yes we're going to start the minute if you're going to speak tonight then please do i want to these green cards you can get at the staff desk over here and you're right justice board meeting for thursday august eighth we will start with a roll call and if you have any ex parte communication then it's good to disclose that at this time  and i had no exposure to i did talk to records as well on the phone but we didn't discuss any of the really the formal business of twenty seven  present since nobody knew i was going to be here no no ex parte communications thank you board member present and nobody tried to contact me except for a meeting sorry let's start with june thirteenth get it one step backward all right any motion on june thirteenth all right so you were moved bob seconded to take a voice  ok all in favor of this action to say i'm anyone against i will abstain again and then wonder stanching i also abstained i wasn't present when i also need to abstain i was not present so we still have five suggestions for the consent calendar bein squared away before you have a project as a opposed new single family dwelling on a vacant lot twenty eight hundred square foot single family dwelling with an attached single car garage the key issues just very quickly to highlight for you neighborhood compatibility the project is just below the average for lots that are comparable in size within a three hundred foot radius it also complies with all development standards for the zoning district so the only permit that is being requested is that to build the main building so there's no additional requests for extra height or setbacks in terms of shading wanted to make a correction to the staff report the staff report notes that there are only additional shading implications to the morning of the winter months and that's not true the southern facade will have increased shading during the winter months pretty much afternoon and midday so those are new shading implications there are additional wind that provide some light in these rooms which is why staff didn't feel that this was going to be a detrimental effect  privacy for the last meeting we received several letters and three of those were concerned about views and privacy six hundred spruce which is located to the south immediately of the property had concerns about a window facing into the kitchen and subsequently there were discussions between the applicant and the neighbor and apparently that has been resolved the window had been moved five four spruce is located to the northeast of the property and there was concern about the chimney blocking the view that remains an issue today lastly ninety eight north hampton which is the property immediately north they have been in mediation they have met a few times and i believe victor herbert is here to give a report for us but if necessary the original proposal has changed significantly and much of the much of the issues were addressed however there remains to be some objection because there is a view of the golden gate bridge that remains obscured but again staff didn't feel that this was rising to the level of detriment and feels that we can make the findings to your excellent summary any questions for staff thank you perhaps but i hope this wasn't in the report and i didn't catch it how many other rooms in the house to the north have a golden gate bridge for you just get a sense of like how big of an impact it is on the enjoyment of that pew for the whole house i believe there is a view and i can ask the applicant if you don't so our neighbors and the applicant still in the discussions mediation or not is that is has that ended and has ended it has so we're this is where we are ye i don't see any other questions for staff so let's open up the public hearing and we'll start with the applicants  h a little louder down some steps into the front door two car garage was still within respected required setbacks to our property line i put up the neighbor's fences several feet beyond the property line but so we agreed to to reduce this to one car garage which i think is a significant give back to the neighbors and we also reduced the library here so as to keep the view from the window in question is this window from the library from their from their dining room or other  the view what you'll see next top floor similarly reduced scale of the library and the garage next again roof plan next  ok original proposal next second proposal next third proposal next ridge a proposal next next proposal next ok and so on you can to cycle through these  first second third next first second third next quarter as i mean these people in the new jason house have a very wide view about one hundred fifty degrees many bridges the question the window in question is this window unlike to resume in on that next and so it's this dining room window and the the impeded or the impacted view is this these these couple of degrees here beyond this point are vegetation which blocks the view and you can you can see clearly that this house has struggled to respect that view next i mean the shuttle studies will just flip through you don't need to dwell on those next next unless people have questions next next next and i'd like to point out this is the view from a neighbor's window as it exists looking onto my client's property next in the view towards a golden gate bridge  good evening my name is christy lavelle my husband john and i purchased the property at five nine hundred six precise talked over and it's been a long journey for us as we have spent twelve years looking for a home in the berkeley area we predicted that building a new home in the north berkeley hills would not be without issues we determined that our first step should be to approach the neighbors with openness kindness and authenticity we introduced ourselves with a letter in september when we were still in escrow and then spent several weekends going door to door with our eight year old son neil are grateful and heartened by the warm and welcoming response we have received from most of the neighborhood we spent several months working with trachtenberg architects to design our home great care was taken to consider all the neighbors views and impacts our intention is to be good stewards of this special piece of property and the house was purposefully designed to fit into the natural down slope of the hillside we knew that the neighbors to the north at ninety eight north hampton would bear the greatest impact from any development on the lot and we took care to stop the house back on the north side to preserve their views and to stay below the allowed the height limit to minimize shading a meeting was held at trachtenberg architect's office on february fourth to share our design plans with the neighborhood forty households were invited and eight attended several neighbors were concerned about the impact of our home on their views and the following week we visited four neighbors homes with the architects of the plans could be explained in diagram based on real views from actual windows in porches on june seventh an additional meeting was held at the planning office of the city of berkeley with the neighbors from ninety eight north hampton and in the effort to avoid an appeal and to avoid poor neighbor relations we offered to reduce the size of the garage from a two car garage to a single car garage this increased the space between the homes and reduce the sheeting on their patio this was offered in good faith despite the fact that the initial plans conformed to all city of berkeley zoning codes for setbacks and height restrictions we asked for response to our offer by the following week and no response was received until a week prior to our initially schedule job hearing when letters from six neighbors were sent to the planning office accusing us of not communicating with the neighbors at ninety eight north hampton it became apparent that simply reducing the size of our garage was not satisfactory to these neighbors and completely redesigning our home and building it underground was not satisfactory to us so we gratefully agreed to meet with the mediators from seeds after two mediation sessions we heard our neighbour's anguishing concerns and we not only agreed to the smaller garage but we increased the northern setback from four feet over nine redesigned the northern side of our house to break up the massing gave written permission for the neighbors to use over two hundred feet of our property that their fence and crutches upon for as long as they own the property and provided descriptions and pictures of proposed plantings along the property line that will not grow above six feet we have compromised much and we have gone above and on what is required by the city of berkeley it is important to note that most of our neighbors views have been preserved we deeply regret that the dining room view over the undeveloped lot that our neighbors have enjoyed for such a long hello my name is lauren purcell and i'm a dear old friend of john and christie's i've known them for twenty years and i think you got most of the details from christie and i just wanted to come to support their family and to let you know that they're very good honest people and i would trust them with my child they're very kind hearted and i know that at the top of their priority list is making a house that is a community oriented project as well as completely as environmentally friendly as they can their avid gardeners their child is in a waldorf school because they believe in a very natural healthy way of living and i i feel in my heart that they've been misunderstood by some of the neighbors and i think that they actually have gone in a long way to try to make accommodations and compromises and have done mediation and i just i feel that they're really very deserving of what they're asking for i'm danielle epiphanny and i have known for nearly ten years i know that preschool and kindergarten teacher for which their son has participated in my program every summer for nearly five years even though he's well beyond the age of the children that i now care for and in knowing them during this time i've also known their  to find a home i also live a street up from them and have spent my summers outdoors with the children in tilden park and i think that in many ways what i have found about the lavelle's is said they value not only this natural experience for the children which is somewhat unique in terms of the work that i do but their community building aspect so in the sense that they have participated and chosen to have their their older boy now continue to be really a leader you know for my little younger ones i think really demonstrates the commitment that they have to certain impulses to preserve and protect and to form community and that was one of the things that i wanted to make clear in that i have a little bit of an understanding of what they've been doing to meet the needs of their building project here and you know i know that the accommodations that they've made are quite great having lived in my home for almost twenty years in the north berkeley hills like him full well appreciate the issues that come up regarding views expansions and whatnot and so today i took a walk with the children over to the site and i really could appreciate how the scale of the proposed project the story pulls and everything really and what i've seen in the twenty years that i've lived in the berkeley hills is quite modest  and in knowing the improvements that they've made and i really hope that this struggle can be overcome and i can appreciate what that is so that their goodwill and their spirit and the what they have to offer their neighbors and the community can come forward and i can say that again and knowing them for almost ten years and and working with them you know they continue to provide and give back to their community and they don't really see on their ideals and i know that they took a long time many many years to choose this piece of property and hello my name is leslie shorts and i live at ninety eight north hampton adjacent to the proposed three story structure at five nine six proves i oppose this project as currently designed on two issues both of which have extremely negative and up setting ramifications on our home quality of life and ultimately home value first besides if this massive building would cause drastic shading to our home and garden and second the proposed placement of this development would eliminate our view of the golden gate bridge from our front patio and dining room my husband will focus on the enormous effect this building would have on our sunlight from the fall through the spring and most devastatingly in the winter well i will talk about the impact to our views i now would like to ask you to look at the photo that i have distributed it is from our dining room window as you can see we now enjoy in on obstructed view of  an the golden gate bridge and san francisco the proposed structure will tower above our house our home and eliminate all of this even so i'm not asking that all of our view be preserved instead what i'm asking is for a small view corridor which would allow us to keep a partial view of the golden gate bridge by making a minimal adjustment to the stairway landing as seen in the trachtenberg section drawing a for dot to we could at least have a fragmentary view on my number two which i submitted to sab with my letter i have drawn a sight line to illustrate the approximate modification to the proposed building plan i feel this is a reasonable request it involves the applicants making a small adjustment while allowing us to preserve a minimal percent percentage of our once spectacular view certainly it is an equitable compromise for the applicants to modify a few feet up their proposed three storey structure in order to allow us to keep a partial view of what they are proposing to eliminate from our lives this proposed building is not a modest house but in over wing looming structure which by its very design causes major loss of our views sunlight quality of life and home value i understand and i am sympathetic that any building on this lot will have an effect on our home however exasperates detrimental due to its design size and location on the lot i asked for zoning adjustments board to request the applicants to alter their proposed plans to allow for a view from our dining room window and to mitigate the extreme cold dark shading to our home thank you all for your time your consideration i hope that you can hear my distress and  consequences this proposed design would have on our lives i ask you to be sensitive to the helplessness i feel in trying to mediate a compromise in this very personal and important situation thank you thank you mark good evening zab members and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak with you when it was mark short to leave at ninety eight north hampton which is directly north of five ninety six paris i oppose the project as proposed because one it blocks are only f view of the golden gate bridge from inside of our home into the hyatt and location of the buildings as proposed cast deep shadows over our tire home both of these issues are important and however i'm just going to focus my time on the shade an is because my wife just spoke about the issue to paraphrase the staff report finally it's located on page ten it concludes that there would be partial shading on the dining room window in the morning and that the afternoons and evenings would not be was presented as you can see in the architect's own project plans trachtenberg shadow study attachment three eight point zero one through eight point zero five the structures at five ninety six proposed will cast dark cold shadows across the entirety of the south side of our home including the windows throughout the december twenty first day selected for the study it's evident the proposed structures of five you six would drastically limit our sunlight especially during the winter months the consequences to us would be as follows one some have a claim higher heating costs a decrease in the value of our home and three the most important to us a drastically reduced quality of life modifications are made to the height of the buildings if you out of our windows along the south side of our home is looming so it is a limited stuck a lawless this is especially true for our dining room and kitchen where we spend the majority of our day we have brought up this issue to the owners each time we have conversed but little or nothing has been done to address this having a site to build on guarantees the only suspect calculator view from anywhere on their property it's also a fact that the five hundred six  lot has the highest elevation of any property on the west side of spruce stretching from the university of california over two miles to the end of north hampton that there still chose to propose to build a three story house mast at the top of the hill are a bit exaggerated but my question is with