Plan Potrero Hill SF

(reprinted from the September 2007 Potrero Boosters newsletter)

Since December, dozens of Potrero Hill residents (between 30 and 70 neighbors at every meeting so far) have been working to come up with a stronger, more responsive, and more thorough community-based planning process. These workshops were convened by the Boosters, the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, the Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses, and Save Potrero as a way to improve the long-term rezoning process that has taken the City’s Planning Department most of this decade to develop. We will be publishing our community land use recommendations in late October.

At Tuesday’s Boosters meeting (September 25), we be will continuing our conversation from the last meeting on September 8, where we discussed strategies to get meaningful contributions to public benefits into our neighborhood planning.

Here’s some of what we’ve accomplished at Plan Potrero Hill in these past months:
• We’ve built a growing consensus around a new land use map, showing the centers of our new neighborhoods, and locations for open space.
• We’ve contained bioscience uses and large offices in one large portion of the Central Waterfront.
• We’ve combined the Showplace Square and Central Waterfront neighborhoods, and added the Port, Mission Bay, UCSF, and public housing land to our planning area.
• We’ve added the Department of Public Health’s ENCHIA standards to our public benefits discussion.
• We’ve demanded that transit improvements have to be part of new developments in our neighborhoods.
• We helped develop one of the best Planning Dept. proposals in years for getting sites for affordable housing.
• We’ve revived discussion about legalizing in-law units.
• We’ve influenced the Planning Department staff consensus, changing their proposed zoning map and getting us closer than we have ever been to good planning for our new neighborhoods.
None of these things were true in December 2006.

The big remaining problem, as it was in December 2006, is creating a real public benefits program to go along with the zoning. It’s hung us up for most of the summer, just like it’s hung up the Planning Department.

In December 2006, the proposed Potrero Hill area plan needed strong analysis of neighborhood needs, a clear strategy for funding necessary improvements, and official ‘nexus’ studies connecting the two. In September 2007, those things are still needed, especially the ‘nexus’ studies. The Planning Department tells us they will have those studies late this year.

But what are our neighborhood’s priorities, once we have those studies? (We will make some progress on this question at Tuesday night’s Boosters meeting.) And, just as important, how does the Planning Department handle building projects in the ‘pipeline’ – those who have current applications and are pushing for approval now, before the plans are adopted?

The city’s Planning Commission’s made one ill-considered attempt at a decision on that second question with a vote on August 30, where they decided to exempt all pipeline projects from making any significant contributions to public improvements if they are approved in the next few months. That was a spectacularly stupid vote (some commissioners were falling asleep as they were voting!), with potentially huge implications. At this point, many years into a long planning process, there are dozens and dozens of projects, with thousands of housing units, in the Showplace Square/Central Waterfront ‘pipeline.’ Any decision on those pipeline projects could affect more than half of the entire future development of our new neighborhoods; so exempting those projects from contributing to public benefits could destroy our planning before it’s even completed.

Fortunately for us, we continue to have a Board of Supervisors that is willing to protect our neighborhoods during this critical final stretch of the community planning process. This past Tuesday, Supervisor Tom Ammiano introduced a strong set of interim controls designed to limit approvals of ‘pipeline’ projects in the Eastern Neighborhoods while plans for those neighborhoods are being completed. At the moment, interim controls are our best hope to ensure that everyone contributes their fair share to our future neighborhoods, and Potrero Hill has to show up to support the Board when the time comes to consider the controls in October.

For more background and info, join us on Tuesday! NOW MORE THAN EVER, your input is critical in making this neighborhood, your neighborhood.

TWO Plan Potrero Hill meetings this week!
WEDNESDAY July 18 at 6.30 pm, and SATURDAY July 21 at 9.30 am!
at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro Street at Southern Heights.

We’re in the home stretch of our neighborhood planning process, and NOW is the time to speak up about what you want to see in a future Potrero Hill!

This week, we’ll bring back the Dept. of Public Health’s Healthy Development Measurement Tool and evaluate what might be in store for our neighborhood.

Also on Wednesday, Ken Rich (from the Planning Department’s Eastern Neighborhoods Program) and a guest from the City’s Recreation and Parks Department will join us to tell us of progress in the open-space portion of our area plan.

