Historic Preservation Commission - March 18, 2015 - Minutes

Meeting Date:

March 18, 2015 - 12:30pm

Location:

B. DEPARTMENT MATTERS

Preservation Coordinator Tim Frye: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Tim Frye, Department staff. One item from the Director’s Reports I want to bring to your attention. Tomorrow we are conducting a Mills Act Workshop in the Tenderloin and this year we are using a slightly different approach for our outreach. We are focusing on two national register listed districts rather than locally designated districts or properties. That was just as a means to provide a broader outreach to communities where buildings are eligible for the Mills Act Program. The meeting will be held tomorrow from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Center for New Music at 55 Taylor Street. It will be a workshop format where we’ll have a variety of tables set up where property owners can come and ask specific questions about the application process. The Assessor-Recorder’s Office will also be present and we focused pretty large notification to property owners within the Lower Nob Hill Apartment Hotel National Register District as well as the Uptown Tenderloin National Register District. Depending on the success of the workshop, we’re also intending a workshop in the Dogpatch Neighborhood and certainly keep you up to date once we have finalized and scheduled that workshop as well.

2. Review of Past Events at the Planning Commission, Staff Report and Announcements

Mr. Frye: I have no formal Planning Commission report, however, I do want to mention to you that the Planning Commission is very interested in the resolution on your agenda today and we will be sharing that with them once it's passed. There may be an opportunity for either a joint hearing for a broader discussion some sort of representation from this commission to the Planning Commission at a future date to discuss the details of the resolution. The one item I did want to share with you as part of the staff report is, and you are probably are all aware, that the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation is meeting in San Francisco this week and they sort of taken their organization on the road and are not meeting in DC but having their meeting here. Right now on Angel Island they are hosting a listening session. Their primary focus for this meeting is about social and cultural heritage which I think is timely given we just had our social and cultural heritage assets meeting earlier this afternoon. I will try to get as much information from that listening session as I can. There may be meetings minutes published in the next few months and I’ll certainly forward those to the committee but also to the full commission. I have an opportunity of attending their business meeting tomorrow morning in the Presidio and I will report back to you if anything comes out of that meeting because each of their committee will also be presenting their reports at that meeting tomorrow morning. That concludes my comments unless you have any questions.

President Hasz: Mr. Frye, I have one question/announcement. I was coming home late last night from the hockey game and one of the facades on Pine came down. Pine between Van Ness and Franklin. They had whole area cordoned off.

Commissioner Pearlman: No, there's a high speed chase. So it had nothing to do with the building.

President Hasz: This brings up a question. What if something does go down that we’ve called to save? Do we make them rebuild it? How does this…

Mr. Frye: That's a good question. There are CEQA implications and there are also policy implications that we have to vet out through the Director and the Environment Review Officer to figure out what would be the best course of action. I will say that somewhat related now that we have a Preservation Compliance staff member, Kelly Wong, we are talking with the Zoning Administrator about certain policies on whether or not to require somebody to build something if it's been demolished or neglected and some of those policies will be coming to you this year, hopefully by the summer, and maybe at that time is a good opportunity to discuss situations like you are bringing up.

Commissioner Matsuda: I know that the columns at the San Francisco Center, there was a lawsuit that took place and…

Commissioner Wolfram: No, the front part of the building that was supposed to be kept and then get kept. That’s when the Preservation Fund comes in.

Commissioner Matsuda: But could you, when we have that discussion could you bring some of the information because some of the analysis that was done was really good. I read it once about 10 years ago, but that would be good to re-review as part of that discussion.

Mr. Frye: Certainly.

C. COMMISSION MATTERS

3. President’s Report and Announcements - None

4. Consideration of Adoption:

· Draft Minutes for HPC March 4, 2015

SPEAKERS: None

ACTION: Adopted

AYES: Hyland, Johns, Matsuda, Pearlman, Wolfram, Hasz

ABSENT: Johnck

5. Election of Officers: In accordance with the Rules and Regulations of the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission, the President and Vice President of the Commission shall be elected at the first Regular Meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission held after the first day of January each year; or at a subsequent Meeting, the date of which is fixed by the Historic Preservation Commission at the first Regular Meeting after the First day of January each year or at a subsequent meeting.

(Continued from February 4, 2015)

SPEAKERS: None

ACTION: Elected Andrew Wolfram as President and Aaron Hyland as Vice President

AYES: Hyland, Johns, Matsuda, Pearlman, Wolfram, Hasz

ABSENT: Johnck

6. Commission Comments & Questions

· Disclosures

· Inquiries/Announcements

· Future Meetings/Agendas

Commissioner Johns: I unfortunately wasn't able to be at the last commission meeting, but I did want to recognize that at the History Expo at the Old Mint, the last of February and first of March, the Planning Department Historic Preservation Commission had a booth. I noticed there was a map there where people could pinpoint things they were interested in. I saw there was a respectable crowd outside of the booth talking to the people who were manning it and I thought it was extremely nice.

