i remind you audience said if you want to speak tonight then you need to fill out a green card holder in the staff table for starting a few minutes late because back to school night the high school is making parking very difficult and starting a few minutes late because of the parking issues outside for the berkeley high school back to school night we also now have a projector failure so we may start soon but we may rearrange the order of the meeting for those topics don't use a project from somebody who i believe was opposed to seven a one shot but i i just replied to them and said that i was not available for discussion and i received a call from marina rickles and unfortunately she got the same reply we talked about limited time the proponent of a complicated project has to present things to the board and i find that five minutes i thought was sometimes inadequate and  and i also met with the architect of twenty seven a one at their project in san francisco earlier this month and yes board member i'm so sorry i forgot to mention that i did accept the invitation to visit the st micro unit project in san francisco i did visit that and that was led by the architect for that project who was also the architect for two seven  i apologize for that major oversight board member donaldson present and i did have a conversation with rickles on the phone about the project i also went to a presentation at the chamber of commerce on micro units which was actually a general discussion but the developer reserve and i introduced myself and the architect and board member you like to hold on hold for just a moment i believe with stephen he wasn't here he was here that maybe ok so we'll carry him over to the next agend ok let's move to the consent calendar now to set a summary i have course many cards for item one two seven zero one shattuck i have one card for item two which is in support  i have several cards for item three including a one card not position item for one card support and then item five nothing you're in support do you need to speak on this topic are you ok with us putting out a consent all right thank you and then item four three one two zero california street so we have one card this is  absolutely ok well you know you can hit on that when the time comes out but if it's getting if the long meeting getting away you may want to postpone or just like first not to make that decision right now because we may have the time to address it and i can look at it i'm whatever we need to do ok i'm fine with that the real reason was i wanted to make sure we had time for it tonight and that if we didn't have time it would absolutely show up on another just a couple quick conversations with bob allen who i'm sitting in for tonight and also steven donaldson both regarding twenty seven a one  also proposed thirty five parking spaces on august fifteenth a designer view committee passed a favorable recommendation regarding the design i recommendation for tonight is that you direct the applicant to revise the project to provide an increase at back at the northeast corner for the fourth and fifth floors her recommendation to do this would be to remove twelve units we ask that you hold a hearing tonight to find his conditions were not presented to you thus no action is possible recommendation yeah ok so i have a question about that too with no you're basically saying this this is what you must do s for that hearing so that's the that's the reason why we did not bring those to you tonight but that does not give us the option of approving of the project as presented i would say that is would generally be the truth yes that's  correct you didn't really understand this process yet you didn't really cite any grounds for your recommendation i don't understand it well we have a staff report that was presented last friday ok that gives the rationale for why we think the project needs to be revised provide a greater set back from the northeast corner and i can walk through the airport report for if you'd like but i i understand that but what i'm saying is that i feel as a board it does this is the first time i've heard a project come before us that we i feel as though we don't have the option what i would say in my apologies you know i have not been with you as long as some other folks you certainly can you know come to and that would give us an indication that you know we of course will address findings and conditions we can bring it back in the next meeting and it would just be a matter of just approving you know the findings and conditions themselves and not the project well that ok that that's a little more open the language from greg at the presentation seemed a little like a very direct like we don't have any findings therefore you can't make a decision on it tonight that is not true well our recommendation is that the project needs to be redesigned so it be very difficult for us to provide findings in support of the project because we believe it needs to be changed i understand your thank you i just had a question on the basis feel like you need to start with that and i'm happy to yeah i was just posing this to staff because it was a staff report but i'm happy to wait maybe my question will get answered well i because this is a very important point you know our recommendation is not to prove it as is if the board would indulge us i would love like to have greg you know make a brief presentation on you know the explosive mix of why we're not and what we're recommending just to make sure it's clear yes but i think that's correct and i would say and for in general for us it's it was a starting point of what we felt comfortable with and that's why we recommended that the board can certainly disagree with us and you know do as they so choose then the final recommendation is hold reduce the number of dwelling in it so saying up to twelve at the northeast corner of the building so that's more specific than the board members of kind of indicated here and i think staff could elaborate on the reasoning for that a little bit more either now or perhaps up to the applicant provides an overall presentation just summarizing what their design is and i don't know what you want to do first just to do that now we certainly can yeah let's do that now so when we reviewed this project we paid close attention to how this project transitions to the residential densities that are present along  street to the east and in doing so we also looked at what other projects the cities are proved in the last ten years to see if there was any sort of trend of what the city's done when trying to transition from the building heights that you might find along the commercial street to the residential development adjacent and by the way projects in the city of berkeley that have gone through have a house or a duplex or some residential use or immediately adjacent you know so you can cross a property line in the scale and the uses changed dramatically so this p in every case there was a step back where the residential district boundary line the height was lower and there might be a greater setback to any height that was present and in some cases there was a setback as many as fifty feet and sometimes it was pretty change between when the residential densities and building heights along the residential districts to the east and what they propose here and done a good job i believe in presenting why they think the high is a new and we don't disagree with that necessarily but when we look at having a sixty foot tall building sixteen feet from residential and we find that that's too much and fortunately when we look at the history of cities done over the last decade nine times out of ten or maybe nine and a half times out of ten there's never been a case that had this great of a contrast between what happens on a commercial project and what happens next door and the average setback i found on the five or six projects i looked at was roughly thirty to thirty five feet before you got we reviewed all of