And on Saturday, we will return to Affordable Housing, and protecting jobs in Showplace Square and the Central Waterfront, with Planning Department folks and guest Calvin Welch.

Be there to find out what’s in the works, and to speak your mind!

Wednesday, July 18 - 6.30 to 9.00 pm
Saturday, July 21 - 9.30 am to noon
Potrero Hill Neighborhood House

www.planpotrerohillsf.org

I have to apologize for my frustration in these land use discussions. I have been going to the meetings in the Mission, where everyone is yelling at each other, and it is such a pleasure to deal with a group of reasonable people, who are basically on the same page. No one wants unregulated growth that ruins the small town character of the Hill. There is a charm to the isolation of Potrero Hill, but I think everyone can see the pressure building. A tsunami is upon us, so to speak

Everyone wants the best for this neighborhood. The industrial protection zone concept has some appeal to preservationists. I believe more open space and housing and less trucking are worth the trades-offs with increased density. I know others feel that we can avoid negative impacts by resisting market forces altogether. Unintended consequences of too many restrictions can back-fire (ie Kink.com in the Mission).

Unfortunately the environmental impacts of leaving aging, industrial sites as is, may be worse than the development plans. The health of our City and Bay Region, depends on San Franciscans finding appropriate land for urban infill of all kinds. San Franciscans play a huge role in the endless sprawl across California’s agricultural land, increasing greenhouse gasses, 2 hour commutes, dependence on foreign oil, etc. etc. For the last few decades City residents have resisted nearly every effort to increase housing.

Sharing our City with new comers is the environmentally correct thing to do. We should be able to find ways to be a showcase for environmentally sound products and design, that we can all be proud of. Increased density can encourage walking and biking if done right. We cannot depend on new MUNI lines to predate the increased population. Many of us would walk to Trader Joes from the Hill if the route were more pleasant. Mixed use housing above ground floor commercial will generate needed funds for open space, utility upgrades, and other community benefits.

But I wonder sometimes, if people in San Francisco are afraid of economic prosperity, because 2/3 are renters and have only a tentative hold on their homes here. It’s all fine and good to talk about wanting parks and planned developments, but there is a natural reluctance to make the area attractive to others, when you feel threatened by new-commers. It’s very hard to find the right housing solution for everyone. Try to think about what would be the ideal plan for someone you want to see move to Potrero Hill? Or a tenant you know, looking to buy something modest?

I would prefer to create new units behind and below existing houses, to minimize displacement of tenants, combined with shared ownership structures. This is where the real affordable housing can be created, without public subsidies or endless government monitoring. There is language in the City’s plan to allow additional units for existing residential without parking, which is a big step, but increased density on the big parcels at the bottom of the hill will need to provide parking somewhere. I hope we can find a place for a public garage, so we can save our street levels for something better like businesses.

I often speak about Potrero Ave and Franklin Park as a location for housing that would receive minimal objections from neighbors. It is not because I want you all to be concerned about a fringe area of Potrero Hill, but because I think it could be a win-win for everyone. Increased density should be directed first, to transit corridors that already exist like Potrero Ave. Taller developments would have less of an impact around Franklin Park than at the bottom of the hill. Smaller, more neighborhood scale buildings could be justified in Showplace Square, if higher density projects were placed elsewhere. It has to go somewhere. It is not out of line for Potrero Hill stakeholders to comment about Potrero Ave. along our border. There are many vacant properties there, an existing park and shopping center. My thinking is we should push the density where existing infrastructure already exists.

The lovely brick buildings along Kansas could become an “historic district” with regulations to preserve and enhance the existing architecture. I can’t see why we should dictate what people sell or do in their spaces. What we do not want to do is put so many restrictions on property owners that they do not make the seismic and handicapped upgrades of older buildings, that make the City sustainable into the future.

Thanks for listening.
See you Saturday.

Judy West

There is a new document concerning the Eastern Neighborhoods available on the Planning Department’s web site called the Rezoning SocioEconomic Impacts - Draft for Public Review.

It is also available here: Rezoning SocioEconomic Impacts - Draft for Public Review