the description of this development being looming what is the square footage of your home our home is about seven hundred square feet a little over seven hundred square feet thank you ok tony i just want to better understand what a three thousand square foot house that would be acceptable to you would look like would it be that there is no house that of other venues as well as our own and designing it so it's just massive from where we are and if you went by and saw it it would have the same kind of impression you know when you say a modest house  what i mean that i think a lot your home is on is quite a bit smaller and usually the size of the home is somewhat relative to the size a lot and i'm truly curious what what you imagine would have banned sort of sing reaction and it was like this is modest so i see that it wasn't the the actual configuration of the lot or the allowed building size or anything like that it was that someone's idea of modest was not right and then of course of when we saw the real thing you know it struck a different chord ok i don't see the question so thank you thank you very much so  david feiten i live at five eighty four spruce street and my views from my living room dining room a little bit of a kitchen ok the den and the deck and one bedroom all face that direction  so i do see that house and the height of it blocks some of the view and especially the chimney is probably the worst part and that's my biggest dispute was the chimney by the way the  people so i can't complain about that they've been really kind and really really wonderful but the chimney is my biggest complaint and my recommendation as i went down to trying to come up with th solution rather than just complain about it went down the building department talked to a building department and showed him the blueprints and they recommended that you can do a side vent and i gave you guys a little sample of what  fireplace is by doing that you don't have to have a chimney and you can remove the chimney which would solve all my problems from my view and the other neighbors but also help on the shadows for mark swartz his  house and you still get to keep your fireplace because it is a gas fireplace not a wood burning and they do make that and there is a place here in berkeley i gave christie that address where you can have point as a party my question is on what the extent of the discussions has been that he of play sued about this particular issue with the applicant i asked because i  see much mention up the chimney in the staff apartment coming here i thought that all but the views issue had been of itself so this is you know i wanted to get more hasn't been resolved for me i did meet with up i then met with claudine at my house showed her the views they did make changes the story board pulls up hoping that that would resolve it it didn't make much difference at all for the chimney in the height claudine if i could talk to a mediator or talk to mediator over the phone he didn't have any much recommendation other than for me to go down to the billing department and talk to them to see if there was a way to  put in the side vent fireplace instead and there was and that was a really good solution and so i talked to them i talked to a fire place company and the regency fireplace company and all agreed that it could be done so that's kind of where we're at the i'm sorry i forgot one little thing is claudine and david did come up with a small change on the fireplace chimney where they angled it slightly but it really didn't make much difference takes out about three inches is all it's very minor but unfortunately it's not the best angle to be for my view right bob you have questions i'm i'm looking in that area which what's your address again it's five eighty the window there should be some photos showing kind of before and after and then the both the living room and dining room dead center of the main window looking out toward treasure island and the bay bridge a great and your and also the kitchen your view extends to hell far up toward socially and dimmer and headlands it circles around toward richmond toward the richmond bridge and then it stops about there sold secondly i would like to say that i find the laval's a lovely family and i'm looking forward to having them as neighbors however i do have some concerns the north side of my house my kitchen  window will be seriously and backed up by the height of the house we are far enough away so that i do get a certain amount of sun and kirsty lavelle was kind enough to come and show me shadows studies and so forth because i was worried that my driveway would get very wet and do you know mildew and so for that and then it would be somewhat of a hazard to the placement of their windows is not my main concern because neither mrs laval nor i have time to be looking and there's windows and there are curtains but what would help us all would be if they could see a way to maybe i don't know what you call it stepping down those house rather than stepping it up a lot goes this way and the house goes out so that is what the problem is for my two neighbors and myself it's going to darken the side of the house you know considerable i know i am lucky enough to have a view from the back part of my house so my kitchen doesn't matter to me that much  anyway they have tried i think to modify their windows and i'm sure they're trying very hard to cooperate with all of us but it is going to impact us rather seriously thank you thank you kristie it was kind enough to measure it so that part is fine that's my driveway and that they're going to make a side path going down and i have a hedge on the side which they're kind enough not to remove because it's kind of this kind of a he so she's has told me that it's twenty three feet from my house to hers so that part doesn't distress me but i do feel that if i get too much shade on my driveway it with the moisture and so forth it's already kind of a steep driveway out it's somewhat of a hazard and i it would be nice to have more sunlight you know ok thank you my window ok great so the app can come back up twenty four feet but it angles out to thirty five feet so it's quite extraordinary it's a kind of extraordinary degree of separation between houses up in the berkeley hills  i know you guys are high tech so and also i would say regarding the possible shading i mean our house is north of dorsey's house so it's not going to cast me shadows in her driveway or her house or speck to the concerns raised by the schwarz's you know we really have tried in good faith to work with you know i think any house is going to have impacts i do believe that this is a modest proposal that's the reason why we were attracted to this project in the first us came to us and said we want to do a modest house ok and you know i think that most people who bought this site for more money i would say than most people spend for their houses right back any further it's a redesign because there's no landing left on the stairway ok and then just for the record can you comment about the alternative fireplace chimney i mean it's true that you can do a side vent we think that the chimney is a handsome feature houses have chimneys all the other houses have chimneys we think it's a good thing it's certainly and we think that there's a misunderstanding perhaps about what the true impact is of this feature so we'd like to keep it you know if push comes to shove we would we would take it away but would rather not ok well i would i would urge you to look at that at least explore that possibility  your statement was you said i do not think the chimney is a major obstruction that was an opinion and not fact is there any way of measuring what the be objectively what is the obstruction of the proposed chimney as it is i now think that and i think that claudine addressed it in her staff report i think if you look at attachment six to the staff report pictures that are taken from mr finds far you already have ride setbacks from the houses to your left and right but it sounds like the neighbors somehow would have preferred you know house that sort of cascaded down the hill i was that in order to get the program to fit i think you look at the plan it's it's it's a pretty tight floor plan it's not a huge plan i think if it were as they suggest to step down the hill i think that would have much more impacts on their views because you know you can't you can only get it down so low in the ground the other thing i'd say is that in terms of our views we can go from our principal floor main floor we can't go any lower than we have because as you do then we block our own view because there are high hedges up in the distance so the idea that we could step that we main floor could be lower than us would deprive my claim of that of their views so you know it's discuss objectively how mediation went and in your view what that would be an opportunity or value to find the mediation mr mr schwartz and i did talk to one of the other neighbors on the telephone after that was over  you about how to open up the view can call it that that's a question for the architect it just seems like i'm getting several different stories one that's captured in the mediation  that there was on the one with meaning linking issue which i suppose may be true in this particular case but with all the other comments that were made by other neighbors and i know that we're not parties to mediation i just want so whoever showed up that's who i deal with can somebody tell me what the process is there is a publicly noticed how it's mediation how is that developed how was how do people know about it well staff lets them know that mediation so they were informed yeah ok well that's my question i'd like to i'd like to make a comment just respond to that for you the applicant spoke that they invited forty families and that eight of them showed up ok and by the way in the process usually works very well the most concerned neighbor knows who who else is concerned and most of the time the people show up who should be there right thank you now the question before we close the public hearing now ok let's close a public hearing and let's first say any questions for staff shellfish i have a question about that the tall trees which of course are you know a near either these properties but am i not am i mistaken that there is some kind of a rule that you are entitled to the view you had when you moved into your home and that somehow you can that invites where there's issues regarding the use you know related to trees and so forth there is a section in the ordinance that's the city's municipal code that speaks to neighbors you know trying to work things out but there's no specific requirements those owning orange requirements my real estate agent lied to me street and everything else is i think to describe it as a three story house is really not doesn't address the facts that are here yes it steps down the hill it's a total of three stories high when you have a one story house at the street i think i consider that modest i think somebody did point out that it's not possible for the new house to be casting any shadow on the house that's within four feet or six feet whatever it is of the property line to expect someone or a neighbor to move their house further away than that just because you were there  first and i'd also point out the board that if you noticed that the house to the north of ninety eight north hampton i was there at about one o'clock in the day and it's totally in shade from ninety eight north  exaggerates the bit of the chimney rather dramatically from what everything i hear applicants made a real effort to lower the house to move back from the property line to the north and i just don't think that the objections  they don't have any weight with me i'm going to make a motion to approve the project second great ok any other comments let me just say i don't disagree with your comments there i do have some sympathy with ninety eight north hampton and certainly the chimney issue and i wish applicant would look at the chimney particularly and see what could be done there however neighbors i mean you've had the lot the whole time you've been there most of us in this town do not have that luxury and sooner or later it's going to be developed that's a reality and i'm not sure we can do anything about that it is in my mind a fairly modest development house and i think applicant has made accommodations and concessions and i don't know how far you want them to go so i i i do agree thanks you know i agree with everything that the other board members of stated and i also want to point out the photograph that the neighbors at ninety eight hampton submitted the views from their their dining room toward the bay which has the story poles and pride of the story poles and and it's a view very close to that window and angled looking out and and when you get to a point like that in a view it's you know there's a ways to kind of show what that looks like but i also want to say that these neighbors already have some substantial views out of their windows and their home toward the bay and this is one one view that will have certainly a view of the new construction next door but it's just one project to analyze for me because i see may have it on both sides of what has been said i do however believe particularly in the hills well perhaps solidly in the hills the view issue lot that's that's not something that's commonplace what made it difficult for me was there has been accommodations made by the applicant to be more sensitive to the neighbors concession to the neighbors i wish that more could be done and i do hope that the applicant will continue to engage in conversations with neighbors i think it may be possible to resolve the issue of on the chimney what's difficult for me always when i come to these meetings and i get both sides of how conversations and negotiations have been going is  i can on the base my decision on what's been represented to me and so i don't know who acted in good faith if both parties acted in good faith if there was a situation  where the applicants came through the neighbors and let them know about the proposal and for weeks they were not hearing back until the last minute or in the contrary case whether they did hear back from the neighbors immediately and did not do enough to mitigate those concerns and at some point disses as out commissioner i can on the make a decision based on what i've heard on the record and what's before me today i think the applicant has made to me they've done enough to convince me that this project is sufficiently sensitive and so i will support it but with the hope that there will be for their conversations that are possible and other concessions that might be made in a good faith attempt because very soon you will be neighbors for a long time one of the things that comes to my mind immediately is that in this situation the positive is that we have folks coming into community that everyone seems to embrace no matter which side they're on at the development and to me that's that's the best part of it the other thing is i think that the neighbors have the applicant has made a reasonable consideration in development of the site in looking at first second and third drafts  and have made the compromises as best they can i think that the definition of modest home has many you know there are many definitions of that is we're clearly hearing from the board and also from everyone in the  room and my position is within one thousand square foot lot we could see something a lot more dramatic than what you have before you right now my hope is that this project can move forward and that everyone will be comfortable with it after it's been built and everyone settled in i'm going to support it i just like to say that it's not our job to do to like or dislike applicants or people who are concerned about a project or not it really it's not in our purview but i will say that we see a lot of projects in the hills where views and shadowing are the main concerns and the discourse from people who have come before us today and are written materials are actually very calm and very respectful and so i'd just like to put a shout out to everybody because i think this has a lot of potential for a happy ending i do feel strongly that zoning code is a point of reference it doesn't mean that what is allowed it's not allowed by right we still have to make a finding as owning as a zoning board that what is allowed is not causing detriment but  code is our social contract with each other and the code says a really big house could be built on this property and when people buy a property they rightfully rely on what the rules say and the rules say you can build a really big house here now that is qualified by detriment and detriment does not mean that there is no impact it means that the impact is so great that it is detrimental so i don't think that a no impact project is something that any of us here is looking