Its also important to note that the use of these guidelines are discretionary. Unlike other guidelines that are triggered by a particular zoning or petition, these are voluntary by the applicant and would be requested by the staff or one of the commissions. Ill get into a little more detail about the Design Guidelines themselves. I think its important to note that the retained elements Design Guidelines are focused on the how, how you do something. Once you weigh the options and consider whether there is something existing that should be maintained, then the next question is how to do it so that itsful, both to the existing material and the new development. There are two sections. This plays off of the urban Design Guidelines which is our larger guidelines in the city. There is site architect and urban realm. You see reference of an s 1. 1, that references s 1. These take those as a basis and get into deeper detail around this particular topic, which is why its called a special topic design guideline. So theres site design, retain existing features. Under architecture, modulating new development to support retain massing and facade edges. Articulating a clear relationship between new development and retained elements. Harmonizing new materials with retained elements. Restoring and highlighting existing features and reviving and animating retained ground floor elements. Im going to show some examples of what these look like. They get into the specifics around how these things come and play a role in future development. At the site scale, of course sustaining features, what kinds of features would they be, whats important about why you would keep them, how it works. Articulating a clear relationship new development and retained elements. This is getting into a level of architecture, where youre starting to think about how the new and the old pieces go together. Theres a lot of detail thats very important about the qualities of material, qualities of scale and massing. We defined hyphen in here, there is a glossary, that gets into detail about the meaning and purpose and how it can be achieved. Harmonizing materials. This is a complicated conversation because sometimes it is really about finding conformity and finding materials that really directly relate to each other. There are instances where differentiating the old and the new, its important to contrast those materials. I find that usually you want to find certain things that align. The geometry might work with the existing geometry, but maybe the materials are quite different or vice versa. So really finding ways that there can be synergies and combatabilities and also distinguishing markers and that is really a casebycase basis. Restoring and highlighting existing features. This is to recognize that what you are keeping you should keep with respect. Understand its own core sense of esthetic value. Find ways to bring its history back. There may be other qualities such as interior spaces or other relationships that it needs to have. Those can be reformed, so sometimes windows have been filled in. Storefronts this happens quite a bit. Finding ways to bring it back to its highest and best qualities. So guideline applicability, theres three main issues to highlight. The first, as i mentioned, this is a discretionary application. These guidelines are to be used voluntarily by the sponsor when requested by the Planning Department staff or the preservation commissions. That would be through some process its going through in the department. This simply increases options. So these guidelines establish more a handful of respectful options for the use of existing fabric in new existing. Those have to be weighed side by side whether those really do provide the larger benefit. This does not change or reduce process. So these guidelines do not change the decisionmaking process around demolition of a Historic Resource. This has been one of the most challenging parts of this conversation is to understand how these could be used in situations of a Historic Resource demolition. So we have started to within the guidelines themselves articulate that as clearly as we can. We have other members of the department here to help get into details on that, as you may as may warrant. So note that these are not rehabilitation projects. This is not preservation as is established here. There may be proposals in which demolition of a resource is being proposed and this could be potentially used for Alternatives Development, but that does not achieve the standard. Such an alternative standard would not be considered rehabilitation. The use of these guidelines would not result in a lessthansignificant impact to Historic Resources for the purposes of review. So as i mentioned, were on a faster timeline, seeking adoption of the Planning Commission in the beginning of december. Were seeking Public Comment and of course comment from the Historic Preservation commission today, to make sure we can be as clear as we can about when and how these would apply, what they would do and whats the best outcome for the guidelines themselves, so we can get the best outcomes of individual projects. Of course im happy to take your questions. Thank you. Any questions, commissioners . Open to Public Comment. Good afternoon. Im the Vice President of advocacy and programs at San Francisco heritage. I want to express my appreciation to planning staff for sharing earlier drafts of these retained elements guidelines with heritage and for their willingness to address some of our concerns, mostly centred on possible impacts to Historic Resources in the city. On the last slide we saw under the subhead resource demolition, the first sentence reads the Historic Preservation commission or planning staff may request, in rare cases, application of these guidelines during the Alternatives Development process as part of an Environmental Impact report or as part of impact mitigation for a project that proposes demolition of an Historic Resource. So in these guidelines, theres no specific criteria to explain the circumstances under which this commission or the planning staff would deem the application of the guidelines appropriate or desirable. So thats where were concerned still, about the unforeseen impacts that would result from the use or abuse of these guidelines after theyre adopted. So to address this, not just to complain, but to offer a solution, we urge the department to further prohibit application of the guidelines to Historic Resources that are individually listed in or eligible for the california register of Historic Resources or the National Register of historic places. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Ill close Public Comment and bring back the commission. Ill go first. This was a little bit difficult this presentation for me because in the packet there was really no information about this. So in a way, its rather peculiar to ask for anyone to comment on it, since the only thing that at least i have seen is this slideshow. So i dont know if it was a serious effort to get commission comment. If so, i think it could have perhaps been organized in a different way because i am personally not in any position to say anything other than it was a colorful presentation. Commissioner pearlman. Yeah, i was a little surprised there was nothing to look at. [ indiscernible ] i mean typically theres a lot of text coming from the department to define what it is that is getting adopted. Thats what im not sure. Were not adopting your presentation. Did you not receive a copy of the guidelines last week . I didnt get them and it wasnt active on the site you know, on the agenda. We it wasnt an active link. Thats interesting that was given as part of the package. I received it as part of my packet and i downloaded it from the link on the site. I was able to get it. I couldnt. [ overlapping speakers ] sorry. And i didnt get it because i dont get the text. I always go to the web to the site. I worked with Commission Im sorry if you werent able to get that in advance. I need to get it so i can comment some other time. I think you have other questions well, i need to read it. We have two additional copies here. That would be great, if i could get a copy. I did have a question about if there are other cities that you know of, other major cities in the country that are doing and looking at this. What are they doing . Because of course a lot of the examples that we looked at the last time and these are all you know, seem to be all San Francisco examples. But i know last time there are many other examples from around the country. I wonder if youve come across other places that are looking at this policy . I know the team had known of some going on looking at context, but we dont know any Design Guidelines that are tailored in this particular way. I think there is a conversation around it, but this may be one of the first that is adopted and directly addressing it as far as we know. Weve been focusing on the San Francisco ones because of the ways we wanted to articulate it in the guidelines. Its challenging to find examples that have come out that the bulk of the community is being supportive of. Were continuing to look for some. I had just sort of a confusion about what mr mr. Labounty was talking about. Its not a question, but a comment about when we look at the alternatives for an e. I. R. , you know, the only reason were looking at it is its a Historic Resource and there is an impact to that. One of the impacts could be full demolition. So we often run into the fact that we dont want it to be fully demolished because there are some elements that could contribute to retaining the context of the site. So im not quite clear you know, because it seems like heritage is requesting to then say we cant use this maybe you could come up here and explain in more detail. It seems like youre saying heritage is requesting looking at saying you couldnt use a retained element in an e. I. R. If the building is in a particular level of recognition. Right. And the thing that is concerning for us is that in the guidelines itself, it is mentioned these are not to be used for rehabilitation projects and it will not result in a lessthansignificant impact to resources. Then we have mention of article 10 and article 11. So thats terrific. So then you start getting into the question of when would these guidelines be applied that would not impact a Historic Resource. This is talking about finding difficult examples in which we apply these guidelines. We have the same issue. When would these apply and not impact what would potentially be a Historic Resource. The example that is put here is there are rare conditions when the planning staff would ask them to be applied. Thats vague to us as to what example would that be. The church on eddie street the Christian Science church seems to be one [ overlapping speakers ] thank you. That seems to be a good example of what youre talking about because that building certainly was eligible. And it will certainly be gone. One solution would have been potentially to save that porch element so there would still be and respond to that architecturally. I dont know what the deal was, but im just trying to understand because it is curious where this would really apply, because otherwise its a building that doesnt happen to be a Historic Resource, but happening to be oldlooking and contributing to the context of the street. Are we eliminating a group of buildings that we would potentially want to look at . Commissioners, if i could, i