the comments from the board as well as the comments from the community and we believe looking at all those comments from the board and from the community in their entirety led us to this conclusion it really had nothing to do for the city you know the d r c of course does deal with setbacks and height limits and so forth but i do believe that looking at you know detriment in terms of what the zoning adjustments board is charged with that you know there is sometimes not a clear connection between the two just my opinion would be nice to have some guidance from staff and design review design review also has community input and we had substantial one on the pro essentially the entire day eastern facing units on the fifth floor it would be lopped off was that the calculation for well i'd rather not use the word calculation in this case what i did was i plotted the fifty foot setback in a thirty five foot setback from the eastern property line and again because the units are to at a diagonal i said well if you follow the fifty foot line that could have that could affect fifty she's mean four or five units on the top two or five or six you know something like that so it's just really the northeast corner it's the it's not the entire building because as it goes to the south the setback increases it's really just that interface at the northeast corner of the site that we found there was to close and you know we like to in planning we like to say here's a can you meet this that way come up with a good design response and as architects very clever he could come back with something at forty feet that might do exactly what we want and maybe it's and it's so we don't want to say it has to be absolutely this much setback or this many units it's just as many of twelve units would bring this project more in line with what we've seen elsewhere and we believe not just to do this to make it comply with other projects it's to help i just noticed when i look back and i think it was two or three years ago that the city adopted the latest building code and and ever since then the projects have had a different height than they did before they used to be about i think a fifty or fifty five foot limit so luckily there was alignment between the building code limits for a type of construction and what the zoning ordinance allowed design a board saw lots of fifty foot tall buildings with four or five foot tall parapets and that meant zoning and building code quite often but now i think the limits gone up and since in the last three or four projects outside of sure if we could have a hard and fast rule but i i would agree with him that if there were some way for these larger projects maybe to talk go between design review and preview at saab i do understand that design review spends a lot of time  working on a project and the applicants of course also are going back and forth with design review i do and so if there were a way to kind of get more input as the back and forth wor on that would be i think very helpful both to design review and to the applicant that having been said i think it's incredibly important for this board and everyone who's on it even if they double serve on design review and there are two of you but you're just not both here today this is an entirely different process i noted in some of the comments from members of the public and their letter that they said they've been totally design reviewed don't bring up set backs that's for zab so you can't you know it can't be that that design review is enough and that we as we are sometimes asked to just kind of go along with what designers you came up with because they spent a lot of time on it we are a different body we have a different charge and i think we have to keep that separate so to the extent that that is not a well the process doesn't work that well i think for the applicants design or view zab or the public i wish there were a way we could find to so that was longer than i meant to be you saw my question for  greg why didn't that my understanding is that some of these other projects you looked at out on a they would they would on the smaller street the side street let's call it in this case it's technically the front of the building but the street i understand that at the corner itself you would want as zero set back that would be nice but why not pull the actual street level set back back as you move towards the residential so i think you're trying to pull it back at the higher you know the upper corner of this building but why not at the street what wh why didn't you recommend not typically this ad does look at projects that have a greater transition and set back as well and when i looked at this project i found that where it really where this project s diverged from what we've seen and made it harder for us to make the findings for in favor of the project was really it's the upper floors you know at this point it does exceed the ground floor setback along the eastern property line for the first and second floor and maybe even the third but from me i can see yes it's roughly about a nine by nine yard that has a set back otherwise the billions that essentially the property lie all the way along that street granted some of it's solid with the building and some of it's this open sta it creating a greater setback in the ground for would also be more destructive to the program as a unit of obviously would go all the way up and also the parking would be changed and so we felt that the focus really was the height and the proximity on the fourth and fifth floors it being an issue more so than on the lower f your first i'd like to just reference in the comparable sites that you're mentioning several times in the presentation of staff and making the decision that you arrived at what are the sites that were that were that are we're talking looked at other projects greg hold on with me here you said that there were certain projects that you looked at over and over a number of new years and particular projects and i'm asking what other projects that you're referencing to arrive at the north and that's where the fifty foot came from ok well we should we should have those as a as a reference somewhere so that we can utilize those and also do have a have a look at those so we can objectively see how you are arriving at the decision that you're making because that would be very helpful for us the second the second question that i have is that in regard to this project is right for affordable housing that's an option for big projects like this one one thing that would address some of the comments about the interaction between d r c and and zab is that sometimes big projects go to make come here it is out very early or much earlier in the process sometimes the initial view before it goes to to the r c and i think we kind of all agreed that would have been a nice thing to have happen here at least if you go to d r c and then come here much before we saw it as a preview for you august so i think i concur with transition between the building massing at the ne corner and their residence on derby  we did not have that information but board member williams you were there at the meeting was it primarily about the what put happens with what the windows because there were some complaints on public testimony from from neighbors that people and higher floors could could look out of the windows and down into the neighbor's yard and likewise the neighbors could look up the unit cells we must along with the window treatment but it wasn't about the building massing that seem to be a foregone conclusion at that f we go with what the stabber suggesting i think we eliminate that the discussion about twelve units and leave it for design review committee to see how the building could be made to step up step down to the neighborhood it sounds like we did and this is what they have given us so what do you recommend approval right ok so if you want to make it a combat i want to remind the board that we haven't started a public