for and while i do understand how difficult it is to adjust to a big new structure i've actually had that happen to myself i live next to an empty lot that was built on in kensington before i moved to berkeley it's a big adjustment but it i don't think it's detrimental in this case and i'm going to support this thank you and the comment so just one more i want to say i do not feel that chimney creates any significant problem for the neighbor next door it's a very small fraction of view and it's quite panoramic from across the street and up higher so i just want to go on record saying i don't feel that chimney is a significant issue and i hope nobody raises that as an appeal or any other part of this is an appeal god and i'll just i want to second that i i want to appreciate the applicant in terms of the clarity of the proposal and taking us through the steps i can sympathize with the neighbors but as mentioned here i think this project is a ok so this project before you nine hundred twenty four fairview street was actually at the board june twenty seventh and it was continued for mediation the project involves the movement of the of a structure it's a it's a single family home and it's basically moved from the front of the last towards the rear of the lot the original proposal was to locate the house fifteen feet from the rear property line  the applicant has submitted different plans that show the house is not that far back it's moved so that it's thirty five feet from the rear property line i understand mediation has been ok come on up we started off with five minutes try to put this together last night and i read it today and it was fifteen minutes so i chopped it up a good way here and so i apologize if it's a little jumbled ok first p c your name for the record and my name is brian connor murphy my wife and i houses away on fairview street at our last at our last meeting you had asked us to attend mediation with the neighbors my wife and i stated our concern that relocating an existing structure on a lot  was going to be a difficult matter to mediate because as one neighbor is affected less another affected another neighbor is affected more what's important is understanding kind of the lot configuration of our lot so it's a seventy eight hundred square foot  lot it's forty feet across one hundred ninety five feet deep along here is a city park in the center here and then you have this is actually the oakland line so these are open properties that go into the back of o property so these these three houses here join our back property line and then these are two berkeley addresses that are on the right the east and the west of us the house is twenty one fifty two i believe on city record when we went to get permit in for the house when we first bought it in october the building department told us that it's actually a thirteen hundred square foot house and the only way that we could get it up to twenty three hundred was if we let raised the first floor another four inches if we were to raise the first floor four inches we'd have to take out the slab if we're to take out the slab the footings are only four inches below the slab so we'd have to underpin the footings became a pretty and expensive endeavor to take on my wife and i decided ultimately that we wanted to move the house towards the back of the lot we made that decision in january talked to different people about how to do it they said hire an architect we did that and and have been going forward with it they don't get it why are we moving our house back i think mr allen you would ask that our decision process for moving the house was simple and we'd like to remind you of our reasoning which was very much it which very much included the future valu the future value of what we consider our lot we intended to move in in january but the house was structurally unsafe in the bottom levels not recognizable which i had mentioned once it became clear that we needed to increase the ceiling height and underpin the foundation we began thinking about how to maximize the future potential of a lot and thus led us to wanting to relocate the house in its current location the house provides approximately four feet of clearance on both sides so every single contractor that we had to our house to talk about the renovations when we first were going to keep it in a place was like how am i going to get stuff in the back and we couldn't have parking the way that the house it's twelve feet from the street so from the sidewalk so under current code we don't have to parking spots that are at our house we therefore we therefore submitted as mentioned parking was also issue we therefore submitted a plan that we believe was conservative so that we could move into our house as soon as possible while maximizing the future value of our lot by moving the house towards the back of the property we would gain parking we gain more distance from the street we remove the obstacles of having a house at the front of the property at a position that blocked access to the back of the property we did not include a plan to develop the front because we did not and did not want to slow down the process of moving in q baby and b did not know what exactly wanted to do with the property in the future  sorry i'm kimberly murphy thank you thank you also owner of the house of several hundred copies of zoning literature a d v d of their request we just wanted to underscore our efforts to try to meet a compromise because that is ultimately where we netted out at the end of the last hearing in addition to opposing six different alternatives of where the house could be located on the lot we proposed alternatives around noise reduction tactics tactics to reduce traffic lighting fencing water strategies and ultimately none of these were we received feedback from the neighbors they just continued to express their individual opinions about where the house should be located we really wish that we would have come here tonight saying we reached a happy consensus we agree on more than we disagree but unfortunately it seemed heard several comments about you know driving traffic the new plan that we proposed does not have a driveway running along the back of the properties on dover street so there are concerns around safety and security and exhaust and lights in their house is no longer an issue so i guess in summary we really feel like we've made a very genuine attempt to listen to our neighbors we felt badly that they didn't recognize our intent to want to make them happy from the beginning and we feel we've tried to do that since the last hearing and ultimately this is our house we hear them to continue to refer to this is their yard and i think as somebody just mentioned they've had the luxury of a vacant lot for the last fourteen years but we bought this house we bought this house and we quickly learned what we could do under his own in laws and we've stayed within our rights as my husband mentioned what we submitted was very conservative hasn't changed the building on below same use and we feel like you know at the end of the day not moving the house is not an option because this is within our rights and we've really tried to propose something step back from that we were about fifteen feet from the front one twenty seven feet approximately one hundred two feet what was the motivation for doing that since you also mentioned a lack of individual concern or a lack of been putting at thirty five feet from the rear it's hard when you have so many neighbors to find one that everybody agrees with and so what we tried to do was take a plan that kind of treated everybody equally so it's actually where we put it is almost equal distance from everybody's house so from the from the front two houses were about seventy five feet or front of our house about seventy five feet from the to berkeley street fairview street house and so these two and then the dover street properties are a little over one hundred feet away from each one of them and that's from measuring from the back of their house to the middle of our house so we we try we looked across the six plans i think there were even more that were on the table and said ok they haven't told us which one so which one do we think is most fair to all of the neighbors and which one is also going to allow us to accomplish our goals in middle east there were some of the options in there that did not give us the greatest flexibility and future potential for the lot so that's how we arrived at the one that we did and we also really liked that it took away that drive it negated a lot of those concerns that the governor st residents had it also for our parking what it allows us to do is it allows us to park along the it's a cinder block wall right here so when we come in and park we actually park mostly against the cinderblock wall and then the back privacy fence of one nine hundred twenty two fairview street if we moved it up any more forward then we'd be parking kind of more towards their house and there it can i say one must your questions are i think the other thing is we really did think long and hard how can we minimize the impact but you know it is going to alter some of the residents bedroom views and  know some of them have lived here for a long time and as we've said the lot's been vacant for fifteen years almost fifteen years and we just i guess we appreciated what somebody had stated at our last hearing which was that berkeley is a city advocates for change and for growth and you hi there thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is michelle cooper and i live at six five two one dover street and i just wanted a quick correction all of this the houses on that side of dover street are in fact in berkeley and our property line is the sidewalk airview is to increase the front yard size and establish privacy from the street and again of privacy for one family is more than offset by the resulting loss of privacy of six families all longtime residents of this community the majority of the neighbors feel this property and its most recent version is unnecessary and detrimental to our community our mediation efforts with the new owners did not reach a unanimous consent with all six neighbors it was approved by four of the six and so by choice of the applicant the media plan is not submitted to the city for review and it's with great sadness that we learned that the plan that has been put forth for review is almost identical to the original as such all of her original objections still sand r r block of fairview in dover consists of single family homes neatly lining the streets nine hundred twenty four fairview was one of four homes all by the same architect two flanking the sides on each of the side of the park entrance moving one of the homes moving one of the homes from the street to the back will create a compound like development and will dramatically change the look and feel of our tight knit community it will turn the house on fairview turn the two corner house is unfair to view essentially into torn corner lots this is not really the direction that we're hoping to go in our neighborhood and we're wondering if we can meet a better compromise we've been in mediation and i feel still feel like something could be worked out that could meet all the needs of the neighbors ok the question for what was the proposal that got signed off by four of the six parties it's moving the house back not moving the house back from the front of the street not not i think it's forty feet from the front it did detrimental it was really detrimental to two people still and so we were kind of working through that and hoping that we could move even closer to the street talk talk to them and see if that would be reasonable for them then they could still have some of their parking that they are concerned about but that would still preserve a lot of the backyard privacy the mediated plan would be very detrimental to the neighbors to the west and i can completely understand why they would not sign off on it and i still think there is room for for discussion there thank good evening my name is j f grant and i live that i live at sixty five thirty one dollar saint i've been there for over forty years when my parents first bought that house they didn't buy the house they bought the community because they walked in the community to see how their children were going to be in this particular neighborhood that we were going to be living in they came back several times to meet the neighbors to see what kind of community it was and then they bought the house and i've lived there since what would bothers me the most is that there'll be a house in my backyard they said that we had the comforts of have an empty lot but it really was an empty lot i mean there were trees and everything we could even see back there so it wasn't a luxury of having something there was just a bunch of trees raccoons and other things that lived back there they were a nuisance to that to us but that's the city of berkeley the privacy that that really is going to affect my family is really detrimental i spend many hours in their backyard my parents spent many hours my sister and her grandchildren spend many hours back in their backyard i have a organic vegetable garden i've had there for forty years that the entire community of i've i've really been saddened by are these  poles new neighbors come in and because they didn't come into the to us right i mean it would have been really nice if they would have come just ask us and then when they asked us and we weren't happy with it they didn't do anything about it and it really is hurtful not to be heard because we live there this is our community this is where we live this is where we have been for ever and this is where we want to be this is where our grandchildren come to visit with us this is where we party in our backyard this is where we communicate with our other neighbors i don't want to be sleeping my back won't and my room in the back and then i have to listen to stuff that's happened in the backyard from my neighbors i don't want to hear their doors shedding i don't want to hear any of that and i don't know why i should have to be subjected to that when this every well everybody's house that's on dover street will be affected because all of our bedrooms are in the back that's where we sleep that it's very important to us to get a good night's rest to get a good day's rest this would be detrimental to myself my family and to my neighbors no privacy at all to get everybody to argue against himself and so the they can profiteer off everybody else argument now we are no doubt you know you're moving in back into into the middle of the block art overlooking our backyard and i can't i sleep out there neck and that's my privacy and in the other people in the prophecies of the other folks to have a window looking into everybody's backyard that's a privacy issue and they were would they would be being disadvantaged to so i don't i don't believe them you know and i don't believe from the beginning of the conversation in each of the last i came because i got the last minute notice it's my house that is affected and i have a map here where they have f which seat at a building that was under construction on shattuck street i was there on time but i couldn't find interest way you know and i kept looking and looking and finally i thought i heard some noise knocking and i found a peep through a window and they come and open a blind door that had no window and i walked in and they were repairing the building i had  requested that they meet at the senior citizens in south berkeley why we could have a private room for this private room staff for meetings about the community but we met in a and and there you and then  are the things that we are going through and i have a heart problem i had a quadruple and he's going to pot have show you can sure you hear where he wants to park for trucks where i sit in my living room you know to enjoy myself then he's going to take the shadows of his place and then this movie his house back and all the shutters go take all the sun off my backyard and my are getting god i have been there since nineteen seventy two  so what what more can i what more can i do you know to the this is this is this this is really sad to me and you know see such things i got so many things here that they handed to me just like today we don't even have time as disrespectful you know to me it's just written we our community we have never had any problem but we had a few mind a comparable there but we corrected that because we were all together because we did that for the protection of our children ok we had great incentive in the neighborhood so we had a right to fight for that but now we come in and i'm sitting back here and he told me today ok thank you were there any other i think can you clarify what i mean by the trucks that were there i need clarification i have this that's what trucks what are we talking about in regard to trucks  comments and what