Plan Potrero Hill SF

By Steven J. Moss

A few years ago Babcock & Brown, an Australian financial company, floated the idea of constructing a 57-mile electricity transmission cable from the City of Pittsburg under the Bay to San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Unlike most transmission lines, which can convey electricity in both directions, this would be a one-way cable, pumping direct current (DC) power to San Francisco. The cable would be “gently dropped” into a three to six foot trench on the Bay floor, “without harm to the eco-system.” It would then emerge into a non-emitting, if slightly noisy, facility in Dogpatch, where the DC power would be converted into alternating current before being distributed to the City’s homes and businesses. As part of the deal Babcock & Brown arranged to transfer ownership of the project to the City of Pittsburg, which is served by a small municipal utility.

It was a clever idea. At the time, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) Hunters Point Plant was widely considered to be “dead plant walking,” but had not yet been shut-down. Likewise, under severe community pressure, City officials, including prominently Mayor Gavin Newsom, had committed to closing Mirant’s Potrero Power Plant, which in recent years has produced more polluting and greenhouse gas emissions than the Hunters Point Plant ever did. Along with the installation of 150 megawatts (MW) of City-owned power, also to be located in the Dogpatch neighborhood, the “Transbay Cable” (TBC) would supply the City with the power it needed to insure closure of both plants.

What’s more, because the transmission line would ultimately be owned by a municipal utility, it escaped California Public Utility Commission jurisdiction, thereby removing an expensive and risky regulatory process. All Babcock & Brown had to do to obtain the government’s go ahead would be to finalize an environmental impact report – that would be certified by the City of Pittsburg – receive low level scrutiny from the States Land Commission and, potentially more seriously, from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and make a deal with the San Francisco Port Authority for leases and rights of ways.

For their troubles, Babcock & Brown would be guaranteed full payback, plus profit, on their $300 million+ investment. PG&E ratepayers – you and I – would pay all project costs regardless of whether the transmission line was fully, partially, or used at all. A large chunk of change, no doubt, but pennies a month spread across millions of customers. Capitalistic self-interest harnessed to painlessly solve a pressing public problem.

Unfortunately, the facts got in the way of this otherwise lovely story. The California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the nonprofit agency responsible for insuring that the state avoids electricity outages, endorsed the plant as a needed asset to ensure electric system reliability. But it did so by ignoring a number of considerations most of us would find pretty compelling. First, Cal-ISO, which had already committed to removing its reliability-must-run contract from the Potrero Power Plant once the City’s “peakers” were operational, found that the TBC would have little impact on the need for the Potrero Power Plant. Said different, TBC would not ensure closure of the Potrero Plant; and the Hunters Point Power Plant was shuttered last Spring.

Second, Cal-ISO found that the TBC’s benefits – principally in the form of additional reliability – would never exceed its costs. In a previous day this would be called buying a “white elephant.” In even older times it might be considered potlatch: the burning of valuable goods to please the gods, in this case, of electric reliability. Today, when outages can cause governors to be terminated, it’s called purchasing an adequate amount of insurance against (political) black-outs.

Third, Cal-ISO found that San Francisco will likely have plenty of power until at least 2012, and even then any emerging gap would be related to our reliability “cushion;” we’d have enough electricity, we’d just start eating into our reserves. Under status quo conditions the City’s demand might not exceed available supplies until 2018. Under most circumstances, this would be good news, allowing regulators to take the time to make the right decision. After all, energy technology is constantly improving; five years from now Apple might offer a solar generator bundled into its iPod. But rather than waiting and seeing, Cal-ISO abruptly decided to put its money on the TBC horse.

Fourth, Cal-ISO chose to ignore the potential ability of small-scale power sources and energy management approaches to meet San Francisco’s energy needs. Despite the constant public chatter about, and huge investment in, solar, wind, energy conservation, demand management, and, more recently, tidal and food-to-waste generation, Cal-ISO took these potential assets as seriously as a five-year looks at yesterday’s toy. Absent a serious examination, we’ll never know whether or not environmentally-attractive “distributed generation” and better energy management could cure what might ail us in the future at a lower financial and environmental cost than the TBC.

A high-cost white elephant; which would be built in complete disregard for potential alternative, lower financial and environmental cost alternatives; which we don’t need yet; but that we’d all have to pay for. Oh, and that would take up to five acres of valuable space at the Central Waterfront. That’s why I don’t like the TBC.

Ultimately, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will have to approve any Port agreements with Babcock & Brown. Before they do the project should be subjected to higher-quality policy analysis and be given a better public hearing than it has so far. San Francisco succeeded, after years of effort, in closing the Hunters Point Plant. Let’s continue to shape a sustainable energy future by firmly closing the Potrero Power Plant, and moving forward with green power sources. Then, if we need another extension cord, they’ll always be someone around to sell it to us.

