Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Plan Bay Area topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Planning staff previews proposed expansion of Priority Development Areas to tap regional funding and advance citywide equity
Summary
Planning Department staff previewed proposed expansions of Priority Development Areas (PDAs) to include additional neighborhoods across San Francisco as a voluntary signal to regional agencies that the city will pursue local planning and funding for housing and transit investments.
Planning Department staff briefed the commission on the regional "Plan Bay Area" process and proposed updates to San Francisco's Priority Development Area (PDA) designations.
Staff emphasized that PDAs are voluntary local nominations that make areas eligible for regional planning and transportation grants; they are not zoning changes and do not impose growth targets. The department proposed expanding PDAs beyond their historic east-west pattern to include additional corridors on the West Side and other supervisor districts to gain access to regional planning dollars and transportation investment.
Commissioner and public concerns: Several commissioners and community speakers raised concerns about the potential for PDA designations to be misread as pre-approval of upzoning, about the relationship between PDAs and state bills such as SB 50 or SB 330, and about the risk PDAs could accelerate market-rate development without mitigation. Planning staff replied that PDAs are an incentive signal and that the actual zoning or plan amendments would follow locally, often with community-based planning and potential mitigation strategies.
Takeaway: Staff framed PDAs as a tool to unlock grants, transportation funding and planning support and said the Board of Supervisors would consider forwarding a resolution to the regional agencies. Commissioners asked staff for more analysis on how PDA expansion would interact with recent state laws and local equity goals.
Next steps: Planning staff said a draft resolution was before the Board of Supervisors and that the city would need to forward final action to the regional agencies by mid-January.
