This is a very broad potential use, isnt it . Thats correct. Its one of the reasons we do look at the new uses and kind of new companies. The lab definition is broad and more than just biological labs, kind of like what you would think of with chemists and beakers and things like that. Especially with the Way Companies and Tech Companies are evolving today, we really do dig into what the types of products that theyre using and then proving that they fall within the lab definition and not within the office definition. We drill down pretty fine grain in layouts, business operations, making sure that what we this doing is is consistent with what the land use definitions that we have are consistent with the codes. They go through the letter of determination. We will have the company off employ and help prove why they are, for example, a lab use or pdr use or other types. Any concern would be different than commissioner moores and this is a Residential District. If you put a bio Chemistry Lab in there and you get into the issues of toxics and other things, which may not be a compatible use. Sure. Keep in mind within the definition, the commission does have the ability to restrict portions of the definition and if the concern is bu biological laboratories to the adjacent, you can basically state that a biological laboratory should not be permitted or chemistry or bioChemistry Laboratory should not be permitted. But it still leaves interpretation for other things, like engineering labs, Quality Assurance and things like that. Commissioner richards . You are telling us a letter of determination makes me feel for comfortable and any type of lab will have a computational device on the desk i and i cant imagine one that wouldnt. I would like to approve it with conditions that tenants have to have a letter of determine augusts anationand the new tenad however you said it and i would like to move to do it. The commission of approval that says any future tenants must prove themselves as Laboratory Use. Commissioner moore, weigh in first. Go ahead. I am hesitant to see biomed as a potential bio lab. Were strongly supporting additional expansion within the mission bay corridor and you think this is an isolated occasion i would have great concerns about that. Mr. Loper, did you want to something. Just briefly, some tenants have letters of determine augustationand if thats a condi would suggest its written more broad and they need to get a new one. If the tenant had that, they would have met that condition. Commissioner moore, did you want to Say Something else or second the motion . I would like to add that we consider excluding Biomed Laboratories in location. You who put biomed chemistry then. Just to be specific in how it reads, we have a category for chemistry, biochemistry and a analytical chemistry and if you were to exclude those two, thats what i would recommend, is to defer back to what we have in the planning code. Lets do that. You know, im not sure why woe do that. I mean, you know, were not this is not manufacturing. This is not chemical manufacturing. This is Laboratory Use and we have all kinds of controls now to make it clean and safe. Im not really sure why we would do that. If i may add to that. Mission bay has a lot of labs, as well as housing. The concerns that were really in place in the 80s, when the mission bay plan was adopted to separate that, none of that has come into play. You mean, there hasnt been those kind of issues that have arisen. Commissioner moore. Arent the buildings in mission bay all billed as biomed specialty buildings . Theyre for a different purpose than a laboratory and for that reason that i believe that extra degree of caution in a High Density Residential area such as lincoln hill on spear street requires additional caution. What im afraid of is being too specific and ruling out uses that could be perfectly fine and so, i just want to understand, like, what were doing in not painting with a broad brush. A lot of stuff that is perfectly fine. So i am sorry, steph . I just want to add a note that this cu is technically to allow for a new nonretail selfuse for more than 25,000 square feet and technically, now there are two uses of Retail Service use thats over 25,000, which is ise and office. What is ise . International service exchange. So if the applicant would change the use into a Laboratory Use, now ofnowadays, they would not e an additional use authorization. A portion of it, they can only, basically, change a portion of it to a third nonretail nonservice use over 25,000 square feet that requires a cu. I think you confused us more. [ laughter ] i think at the end, what planner leing was saying, we have a large use and theyre establishing a new large use on the site. When you have established uses, we dont require you to come back and reestablish one of those uses, basically, is what its saying. So, like, in the future, as they switch out the ic, they may not come back. This is why you want a prohibition . Yes. Mr. Loper . I would push back and the architect is here to explain whats going on in the interior of the building. A lot of work has to go into make these buildings ready for lab tests and to an older house and setting up some petri dishes. This is next door to a data farm and im not sure this is a really dense Residential District in the immediate context and so the architect is here and can walk you through all of the work being done to prep this for a nonoffice noncommercial user. Commissioner richards. So just like when somebody gives us a dr on a project next to them and they say, it will undermine my foundation. We say, thats a dbi issue. I hear what mr. Loper saying, if they want a laboratory, theres certain safeguards in there and obviously any urban area laboratory something could go wrong and chemicals could come out and harm people but we have these labs all over the place and i feel comfortable leaving it as is, with a Laboratory Use. , with no restrictions. Theres an element of safety but an element of nuisance in laboratory buildings, but