Check out the PDF of this article:
Why I Don’t Like the Transbay Cable Project

By City and County of San Francisco, Dept. of Public Health

More and more, inter-disciplinary research associates the “built environment” (i.e., land use, transportation systems and community design) with health outcomes and well-being at the population level. For example, healthful neighborhood conditions require adequate and good quality housing; access to public transit, schools, and parks; safe routes for pedestrians and bicyclists; meaningful and productive employment; unpolluted air, soil, and water; and, cooperation, trust, and civic participation.

These built environment factors are generally determined outside the institutional realm of public health, in the purview of Planning, Transportation, Housing and Economic Development agencies. While there are few mandates to consider health in “built environment” planning and policy-making, public health agencies in diverse cities such as San Francisco, Riverside, Denver, and Minneapolis, are increasingly investing in strategies to influence the “built environment” to improve population health and reduce health inequities.

In San Francisco, the Department of Public Health has responded to the need for health and planning tools and guidelines by creating the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, an evidence-based guide for decision-makers to consider the health in land use planning. The Tool encompasses a community-based vision for planning and uses public health to explicitly connect physical and environmental planning to a wider set of social interests. The Tool provides land use planners, public agencies, and community stakeholders with a set of metrics to assess the extent to which urban development projects, plans and policies affect health. Where applied, the Tool thus might help to achieve a higher quality social and physical environment that protects and promotes health.

A joint committee of the Potrero Hill Associations of Merchants and Businesses, Potrero Boosters and the Dogpatch Association has proposed a plan for the Neighborhood Commerical (NC) District of Potrero Hill. See PDF for details.

By Corinne Woods
Neighborhood Parks Council

While increasing the stock of affordable housing is a key element in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process (see The Next Big Fight, San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 20, 2006), creating a new community involves more than building housing, even affordable housing. The San Francisco Planning Department is currently engaged in a “community-based” planning effort for land within the Showplace Square/Potrero Hill and Central Waterfront areas, among others. Unhappy about the length of time that the Planning Department has taken in this effort and cognizant of the intense developer pressure for parcel-by-parcel rezoning of industrial land to high-density residential uses under “conditional use” variances, the Potrero/Showplace Square/Dogpatch community itself is also conducting a concurrent planning effort: planpotrerohillsf.org.

In support of the community’s initiative, the Board of Supervisors, at their January 9, 2007 meeting, unanimously approved a Resolution establishing City and County Policy for the Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Community Plans Area.
This resolution sets forth priorities that the community feels should be considered in the planning effort: not only affordable housing, but also public improvements, services and amenities, including recreation and community facilities, open space and transportation improvements that will bring a coherent sense of place to the area as it evolves.

San Francisco has about 5.5 acres of open space per 1,000 residents – about one half of the national standard, set by the National Recreation and Park Association, of 10 acres per 1,000 inhabitants. There are more than 4,000 acres of public open space owned by local, state and federal authorities within the City’s boundaries, the preponderance of which is on the western side of the City. In its 2003 report, Green Envy: Achieving Equity in Open Space, which is currently being updated, the Neighborhood Parks Council discovered that there is a serious gap in the distribution of accessible open space in the Eastern Neighborhoods, especially along the waterfront corridor. The eastern side of the City is identified in the Recreation and Open Space Element of San Francisco’s General Plan as a high-need area. This won’t come as a surprise to those who live or work in the Showplace Square, Potrero or Dogpatch neighborhoods.

Much of the eastern bayshore, of course, was historically zoned for industry, with little area included for residential or commercial uses. Industrial areas have not traditionally had much parkland. As these areas are redeveloped for residential and commercial uses, with significantly increased density, adequate parkland and public open space needs to be reserved for public use and enjoyment, including the environmental restoration of the bay edge wherever possible. These are also the mandate for development of the State Lands Commission.

The 300-acre Mission Bay Redevelopment Project will, when complete, add about 49 acres of open space including parks and plazas along Mission Creek and San Francisco Bay, with another 8 acres of (not very accessible) open space to be developed within the UCSF Mission Bay campus. While this is a significant addition to the neighborhood, Mission Bay will be quite dense, with 6,000 housing units (adding 10 to15,000 residents), 6 million sq. ft. of office/life science/technology commercial space, and a 500-room hotel. The UCSF research campus will contain 2.65 million sq. ft. of buildings on its 43 acres, including a 750 bed housing facility for students, faculty and staff, plus an additional 14.5 acres for a new hospital for women, children and cancer patients. When it is built out, the Mission Bay Redevelopment area will have up to 30,000 new workers.

Using San Francisco’s current open space average of 5.5 acres per 1,000 residents, if we add 12,000 new residents we would anticipate gaining at least 66 acres of open space, or preferably 120 acres of open space using the national standard of 10 acres per 1,000 residents. Unfortunately, Mission Bay won’t even meet the current San Francisco standard, let alone relieve the deficit of open space in surrounding eastern neighborhoods.