hearing yet so we're going to keep moving on this so go ahead sophie steve i just want to point out again it seems to me that this was not in the purview design review and that people in the public appear based on their witten items submitted to us to have been told that that was not in their purview so i don't think we should draw any conclusions from whether d r c considered it or not if they weren't taking testimony and were telling the public it was not in their purview then they didn't really consider it design to talk about how the design worked with the massing so it's certainly in their preview to address massing as well as the details of the design and i also want to be very clear that even though it may not be in in  great any other comments or questions ok i got off our chest so let's not open up the public hearing and what the applicant to come up and i have by the way we have over  twenty cards people who want to speak at tonight's meeting so we're going to we're going to limit the individual speakers to two minutes and then the applicant normally you have five minutes for this larger project ar requesting a little more time yes how much more time are you requesting ten minutes well right but let's really try to keep it concise and ten minutes max absolutely contains a detailed findings for approval for this project we haven't just provided the abbreviated statements but a broken down analysis of each and every finding tab to support letters not only do we have that is from the immediate blocks in the neighborhood but we also have that us from those involved in impacted by the very important needs for the city the environment the businesses and residences proposal for fills here some of the letters you will find healthier lifestyle and a safer environment unquote the adeline alcatraz merchants association this letter discusses how the member businesses will be helped by the life of the customers our project will bring in the form of residents and increased attention to the area top five list a substantial benefits to the immediate neighborhood the city and local businesses fundamentally about the public many park at the corner the restaurant the car sharing bicycle parking and the projects ninety four percent walkability score tabs  focuses on the projects environmental features such as spy the lead silver target and the conditional green chip sort of occasion we've already received top seven is all about site contacts and how i project fits in this neighborhood in this part of shock and a city tab a details  professionals affordable housing professionals and business associations i have tired of the public many parked at the corner the restaurant the units and the lifestyle the building affords of accidents the transit oriented nature of the project the environmental example the project will record the presentation and we'll play it for you now thank you remember reading somewhere that the cost of the units is projected to be two in twelve hundred and eighteen hundred a month is that accurate roughly twelve hundred sixteen hundred hundred sixteen h considered providing any amenities within look ation itself perhaps a gym or some other common space of that nature yes so we do have common space on the podium level next to the podium garden there's that seven hundred foot community with the idea behind that is you have a communal dining area you have a seating area for larger groups for t v you have a full commercial kitchen available there so if you have folks who are number too many to be in your unit where you still have all those same things you can as as in most complexes in the bay area that you see you have that resident lounge that allows you to use it for larger groups in addition you have an indoor outdoor eating and entertaining opportunity where you can sit here and say it's a nice day it's a saturday afternoon and you have the resident lounge but then you also open the doors and you have the deck outside with respect to gems and that nature what we really try to do with the site is make it more interactive in the community so we are establishing relationships with local businesses example yoga studio and gems of that nature so while we don't you and two more questions and they might actually be for staff but feel free to respond as well and they really questions that for presented by in in a letter by janet unfortunately i didn't get her last name but i couldn't answer these questions and maybe one of you could the first question is and feel free to comment if you don't agree with the premise here as well the first question is why do new buildings downtown have to be ere not taking it's going to remain is public now at a woman in public so we're saying how do we enhance it how do we sit here and say if you look at this space could you look at it and say this space existed then they put a building to respond to the space so that's kind of how we look at it from a design standpoint we said what if this space was already designed the way we expect you know the way we think it should be design and then we put a building there so what we've done is we said there's an already existing bus stop that's going to stay ac transit when communication with them to try to figure out exactly what they want to put there we'll put it you know we'll put what they have they're going to say bus stop the rest of the sidewalk will just be treated as an extra large sidewalk that has some real park like improvements on it and and the restaurant seating will be just like any other sidewalk you know we you know we put our seats out and then at night we pull them back in because it's not our sidewalk it's not restricted or anything that it's all to the face of our building it's all public space and we just be using it like any other sidewalk cafe would be using the sidewalk downtown or whatnot  space much more reasonable so you know we think you and i have had some real experience in the bay area doing kind of higher and restaurants which you have a broken over our or haven or any of those places and what we found is the space that we have the way it's laid out on the interior is a nuff to track the type of restaurant that we're talking who we're talking with the outdoor seating what they want is they want something that provides a legitimate kind of end or out to explore feel but you don't need to have say any particular ratio between the end to end the outdoors so the short answer is what we what we're showing now will absolutely work so that's why we don't need to take the space for ourselves  more viable potentially more vibrant restaurant potentially but none of the people that we're speaking with have said that they have a concern about what we're showing and in fact they like the idea of the interactive park and the idea that you're kind of sitting here in a more interactive environment because again it's a large corner so it's a way to make the corner feel smaller but without actually taking up any usable space for the public or what not also managing partner access development along with your question there will be a part of the feedback we've received from the community as well as from staff was to have more of a public benefit to our project and not just a private benefit so while there would be from a revenue standpoint better to have that additional lisa space we listen to the community we listen to the staff and and those were we think a favorable evolution of this project in terms of providing that many park  and with the city be in charge of maintain this once you've built it or would you would you be maintaining a public park i mean that's kind of that's kind of you know public works and the negotiations we have with them i mean we're prepared to go either way i mean obviously you want to make sure it's not it doesn't you know fall into misuse or you know disrepair anything like that but again there's still it's a public you know it's a public publicly own thing so public words might say no they want to maintain it or