theyre required to filter and they throw it out at a high velocity and therefore, the noise factor is much greater with laboratory exhaust systems than regular use. Commissioner moore . Its the detail of osha and simply regulating the detailed execution of the building, the Land Use Decision itself is a broader issue and that particular issue. Looks like were in a deadlock here. Any suggestions . Mr. Loper, would you opine on the commissions discussion to limit the chemistry or biological labs from the deaf ligs or prohibit them. Sure, and were not prepared to volunteer a condition that would limit the number of lab uses. As weve heard, this has worked in different parts of the city. The architect said they would like to get up here and explain what theyre doing, which i think could go a long way to addressing some concerns. Lets do that. The ise consisted of switching gear didnt the building next door owned by Digital Realty is actually cloud in San Francisco. Those kinds of buildings require a lot of cooling and pa part of what weve done is remove the crack units have Hazardous Materials and making the building if that regard safer. The building has infrastructure far above average than any Office Building would have. For example, 9,000amps of electrical power. A typical Office Building this size would have a third of that and it has two really large shafts and its not ready to go for Laboratory Use, but it would be easily adaptable for those uses. They are controls to would prohibit those uses coming from the building. Commissionecommission johnso . So i would just agree with commissioner richards and president melgar, that i am concerned about putting that extra condition, really limiting the use that could be useful in this space, recognising there are all sorts of regulations that are outside of our purview and better understanding of what is going into the building, to adapt it. So i would personally support the motion as it was made. Were missing a member of the commission. If hes in the back, if he could come back, that would be great. I second your motion. Who will second dennis motion . I seconded it. That includes the condition of approval for future tenants to file for a letter of determination, correct. Yes. So we have commissioner richards making a motion, commissioner johnson seconding that motion. So a motion seconded. Commissioners, to approve this conditional use with conditions, including adding a condition that any future tenant must provide proof of Laboratory Use through a letter of determination, on that motion, commissioner fung . No. Commissioner johnson . Aye. Commissioner moore . Aye. Commissioner president melguy. It fails 32 with commissioners fung and moore voting against. An additional motion . Commissioner richards . I move to continue this item to november 5th, whatever december 5th. Or november 7th. Lets do december 5th, because we know for sure well have full commissioners. Very good, on that motion to continue this oh, who seconded that . Second. Thank you. On that motion, then, to continue this matter to december funning . Aye. Commissioner johnson . Aye. Commissioner moore . No. It passes 41 with commissioner moore voting against. That will place us on due discretionary item 14, 106955 drp at 220 san jose avenue, a discretionary eview. Review. Perhaps we could take a little fiveminute break. Im sorry to the public. Were down a couple of commissioners and so, its difficult for us to go to the bathroom and do all of the thanks we need to do. So well take a tenminute break and then well come back and hear the two drs. Is that ok . Ok. Thank you. Welcome back to San FranciscoPlanning Commissioner regular hearing for october 17, we left off on im 14, 155 spaws drp at 222 san jose avenue, a discretionary review. One of our commissioners needs to make a disclosure before we begin listening to this item. Go ahead. Theres a paid member, mr. Buscovitz, not as a managing partner but as a structural engineer. That needed to be disclosed, thank you. Good afternoon. Im the staff architect. The item before you is a public initiated review request to constructs a twostory rear horizonal addition to an existing twostory over basement one family residence at 220 san jose residence. The dr requesters of 228, the adjacent neighbors to the south are concerned with three things, primarily. One, the proposed addition is not compatible with the residential Design Guidelines to articulate the building and minimize light and privacy to adjacent properties and two, the design of the height and depth of the building is not compatible with the building scale at the midblock open space. The dr provided a letter before the last hearing in which they allege the property had been converted from a two or more unit building into a Single Family dwelling didnt that was the reason for the continuance from august 22nd. The department has received two letters in opposition and no letters in support of the project. The departments Residential Design Advisory Team reviewed this and confirmed that this addition presents an exceptional or extraordinary circumstance with respect to the building scale at the rear access to the open space and adjacent to the north, which was acknowledged in the original review and accompanied by a request to provide a fivefoot side setback at the north neighbors Property Line at the second floor of the audition. Addition. The project submitted revised drawings for that fivefoot side setback and extended a twostory fourfoot deep popout that of coursextends into the rear yardd staff does not support this addition in light of the dr request. The addition being the fourfoot popout. With respect to the dr requesters property, since subject property is north of the dr requester and extends less than the depth of the requesters building set back by a twoinch sued yard side yard,t see any extraordinary circumstances with the dr requester. The department requested a fivefoot setback to ameliorate the neighbors to the north. The dr applicant identifies the property as