we'll do is the applicant you know of i three minutes respond to the of the public hearing anyone can anyone can speak on behalf of the applicant oh you can stay there i'm just going to pass out some plans i'm krysten person at on the author of the plans that have been before you today as author of the plans i wanted the opportunity to share with you my experience with seeds and say thank you to victor  for his time during mediation several options were presented to the neighbors with full shadow studies for each design one of which was just presented to you with some parking in the front yard that was upsetting to the  application that we're going forward with today and moving the house to the front half of the law gave to many of the dover street neighbors approval while moving the house to the rear lot had less impact on the fairview neighbors well both sides worked very hard for a group of approval alternately everywhere we moved the building affected the neighbors differently at the second mediation i remember at a large size site plan and we moved the house template around on the site to fluidly discuss options and hold it as i am sure at all to me there was not a location that was approved by all neighbors which is why we're here feel that because there was not a consensus from the neighbors as to where the house should be located that they're in an awkward position of having to choose between neighbors and their concerns as a result they feel that the best option is one that moves the house equal distance from all parties involved and  option that we're presenting today this option places the building in the middle of a double length property allowing access to the lot to maximize usable open space future lot potential and value it also places the building equal distance from all the neighbors and attempts to address the communit concerns of privacy shading and disruption on issues of a driveway on a shared property line in a quick summation comparing the previous design to the proposed going by address sixty five twenty one dover privacy is increased in the  in their direct fuel line shading increase is minimal and the driveway no longer runs their shared property line sixty five twenty five dover privacy is increased and the developing is not in their direct view line shading increase is minimal and the driveway no longer runs their shared property line sixty five thirty one dover privacy is now parallel to there are a lot line it is an issue but it is hoped to reduce be reduced with the increased planting barrier shading is minimal and minimally increased when compared to the current vegetation driveway and runs only slightly longer than the adjacent driveway of one thousand nine hundred six fairview and is partially obscured by sixty five thirty one dover's existing accessory buildings one thousand twenty six fairview building is no longer adjacent so privacy is increased shading is decreased by forty five percent of the buildings original placement driveway runs adjacent to the nine hundred twenty six fairview driveway one thousand twenty two fairview building is no longer adjacent to the one thousand nine hundred two house so privacy is increased shading  is decreased by thirty five percent annually driveway does not run along their property line and additional parking is not visible from their lot addressing concerns on previous schemes that they spoke of previously in summary i don't assume to express the views of the neighbors and i'm only expressing the concerns as i understood them to be through observing mediation the proposed design of sought to mitigate outstanding issues of privacy shading and vehicular traffic disruption of each individual neighborhood and a way that allows access to a landlocked parcel we're showing is minimal if you put a percentage but when shooting is maximalist someone or you will only indicate minimal increase in shooting in three of the properties i believe i did your minimal might be a big deal to me so can you put a figure on that as i can and one hundred thirty i didn't do i don't believe i get a percentage but i did do square footage in the shading calculation handed out and they originally packet i believe and i don't have that in front of me is less than three hundred square feet of increased shading for the overall lots that i included as minimal increase in shading i believe hundred square foot feet per l thank you and bob i just want to and i apologize i wasn't here the last time so i may be asking a question that you've already answered but if i understand correctly statements that go to you know preserving the value of a lot yes am i right understand that this is a deep lot to structures could be built on it yes but with the current structure at the front it's very hard to access the back there for a second structure would be very difficult to ever build i don't want to say that i haven't heard any intends to build a second structure right now but preserving the am i right to understand that the value of the lot that that is sought to be preserved let's say the correct would increase the value of dots yeah that would increase the value of the lot although there's nothing in this application and no proposal right now to do such a thing right it's a value preserving it doesn't have to i understand that  going to do it but it enhanced is the value of your property they have a substandard garage currently and their front yard setback is directly up against the exterior front wall of that house meaning to not be able to access a substandard garage so they're essentially parking in their front yard setback in the public right of way and so even in the current lot it solves a little problem yes i mean there are several ok we have to we have to do because of the structural problems with the house that we found after we moved in and the ceiling height making it such that the city only recognizes half of the space that was on the contract when we bought it at i mean every done it but we realized after buying it that we were going to have to  lot lines are scaled in my drawings which are accurately scaled so i'm i'm going to guess no what i really want clarification because i'm getting a little confused about which proposal is in front of us and what the final draft is so what you're proposing if i can clarify the drawings that were submitted by the applicant are measured from the middle of the home so that's not quite accurate sure one page three or five it would be safe to say that the homes are over seventy feet from the f property that's beam thank you thank you and then the setbacks from the saw elevations are how many feet from the side elevation of the subject clarification and see what would what we have here is the house in its current state so we can't turn the house at all because of how long it is but the house in its current state has approximately four feet to don't quote me on that but approximately on either side the hold on in regard to the auto parking ok can you address that for me based on your proposal now yes that the the plan that she is referring chair with auto certainly cation for us again and also for her as the immediate neighbor we are not that we're not submitting we're not submitting the design that keeps the proper keeps the house forty feet from the front property line that is not the design that we're the design that we're submitting today we delivered to the neighbors and discussed in mediation on the second meeting it is the design that puts the house thirty five feet from the rear property line and does not a sign off street parking up against the property of  it's a proposal that's in the staff report and i feel i need to speak to the parking that parking in the front is not allowed unless they applied for additional permits so that wouldn't be something that could be established it would not be part of their mine saying that that's that's something that requires additional permits to park in front yards so that's that's something that just to alleviate the concerns of the neighbors that's not something that's really tonight yeah  a driveway that they specified is a long nine hundred twenty six fairview with it so that driveway is not they actually have illegal parking on it no there's a garage that's part of it and you are allowed however we have very intricate parking standards where you are allowed to park in the side yard as long as you're outside of the front yard septics or you have to be at least twenty feet from the front and you are allowed to have one space in a side yard within the fo on they don't have one right they can't park a car next to their house so it has to be in the garage it's it's either i mean people park their cars in their in their driveway but if it's the garage they haven't changed the house themselves nothing else in the house  changing ok so i'm going to remind the board that i think the applicant is going to have three more minutes to speak so do you want to keep questioning this particular person if so then you right and you also said previously that the zoning or does an ordinance doesn't allow the required parking space to be within the front yard secretary rice like right by the gym question so i'm still unclear whether it's the parking conversation that connor had about how there was a low had high and substandard garage conditions and part of our construction documents in relocating the house were actually increasing the head high and the structural capacity of the garage without increasing the building on b building height so putting in a new foundation will be more i'm assuming when you move the house to the back to you're going to have cars parked in front of that house we would yeah was the plan that the public were pushing forward as is what they what they had what they had agreed to and that plan forced our cars to park on the side of of one nine hundred twenty two fairview street so house two feet long so eighty to eighty two so it would be the lot of one hundred ninety five so it would be probably more than seventy five feet from the street right ok if i could just interrupt i just make sure the board understand because able to recall being the applicant is represented that they are going to keep the garage is that correct yes yes yes so they are required parking will still be in the garage if they're moving the house back they have a garage the required parking will still be in the the confusion is coming from the plan that nine hundred twenty two had put in front concerned about the parking that is not the plan that we are that we are we are doing we're moving the house back a lot further than that ok let's just for the final point on this is that they have to go for a permit what's the permit process for this is it just is it going to be a public hearing or is it a mean in order when we started looking into it the only way that we could get the full height of the first floor was to take out the slab four raise the house knock out the foundation build a new foundation and in today's code you have to cut back the foundation to the slab therefore you've got to take out the slab so the cost of all of that is significant and the cost of moving it from its current location when you're doing all of that work anywhere is really not that much more ok and allows us to gain access to the back where are doing all of the foundation work anyway so our thought was over doing all the foundation work anyway why wouldn't we just incremental cost was not that much more because you're already doing all of the the foundation anyway the actual cost of moving the house is not that significant of ok i'm not i've done this my address and response first of all i guess i just wanted to say that i'm speaking on behalf of because we've been very closely working on this together i wasn't at the mediations i work full time and we have a one year old so i haven't had as many face to face conversations as my husband but i might be a little bit of a better speaker than you know but this is been a really hard process you know i've never had my integrity questioned as much we haven't as it has through this we've been called names we've been called liars and they're of even than things said here tonight that i mean we're not going to play he said she said but that her frank just outright untrue so this is not been fun and we both wish that it would have gone a lot smoother than it has i guess i just wanted to say that you know we respect these people and we're really sorry that it still at this point it's not what we wanted or that we ever envisioned when we bought this house back in october of last year so we apologize for the stress that it's caused everybody for the record but one of the concerns last at the last hearing was continuity in one of our neighbors a grass address that i just want to remind you what this neighborhood consists of and we live in this neighborhood five houses away the application this house is across the street from a tile store and the berkeley housing authority a four unit single storey multifamily property and four other houses with very different architectural designs than ours to how to parcels to the west of our property is a park with an eight foot high metal fence two houses beyond the park is a four thousand square foot twenty five foot tall theater the house to the east of our house is a completely different architectural design and has a driveway that runs the entire length of the house similar to one of the houses on dover street so it's also been in a band in a neglected house for fourteen years and i guess i just wanted to stress that we don't feel that we're really changing this tight integrity of a whole neighborhood and we're very much going to ignore prove the property for ourselves for our neighbors and for our community we really believe that just as we've done with the property that we currently live two blocks away so one block away and then i know that they have a proposal that they say four of the six have agreed to it doesn't allow us to accomplish our objectives and there is not agreement there is not consensus it's already been what ten months since we bought the house seven weeks since our last hearing r r r followed hearing was postponed because no consensus was reached so our fear is that unfortunately we don't see how further conversations are going to come to consensus your response is there any questions for the african before we close the public hearing oh i have a question again and back to the parking again in one of the questions that i have is what actually would prefer that we don't start talking about parking that is that it's not shown on the plans i i think we should really focus on the fact that the garage is the proposed parking as recognized by the city ok and if there are any other proposed parking spaces this would be a modification to the permit they'd open themselves up again for appeal it be a whole thing all right i'm with that never mind but i'll call my own question because i'm sorry i need some this is a question for respect that completely thank you are there any other questions for the happening before we close the public hearing now ok thank you for your comments thank you close the public hearing first any questions for staff i have a question but it is a board of w that's a pretty thin area to construct the second so we did but there is but yet that's possible it is possible that you will still be subject to the density standards to the law covered standards to open space requirements to parking a acquirements i mean and also i think i had a lengthy discussion with one of the neighbors to say that because there was concern that a huge gigantic apartment building would be placed on the site and i really don't think that there would be a way for us to say that that wouldn't be detrimental to have a gigantic ten unit or something apartment here so it is possible that another unit could be built maybe even two units i don't have exactly the calculations but it would have to go through a use permit with public hearing and it would have to  and a lot that is unlike others near it and quite frankly unlike many lots in berkeley so i think it has unique challenges i understand the concerns of the neighbors  although i think the privacy concern is perhaps overstated the houses are close to each other and certainly people are able to see into each other's yards and i'm assuming folks have been able to get along with their close next door neighbors over time and this new placement puts the new location of the house quite far away but i think that the frustration with something like this in my opinion comes from the fact that our code allows you to do i personally just don't really like this infill where backyards and in this case ultimately a front yard are filled with a second unit and i'm not sure a lot of people in berkeley like it either unfortunately it's legal all over the place i mean that is what the zoning is and i think that every time we have this kind of a situation where somebody wants to cite