they might as just as had another b g projects that we've done we've had to take over the maintenance of it even though it remains public so the answer is we don't know but we're prepared either way yes all right no more comments or questions thank you your time  sorry my name assessor silas i'm a member of the community health commission but i'm here us an individual who lives on the lake on neighborhood and i believe him directly for over twelve years i decided to speak to you tonight because i am so but i'd bet a couple of things in our in buckley in our neighborhood and people talk about it and we haven't done anything about it he says five talking about this project i think it's important second is the ability of errors to convert single family houses to eleven fed and i don't even know what kind of planning is going into it because i think it's a whole different other impact into the community so i support just development because being proposed by axis in a corner of sh now so i can't really go into this but you have to look at the reality that there's a huge demand for housing and there's not enough supply that's why does an acceptable living units are getting rent out that isn't that out our community so there's exploitation even in our ranks here and we are not able to do that so i started to consider to pass this project no it would actually be a very positive addition to that corner which for us known as i can remember has been a used car lot today twenty years later or more that this portion of south shattuck is still so under your lies and really not safe i think this is really truly an important example of a project that should be approved as is it's there's been a lot of thought put into it and is now our third conditionally green trip certified project and what that means is from a transportation perspective because you've heard of the great walk score in addition you'll see in your packet tab two and i have more copies if you amounts about half a million over the forty year period so you know in addition there's over a thousand bus opportunities within a five minute walk there's over two hundred fifty bart trains to get on with that a ten minute walk  and surely the project is green because of the number of units because of the orientation near transit simply bedrooms above shattuck avenue which is currently quite desolate at night will make a huge difference economically for the community support more local things to do close by improve safety most of you probably know all these things as your service on the so it happy to answer any other questions you might have about the sort of occasion we've also got a letter here from the transit about the estimate letter for the cost of the transit passes so with that thank you for your time thanks for your service to the community or thanks in any questions thank you very much yeah my name is tim frank and i'm the director of the center for sustainable neighborhoods i happen to be a resident of berkeley and i've been active in working on the shape of the the downtown plan and been an active supporter of  regional plan and i'm very encouraged by the opportunity to speak on behalf of the project which i think will actually contribute to the success of the regional plan and of the berkeley as general plan i was first brought in this project was first brought to my attention by transform and i and hugely impressed with the contribution it can make to mit building a more sustainable region because of the transportation aspects but i'm also quite passionate about affordable housing issues  colleague of mine that's actually looked at this project has written a nice very poignant letter and i wanted to to share a couple of paragraphs from that that's who's the director of the eight housing so she said this neighborhood is ha a severe shortage of housing for singles and students the current response to that shortfall is what we've seen throughout this exact neighborhood which is that single family homes are being turned into many many dorms the far better solution to the neighborhood is to intentionally promote housing for singles in multifamily format especially along the principal corridor us the challenge is that there just aren't enough good sites and berkeley general plan honors the objective of actually locating more in the along the corridors and it does  by and this place offering a sixty foot high as an incentive if people will cite a mixed use project with the ground floor retail and and housing above some of challenge the height and that's never a surprise in point of fact if our goal were to promote the most sustainable use of the site we've asked the applicant to add another floor to the site to the building in ad units this is clearly with its very wide spot along shattuck an appropriate place for a building of that kind of scale so the staff has posed a question that frames the issue as a matter of values should we stack a price twelve homes in two hundred forty thousand dollars in fees for affordable housing trust fund to provide a few extra hours of sun for a single family home i think the answer that is actually quite clear great rosencrantz name my name is louise rosencrantz and i've lived on the twenty one hundred block of derby street for over forty years you should know that this is not in the like cotton neighborhood association it's part of the walker street plus neighborhood association we've been a neighborhood association for over forty years we operate separately from the a cotton a brigade association and so i'm handing you tonight sixty four signatures of people who live in the one block area around where the micro units are being proposed there are two spots in this neighborhood that i would call blighted and they are both on shattuck one is the corner of derby and shattuck and the other is the east side it's a twenty six hundred block of shattuck otherwise this is a vibrant neighborhood i agree fully with the developer that this is a great area to live in for those of us who walk and bike for the thirty years that i have forty years that i've lived in the neighborhood thirty of those years i have worked no worked no further than a ten minute bike ride from where i live i also agree with the developer that something positive should be done at this corner however i believe what is being done should meet the existing zoning requirements that's why berkeley has a zoning ordinance at the design review meeting a commissioner was overheard to say these people just need to realize that all of shattuck is going to have five storey buildings on it my response is why that's not the zoning if the city wants to change the zoning in such a major way let's have a ballot measure let's have an election that focuses on zoning that way we all get a say in what berkeley is going to look like tonight my neighbors are going to outline what the requested height density setback and encroachments variances mean for our lives in our neighborhood we are asking the board to deny these variances we are asking the board to have the developer comply with the zoning law it's say your name and your two minutes to comment thank you very much i'm tom i have my two minute speech here my concern is public safety because i just haven't seen it addressed in any way in the proposed plans there are several elements of the design that degrade the traffic safety it shattuck in derby and nothing that enhances it this intersection is arguably the most dangerous on chaddock avenue right now as it is five lanes wide and fast traffic very often doesn't before or during transit they just don't see them we had a beloved neighbor struck and killed there several years ago section twenty three thirty two zero four zero of the municipal code dealing with conditions for acceptance of use permits has a requirement of non detriment that new projects must demonstrate so what do the developers propose we have a thirty five car garage opening on derby street just a few feet east of  and restaurant will block