a two unit building was never completed. I conducted a site survey and based on that, the survey history is a singlefamily residence two permits from the early 1960s note three units. It goes from three to two but the permit was not final finali. The zoning is in rh3 and all records indicate that this is a singlefamily residence anyone 2015, spaws dbi issued a cbc and this permit noted the Single Family dwelling. Theres no evidence of a conversion that i could see and theres no basement, but a 30inch high crawl space and staff also investigated records with the Housing Services which conducts or performance periodic inspections and found none. Again, the final completion is a singlefamily dwelling and staff recommends that the commission take the dr and approve the fivefoot side setback but eliminating the fourfoot popout to code compliant project and this concludes my presentation and im here to answer questions. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Winslow. We will now hear from the dr requester. Good afternoon. My name is vanessa ginston. We live at 228 san jose avenue for 11 years. The second floor addition will have severe impact on light, ai airflow and privacy. The project sponsors three large windows facing our you units. They areremoving a bedroom and full suite if the ground floor. If their plan is to move in elderly parents, doesnt it make sense to move them into the first floor . President hey have a large atticg most of the property but refused to consider this. The backyard is 70 feet so they could build out the first floor. This is removing an independent dwelling from the ground floor which is separately occupied under prior owners. We have met with the project sponsors numerous times but no meaningful compromise has been offered. In our last meeting, we ask that the architect attend so that both of our architects to Work Together but they refused to bring their architect. The project sponsors countered with yet another minor tweak that doesnt address the problem and if we didnt accept, there would be no further discussion and refused mediation with david wiwinslow. This affects many neighbors and we appreciate your consideration, thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Im an architect in San Francisco. If i can have the overhead, please. The proposed rear addition blocks direct sunlight, afternoon sunlight into the dining and culture spaces of 228 and this is the zone here. This is the addition and here is the windows of concern. The sunlight reductions caused by the height of the wall and the close proximity to the 228 north windows. By set back the additions wall five feet and dropping the height by using a gable roof form, sunlight is restored to the fivefoot space. The current proposal using a setback on the north side but maintains the high wall and so, were suggesting which we proposed to them, is to flip the design thats currently there and using a gable roof form and providing increased sun candlelighlight tothe northern. The angle bay form is not subject enough due to the geometry and it doesnt help. Regarding the privacy issues, we have large windows being proposed that face on to 228s windows. Were just asking that those be reduced to that the reduced privacy issues looking into bathrooms and things like that. So thank you. Good afternoon. Im commissioner pat buskavitch. There are no prerecords. Its a singlefamily house. The 3r report, every time they update, they delete the previous report. Theres no record. It says its a onefamily dwelling today based on the records in 2015. If you look at every historical record, and they just line up, three units in a sandborn map, reverse phone directory, two units, a couple years later, two units, another reverse directy, two units. They are issued by Health Department because Housing Inspection Services currently under the Building Permit were under the Health Department until, i think, 1967. They didnt issue the unit to housekeeping and thats a threeunit building and why . Because here is the Health Departments record, a report of permit of occupancy, three units. This is the citys record. So anything after that is worthless but if you want to talk about the cfc for the current your time is up. Happy to explain this issue. Youll have a chance at rebuttal. Thank you. Do we have any Public Comment . Support of the dr requester . Come on up, please. Good afternoon, commissioners. If you could speak to the microphone. I dont knomy purpose is to e commission, the board, the department planning, everybody deny the request of this subject property. Im right next door to it and this 220 is a large its actually a five bedroom, four bathroom, dining room, large standup attic and i know this because i grew up with full access to the house, two owners ago h ha is who is a family fri. Im asking for denial. The standup attic would make a beautiful master bed and bath. Theyre already putting elderly parents on the second floor with an escalator to accommodate them and they could accommodate that to the third floor as well. So while 500 feet expansion does not seem large, it is large. It puts us into a cave. Its going to affect a fourunit building and affect the house behind me. Directly behind them are the romeros and their house will be affected by the big cap into their property, as well. So most of the people who are affected are right here. I understand the board wants to hear alternative suggestions and my alternative suggestion is to build on the third floor. Its perfectly reasonable, costwise, everyone else. It will be well beyond the value and a mansion in the mission. So i dont want to live in a cave. My tenants dont want to live in a case of cave an cave and the d not a big wall built next to our property. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there any other Public Comment in support of the dr requester . Thank you, commissioners. I want to thank the Planning Commission staff, mr. Winslow, for the type spent. Wevthe time spent. We wantthe to Young Children and parents and we need space for my home office. We ensured our addition would be built over the existing footprint of our home and maintained or increased all of the side setbacks and retained ample rear yard open space. Projector, please. You can see this here. Weve accepted rdots proposal to the Property Line and recapture the space, we are recapturing 67 of the 71 square feet lost. The popout will be on both sides. Set back seven feet on the north and five from the south. Ordinarily, in property lots like ours, the code permits us to build 12 feet passed the 45 line. Were only extending four feet. In short, our proposal is significantly more restrained than with the code and guidelines and im happy to answer any questions about the proposal in the interest of time and costs, we havent resigned the interiors just yet. With a project this simple, we never thought we would be here and the only reason we are here is that our neighbors believed their northfacing Property Line windows should prevent us from completing a renovation that complies with the codes is guidelines. As was pointed out, Property Line windows are not protected with the code and do not constitute extraordinary circumstances. Buthat is the case here for thre reasons. First, the Property Line windows in blue will be set back over three feet from our addition. Second, the area with the Property Line windows has at least three other sources of light and air. Two windows and a double glass door facing west into their backyard. You can see these windows more clearly here. And on the third level, you can see there are windows there, as well. Third, the dr applicants, the ginstons themselves built a sevenfoot wide wall at the Property Line and this wall blocks light to their affected area as well as to our property. The wall was a consequence of their choice seven years ago to build two completely unnecessary roof decks. You can see roof deck number one and two. We deeply respect the city policy encouraging neighborly resolution and met with the ginstons six times, three times prior to the planning and three times after they filed for dr. We have, prior to 311 notifications, deletely made significant changes to satisfy the demands at their preapplication meeting and eight substantive compromises. Because they know they have no merits, they are resorted to bossless and misleading augments abouarguments of us and our hom. They wanted to deprive the benefit of a father process. In thafair process. They said wen unauthorized dwelling unit and the staff report collectively addressed those and i want to be clear here, 220 san jose was and will be a singlefamily home and we have never used our office as a udu and nor do we have any clarification of doing so. As for the argument we are trying to peacemeal a project, we did not our home when this was built. They and their attorneys believe its ok to abuse this process in the interest of northfacing Property Line windows that are not protected by the code. Even with the popout, our home will be shorter in height and not extend as deeply into the yard as theirs. Help us to get our project on track and approve our proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any Public Comment in support of the project sponsor . Dr requester, you get a two minute rebuttal. Thank you. I just wanted to spend a moment with what we had originally proposed back when we started the conversation about alternate options and this is the option we proposed, notice the setback here and we actually had showed the bay. We didnt seem to have a problem with the bay at the time. The proposal theyre doing now is exactly a followup of what we proposed earlier. So that solves some of the light and air issues due to proximity and what solves the other ush of loot and ailight and air is thef form. But putting a gable roof form, using a low plate on the side, 7, 6, 8 feet, that lowers wall height allowing light in on both sides. So its a very simple solution and its what the group had established here and i think that this is a viable solution that solves both problems. So the issue of the legal use of the building and historic use, the research by staff is very good. They looked at the housing files on the sixth floor to see what historically was there. The problem is, very few people understand this, that the Health Department had housing inspection underneath them until 1967. So if those records are after 67, they dont exist, so looking for something that was tossed doesnt exist. What does exist is this record, which is the Health Department permit of occupancy that says three units and what they were doing in the 62 permit was converting one to a housekeeping to match the density. If you want to thank you, your time is up. If you want to ask about the lawsuilatest permit, happy to a. Ok, you get two minutes. Go ahead, sorry. I just want to question why we should be required to lower our roof height given the ginstons are ten feet. They have lied, mischaracterized and mislead. Mr. Patterson lied when he said our home was originally a threeunit building. Db immineni records show its n. If you look at the 1960s permit history, this is not a certificate of occupancy. The permit that this was attached to shows the owner considered converting 220 san jose into three units. They called the home a Single Family home as every other person mit filed witpermit file. They say we have trying to avoid s earningequa. But, perhaps, the most galling is the claim that we have a udu in our home. Mr. Patterson made this claim in his letter and mr. Winslow research confirmed this is a lie. What they are doing is accusing the prior owners of our home of defrauding us when they sold us the house. Its worthwhile to note mr. Patterson has used this tactic before. He appeared before you in february in 743 vermont street using the same language verbatim to you that he used in that case. The argument was farfetched there and utterly preposterous here. The ginstonis are making these claims on issues with no relevance to their project, north facing Property Line windows. Im happy to answer my questions. We spent a lot of time researching the history of the home, as well. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner richards, how can you go out and do a site visit and see no evidence of a threeunit building because of the original construction, et cetera and have us be presented with data that it was a threeunit building and how could it go from a three to a one . What do you think happened . I dont know. You know, you could create all kinds of scenarios and say, you know, there was a house in the 60s that had lodgers and they had their own phone lines, hence the records of the phones. Didnand the health departme. I dont know about the Health Department but the evidence is a Building Permit application to transform to apply for a permit it claims that is going actually, it tiger wood was twoo one and thats the sole evidence this is three units or two units other than the sandborn map. Errors lube this happeerrors lie question youre asking is to scratch our heads to to reconstruct a history conjectu conjecturally. I have photographs on my phone that show what this house is from the front door through the stairway through the rooms, including a breezeway to an independent door that leads to a room and a bathroom that then joins to the main dining room. Could that have been a second unit housekeepers unit . Possibly. Its not independent in that it does not have its own kitchen, never appears to have had its own kitchen but by all common sense appearances when one looks at this building, it looks like a singlefamily residence as it had been designed at the outset, that could have had a housekeeping unit . That housekeeping unit was removed at some time in the distant past, probably legally at the time and thats kind of the best story i can conjure up. Mr. Buskovitz, you heard it and sounds airtight and what do you make of that . Well, if i had some time to explain what happened. It was built as a singlefamily house. During world war ii, there was a point in time that we needed more housing in the city to put men on boats to ship them to the pacific. So the federal government came to the city and said, we need to legalize these units or well put them in there. There was a number of different ways they did it, including just get an address. This is one of the extra buildings they added extra units. The federal government came back to their word and created a number of programs to legalize these units. In the 62 permit, they were responding to a lawsuit that a group of citizens did in Pacific Heights where the city was granting permits for more units. These are legalization of units where people were living there and they got sued in superior court for legalizing more units than the density would allow. The city came up with dwellings and housekeeping units and i believe you could have up to three housekeeping units per dwelling and they were able to say, that doesnt count against the density, the judge bought it. The Fire Department bought it and that became one of the ways to deal with the density. What they were doing in 62 is 63 was taking a threeunit building and converting one of them to a housekeeping unit to match the density of two units. So thats what they were doing. That permit never got finalled didnt so they never converted the third to housekeeping. So the 3r report says its a singlefamily lets talk about that. So in 2015, two permits were filed, a little serial permitting. The first was to excavate under the house four feet and then a month later, a subsequent permit is filed. Lets convert that storage room to a garage. And that is the only document that has the c of c on it. Here is the permit to convert the storage room to a garage. The special inspection this record right here, special inspection was a1 construction and the building inspector who looked at it were in district eight. This is the inspection history here and this is the actual printout of the inspection history and it was done by brett howard and bill walsh. They were the inspectors for that district. Bill walsh got to a prefinal with a note about special inspection. And then, inexplicably, a c of c was issued for a garage project that wasnt changing the number of stories. Not doing a change. Occupancy and that cfc was signed off by Senior Inspector kerwin. I discussed this with the Building Department because theyre comfortable that they changed the record. If we could see the old 3r report, most likely, we would say unknown, but if you could in and file a permit for one unit, nobody looks at the previous record. They only do it for three and above and so, the permit was filed as a singlefamily house and they issued a cfc for a garage with no change. I think weve had enough. Thank you very much. Commissioner fung. Theres a lot of history here didnt its interesting how it changes through cycles. All of the information they provided 30 years ago would have been used to substantial auto extrsubstantiate extraunits. Extra units was more valuable. These days everybody wants a singlefamily home. Legally, whenever you have a cfc, that is the status of the project in terms of designation of units. The question for me is not so much, you want to argue whether there was a merger, whether you would delete it or whatever and you accept staffs determine augustdetermination. One could tell when theres was distinct units that were combined or left alone. The other issues are whether a light in air is impacted or extraordinary circumstances related to the appellants issues and at this point, i dont think there are. Im prepared to support excuse me, except dr and the departments two recommendations. Second. Commissioner johnson. I conhavcouldnt have said ir myself. Very good, commissioners. A motion with modifications. role call . The motions passes 50. Thank you. It will place us on 201701239 drp at 275,823r 275,823rd street, discretionary review. Good evening. Im david winslow, the project is before you an initiate request for permit application 2017 09289889 to constructs