a structure in a back yard usually there's already a structure on the front we're going to have neighbors who are really shocked shocked that a structure can go and look into their backyards and  kind of you know change the pattern of a building on their on their block but you know for whatever reason that has that is the policy of the city and it's been a memory allies in the code so i don't particularly love what is allowed here but i think it has allowed and i i don't really see the kind of detriment that we are allowed to consider and making these decisions so wide i don't love the policy that's that's not my place here today and i believe i do believe that this is within what is allowable and i don't see detriment to the neighbors  and so i'm going to support it i i will move to approve the proposal that was submitted to us today i just want to make sure we're approving the right thing i wish that weren't there it's easier for us to deal with projects when that does not exist and i do i do urge everyone involved to try to work things out civil i probably going to abstain on this i actually and start think so if you brought up a philosophical issue here with coding in phil and i actually think we should be using in fillmore because if we don't then we're going to be looking at projects like our next project sixty nine units it's one of the other really when you look at look at berkeley so and that's a philosophical discussion because as sophie pointed out this is permissible under the code i don't see significant detrimental or impacts to the neighbors though i do understand some of their concerns because this is my first sitting on at this thing i think i'm going to abstain tonight because it is somewhat complicated and and hearing tonight that the parking really is not in our purview tonight is also really kind of quite fascinating because it it is kind of in here somewhere  possible to put a you could put a quite nice second unit in the front probably be about twenty feet wide and goodness knows there's hundreds of twenty foot wide very expensive homes in san francisco so it could be it could be done nicely  i think the logic of what they proposed it's very clear to me if they don't move it now there's no chance of ever building a second unit you know if we were sitting here and someone were proposing if this were an empty lot and somebody were proposing a house between one thousand to and one nine hundred twenty six i'm sure we would have objections to the shadows and privacy and everything else like we had on the previous project buy a new house between those two so it's going to not not going to be received well anywhere you do it so i think it's a reasonable proposal and i certainly yards and there was some talk about how much shading there is on those properties it's shading to the yards from this the new proposed location rather than shading on the living space on those units so i don't see any real quick good evening my name is greg hall tonight you have a preview of a project at twenty seven a one shot avenue presently fast for seventy two and its square footage is roughly thirty thousand square feet it's a sixty foot five story building with rooftop projections that go above the sixty foot limit this project came in in october of last year which is one of the first correction i need to make to the staff report it was last year not in two thousand and ten there's thirty five parking spaces about  two thousand square foot cafe proposed and the purpose of the tonight is to allow the zab in the community and the applicant to talk and comment on the project the next step for this review process will be to go to the design review committee and that's scheduled for next thursday and then this will eventually come back to the zab the date for that is to be determined there's a number of years permits required for this project they need to use permit for the setback reductions the lock coverage exceedin the number of stories in the height there also used permits for the cafe restaurant use the beer and wine it's incidental the food service they've also proposed and you can see this in the site plan some improvements to the public right of way and all of those improvements will be handled through the public works department so even though they're showing there and we wanted to make sure they were vetted to the public works sort of staff review with approval process process for that is not yet run but whatever they do in a public quite a wa entirely up to the public works department is not something that the planning staff have anything to do with what it's going to say that's it and you question yourself you're just nit picky and i try to get this handled ahead of  strange but yes i mean i guess as far as it goes to say there's some bike stuff but finings just wanted a clarification on this point about the public right of way improvements one of the comment letters that was submitted questions by what right they would sort of be using the public right of way for cafe seating nurser that kind of thing and i was just curious if that was the intent and if you could just clarify a bit extra wide sidewalk what are they allowed to use under what circumstances will sidewalk seedings allow pretty much in any commercial district in the city when it's related to a cafe and the well originally it was something administered to design office and what we did then was to make sure that there would still be adequate space on the sidewalk for the normal functions of the sidewalk so there would be conflicts with pedestrians or bike racks or meters or what not now it's a dministered only by the public works department their same standard what's different about this project from normal sidewalk seating is in downtown and everywhere else in the city the chairs and tables are removed every night so the sidewalks restored to its normal state this projects so far are proposing a more permanent encroachment on the right of way so there it is allowed it's not a certainty that it's going to be approved but there's a process that the city has for doing this and this would be one of the first ones that has this level of material in the right of way thank you that's helpful and i could add one more thing to that is we often look at sidewalk seating but there's also a separate orders for benches and planters and that's something that normally isn't removed each night so i think that that's kind of what's framing the sidewalk seating area is something that's also allowed but it's just a very and it's not necessarily and entirely new and is some of the public and some can be private that is you can be required to purchase something to sit in the public right away have a table furnished by an establishment where would a bench be a public thing i am curious about and maybe that's for another time to add more information on just clarify maybe what the minimum with clearance would be in the public right of way the sidewalk area so that seating is used generally we have a rule of thumb of six feet and i see is that there's a  corridor that's straight in that's not a meandering corridor of six feet in some areas where there's more pedestrian traffic we ask for more if there's a bus stop we ask for more but there's minimum standards that whatever does happen the right of what we can't preclude transit access or just a normal for steph no ok we're going to the public hearing and let the app and start however we have so far fifteen speaker cards and most of them are in opposition so if there's no objection from the board we're going to have the public comments be limited to two minutes each it for the public hearing now ok great so you have five minutes and then you have a chance at the end for a response and car access is only off derby we've got thirty five parking spots and a restaurant is here actually by bicycle parking is in trouble to this project of sixty one by bike spots this is where from the property line here so the building is quite far away from the jason neighbors and we're also keeping the occupants off the podium by continuous planting which part of the building with stair access to the roof which is sort of a metal filigree that picks up some of the elements that are also on the stair next this is the elevation facing east the residential neighbors were stepping in we have three bay windows that on the backside there are forty seven feet and bruce general talk more about the landscape here and this is the south elevation we're picking up the metal panels here with paint details the fasteners and the concrete podium we're going to decorate with screed here next this is a view of the encroachment we're proposing at the restaurant with planted area and this is another view that same outdoor seating this is a view the roof deck which is oriented completely towards the bay there's a screen so you can't see the roof or you can't see the residential neighbors and  you through the landscape proposals here on the ground floor we have thirty straight trees at thirty to thirty five feet on center i do want to point out that along this edge of the planters we do have seat benches integrated into the planter so anybody walking b and push themselves along the street edge which with the cafe patio will help to activate the street and we were integrating innovative designs with storm water treatment things like that along the eight foot setback we have a mix of deciduous evergreen trees along with green screening on the podium wall so that you'll see a pretty thoroughly screened bed sheet along there next please here on the podium we have a variety of spaces for community gathering small groups seating for two to three maybe four people at the most a strong barrier landscape screen barrier with patio medium and small patio trees again evergreen and the situ us to help strengthen soften and scale the whole side of this have violates the setbacks and it becomes a story higher so to me it just looks like you just want to build a bigger better thing can you explain why you're taking none of the setbacks yet you want take public space from your front yard right when she just about going back and put your sitting on your own property i'm just curious about what the motivation is for not having any setbacks basically i mean i've got my back i understand that i'd really like to understand where that arises rina rickles attorney for the project the reason for the lack of setbacks is to give other amenities are significant requests to have a large area of open space that could really be used by the tenants and so we have met the zoning requirements for open space also it was important to meet the parking requirements we're not asking for any waiver of parking and in terms of the front the reason there's a zero set back is that since century what you do on shattuck is you have a zero set back there the encroachments for the sidewalk cafe is actually bent to be a city amenity to soften this very very wide thirty five foot sidewalk to make it live an open and people on the street so it's a it's a benefit going both ways because for several blocks there's almost no activity in that area so the fast answer is yes there are a lot of requests but it's to accommodate other amenities that are required by the city so are you saying that you are providing more amenities than the city requires and therefore you think you should work at imitating more serious was when you were then what is requested of you to build those we are within with requests so you're not giving anything that's not required a commercial street why would you want no set back there what was that rationale again quarter commercial buildings generally go right up to that zero setback although we are keeping an street trees so that is somebody looks down the derby street they will see trees many trees which will soften the presence of the building the other answer that greg handled very well in the staff report is city staff over the last few years in approving projects in the on main thoroughfares is not to require most if not all of the setbacks because what you would have is a  gross underutilization of land we have very little land on the public corridors so you don't like that policy i did say that i'm following the city policy that is what the the song is about this code but ok it's that's fine what they've done on the building lot of north it's been standard and i'm sure gray can give you more instances than i can but this is what staff has consistently done for buildings on the main thoroughfares so   i think in your opening comments use you said something to the effect that the sixty five feet the sixty foot high is can grow one with adjacent properties and having looked at the site i think it's only you see storage that's at that height isn't it oh there are other properties i'm not aware of which properties it's property well in the jason property which is which is currently titled is close to sixty feet which is the patrick kennedy project which you the support of but proved about a year ago and i believe yeah so am i right in understanding that other projects are not considered precedent here i mean we are told that frequently and here we are i mean i just i really want to clarify here the code is the code i know the staff likes to push for certain interpretations we are the decision makers and a prior approval on this property or any other property to my knowledge is not precedent is not correct and i would certainly agree with you about i do think it is part of our job to inform the board of similar situations where there have been exceptions granted by the board and that was just the purpose of the matching in talking about the staff report and greg can certainly talk speak to that better than i can if the board would would like to hear more about i do think it's a good thing the applicant to be clear about that that that we are making the decision not staff and that we actually it's seven not a rule but it's  practice that precedents are not set so as he says sometimes we do then that consider what has been done elsewhere but we're not in any way bound by it when you stand that ok completely an appropriate location for a building of this density but we're also concerned about the precedence that we would set for other neighborhood especially in the economy area i have read the three hundred eighteen page housing element and other riveting selections of the general plan i have read th clam which we actually were out of beating with the developers and we mentioned the south plant and they said that they had heard of it but had never actually looked at it i swear the municipal plan sections of the bay plan area countless other reports on mixed use and infill transit corridors i find these reports to be confusing contradictory and frankly it makes my head want to explode i don't envy your jobs i deal with four hundred water agencies in the state of california i thought that was complicated that's nothing on this there is no clarity there is no consistency there is no way to be able for us to be able to tell what can and cannot be done within the city of berkeley i want to focus on a few of the many issues that this building presents to us this is only the second lot to be approved in the section of berkeley the east side of shattuck as are two not to a which the parker development across the street is and also the c s a height changes  park or so the original plan for shattuck and which is still in the general plan is that shot is supposed to step up from a thirty six foot three story at toward the the u c building was built in the twenty's the patrick kennedy building that has been approach approved next door is actually a forty forty foot four story building not sixty feet and then going up to fifty feet up to parker so there are no other developments planned or and i live under be my primary issue with two things one these are very bad neighbors they came to our neighborhood they never really listened to what we had to say and they've never you know understood the neighborhood itself so one thing i'd like to i don't know if this is appropriate but i would like to offer if anybody i was i won't even try to sway your opinion but if anyone wants a tour of the neighborhood from a pedestrian point of view i don't drive that i have really good idea of what this project w do to the area it's just a lot of detail about what that level of density would do i have to tell you i was so appalled by this the density of this project that you know it's a it's just over a quarter acre and has seventy units that comes to two hundred  sixty units an acre and i went to look for any buildings in berkeley that were that dense mixed use there are four that are over two hundred it's the guy building berkeley central and this building would be number three those buildings are all downtown and none of them are next to a residential community so if you can have a precedent i think we're looking at something very freakish here and i hate this president and i think having