the line of sight of on coming traffic to be best friends who wish to cross add to that customers of the business looking for parking and finally and most importantly additional pedestrians and bicyclists from twenty seven to one using th substandard intersection make that pop probability of a deadly accident much greater and while there are so many aspects of the stenson experimental development the trouble me safety trumps everything it has to it's a complex inflection point along shattuck avenue the corridor and it's not suitable to the density development this being asked for we the neighbors understand how this intersection works and we're saying it's dangerous right now  members of the committee to deny the use permit for this project in its present form as it fails to demonstrate non detriment thank you tom we have quite a few we don't need to clap and we have to keep it moving tom we have a question to stand at the podium and this might be to stuff based on the constraints of the public comment traffic engineer would look at the impact of this plan and opt in including potentially putting a traffic light there the traffic department has looked at this project and has and is also looking actively at the traffic flow and estrin flow in the area to see if there's things that we can do to improve the situation the parker place project should it go forward would have put in a signal i think at carlton so one block north of this and apparently right now there is no warrants for any additional signals between this and ward street however there are things that they're looking at but there's nothing that they believe at this point would contribute to the need for a and i'm here to talk about traffic and parking and i think it's very interesting that it was so hard to get here this evening due to the event at berkeley high school it just illustrates this big problem that we have in berkeley with parking with traffic and by the way i had nothing to do with the event but it certainly helps my presentation i do feel that the building at twenty seven zero one shadegg will greatly add to the traffic and parking problems that we experience in central and south berkeley the building is seventy units and it has thirty one parking spaces and right next door in addition there is a twenty two unit residential hotel planned with no parking the developer told our neighborhood that once the thirty one spaces for the building are filled people who own cars will not be allowed to rant there i do not think that that can be regulated monitored or controlled and it just seems impossible to control who has a car and who doesn't and also if people are paying one hundred sixteen hundred in rent every month which i think is very high they probably will not want to rent to space a parking space even if they have a car so where are they going to park they're going to look for parking in the neighborhood and we do have our own our neighborhood but between five in the evening and ten in the morning he will not apply because you get two hours free and then it does and doesn't go so that means they will be able to park there in the evening and then if grace jean turrets i live it twenty one twenty four derby street which is within three hundred feet of the project it is interesting to note that all the experts all the experts who support this project none of them lives in our neighborhood but like experts who go around all over the world they don't how to fix problems and then the people of the area are left to clean up the messes they have left we who have been residents and taxpayers in berkeley for many years while the real experts who live with the solutions we create we expect to see our city work for us city staff has aided a san francisco developer and oakland architect in an orange landscape design or bring this project forward despite the clear neighborhood opposition to this project the city never initiated any meetings discussions to try to find a reasonable solution to this project does nothing for us or berkeley the people of berkeley who need housing are lower and middle income people who have been pushed out of the city for over a decade none of us could afford to live in this project this housing is not for the disabled the elderly or the poor it is not for young families with children the high rents for a single room micro you know when one neighbor landlords who a chain charging the same amount now for a one bedroom apartment to raise their rants even more the only purpose of this building is to provide large proper so the developers and their investors in no berkeley plan the general plan including the housing this project flaunts the code as being a relevant we want the law followed if you do not agree with the laws and the kind of city they represent then write new laws and put them up for a vote this is how democracy works not by a select click charging changing the laws on their own thank you thank you ellen you're up and then followed by marian soulis ellen langer i live on the twenty one hundred block of derby i wish the developers booklet had presented facts rather than just from information on hyperbole per google maps the closest bart station to twenty seven a one is ashby point six miles away four blocks as the booklet cla is a gross understatement count the blocks marion sluices letter to zag details the actual state of the actual transit options and the real transit score of sixty two the book that uses the term neighbor misleadingly under letters from neighbors we find joe hundred seventy two los angeles avenue two point seven miles from the site and also on the board of directors of little berkeley robert piper another so called neighbor seventeen o five california about one point seven miles away susan lou approaches being a neighbor at only sport six miles from the site the neighbors who have written letters and signed the petitions opposing the current plan live within a very few blocks and would actually experience the detriments we have brought to your attention we would like to see an appropriate building on the site but the developers have not responded to primary concern voiced by genuine neighbors the vacant storefronts in berkeley are primarily those in the relatively new mixed use buildings twenty one zero seven would probably add to the problem not solve it businesses in the immediate area are thriving cricks a cakes and a hinge the find of all members of the adeline alcatraz merchants association on the web are two antique dealers the twenty one twenty seven a one proposal would likely start  one submitted a letter of support both shops sell primarily large articles of furniture of antique furniture was the letter writer aware that the preferred furnished micro units would have no space for such items the exciting nightlife in the immediate area offered to prospective tenants would be limited to corolla and walgreens claims about the high end restaurant remain unsubstantiated tenets could stroll of an evening by the u c berkeley mail room defeated i l s a center you see storage the fire station very vibrant even  retirement homes the derelict birthday iceland and car dealerships this is not green seventy washer dryers are wasteful put in a laundry room on each floor i thank you for your comments very entertaining  east of the site and i apologize i don't mean any disrespect by being all casual here i pose this and my neighbors have wonderful things to say i'm we've got a great group and i would just like the board to take that seriously these are major they're prohibited for profit making enterprise says they need to get approval from city council i couldn't find any major encroachment such as the giant section of building that intrudes three feet out of the into the public right of way that is not something that berkeley normally does it creates a right of use it can't be revoked and i really appreciate if you look into that for us because we would like to discuss this in front of council also like to comment that permits