And i want to tell you that what were seeing right now is not a cycle change. Its a structural change, and i am sure you are aware and seen the retailers and the retailers are shrinking the footprint and it is not the Large Department stores but even tenants that used to be 5,000 feet are shrinking to 1,000 feet and trying to deal with how to market the goods online and cross market both aspects. It has had a very structural change and quite frankly t vacancy rate at union square is the lowest that i have seen in 25 excuse me t highest in 25 years of business in union square. This there is, as we all know, a lot of vacancies that are happening. Barneys is going to close, forever 21 is closing, Williams Sonoma and the multifloor retailers are going out of business and those are the only ones that can occupy the upper floors. They are just not there. We have been marketing 146 geary for four years and talking to tenants initially to take the entire building because that works the best for us. That is what was there. We said somebody take three floors, two floors, one floor, and we havent found a single tenant that we can get to take that building. So were concerned, as i said before, about that space remaining vacant on the upper floors because we want to activate maiden lane and provide more shoppers for the existing retailers and more security and bodies on the street to encourage more customers to come to union square. I would answer any other questions you might have and appreciate your consideration. Okay. Thank you very much. We will take Public Comment on this item. Good evening, planning commissioners. I am karen flood, the executive director of the Union Square BusinessImprovement District and we are here to speak in favor of the project, 146 geary. The project sponsor did come before one of the Board Committees to present the project and it was received very favorably from that committee. As mark mentioned, retail is really changing and of course, union square is a shopping district, but peoples habits are changing and shopping online and the Big Shopping Centers are not coming to union center and there is less, less demand for retail. They are certainly not going to the upper floors. What we would like to see in union square is the spaces are filled whether its office that bring tenants and people that will come and shop in our shops and eat in our restaurants and frequent our businesses. That is what is really most important to us. And as a side note with regard to the chronicle article this morning, with regard to the luxury zone, it is something that the Business Improvement district came up with. It is not sanctioned by the city. We look at union square and within the 30 blocks, there is some different areas. Value retail on powell. More Luxury Retail on grant and geary. And we came up with the full cannabis policy about what are the criteria we evaluate with Cannabis Retailers at union square including security and how responsible the operator is including how much theyre going to sprord the b. I. D. And what we are trying to do down there and that support and whether or not they can contribute positively to the block and to the area and whether they are received by the stakeholders on the block. And if there are multiple residents that are opposed, were going to back those residents. With regard to this, we are strongly in support. We hope it will move forward and not be delayed. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. The value of sue hester. The value that is being create bid your motion is going to go to the land ward. And they have to have an obligation to light the streets. Planning Department Staff doesnt pay full attention to this issue, and the plans have to require they honor to maintain lighting permanently. Two speakers before me spoke about the high level of va can sis. Whenever there is a vacancy, the street gets dark because there is no lights coming onto the street from the retail establishment, which is why the obligation cant be put on the retailer establishment and has to be done permanently and looking at a quadrant leader to tell the planners you have to do this. You have to go over the plans for the building. You are creating value for the Building Owner. The Building Owner has to maintain lighting permanently on the street to make it safe, to make it more attractive to rent out the space. We are creating dead zones unintentionally on ground floors. We cant do that. Thats your job. That is a planning commissions job. You have the conditional use before you. You have to add a conditional use exhibit b requirement that there be adequate lighting on the street. And people need to Pay Attention to it at the planning staff level. Really. Im tired of trying to review plans to see what the level of lighting is. Its not good in downtown area. Thank you. Thank you very much, ms. Hester. Any other Public Comment on this item . Hello. Charmin spector, legacy business in downtown San Francisco, as previous owners of 146 geary, i would like to lend support to the the project to have office space on the upper floors. I feel that it would be more beneficial to have more people at least in the area and we have experienced a radical shift in the retail momentum and i do hope that it will swing back, but a lot of that has to do with having people as a Critical Force down there to try to encourage more businesses to come down to downtown and not be so stepped back from it. We really have created a vacuum in the last two years. Its been devastating. And there must be a way with the help of the bid and the help of the landlords to try to make it the Shopping Center and destination that it always has been and deserves to be for our lovely small city. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment on this item . Hello, commissioners. Richard lee from crushman wakefield. I am a stakeholder in union square. I am a member of the union square b. I. D. Whom you heard from ms. Flood. Mr. Steffen has a strong point and talks about upper floor vacancies and retail users. I actually oversee the property on post street where the former gumps is and i am the owner and gumps december 31, 2018 after filing bankruptcy. After 150 years on post street. That is a long time. So regardless, they vacated and left a large hole in the middle of post street. And that happens to be right next door to the new britex store, so if it were not for the top two floors of being an office building, that building would be completely dark. There is only lights on two floors. Thankfully for the upper floor tenants. Now, if you are walking down post street, you will understand what i mean. Its not that robust. So mr. Steffen brings up a good point. I ament a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers and if i can post this up somehow, i will do that. It is a monthly magazine and it talks about retail. I receive this every month. And i am not an expert in retail, but im in it every day. So with that in mind, this is a sample magazine and may not talk about transitions to offices to upper floors to office use, but it really talks about the changing shift of consumer habits. And that was mentioned earlier. And that is why i am here. I am on post street and im fairly active, so i will ask for your support on reconsidering this and you will hear from me for the next one, 220 post as well. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment on this item . With that, Public Comment is closed. Commissioner richards. Having heard the project sponsor say the cannabis dispensary is not an issue, Cannabis Retail is not an issue, is your office still requesting a continuance . Yes, and we dont mind if its a very brief continuance. I think that we would be fine if it was probably just a week. With all due respect to planning staff to analyze the issue, i did speak to supervisor peskin just outside who said that he was about the concept of a Luxury Retail zone. And that it might help all parties agree if we figure this out and just give it one week for that to take place. Thank you. Im sorry. Move to continue one week. U a second. Commissioner koppel . That was it. Okay. There is nothing further, commissioners. There is a motion to continue to december 12. On that motion, commissioner diamond . Commissioner fung . Aye. A commissioner moore . Aye. Commissioner richards. U a commissioner melgar . That motion passes unanimously 60. That places us on item 26 for 2017014849cua, 220 post street. Initial use authorization. Good evening, president melgar and planning commissioners. Jonathan vimmer, planning staff. The application is a request for a conditional use authorization for the property located at 220 post street. Which is developed with the fivestory over basement commercial building completed in 1907 that is historically been fully occupied by retail sales and service uses. As proposed t project would convert an approximate 18,525 square feet of retail space to floors three through five from retail to General Office use. The department recognizes the change in retail environment, particularly when it comes to Large Department stores and vertically oriented Shopping Centers. The staff fully supports conversion to floor four and five but not at the use of the third level. Such a conversion will result in the majority of the building located in the Downtown RetailZoning District being utilized for office space and set a precedent for like conversions of the numerous similarly scaled buildings within the area. Located downtown and more specifically a block from union square, the department further finds the categories of retail sales and service use remain that could occupy the third floor of the subject property and maintain the role as a retail site with the shopper retails and direct consumer services. The department has received three letters in support of the full proposal and in addition to those included in the sponsors packet or brief with the project sponsor yeah, having gathered additional signatures and letters in support in their submittal. This concludes my presentation. The project sponsor is in attendance and wishes to provide their own. I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, jonathan. Hello. Could we kindly get 10 minutes to kind of go through a little bit . Thank you. Representing the project sponsor, so for 220 post, they are requesting conversion of the third, fourth, and fifth floors. Each floor is about 6,175 square feet. The building has a mid block, approximately 50 feet frontage on post. And then the secondary facade facing hampton place. And the building has now been vacant for over three year. We look at multistory buildings and its extremely difficult to find a retailer who is interested in taking a third floor or higher floor in addition to taking the first and second floor. The other option would be to look at leasing it to stand alone and therefore, to a third retailer, but that requires for the building to have excellent access and visibility especially from the pedestrian perspective, which in the case of smaller buildings is a tough ask. So what we dont want to do is we dont want to jeopardize the primary retail facade which in this case is post street, and thus t access to the upper floors has to be off campton place in this case. We are not proposing any changes to the primary street facade and when we look at the maiden street facade and if i could have it on the overhead, here you see the existing versus proposed. The existing is currently a rather solid, noninviting and nontransparent facade. It has been approved already for a more transparent pedestrian parenedly lobby that also provides lob lu that provides access to stair and elevator. However, you