In the area covered by the Eastern Neighborhoods Planning Process (Better Neighborhoods 2002), open spaces consist of Jackson Playground, Esprit Park, Potrero Hill Playground, and two small waterfront parks managed by the Port of San Francisco – Agua Vista Park and Warm Water Cove Park. To accommodate the expected population increase of up to 10,000 new residents in the Central Waterfront area, the City needs to fund and find another 55 – 100 acres of open space. Showplace Square, also being considered for rezoning from industrial to high-density residential use, should also include sufficient publicly- accessible open space to accommodate the increased density.

Current planning regulations have allowed “live-work” market rate lofts to be built in industrial areas at 100% lot coverage and little or no private open space or any requirement for public parks in the immediate vicinity. The Planning Department does not seem to be able to take into account the cumulative impact of all of these individual developments that are essentially creating new neighborhoods. Not even a playground is eked out of large development projects. It’s no wonder families are moving out of San Francisco.

There are several proposed individual projects currently under review by the Planning Department that would rezone industrial parcels to residential uses on a parcel-by-parcel basis. If these pending projects are exempted from analysis of cumulative impacts under the Environmental Impact Report for the Eastern Neighborhoods, it will be much more difficult to achieve equity in open space for the area as a whole.

How can neighborhood serving accessible open space be provided in a city with competing priorities and sky-high prices for land? First, it must be acknowledged that land use development policies impact public health, and, as such, deserve special consideration in comprehensive land use planning. The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) recently released a draft Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA) Final Report (December 2006) after an eighteen month effort to comprehensively evaluate the health benefits and burdens of a community planning process. One of the conclusions of this report is that open space planning should be a priority for healthy neighborhoods. The ENCHIA process produced an assessment tool, the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, which reflects a systematic approach to assessing social, environmental, economic and equity priorities for land use planning through the lens of health. It is vital that we begin to use this tool with all projects under consideration and that come forward in the future. The City Planning Department and other city agencies involved in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process must not miss these important opportunities to add critically needed open space.

Second, the City should actively adhere to the recommendations for Parks, Open Space and Streetscapes in the Sustainability Plan for San Francisco in the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process. This plan has four major goals: providing attractive and numerous vegetated oases and tree lined streets; maintenance of this vital resource; expanding public participation in supporting our “green” resources and recreational facilities; and providing adequate civic commitment to fund urban forest and recreation programs. While streetscape improvements are an important element of the plan, they cannot replace parks.

Third, it is important to identify and reserve adequate land for open space development early in the process. Otherwise, only the “left over” land, that can’t be intensively developed for residential or commercial use, will be available. In the Eastern Neighborhoods, Port of San Francisco property, which is subject to the Public Trust that sets a high priority on public access and open space, may offer the best opportunity for development of parks and recreation facilities where such uses would not conflict with the Port’s maritime operations or deprive the Port of income-producing uses. Although surplus Port land may be available, the cost of environmental remediation and open space development are far beyond the Port’s financial resources. The cost should be shared by the City and by the developers or new residents who will benefit from the improvements.

Fourth, both the Neighborhood Parks Council’s Green Envy Report and San Francisco’s Sustainability Plan outline mechanisms for funding acquisition, development and maintenance of publicly accessible open space. The Environmental Impact Report for the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan (and for each and every separate project proposed within the Plan areas) should address the cumulative impacts of increased density, and incorporate required mitigations that provide funding mechanisms for acquisition, development and maintenance of parks and recreation facilities as conditions for rezoning. Privately owned land could be purchased, or already-publicly owned lands (possibly traded from one agency to another) could be developed and maintained using public Open Space funds, bond funds or state and federal funds or development fees, community facilities districts, or any combination of these mechanisms.

However acquisition is accomplished, development and maintenance of new open space in the Eastern Neighborhoods requires a plan that acknowledges the importance of parks as a critical environmental, social, and health element in creating a new and vital San Francisco neighborhood.

About 40 neighbors turned out Saturday morning, Dec 16th to continue our neighborhood’s community-based planning process. Here is a summary of that meeting, with my thanks to Jen Serwer, Dick Millet, and Tony Kelly, all of whom supplemented this summary with their valuable notes.

In attendance were residents of Potrero Hill and Dogpatch, representatives from the Planning Department, the Port of SF, and UCSF/Mission Bay. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), and Cynthia Comerford, Senior Health Program Planner in the Environmental Health Section of the SFDPH, also attended and gave a thorough and engrossing presentation on the Department’s recently completed (May 2006) Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA) and the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT), ”an evidence-based guide for decision-makers to consider health in land use planning.” This presentation was the morning’s main focus, and there is more on it below.

