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Planning Commission continues Eastern Neighborhoods review with retail and height proposals
Summary
Planning staff outlined proposed zoning changes for the Eastern Neighborhoods plan, recommending retail liberalization along Sixteenth Street and selective corner height increases on 20 Fourth Street; commissioners asked for more economic, transit and environmental analysis and opened the floor for public comment.
San Francisco Planning Commission staff presented a series of targeted zoning changes to the Eastern Neighborhoods plan, seeking direction from commissioners after completing primary presentations. Ken Rich, planning staff, told the commission the project team ‘‘has completed, as of last week, all of the primary presentations’’ and asked the commissioners to focus the remaining hearings on specific top-level issues.
The staff recommended several near-term edits: liberalize retail controls along Sixteenth Street in PDR areas by establishing a special-use district that would apply UMU-like retail rules (allowing up to roughly 4,000 square feet per use without a conditional-use permit and using a conditional-use process for larger projects), and change parts of 20 Fourth Street from NC to NCT with modest corner height increases (generally to about 55 feet) at Folsom, Harrison and Bryant to enable one additional floor at key intersections.
Staff framed the Sixteenth Street proposal as an attempt to ‘‘liven up’’ the corridor while preserving PDR industrial uses, saying the change ‘‘is intended to deal with the concerns that have been fairly universal with liveliness on Sixteenth without necessarily introducing housing into the PDR areas.’’ The 20 Fourth proposal was described as a compromise that would permit slightly greater development at wide cross-streets while allowing curb-cut restrictions and removing an inconsistent parking mandate.
Commissioners generally signaled receptiveness but pressed for more supporting analysis. A commissioner asked planning staff to bring economic-development input on whether expanded retail could be supported along daytime-oriented PDR streets; concerns about whether narrow streets could absorb added height were raised in the 20 Fourth discussion. Staff committed to return with additional maps, modeling clarifications and data (including PDR vacancy and demand information) at upcoming hearings.
The hearing closed the staff presentation portion and moved into an extended public-comment period. Staff emphasized that a program EIR may allow limited streamlining for projects that conform to the plan but said that individual projects that appear to exceed program assumptions will still require project-level review.
Next steps: commissioners asked staff to prepare more-detailed draft language and analyses on the items discussed and signaled they will use the remaining scheduled hearings to finalize changes before an adoption packet is prepared for action.