are based on circumstances existing at the time that the application is granted so the circumstances right now is that there is already been an entitled building right next to this one it's one hundred sixty nine unit and it's a residential hotel it was built in the exact same configuration as this building tinier so we've got micro units essentially twenty two of them no parking and we need to be able to factor that in to the density of the area so we have a two hundred sixty nine unit building next to one hundred sixty nine unit building neither was there no parking or insufficient parking and i think that we have more than our fair share of tiny prefab units on that tiny block so i would sidewalk is really for information purposes only you shouldn't rely on it for any decision because it may not ultimately be done or approved by the city however the project does have a window of the right of way and unlike the speaker's comments there's many many many buildings in the city of berkeley approve in the last decade that have similar approaches maybe not as much or different but the encroachments is something that is done the public works department is reviewing all the encroachments that the applicant is considering and they now i know that you're all getting bored there's a ton of us i want to talk about affordable housing because it's very important to us also and i want to say that the entitled building that could be built there we were told during this whole process it was almost like a threat to us we can build this other building and it's way worse and i couldn't get a hold of the plans and i was trying to get a hold of the plans and i just got them this afternoon i had read some things online on some other things but the building there that's that's they're entitled we would love it has inclusionary affordable housing it actually has a two story house behind the unit so the two have two story house transitions from the one thousand eight bungalow that's there now to an actual single family home for affordable housing the unit itself is only four stories at the at the derby street that fifth floor is only three thousand square feet and has four additional inclusionary before the housing units their two bedroom two bath units we are a family neighborhood where we're walking distance to look khant elementary schools and three blocks away we're walking distance of a bit of a middle school we really feel like this should be a family housing area and we can't build five units of inclusionary low income housing anywhere in the city for that cost the last time the city built affordable housing units they came in over four hundred thousand dollars per unit and we would much rather have them included in this development than this we thought that's really a sham  i also like to say that berkeley has no density limits where the only city i can find that doesn't have density laws and because we're a general plan city the only hope we have is that we can appeal to councils like you to uphold the laws of the and the use permits because otherwise we will have overcrowding and we will have density issues in our city this building is higher than what's allowed in downtown los angeles right now it could not be built in oakland it could not be built in emeryville boston new york and san project change and since when they first presented it the facade changed we actually had a meeting with the developer where he told us the city didn't want him to make any concessions and that he would walk away before he did anything so we kept telling them that we know what we hi my name is jennifer dix i'd like to talk a little bit about the process it's been said that neighbors who bought their houses near the simply law should have known that it would be developed and i agree but i also think it's entirely reasonable to assume that a development would comply with the law of the city so what is the law of the city we have a general plan developed over a decade by the planning commission we have a south shattuck plan and according to the law in that plan this building can be at most fifty feet tall the law says the law coverage should be at most forty percent and the log of setbacks on all four sides this proposal complies with none of these why i think years ago when the process of this board started you know contractors and developers coming in saying for my project i just need an extra foot of height and the board thought of foot sure why not we're allowed to make exceptions to the code it's only a foot then the next jennifer so erica and then me like i am my name is erica brennan and i live on a twenty one hundred block of derby street who knows anymore which law governs our lives in berkeley let us add here that this is not only and unbelievably detrimental to the neighborhoods but also to the developers who have to find out with each proposal what does and what doesn't fly they invest a lot of money time and effort and design and redesign and redesign even in the staff report our point is made it says the city's practice here is to not require a set back to this yard which means basically we just do it this way now we always ignore this code in the materials from the developer you're asked to ignore the lot coverage requirement because it serves no useful purpose isn't that like running red lights every time you don't see other cars in the intersection stopping wouldn't serve a purpose the staff report also encourages you to ignore the requirements for setback slot coverage and hype because it would bring more money to low income housing fund a lot of old cars for sure but if the police just would stop and help with the bank heist because the robbers promised them part of the loot for their police charity then but that because of the drift away from the code isn't our real problem that mr theory was made to believe that it's perfectly ok to build this large and incredibly d i'm going to call up todd darling followed by john posts you might think that we're all very naive in that we don't know what we're talking about we have not studied city planning we're not developers this is not our field and that brings me to another important issue about process and that is who are the players i'm a potter and i hang out with a lot of potters we're a very small subculture with our own lingo and we can sometimes feel extremely self important as if ceramics is really what the world is all about well this process is run by people in a subculture to people who speak a jargon who have decided that certain things are crucial to urban life and who feel extremely self important what could we as neighbors possibly know about planning and development right if you look at the letters in support and against this project all the letters that come from the surrounding neighborhood are against and the letters in support are not from the neighborhood the letters in support are all from the so called experts they have learned all the right things in school and they share the same philosophy there is no room for a different opinion but they forgot to incorporate a very important aspect of planning the knowledge and lives of people on the ground thoughts i lived in sierra leone west africa for a while and i saw the same things there over and over and it wasn't pretty development agency sending their experts in from north america and europe with all the answers they never included the people on the ground to the people affected by their projects except to play lip service to inclusion and the projects failed again and again and left people worse off than before to wrap up this project the process is code too much it will reach its breaking point and this is the proposal that will break it if the code is not right then change it democratically go to the citizens of berkeley and ask for changes so you don't get buildings that are more than twice the size they ought to be thanks todd yeah who are you going can you can step up and tell me who you are  again there was to me listening