people live like little i don't know where housing people to edge of a view of the most used traffic corridor in berkeley thirty six thousand cars a day perched on the corner in little cubicles with one light source no amenities halfway between two bart stations half a mile each the grocery store closes at eight there's nothing else to do there this is not the middle of summer you know who were out in the middle of fun area this is not an area where students tend to live the students in my neighborhood come here because it's quiet it's a grad to have a grad student next door she went to l a came back and said i missed here because i can hear myself think we don't get you know we don't do students are not going to want to live in this so i'm hoping that you will take a my name is jean diller thanks for giving us some time to speak i think you should notice how many people are here and i know how hard it is to get that many people here i have to get up in the morning go to work and a whole bunch of people have spent several hours of their time because it's really really important to them i building at the corner of fulton and derby my parents bought hundred fifty s there's four generations of my family that have lives there this is a community of families people raising their kids it's a quiet neighborhood it has been that way ever since i was growing up there  one of the people who wrote you guys a letter talked about the fact that the there was a bus stop at the corner there which i guess is go spirited away that bus but stop has been there since i was in high school at berkeley high and i think it should stay there i think people need their public transit stop there  i really consider that this building is a detriment i don't agree that it should be four stories i don't think it should be there at all that would be my concern is not at all there's not enough parking thirty five parking spaces and there's a restaurant how where the people who are going to the restaurant going to park they're going to park on the street as one person and their latter pointed out just about the time that we will be coming home and parking are trying to  know yes followed by ellen langer i'm eugenie cando and i live at twenty one derby street which is three houses from the project in question before i add any more comments i would like to ask everyone who has come in opposition to this project to please stand up on a full size block it is barely half a block so bad takes up almost a quarter it overshadows just three smile and modest bungalows on the derby street side also abut their community room there will be parties with the building serving as amplification for the incredible noise that students can generate at all hours and this is intolerable the the rest of the incident we have kept asking again and again about that bus stop and we have heard nothing but to go back to work a story that's basically a cul de sac it's very quiet there are band shows where kids play and where our community can gather and have some peace and quiet and that's our open space which this will serve as an enormous detriment to ellen langer i live near the corner of derby and fulton on the twenty one hundred block i opposed the project you have my letter in the handout you received today and other neighbors are addressing some of my concerns regarding the letters that are in favor that were posted on the web i wonder none of them are actually signed with the names of people only resident i believe that someone who actually lived a few doors down from derby street from the twenty seven no one shot at project spot would know that they lived on the twenty one hundred block and not the twenty two hundred block we live on the twenty one hundred block also the issue of a car broken into that's very sad  broken into all over the city of berkeley in front of homes in front of apartments this is not relevant we've had packages stolen from our front steps front from our front porch we live in a city we found a purse discarded in the in the bushes in front of our house that we reported to the police i'm not going to address shadowing even though i strongly object to the fact that it deprives the neighbors right there of their ability to have solar and their ability to grow food in their backyards which in this economy is important i will speak to the loss of you in the loss of privacy that a building that tall would cause it would affect neighbors at least as far back as fulton street and probably well beyond in the day the view would be that of the building on the tall trellis on the top and giving our view that we have many many of us have enjoyed to the residents of this building and in the night we would see that the lights of their windows  one very important point the architect and the planners have not addressed how tiny these units are there would be a tear these are between approximately three hundred and three hundred fifty square feet  it would be a terrible model to propose as a new standard of tenement housing for the future generations of berkeley enough for me to talk about what concerns me it's not for anybody so you get sound bites and it's this project is not a sound bite kind of project there is so much wrong with it that we need way more time so i'm just going to talk about one item one thing that concerns me even though there are a lot more which is the whole idea of micro units these i have looked all over the internet and found no other building in this country that has already been built that is as big and as dense as this one i found bigger buildings but then the units are bigger i found smaller apartments but then there are fewer units so this is the first one in the country of this density in this size san francisco  have only approved micro unit buildings as a test case it's a very new trend it's only about a year old so it could be a fad and there's not really a track record i'm actually not very opposed to the idea of micro units i think it's an interesting thing to look into but this place is not the the the lot where it's proposed is not the right place to do it the whole idea of living in my career units is that you give up some space for cheaper rents for having access to a vibrant urban life and for communal sharing communal living and this project actually takes away all the positive things of micro unit living and it leaves only the one negative aspect which is that it's tiny so if we were to look at my living in micro units we should do it in a place that actually can support this kind of lifestyle with a vibrant door with with nightlife and so on not a residential unit which is surrounded by a senior home and a alice's center two car dealerships  and i do think that the storage building will help them because there's no place to store anything in these little tiny unit could you come back we'll comment i'm sorry just wanted to say that you can submit written comments and ok thank you i didn't connect you to the comment but thank you yeah just because you said you had other things to say so i than the rest of the neighborhood so basically this eight unit we are in the front line and i hope you going to accept i'm living in berkeley and it's like  there and that the building was catching on fire a couple years ago so we've been suffering with chronic allergy myself i have like an allergy my wife to my song so they never cleaned up the property so  and take a look at the plans and you'll understand how absurd and how detrimental this project will be just speaking there's many things to speak about i'll just speak to the immediate effect of this building on our property this sixty foot high building which will be much higher because of what's on the top is going to completely shadow our house every day by two o'clock our solar power potential is going to drop  our ability to grow a garden grow any food how is that going to happen with no sunlight the reason we have this house is because we went to it in the late afternoon and saw it the light was like in the front where we bought the house because of that this is going to the lack of setbacks well let's put it in terms of all the various use permits that they need to get this thing built you know setbacks exceptions to the height all of these things have a detrimental impact on our lights our privacy our air no set back on derby that wipes out the light coming on the summer the high that wipes out the light all the time as far as the density of it so i haven't spoken to our backyard we're going to have seventy units and seventy units are going to have at least one person or two persons or if they graduate students their kids grandma comes how many people are going to be in this building is we densely packed  privacy is shot i could go on but i would just say that they do not deserve to be exempt from environmental impact reports on this and the seismic and liquefaction possibilities of the underground creek into this building are serious thank you john you're up followed by ruth d stephen berkeley is my home town i'm from here for twenty four years i've lived on a block almost exactly halfway between the hospital where i was born and the high school i graduated from that block is the twenty one hundred block of derby street  my house is seven houses up from this proposed development i'm not going to focus on the shade noise setback or hide issues i'm not going to focus on the upscale restaurant fantasy and its mystical valet parking i'm not going to focus on the trends in nature of their clientele i am not going to focus on these three mysterious letters that you received that were signed anonymously i am going to focus on two numbers seventy and thirty five seventy you notes and thirty five parking spaces seventy units for some percentage occupied by couples or roommates seven units could easily mean that one hundred people will be living jowl in twenty by twenty cubicles in a gigantic dormitory their proposal gives one hundred people thirty five parking spaces for their cars of course some people don't have cars i assume the quiet engineering grad students touted by the developers will commute to campus on two wheeled those two wheeled electric motorized segway gizmos it's reasonable to assume two thirds of the people at twenty seven or one will have cars that would be sixty cars versus thirty five parking spaces parking on the block is very nearly already at capacity last saturday night with wife and i came home about nine o'clock in the neighbor was having a birthday party who was in a single open parking space on the street that was no big deal you do have a lot line for redrawing one hundred years ago many houses have shared driveways that don't function as two parking spots and some houses have no driveway at all so there's an equilibrium we all have with our cars just finish your talking head thank you most houses have more than one vehicle on street parking is necessary and on our street it all works out this is life on our friendly and healthy old style berkeley street almost everyone on this block has lived there for years and years they're giving thirty five spaces to the hundred or so people crammed into this structure where the other twenty or thirty cars going to park and i'm talking about the restaurant this proposal absolutely ignores the negative impact on our street in our lives and the spillover problem parking problem will push around around the corner on to four and further up derby street and what about the people visiting the people that live at this place a point john you always give me see where you're actually time's up shit please berkeley wouldn't you be fighting this if you lived on our block would you be fighting that's if this was on your blog you're right you're all fellow citizens of our town this proposal is absolutely detrimental thank you not let this happen this thing is here forever don't do this to us find a real plan thank you john your up and panel rally you're on deck my name is ruth dunham i live at twenty one twenty six derby street it's the seventh house up from the project a mixed residential commercial structure sounds positive it never occurred to me that commercial that the commercial portion might not be rented and least or at least for long periods of time i suppose that a developer or planner would only build a mixed use structure after insuring that the commercial portion would be desirable and stay rented over time now i think that having a lasting successful commercial business in the building is perhaps not a primary concern of the developer without doubt the value of having an added story is important to the developer sense seventeen more residential units will be added to the project but we were told by the owner an extra story and a planned commercial usage go together you can't have one without the other we get a taller building maybe the owner succeeds and renting out the commercial space in addition he gets more units thank you thank you panel wall you're up followed by lisa hi i live at twenty seven l one fulton in the corner of fulton interviewee i've lived there for almost fourteen years and my husband's lived there for over twenty and for anybody who knows th traffic on derby at that corner of derby and fulton is not a safe corner a lot of times people just fly through those stop signs all the time and we're talking about many more vehicles coming up and down whether they're cruising around looking for parking or whatever else they are looking for parking that doesn't exist and the other thing is while there is lots of college students in our neighborhood there's a lot more families with lots of little kids and i don't think this serves our oh what all of my fellow community members have said i'm also opposed and this is pretty frightening being up here so i live it twenty seven zero seven walker street i'm real close my light my shadows my obvious acted i really like my son and i we have a great community neighborhood and i'm very sorry to see a big thing go up michael barbero yes in in my little talk here so i believe this dormitory style building is inappropriate for our neighborhood there is an entrance to the project scheduled for derby street and that's going to be very significant in terms of traffic on derby ten years ago the neighborhood opposed to hollywood video store on the north corner on the same side of the street and one of the main reasons was that they also had scheduled an entrance or projected an entrance on derby street the city planning department work with this and there was a cut out chadwick and that mitigated a whole lot of traffic on derby we're not opposed to a building on this corner but the size of this project in the squeezing of tiny cubicles and a large population of residents we we believe i believe is not appropriate for our family based neighborhood we need a smaller project that is in scale with our neighborhood there have been  because of the traffic pattern on shattuck i would say that you should expect more if this project in its present size goes through what are we neighbors going to do with justin's board does not listen to us we'll have to see but you're dealing with a neighborhood which is very well organized and will continue to raise a storm of protest if our voice is ignored finally as other people have said imagine yourselves in the sunlight of our neighborhood having bought a property in our in our neighborhood faced with the prospect of a sixty foot shadow in building to your west that would shut out that li and i love it twenty one thirty thank you for letting us all come and speak tonight you know i think our neighborhood is a pretty terrific place with a lot of wonderful people and we are not at all opposed to some kind of development that's appropriate for our neighborhood on that area in fact we'd like to have something taking up a space so we don't have a empty lot there but it seems strange to take a an experiment something these tiny little micro units which when we drew out the actual square footage is  insanely small and so we have the census seventy units in this large place the largest tiny micro unit building really ever belt is something that's an experiment and something that really belongs probably in a much core where there really is immediate public transportation right at the doorstep where there's tons of other things around but we have a little residential block with small houses and family isn't it just seems like the wrong thing for our place and we want something to be there we want to have people we can share our neighborhood with we have a great neighborhood and this is just the wrong thing and it's just ironic to me we built a small studio in our backyard a number of years ago and the numbers of things we had to go through didn't sign off with the neighbors and talk to the people in our neighborhood to get this tiny little studio built in our backyard was so extraordinary and something so massive that's coming in that will affect dramatically the people on this block is maybe not taken as seriously so i