was going to wait until my fellow comirgetsed had their turn. I do have a lot to say on this. Turn. I do have a lot to say on this. I personally have been dealing with this for 30 years. This is not something new to me. First off, i think staff has done a phenomenal job pulling this together from where we started. This is about a two or threeprocess that weve undertaken here. Im sorry that some of the commissioners didnt get the actual guidelines, but we have reviewed this three times at least and then one time at a joint hearing. I have some specific comments and i think the challenge is when it applies we are reviewing an e. I. R. Or a draft e. I. R. Or a scoping of that so that we can actually make sure if theres a portion of the project that has been determined to demolition, if a portion of it is retained, that its done in a meaningful way. I mean, thats ultimately the goal of this. So theres this struggle between is this a preservation guideline or is it not. I think thats what staff has been having a really difficult time articulating. And i think youre almost there. I think this is really much better than it has been. So some of the specific comments that i have, i would take out the in rare cases. Say the Historic Preservation commission or planning staff may request application of these guidelines. Im not sure. I think that in your summary side, theres a contradiction here. Its discretionary or voluntary by the sponsor, but we can request it as applied if thats part of the the Community Benefit negotiations on a demolition of a potential resource. Right. So thats where we wouldnt see it if we do see it. If its not a resource. If its not defined as a resource, we would not see it and we dont see it. So but we have seen dozen, if not more, of developments over the last since ive been on the commission now, six or seven years, where auto row projects were being built above. Theres the one on fulsome, i dont know if it came before the commission. Its the Housing Project between 7 or 8 on fulsome, where it is the brick facade on to 9 and 10. Yes. We as a city has been struggling with this. This is to help us help the designers in doing something more than just keeping. We saw one a couple weeks ago where the new design has no relation to this Historic Building that was being retained. Because of that, we had this whole struggle of are we designing it for them or not. This is to provide some meaningful direction to those projects. So i would take out in rare cases because i think when it comes before us, it comes before us. If theyre keeping the resource and mitigating so it complies with the standards, then this wouldnt apply. So on the one last comment. I lost my notes. On the imagery of the guidelines, i actually think graphically designed it has achieved what its goal was, but i think its missing a piece and thats whats kausing the challenge. Most of the photographs but one i think are detailed shots of the intersection of the old and the new. Its not the scale and the matssing of the new with the existing. I know in the earlier iterations we were trying to do some pencil drawings of showing and i guess you do have some 3d models that show it pretty well in these corners. Those are good. The challenges is there are not very many good examples. What were forging here is something that needs to be done much better than weve been doing it. So we just dont have the zoomedout scales to pick from. Anyway, i hope i made some sense. Thats what i have to say. Thank you, commissioner. I really appreciate it because being new on this commission, this is actually what was it, like, seven days ago when i got this on my doorstep. Thank you for delivering it. I was looking at it and looking for some clue in the little Meeting Minutes or the agenda to kind of have if the staff would remember what are we looking a staff report or analysis. It was informational only. Now were looking to approve this in this month. So i better be on this crash course. Thank you for telling me you actually answered a lot of my questions. In general we had talked more and debate more about the actual content on each criteria, but then the overall picture is that i wouldnt it be helpful if someone like me or someone less or someone, anyone, would see a flowchart in terms of how this will be applicable. When we have sequa if we know this project belongs to this and it will get the arrow and know this needs to be taken care of in a mitigated way, it would be nice for everyone to understand when the project sponsor or the staff or us could tap into these resources to make some decision or using it as our guiding principle to complement the general plan and also the city plan. Im not sure that will be achievable. Really i think its a roadmap. A flowchart would help because we can all refer to a Single Source of references instead of what my interpretation of when we can use this and what my fellow commissioners when we can use it and also our fellow Planning Commissioners. My other comment i wanted to bring up is you created a really good image of a mural in the front page of the guideline, but havent really talked about how you or if theres any process that you would recommend to evaluate murals. That is like another another silo, another huge avalanche of subject matters that could be very interesting and invigorating to discuss. I would love to learn more about how us as a Planning Department and also coming from the Arts Commission world, and i would love to hear how can we do something to help the city do things more efficiently and impactful and meaningful. Yeah, thats all i wanted to add on to the comments. Other architectural stuff i think my fellow architects have taken care of. Commissioner black. I get how hard it is to prepare Something Lik