Tony requested that folks give him their top three interests for these workshops, with an eye toward setting future meeting agenda. You can email these to Tony, at: president@potreroboosters.org, or bring them to the next meeting, when we will also begin setting agenda for future meetings. The next meeting is: Tuesday, January 16th, 6:30pm, at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (NABE).

There was also a brief review of the first meeting and then a discussion of Supervisor Maxwell’s resolution - Establishing City and County of San Francisco Policy for the Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Community Plans Area - that had been expected to pass at the Board of Supervisors the previous week, but had instead been continued until January, after Supervisor Daly raised last-minute objections. The Resolution’s importance is that it gives to the SF Planning Department clear guidelines regarding the expectations of the Eastern Neighborhoods when implementing the policies already outlined in the City’s General Plan.

Robin Talmadge, a Potrero Hill resident and volunteer in Supervisor Maxwell’s office, announced that she had organized a meeting with Supervisor Daly to discuss his objections, and was inviting all to attend. THE RESOLUTION WAS SUBSEQUENTLY PASSED ON JANUARY 9TH. Thanks to Robin and to many other community members, and to Supervisor Maxwell and her office, who have worked to see it through.

The Planning Department has pledged to follow the guidelines of the resolution in developing area plans for the eastern neighborhoods; we’ll know if they do over the course of 2007, as the City’s new plans for the Eastern Neighborhoods are presented at the Planning Commission and then at the Board of Supervisors.

To read the complete text of the resolution, click on its link, highlighted above, or go to:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/061342.pdf

If Robin or Tony or Joe Boss, or anyone who has been involved in the creation or passing of this Resolution would care to write about it for this website, that would be great. Though it has passed now, it remains to be seen how it will be implemented. The process of having gotten this Resolution passed, the issues involved, and the interests that both supported and opposed it, can provide a great deal of history and context to the current planning issues facing us in the Eastern Neighborhoods. There was a brief summary of recent events and links to recent hearings on the issue, in the email sent out to listserv members on December 17th. (I believe that is archived somewhere on this site.) However, it would be far better to have a comprehensive account.

On that note: Content is welcome for this site.
Cort Dugan, our very generous webmaster, gave a wonderful presentation about the site, how to use it, navigate it, and contribute to it. He’s done an amazing job getting this up and running, adds frequently to it, and maintains it for all of us, on an ongoing basis.
All content relevant to this website and the community-based planning process is welcome. Many of you have been involved in local planning or politics for a while now, and have insight and a lot of history to share that is relevant to this process and our undertaking here.
Please share.

As mentioned above, about 2/3 of the meeting was devoted to the presentation given by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia and Cynthia Comerford of the SFDPH, about the Eastern Neighborhood Community Health Impact Assessment, and the Healthy Development Measurement Tool:

In November 2004, the SFDPH, undertook an 18-month-long process to “assess how land use development in San Francisco can best promote the conditions required for health.” This process and subsequent report - ENCHIA - focused on several San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Mission, South of Market, and Potrero Hill.

Operating on the understanding that the necessities to achieve optimal health are not limited to “health services and individual behavior alone” but rather encompass the whole of the “neighborhood conditions”: from adequate housing, access to public transit and proximity to open space, to things like cooperation, trust, and civic participation, with many more in between. ENCHIA sought to parse the relationship between health and these many conditions, using a set of methods called Health Impact Assessment (HIA). They succeeded in doing this, and achieving a number of other outcomes.

Among the many important products to come from the ENCHIA process, is the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, a set of metrics that addresses a broad range of indicators and data points that lead to healthier neighborhoods. This methodology is significantly broader than the scope of what the Planning Department measures. And while it is not feasible to move all indicators forward, the HDMT seeks to move each indicator, and as many indicators as possible, as far forward as possible, to have the broadest overall/deepest impact on an area.

For example, the tool employs maps that can address specific criteria and multiple metrics at once - measuring for instance, proximity to schools and parks, while also measuring proximity to noise, and at the same time, distance to retail services and health facilities. While there are caveats, this tool can be tested and used by communities to evaluate their actual experiences and unique challenges and prioritize and focus in on what they deem most important. (It is being tested now in Executive Park.)

Both the ENCHIA and HDMT websites are the best sources of information, including comprehensive lists of data points and indicators, examples, and the tool itself, and provide excellent summaries and explanations of the sometimes complex process and Tool. They are well worth taking the time to explore, and to consider how the report and the Tool can be of value in our community-based planning process.

Websites for each can be accessed by clicking on its link, highlighted above, or by going to: http://www.sfdph.org/phes/ENCHIA.htm for ENCHIA or,
http://jcmurray.gotdns.com/sfdph/hdmt/index.php for the HDMT.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the next meeting:
Tuesday, January 16th, 6:30pm, at the NABE.