however if you don't follow that wise course of action i would suggest to you that this project is in desperate need of an environmental impact report according to the  nine thirty one states that exemption from the sequel process requires a housing project be within a half mile of a major transit stop but the downtown part is the point seven miles away and ashby bart is at least point six miles away this building is not exempt from an environmental impact report this building will harm on a brotherhood and it will be an energy drain for the city of berkeley because of its relationship to the sun without the sun there is no life on earth most plants require the sun for humans need it for vitamin d humans need the sun to be happy without it they grow depressed the building steals or sun and dozens of houses and perhaps hundreds of people every day of the year that's seventy feet tall one hundred feet it will start to shade houses at two pm every day for at least three hours longer during the summer the shadow will probably to two hundred feet long it will swing around the neighborhood seasonally the shade in question will require us to turn on the heat three hours more for electricity and depressing use of electrical vehicles and this monster shadow attacks an essential element and right of life our relationship to the sun the developers are too vague the process clearly calls for an environmental impact apart or rejection of this building don't expose the city to ridicule for failing to abide by the legal process don't approve an architectural design charitable he describes but now and mediocre the robs my house in our neighborhood of the life giving sun reject this building maybe you could just briefly summarize the infill exemption he's referring to and why we think that's appropriate in this case well the exception he's referring to are actually not relying on we're relying on the urban infill exemption which doesn't have a prerequisite for proximity to a park station now the last neighbors have mentioned how far is this project from the bart station and i've measured it several times using google maps and it's just at the point five distance and i was using the southwest corner of the project for the residential lobby down to the ashley bart station plaza but nevertheless we're not using that exemption raising the caribbean option for ental housing should we proceed and what does that say exactly i mean i can't hello my name is john ballers born out debates nine hundred sixty class of seventy seven be a resident at twenty one twenty eight derby street for twenty four years thank you for this opportunity to speak although i get the distinct feeling that we in the neighborhood are in the process is slowly closing the barn door after the horses left i'm not going to bring up the traffic safety problems or the overcrowding realities or the complicated traffic issues of the dubious future of the upscale restaurant now downgraded the cafe or the mystifying relaxation setback laws or encroachments issues the history of dubious statements perpetually emanating from the developers or the four dollars per square foot the inhabitants will pay for the privilege of living in an apartment less than half the size of a racquetball court or the noise shade or parking problems not to speak of the hugely relevant issue of detriment i just have a couple of questions for you about the hike to which these people want to build at this point we have fifty feet plus the ten feet extra with one used for for the use permit variance plus a seven foot  according to my berkeley unified school district the education they want to build something that is effectively sixty seven feet tall plus another five in one spot for an elevator my question is what did these people do to before buildings were required to be fifty feet tall and no more at this location why let these people have an extra seventeen feet why why more high just because they want  please don't let this overcrowded monolith be built on this undersized lot please listen to our neighborhood john thanks for your comment favre you're up and pamela your next family while you're next robert gable twenty seven thirty eight fulton street i have three points the first is that this is an attractive proposal for what is essential in a dormitory in the supporting documents for it that they submitted on the twenty third it says that it serves an important underserved population they don't say what that population is but in a letter that they attached in support this lists three people types of people berkeley students and dean nestor seniors in starting health professionals i am an empty nest senior it would be hard for my nest to fit into three hundred forty square feet u nit berkeley has apparently agreed that we have to supply housing for students but the  site this distance is really questionable and i think should be examined second point i think all buildings on the east side of shattuck should probably be four stories five stories on the west side the last point i make is that the attorney cited in her letter a twenty two year old case of ross versus the city of new york the linda to mitigate the opposition she then states finally there are no sustainable facts of support findings against approval given the fact that we and the public had only three days comments pamela well your next followed by i think very clar maybe and then betsy did mars my name is pamela waller i live at twenty seven zero one fulton street block up from the proposed building i've lived there for fourteen years my husband's lived there for twenty two years and i'm not going to speak as helen quickly as all my neighbors have but one of the things that just frustrates me so much is that the builders said that they were meeting the needs of the community by not having it just be about that what they were building but what they could give our neighborhood by now creating a public park and i have two young children and i would never walk down and bring my children to an outside area and shouting to hang out i would walk three blocks over to look caught playground which is a public park or i would walk up four blocks to willard park i don't need that thank you thank you pamela project first thing i want to say is i don't believe sixteen hundred dollars a month is affordable housing i would also like to point out that there is a fire station kitty corner to that and with all the traffic influx in and out of that area i think that could be a safety hazard i worked in restaurants in berkeley for many years and i you want to know anybody who wants to sit outside at a cafe in february march april may june etc it is too cold to be able to sit outside for most of that time and you give any restaurant tour the ability to see people outside they are going to need to have heaters and block traffic sounds i really don't think it's feasible personally also i wanted to point out there's already been traffic issues in the area at coming down derby there are homes on that street coming all the way down and you can only turn right there so traffic flow has been diverted away from that area i don't think it's a wise idea please do not vote for this thank you betty so now i'm sorry now we have for the final five  always been out of place so the location is a major stumbling block micro units might make sense in a more urban environment where there are attractions right outside the door locking that under this chapter the zoning officer or board must make the finding required by section twenty three point thirty two point zero four zero officer or board also must make required by the following paragraphs of this section to the extent to a proposed use or structure of must one be compatible with the purposes of the district to be compatible in design and character with the district and the adjacent residential neighborhoods and three not result in the domination of one type of commercial retail use in any one area of the district section twenty three establishment