want you to consider seriously what it could do to the neighborhood and change the whole feel of the place but we do welcome something this is not it thank you so much  minutes my name is john wolf i'm a structural engineer i live and work in berkeley have lived in berkeley since ninety six i live a twenty three twenty place street about five and a half blocks away from this project i do share with all my neighbors also mention that one of the things but as a result i do know a little bit about the the building in writing proposal for this project the construction  construction and one of the things that that means for the neighborhood is it will about have the amount of construction time above the podium to install that that that housing and so i think that was one of the one of the thoughts developer to minimize disruption destruction during during construction there was some talk about other amenities and that there is there was just much of modern housing there is a can i saw in the plans there is a community room as well  i'm just going to run right through them the kennedy building which is right next door to this building the architect is here it is fifty feet high the bus stop is not going to be moved in fact we've been asked to enhance it and do an extra bench and make the stop much more attractive the micro units are yes an experiment this was going on for two years they've been lauded in every single design review magazine it's a very high end  design by this particular designer they've received nothing but compliments the density of this building is essentially the same as thirty eight harriet which is considered a very high and amenit to the san francisco but this one has more amenities and has part more open space and it also has a large community groom regarding the codes in ordinances i agree with one speaker who said yes there is some problem with clarity because sometimes the policies and the ordinances are different in this case what is being asked for is clearly within the zoning ordinance section twenty three zero seven zero d five allows us to request use permits every one of the use permits that we're asking for if certain findings can be made and it's one of four and one of those findings is specifically will this help affordable housing in the city of berkeley and the staff report is a wonderful analysis of how this exactly does that the parking it is by code is by design in this area the ideas  to courage people on the go back to and be on the large major streets public thoroughfares the one of the conditions that we will accept is none of the residents will get residential preferred parking permits rest there is actually real interest and it will be pretty least before before construction even begins so essentially we take a different point that this is the right building for this size as it is significantly been redesigned in this location tall buildings are meant to be here fifty feet is what you can have without a permit way back to the neighborhood behind it and the residences are are as much as forty one feet from the nearest property line the design has been redone to meet every single request of the design review board and i just want to thank and wog the developers who essentially gave mr loughner the license to go ahead and redesign something that had been questionable best i just want to clarify i don't think that there's any big building that can be built on this property by right it's not fifty feet by right they still need to use permit right for a building ever got a use from it for fifty feet it's a use permit to build he built a mixed use building right so i just want to clarify for the audience and to remind ourselves there is no fifty foot by right building here and the use part of it and this comes up often  season lawyers as well as members of the public have never been here before which is to confuse the limits that are set in the code w to build those things so any permit that is subject to the detriment finding is not by right and we still have to find that is not detrimental so it is actually possible for us to say that a thirty foot building here is detrimental and isn't either permanent so i just i really want to be clear i'm not saying that's going to happen but i really i have a problem with the suggestion that there's any big building on the site or a fifty feet that it was by right ok and i wasn't seeing any big building we think this is been redesigned so what have the least possible impact on the neighborhood and just the currently in title building which can be built right now is sixty feet tall has a five foot set back from the eastern property and goes straight up this is actually a significant improvement over what is actually now entitled for this piece of land i guess i understand that to be i there are more that just and that very much of the issues that you've raised were asked to dance or before this that it does every is different every meeting is different every hearing at the same meeting i grant is different but right now i'm just saying that this is far better for the neighborhood and for the city in terms of design and style than what is currently in title and meant to be a piece of information taken together with all the information you've gotten a lot tonight and this is just one piece to go into the mix into the very tough decision that i admit you have to make greg and stephanie clarify the entitled project here i'd like to lease just point out that the project approved by the city several years ago actually had greater setbacks and been represented to night where that's in the applicant statement it is true that at the ground level it was about five feet away but as you went from the property line to the second third fourth and fifth floors the setbacks increased so the setbacks varied from as little as five feet to as much as forty seven feet in certain locations but generally it was around ten to twenty three feet but setbacks so do you want more detail about the entire project to find that out for now but in less regard staff or comments from board well i guess i'll start first of all i do want to say and i think bob invited me to a deal or see meeting and i think this was one of the meeting the first meeting that i went to and i was in the audience was a previous version of this application and still i do appreciate for juan that changes that have been done and i agree with you do have a bit of a dream team here between the architect the the attorney possibly the structural engineer has well so this was going to be an appeal to you to make this project more harmonious with with what i think we forward and what our finding require arse to do it's least in my mind the first thing i want to say is that i'm not convinced that the general plan consistency or some of the pacific policies that have been cited to show that it's consistent with the general plan are perhaps the right policies  in there and to whit mentioned just one the consistency with building setbacks where presidential building setbacks would not sort of a useful purpose i don't think i've been convinced that in terms of what experiment but the the square footage of each one of those units is from what i understand slightly above minimum requirements of the california building called  size i don't think in this particular area of town is the white vehicle to do that on the other hand we in this town and in other parts of the east they have a day or two of family friendly housing  you know the two unit the two of the units and that might be something to consider or at least to break it up i also would appeal to the developer  to listen to the consultants and make it three to four stories i agree that there does need to be more well i think just about anything is better than a vacant building there and i understand that the city as part of its downtown plan and the general plan it has some goals but i  going for the fifty feet not asking for a separate use for a minute to go above that minimum that maximum to sixty feet the commercial  space just one note about that i for one do want to see more vital zation on that particular part of shattuck and i would love for a commercial space like the one you're proposing to so that's just important cost benefit to consider perhaps if you didn't have that well if you were convinced that you will get a tenant and they will be instrumental in vitalizing that part of then i hope that this succeeds if there is any sort of question that it might not perhaps not having that commercial space there what provide the evan you for you to step down the hyatt to three to four stories rather than the five he would be starting on the ground floor for residential finally i'll just say students will live  wherever they can find housing that either they or their parents can afford when i was a student one of the places i lived in was on m l k and cotton and it took me a long time to find a place to live when i was just so happy that i was able to remain within the limits of students will find ways to get to the university not all of them are going to house cars but some will even with the r i'm not sure i'm going to be as tactful as you where i find the majority of the neighbors concerns very very legitimate i think we have a project here well first of all let me just state the things i do not like i don't like the setback reductions whatsoever i don't see the need for them i'm not quite sure why they're there they don't serve anybody but the project itself i  the height and density or so far to excess of five love to see you cut knocked down ten or twelve feet off of this building i don't think sixty feet is compatible with that neighborhood i think on page five of the staff report that was handed out to members under affordable housing it says six permanently afford an affordable dwellings for very low income households or a payment of one point four million to provide for affordable housing i would ask staff who makes that determination of the or i would strike the one point four million i would ask and actually demand that the affordable to welling's be included in this project because i'm not sure one point four million dollars is going to biased affordable dwellings anywhere else there is the neighbor is kind of hit it on the head there's a lot of things wrong with this project for its site i'm not even going to go into the i think all of us in berkeley need to think about why we're subsidizing you see twice why we're building housing for students when you say that should  be job and we're already paying for you see as taxpayers in the state of california i want to see is igor suggested more family oriented housing in this town we're losing it i've been active in ten and housing issues in this city and elsewhere and we're losing affordable housing for families in this city that has been accelerated in the in the more recent years i would love to see two and three bedroom units being built at that site because that is a registered residential neighborhood that would be very appropriate for that for that neighborhood but students seventy one units of students again somebody suggested one hundred people i'm not sure how many people are going to be in seventy one units even if it's only one per unit that's a very dense unit they are it is not a student area it's not compatible with that neighborhood and i totally sympathize with the neighborhood on that issue for now i think i'll leave that alone except to point out to those in the audience who don't have the staff report take a look at the chronology of the history of this site back in two thousand and one this was permitted for a sixteen unit project if we wait many of the speakers and i suppose the applicants as well that it would be really nice to have a building built here so i just want to put that out there that i'd like to see a building i'd like to see it designed by a good architect and well well engineered structurally etc and i do think you know somewhere out there there is a building that that's a good one i think is this this proposal has provided a lot of challenges my sense i'm going to start with the exterior my sense is that the design review has been sort of exhausted with many iterations and has had a lot of input there's been a lot of response to that there's been some nice changes not spent a focus on design i'm not sure that's fully resolved probably something we need to talk about more but the second sort of big challenge that the sort of  that's called the exterior the presence of this particular building offers are the challenges that i think the neighbors have to have articulated quite well in their written materials and in their presentations there's i think very real concerns about parking massing i'm unconvinced about the setbacks i'm concerned about not taking front sat back and then kind of marking off with a little barrier and why public space to essentially use it permanently as private space i don't think that was the intent of the sidewalk seating  your own property and then you know go ahead and make some nice benches and things out in front of your building in the public right away but make that for the public so i think that's the exterior now i'm little that all these distractions of the exterior has precluded or somehow we've not gotten to talking about the interior very much and actually my my personal sort of first response to this building actually was was about the interior so i'm going to talk about that at some blanks and i'm going to try to be constructive as well as putting forward a bucket of concerns so i really feel like these tiny units with a single bad closet a toilet a little counter with two burners i'm assuming a half fridge a little sink one couch that appears to be looking at a t v no room for a table to dine at and actually no room for a double or queen sized bed i think it is substandard it is one of the policies of th city both official and heartily endorsed by people in their unofficial capacities that we should be eating healthy that we should be reducing obesity and that we should be eating fresh organic food preferably that we cook ourselves sometimes i don't see the possibility of anything but mark or waved or fast or take out food in the food preparation and consumption set up in these units i see microwave and sit in on the couch watching t v i don't see little tables and chairs i don't see any anything that supports healthy eating now let me go next to the garbage prepared food often comes with a lot of containers and so i think a kitchen that really isn't functional is a garbage producing kitchen and we have policies to bring down our waste as well so that's moving from the ways in which i see these units as designed to go contrary to public policy around health eating and waste i will go then to  exercise i think we should have healthy people in our community i don't i barely see enough for him certainly in the three hundred square foot units to stretch on the floor it will yoga sit ups these units are really it's actually something i feel pretty strongly about a space for an adult that does not have room for a bad that two people can sleep in is anti intimacy i think adults should if they are not somehow connected to other people in their lives should at least have the possibility in their living space of forming relationships and i just i find a single bad to be just sub standard i i i think it's incredible that we come to the point where projects are  presented to us where you'd actually have to make a comment like this but it really struck me my goodness grownups who can't have somebody spend the night it's substandard then we go to socializing or family time it's not hardly any room to invite a friend or two if you have a family with more than one or two other people with a you can pretty much can even invite them into your room  and some of the units don't even have a little desk to work so i feel like what these units say is that it's ok from a policy perspective to w outside of your home use the bathroom sleep by yourself well i guess first you would microwave your food sit on a couch alone watch t v and sleep by yourself and then get up and go to work again and i just i don't like what i don't like what these units are saying about the life or lack of life that we are imagining for the people who we think are going to live in  then i have raised this with other projects that appear to be very dormitory oriented although i suppose i suppose any single person certainly not two people could live in these units i don't like units or whole buildings that have no housing for families now this building is amazing not only does it not have any housing for families it doesn't even have housing for couples it's it doesn't even allow for a single person to develop a relationship i think it's penitentiary housing so the possible argument whether you've made it or not that these units are inexpensive generally my understanding is that they will tend to be maybe last then a bigger unit but more