Commissioner Hyland: I had two things. One, for those who may or may not know this, I had the opportunity to go to Washington D.C., that's where I was last hearing and we were doing Legislative Day for the American Institute of Architects and we had the opportunity to meet Nancy Pelosi's aides as well as Jackie Spears’ aides. Mostly, and what I wanted to bring up today is to advocate for three legislations and one of them was the continuance of the historic preservation tax credits. What you may or may not know is that nationally we are going through a whole tax reform that's being pushed by Paul Ryan out of Wisconsin. Anyway, today is a deadline and unfortunately it's too late for our commission to do anything, but Senator Blumenauer from Oregon, as well as, I'm sorry, congressman, and Turner from Ohio have introduced legislation that would make the federal historic preservation tax credits permanent that would take it outside of the tax reform and today at the close of businesses the last day to actually reach out to our legislators. So I just wanted to bring that up if people can reach out before 5:00 eastern.

Commissioner Matsuda: What's the legislation? HR what?

Commissioner Wolfram: I can forward that e-mail.

Commissioner Hyland: Yes, that was one thing. The second thing is the Cultural Heritage Assets Committee met earlier today and had an update for you. We had Regina Dick-Endrizzi present from the Mayor’s Office of Small Business Program and the legislation that Supervisor Campos put forward was passed on March 10th. It's waiting for the Mayor's Office, it's the Legacy Business Registry Legislation. It did pass and is waiting for the Mayor's signature. The original legislation had transfer tax incentives included and that has been removed. The idea is that as the legislation gets furthered and the Small Business Commission, as it's being put into the purview of the Small Business Commission there to bring back recommendations by September 30th of how this registry is going to be created, branded, marketed, that sort of thing. Currently, the tax incentives or any other kind of incentive that our committee is hoping to create as goals coming out of our effort is currently not in the legislation. They also changed the definition of what a legacy business would be and they did have a very specific list of what those business would be and they changed that, took that out, and added back in that it would be business nominated by the Mayor, Board of Supervisors or Small Business Commission. That's another little tweak to the legislation. If it's a business that's been in existence for 30 years with no break more than two years, then it will be eligible, but it will have to be nominated. We did have a good meeting. We had charted out our next 6 months. So for April, May and June we are going to have further presentations to our committee. In July we are going to try to pull those together and identify what the goals of our committee will be. In July and August, try to reach out to more of the community neighborhood meetings. We are working with legal and with Jonas about how we can attend the community hearings without while we are still adhering to the Sunshine Ordinance form requirements.

Commission Secretary Ionin: Commissioner Hyland, if I may, I actually conferred with our City Attorney on that subject matter and she's actually here and prepared to respond to that.

Victoria Wong: City attorney's office. I think the legal requirements will depend on the exact format of the way in which the members of the committee wish to participate in the community meetings and whether these meetings are taking the place of regular hearings or you are there to just listen. So, we can discuss the specifics of what you may have in mind or what the different possibilities are and what the public notice and other requirements would be based on those different scenarios.

Commission Hyland: So lastly, I don't know where our Advanced Calendar in the agenda, I see that the ARC is scheduled for April 1st. So we may need to reschedule the next CHA meeting for the third Wednesday of the month.

President Wolfram: Do we have an agenda item on April 1^st for the ARC?

Hyland: For the 20^th Street.

Hasz: So just to going back a little bit I want to thank Tim Frye publically for my time as President, and the amount of time Tim put in to helping me reach several of these goals and putting up with my philosophy on stuff and why I would come to ideas and etc. Any ways, Tim, thank you very much. I appreciate all of your time. Thank you.

D. REGULAR CALENDAR

7. 2015-001501CRV (T. FRYE: (415) 575-6822/L. GIBSON (415) 575-9032)

PRESERVATION ALTERNATIVES POLICY - Consideration of a Policy Statement outlining HPC recommendations for the development and evaluation of preservation alternatives in environmental impact reports for the purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Preliminary Recommendation: Adopt

(Continued from February 18, 2015)

SPEAKERS: + Desiree Smith, SF Heritage - in support of this verse that has incorporated Heritage’s recommendations.

ACTION: Adopted

AYES: Hyland, Johns, Matsuda, Pearlman, Wolfram, Hasz

ABSENT: Johnck

RESOLUTION: R-746

Adjournment: 1:03 PM

The minutes was proposed for adoption at the Regular Meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission on Wednesday, April 1, 2015

ACTION: Adopted
AYES: Hasz, Hyland Johnck, Johns, Matsuda, Pearlman, Wolfram

Historic Preservation Commission - March 18, 2015 - Minutes

B. DEPARTMENT MATTERS

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