arrangement that reflects the cardinal directions, adjusting to form the Mission/Castro grid. This is a departure from the pattern firmly established all the way from the Ferry Building, resulting in a suspension of the security resting in the predictable pattern of downtown streets. But some clever planning could take advantage of this insecurity and transform it into a distinctly urban sort of excitement, in which even the unsuspecting pedestrian would be smoothly guided by intuitively navigable streets designed for humans, rather than for the sole function of moving automobiles efficiently.
Market-Octavia is exactly the plan that aims to knit these disconnected neighborhoods together into a more unified and walkable set of districts that San Francisco could rightly be proud to call its own. The plan reflects thoughtful cooperation between community members and city planners. This vision was not forcefully hoisted upon neighborhood residents; rather, the goal was to achieve a consensus. It simultaneously blends a respect for the eminently livable residential scale of San Francisco’s most beloved neighborhoods, while advocating for a forward-thinking vision of elegant density graced by moving examples of contemporary design, like the Octavia Gateway pictured above — a building that provides a splendid answer to the problem posed by the narrow, awkward parcel of land on which it would sit, at the northeast corner of Market and Octavia.
Berkeley NIMBY Ordinance Holds the Elmwood District Hostage
Bolfing’s Elmwood Hardware, the famous hardware store which opened in 1923 and has since come to be a key fixture of the Elmwood District in South Berkeley, is in danger of closing its doors — and this only months after Telegraph Avenue lost Cody’s Books, a venerable Berkeley institution of 50 years. Why is Elmwood Hardware in danger of closing down? Is it a greedy developer who has bought the plot of land and plans to demolish the hardware store and build luxury condos on the site? No, far from it. This time, the store is in danger of closing because of a zoning ordinance designed to preserve the neighborhood.
How could this be? Shouldn’t a preservation-oriented ordinance, well, preserve such a long-standing and well-loved store? So you’d think. In this case, Tad Laird, the owner of Elmwood Hardware needs to close the store on October 1, in order to carry out about $4,000-5,000 worth of much-needed renovation, seismic retrofits, and upgrades that will bring the building in conformance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, it is unclear that he will be able to afford all these changes. In order to fund the renovation, Laird wanted to add an extra floor with apartments (at different points in the process, the exact number of units has been quoted as 2, 3, or 4), but the extra story could potentially make Laird’s proposed building 1.5 feet taller than the acceptable maximum height of 28 feet. His proposal also involves additional storage and office floor space. As it turns out, Laird’s rather modest proposal conflicts with the Elmwood’s draconian zoning ordinance on three separate counts, and in order for his plan to go through, he would have to apply for three separate variances to the zoning. If any one of these three variances is not granted, the plan fails, and Laird will have wasted a large sum of money he cannot afford, not to mention time — all in an effort to keep his well-loved store in business.