could easily convert this into a retail use if you ever were in a situation where the retail was viable again. What you dont see in the images, however s compton place with this block is essentially a narrow alley that is improved with back of house entries and no one is going to wonder off compton place in searchover stand alone upper floor retail. It doesnt have a lot of pedestrian foot traffic or the appeal, and on the overhead again, here are images that show the alley in both directions from 220 post. The likelihood that a Retail Business would want a stand alone third Floor Office Space that is accessible from an alley that provides minimal foot traffic, marginal street visibility and has some Security Issues is in our opinion simply less than minuscule. On the overhead, i want to post one more image which is looking at the alley from grant street and if you see the orange box, that is where the third floor business is. Pretty tough to see. Pretty unvisible. So with all that said, nothing prevents the third floor and the upper floors being turned back into retail if at some future point that becomes viable. Project does not include any physical changes that would preclude that, so i am going to let the project sponsor speak about the actual efforts to lease this building, but before i go, in your packet, you have support letters that collectively include 41 signatures in support of the project including a leter from members of the Street Building at 210 post which includes 33 signatures representing 18 different businesses. I will turn it over to mark. Thank you. 220 post, we have been marketing that building for three years. And we have been talking to tenants both retail, quasiretail, and even Office Subject to a conditional use permit. And we found no taker. We talked to prada, lulu lemon, lewis vuitton, maz ratry, ralph lauren, tesla, and we talked to probably 100 tenants and not anyone that would take the upper floor spaces. And in fact, what we foresee happening is that were going to have to because the second floor cant be converted to office, we have a 50 foot store front and we will have to carve out an entrance for the second level to get up to the second level off post street. And to carve out three entrances on that, none of them will be viable and give enough identity for the amount of space. The floor plates are a little over 6,000 feet. On the third floor t quasiretail are not 6,000 feet useers. At best they are maybe 1,000 and mid block with windows just on the north and south which if we try to break up user, users with no window, no light, no air, and i dont want to rent space to people who dont have light and air. The other thing is i can tell you that we talk about economics, and the rents have on the retail areas in the streets are down probably almost 30 around union square just to signify the structural change and that is on the ground floor i am talking about. We tried. We dont have anybody interested in leasing this building. And i have seen this not just in San Francisco, but in los angeles and new york and miami. Its a global phenomena, really. And appreciate your listening to our concerning and are here to answer any questions. Thank you. We will now take Public Comment. I feel like its the same cast, same call. Very supportive of this project as well for similar reasons as 146. Again, we want to fill the upper floors. And bring people downtown and that will frequent the businesses and bring vibrancy to union square. We are particularly excited about proposing an entrance on compton place and we have been trying to activate that alley for a long time with art and two different grants to put art on the back streets and food and entertainment down there with the possibility of another entrance down there would really contribute to the vitality. Very much in support. Thank you. Next speaker please. Richard lee and this is a different spin. I am actually representing owners on each side of 220 post. Compton alley that is not very pretty. There is no foot traffic and the foot traffic that is there is undesirable. It hasnt gotten better in the last 10 years and actually gotten worse. The proposal is a very transformative proposal that is very welcoming and just look at the signatures. There is quite a few signatures. And back to the project and approach often. And i am on each side. This is awful. And what will happen here . Is anyone coming . Mr. Sfeffen expressed to you there is no takeers. And i dont know what to say because i am not from mr. Steffens office, but all i say is lets cross your fingers and see what happens. And its been about five years since saks fifth avenue for men vacated 220 post and he already explained to you its never been the same. And is another year and talking 2020. And feel like that is my property. Take that and following up what is happening closely and internationally and not just union street. And rates have come down. And information on that and i dont need to see much more. And there is no question about it. And also contributes to the city coffers and occupancy tax and with occupancy, the landlords hopefully can Start Playing the property taxes on time and basically its not just money, but there is foot traffic and lights. And ms. Hester talks about lighting. And he made it and. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Sue hester, i was hoping that he would make me happy by talking about the abundance of lighting in the building. And so he didnt make me happy. 2 the Building Owner by compton street as well as post street. And dark alleys are a problem. And they are unsafe and people dont want to wonder down them. If they feel safe and i am sure you do as well. The Building Owner, not the tenants, has to provide these conditions. And you are giving the value a lot of value when you are declining market and prices for retai