per square foot and that can actually have a detrimental effect on the cost of larger units per square foot because people are always saying well that building over there they're getting you know x amount per square foot so that's going right so i'm worried that driving up  square foot prices even if you choose you know it is supposedly a loss and other units in town could be detrimental i also i think about the visionaries and berkeley's past you know i think there's this idea that these units are somehow innovative and they're cool and they're visionary you know the visionaries who really had an impact on living and in berkeley were bernard may back who we can thank for our meandering streets and very naturalistic settings for holmes he had a whole philosophy about the hearth at the center of the home and how you would live in the space and families would come together and it was it was a vision about how you live we had the sixty's california living idea that was a lot about indoor outdoor it was about being connected to nature and so wh think visionaries have done is they've thought about how human beings live in spaces and how they relate to the natural world as well as each other and quite frankly the only vision that i see in this project is profit  because if it has a vision about human beings and how they can and should live it's a bleak lonely unhealthy life that i would have a lot of trouble endorsing now let me around to something positive and helpful for you because i'd like you to bring i'd like i'm sorry this is this is they're trying to break new ground they need to hear i'd like to bring some positive ideas that you might be able to work at to bring forward a project that i think would be more acceptable both to the people who live around it and other people who might live in it i don't mind the idea of taking cooking socializing exercising space out of each unit but i would like to see it provided elsewhere i think that could be cool especially if there is a system for using a larger can you know kitchen signing up for it keeping it clean you have like a big square that you're just calling a community room it be nice to have some indoor public space i would also like to see maybe one or two private i don't mean well public spaces that one could sign up for like if i wanted to have a party i could sign up to have some kind of my family over functions in the rooms i'd like to see them somewhere in the building i mean quite frankly dorms students have access to a gym they have access to dining commons social space etc and this this doesn't actually even meet the standards of a dormitory so i think you could do that i think would be cool and nice otherwise i would like to see it in the units i would like to see a variety of unit sizes and i really i ask you not only dig deep about the neighbors but did about the people you're thinking of housing not just as people who are going to pay you a check once a month but as human beings and what is the life that you're offering for them in this in this building you very interesting comments very thought provoking any other comments from the board  it's a real dilemma and will be a tremendous harm wrestling here to try to resolve the legitimate concerns of the neighbors with the zoning code was pointed out we do have a five story building approved on their site and there was actually a prior project to that and i don't remember if it was four or five stories approved on this site any developer could come in here and ask for a density bonus you can get the sixty feet by state law and we would have no say in it so i don't think it's affordable housing that you talked about i agree with the comment that i don't want our city to be responsible for developing affordable  housing but that is the law that the city council has passed that a developer has the choice between either providing the affordable units on site or paying the fee and there was i was amazed when the city passed this two or three years ago but there is tremendous interest by some of the council you know others to assemble a fordable housing fees so that city could build units i don't agree with the approach but it's there and it's not we don't have the choice the developer can make the choice one way or the other stories period so it's not such an easy choice to say i don't like this and i don't like that we've got some real arm wrestling to do with her own code you know the right of i can't understand the comments this is write a very large piece of concrete if the developer of this project doesn't make improvements on that  very large piece of concrete there won't be any they'll still have the tables out there because they can do that under city code why aren't we going to let him in hand plant more trees plant shrubs put in the encouragement of the planning department policy to have not have setbacks on the street right away to  is precedent for what they're asking for and there is a policy which the city has been following we're going to have to if we can find other ways to improve that but it's really been there you know i i really disagree with the criticism of the micro units but the fact is there are a lot of single people who can't afford a one bedroom unit  today's prices micro units that are i mean there are hundreds of units that meet the minimum code of three hundred square feet building are being built all over the bay area and the city you know oakland and there  review that they would do that but you know the alternative is you have these three hundred square three hundred three hundred forty five square foot units with one or two people or you combine two on two of them into a six to seven hundred square foot one bedroom unit that's going to have bunk beds and could have more than what you're going to have i would think two people would be the maximum here if you go through any of their student housing downtown that's that's been built there real chicken coops i mean there are bunk beds everywhere this is not as dense as what what we've approved here within the last year you know i also agree with the comments that you know the problem with the commercial and whether it'll be used it's our code can somebody come up with a good way to handle residential units on the ground floor on a busy street i don't think so i don't know what the alternative is knowing think think of block after block in paris of stone buildings with nothing on the ground floor i don't know what's behind those  but again it's a planning issue not for us to say you you you can't do that so i just think there's a lot of issues here that we shouldn't go jumping off the roof saying you can't do this this is nasty this is not procreate we've got to really work at this and i think that the developer  it with the pressure from the design review really worked at this there was a project we saw five times which we just flat out would not approve and also trying to do them like are units but micro units that initial they made a big step when they brought in the current architect who's had experience with these including patrick kennedy's little building next door and it is possible i think it's a vast improvement as far as the units and i think we should be open to this stuff you know patrick's mildewing that's completed in samara cisco it's interesting it can be set up with either a queen sized bed or two twin beds separate because he said the market there are a lot of singles who simply can't afford the unit there it's like back when you were in college or out of college which people share these units two people share i don't think we should be so majority of about this isn't acceptable housing this is rawdon's the variety of what we're going to build in the cities so put all that on the table i think it's just not right to say that we can't do this and it's go take some really hard work to look at what is possible that isn't demanded by the current zoning yeah i agree with what bob said he raised a lot of good points and i think sophie raise some good comments about this well there's a there's a there's a need for student housing i bought some bunk beds from some you see students who are graduating from their living at library gardens and they had about four people living in i think of one or two bedroom unit there and my kids are sharing those bunk beds now so it does happen i mean and that was probably quality student housing for a lot of what's out there you know there's just a huge amount of students packed into units so i think these micro units are really good alternative to what some of the older housing half a mile from a bart station to bart stations but that's only a ten minute walk that's not much of a concern there's plenty of transit on shattuck and other areas so i think it's a good place for housing it's consistent with what our general plan calls for in terms of increasing density along major transit corridors but and i think it's a great looking design but i do have concerns and one other thing i think the u themselves are probably like the weather prefabricated seems like a good way to be more environmentally sensitive i do have concerns about this overall project sensitivity to the neighbors the amount of shadowing on  especially the the closest home run derby street i think this is the kind of appropriate develop we need to have on our core doors but i'm not sure if the massing is something that's you know entirely acceptable and would every get approved by the sport i mean i'd design in a vacuum i think it's a great looking building on a corner but given the concerns from the neighbors in the shade i don't know if this particular massing would be approved so you know this probably weighs to a lot some of it off to try to reduce the shadow impacts maybe fright a little more light and still come up with a great building and not lose too many units restaurant on the ground floor would be great if it's kind of a large enough space for a decent restaurant the use of the public right away for seating i think is a great idea to use that extra large sidewalk  area be graded the city could make some money off of that and i hope there's some kind of a rental agreement that goes on with public works maybe to make that happen i like the way that the i mean i'd love to see the developer improve that right of way and sidewalk area  what else so as far as privacy from the deck on the podium level i think you'd be great if we're to continue with that design of perhaps there was a six or eight foot high screen wall at the podium level so if there was open space there people would just peer right down to the neighboring properties the noise could be addressed that way as well so that's maybe something to think about that would address the privacy noise another option potentially is for maybe some of that common open space area to be maybe creates private open space for some of the individual units further away from the common area and so if you suggestion about maybe a common communal kitchen area dormitory housing but there was a communal kitchen where we all got together because our our units were centrally dorm rooms we had common bathrooms but communal kitchen was a great way for a ready to get together so i think that's a great suggestion maybe a good use for facing windows that would be screened views from forty two inches down there that wouldn't i don't see how that provides any privacy for anybody it you know you stand up you're not you're standing higher than forty two inches and you can look down so i'm not sure maybe it's providing privacy for the people who live in those units so nobody looking up can see but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense usually if you're going to you know like that you're going to be looking horizontally maybe at the hills or something people i don't think even though it's a concern that gets raised about privacy people are concerned about people looking into their backyards i think most people don't spend a lot of time peering into someone's backyard they normally look out of the view more horizontally so that's not a big deal to me so i think i'll close there but anyway i do like the design i like the concept just i think that ought to be a little more sensitivity to the neighbors and maybe there's a way to work because your neighborhood i never knew of but i can clearly see that you're quite connected in together in it and it is wonderful and i can share some of your sympathies at the same time i do see this project for the benefit of the entire city and that sort of what we're also up here to do so i think this is about comments and i think i support density in this city i think we need to achieve it in many ways and we these these type of projects can do it but they have to be done with a sensitive mentality of berkeley has a lot of major thoroughfares that that have commercial on them and then they but residential neighborhoods many times are one it's a challenge because you always have this discrepancy and so i am most concerned about the i guess is the east side of the building how it is a budding that the neighborhood i don't think it's sited i don't think this building is sited that well in some senses because i think it pinches the the bungalows and i'm wondering how you know that siding could be worked with maybe maybe less graciousness on the shattuck side but i do agree that we need to be more urban provide more urban buildings so addressing shattuck and derby as a  urban relationship is is perfectly acceptable to me in this city i think my issues are more on the on the neighborhood side the micro units you  know i have experience with micro units i think they're interesting and they do solve a problem that for housing in this city and students are constituent group that need to housing and it's it's a basic fact in the city i think these units could be a little bit more inventive though if you look at the ones that are going on in san francisco they have pull out full beds that can collapse their shelving that can be done and there's a whole like a lot of  systems that could be put in place so that these units can be bigger when they need to be and then the bed can come out when it needs to be and it's actually kind of livable in many ways i don't i think i have some problems with the design i think the windows are recess they take away space from the units they would have into the bay window it's a classic bay area tradition brings in more light it actually adds more character to the unit you can put a window seat in there brings him humanity to these  spaces i think that's really important and i want to echo what sophie said about the common spaces i do think that having some public spaces in the building that are a little bit more gracious would be helpful and i'm going to and maybe those are public decks that actually overlook and actually create a sense of stepping true stepping down to the neighborhood i think the way it steps down is really it's not really stepping down very well to the neighborhood but maybe there's a solution in here somewhere because i do i do feel that this project is important on shattuck it does there's is some precedent for it and i do think that we should we should look at ways to mediate  kinds of buildings in how they address these residential neighborhoods i think that's right and your other comments i make a quick one i think that everyone has spoken very clearly  in provided excellent suggestions to the developer in regard to moving forward with this project one of the things that i'm really happy to see is that this particular section needs to be daylight in community we it's very dark and dismal there you know a lot of the time and the folks on the south and west side of berkeley are deserving of having more activity in community that really addresses what the need is i think this building has become a little more exciting to the community in order for it to be appropriate i think the setbacks on the east i'm in agreement that we have to be very sensitive about how we we we are but the are one district one of the things i think will also be an excellent asset is to kind of know the direction of what the commercial spaces are going to do how are they going to affect the community i mean for the longest we've only had carollo there and corolla is wonderful and we love me co and you know all that she's done but you know let's let's bring more restaurants that are in what communities in need of and i think that as you begin to address that a little bit more and have a little more communication it's going to work out really well but i do think that that for the community is  you are you know bringing your suggestions in protest also remember that this is this is an area that really need some support this part of shattuck and that's the only thing i would maybe just not it's some good ideas not the right location but i think the developer and the architects have a lot of work to do to get to get my approval and i'll leave it at that because getting late so if there's no