maintenance or operation of the or the construction of a building structure or addition there to under the circumstances of the particular case existing at the time at which the application is granted thing i am also a neighbor i live on the twenty one hundred block and i have lived there for over thirty years my comments are that i think that this building is too big for the neighborhood i agree with the comments that the building should be smaller i think that we would like to see i think most of our neighbors and i would like to see something on that lot  but would like to see something that would fit in more with the neighborhood and would meet the zoning codes that would be more of a family like environment like the rest of the neighborhood i find it discomforting to imagine that somebody could live in these three hundred square foot units where when it was laid out on a sidewalk in our neighborhood i  steps to get from one end of the space to the other and i think that berkeley deserves to have a more comfortable and  environment for the people that are going to live there the other comment that i wanted to make was that the the woman from transform talked about some safety issues and i walk all the time in the neighborhood and i'm not exactly sure what she's referring to better neighborhood is actually a very safe neighborhood it's perfect to walk and walk to downtown or anywhere any time of day or night so i think that you know not i don't think that bringing in this huge building in and having these small units is an appropriate fit for berkeley and what berkeley should be striving for as well as for you know fitting in with the neighborhood that we'll close a public hearing and bring it back to the board so ten minutes  first of all yes there is a twenty year old case ross versus the city of yorba linda that is still good law and it talks about findings and the findings cannot be based on the number of people against it it cannot be based on a referendum of your popularity if you have nothing more findings of fact are an expert opinion on facts and where you can try nexus between what you're finding is and the actual fact so believe and here it there's some areas where we have a centrally uncontroverted agreement on the findings we agree with the staff report that we have met the general use permit him findings and the special findings of this section  not just section one but one two and three further question setbacks on shattuck and along the property line and on the interior line that we also mean that we have also met the lot coverage and that isn't actually my tab page six and seven we do meet the general plan consistency and that's in page six there's six to seven of my findings and also fourteen and fifteen of the staff  and i will just throw these out so we can work what's important on the shadow studies staff at page fifteen puts it extremely well that there is no articulable detriment in that that you could have the prime solar access between ten am and two pm this is so the buildings are not going to lose their ability to have solar access and density what's interesting is the f a r and this district is four point zero ours is two point five seven where we disagree with staff and we do feel that the language of the shaddock shattuck strategic pan plan is correct but the additional language there is no support for that what's ironic is that yes we already conform with the setback on the eastern elevation because the way staff looks at it and the zoning ordinance requires the front yard is actually derby the eastern elevation is and this is in the staff report the eastern elevation is actually an interior yard and we exceed by almost two hundred percent that required setbacks the design after twenty hours that d r c was looked at for neighborhood compatibility and yes design review commission does look at setbacks they did it on the project to dwight and fulton they said that is not enough sets backs that is not enough separation they looked at it here and did not find it wanting so essentially to require a debt reduction that pulls units out without saying what the benefit that reduction of units will do does not support any kind of finding essentially there's no debt nexus between what they're asking the project to give  and what they expect the benefit to be for the adjacent house which is it's at its backyard where it begins it's the floors two three four and five are thirty one feet from the beginning of the backyard of the adjacent house and it stands to as much as thirty six feet distant you've asked a lot of questions about the many park i'd like to ask you to refer that to our landscape architect and to our design architect in terms of the comparisons that the staff made as to how this fits with other approved projects i need to submit that this was not a fair analysis it stopped at our two  omitted parker place and it also was based on approvals that were done prior to the understanding that all floors would be nine feet tall i ask that you we have studies on the micro units i know you have material on that i can rebut what they said about the problem mike are you know it's in seattle it is not what was stated and i looked at i do believe that you can make the findings for this proposal as reify reemphasize that our project is fully complying with all those owning ordinances there are no variances being requested there no encroachments other than the windows this is not a mini dorm that's a project of term is being thrown out there this is nothing like a dorm these are all fully contained units that have a full kitchen a private bath and washer and dryer so this is nothing like this exact opposite the antithesis of a dorm dorm when you have audience please quiet down in a dorm one doesn't have their own private bathroom one doesn't have their own private kitchen this is the antithesis of a dorm so to throw out that that bomb of the the mini dorm is really kind of irresponsible and it thank you that staff actually answer answer that because i know approximately but we have the exact number right here from staff i don't have no idea what they mean by the nine foot dimension i appears nothing in  zoning ordinance and i'm not aware of anything in the building code could you explain what you mean by that yes i do during the staff presentation they said that the height limits in each zone ended up being raised because the building code allowed for higher floors and that more recent buildings are effectively higher to affect those changes in in the building code and essentially into what was that the aesthetic value of buildings and so on taking it essentially from gre silly greg can you comment on that well what i was saying before was that this project has a sixty foot tall building closer than any other project that i was aware of to a house that was the first thing and  also acknowledge that the cops if you will of the projects we looked at elsewhere weren't this tall at all because there used to be a building code limit that keep kept millions at roughly fifty or fifty five feet which also align with the zoning or its limit so mean that this actually changed their decisions about buildings it's just that there was a limit elsewhere that kept buildings generally shorter have to limit is now gone so we've seen a couple buildings two or three come through that are claiming that was her question  since the beginning of that project and i think there's now a proposal to convert the bottom floors to live work units i wanted to ask i know we can speculate but suggestion look at corolla one block away and how well it's done thank you for the question we're actively negotiating with for restaurant tours that are well known and respected in the city of oakland and san francisco  and my last question this is foot we know when you were commenting on policy you d thirty two related to shuttles and they exactly statement is new building should be designed to minimize impacts on salt access and you address sunlight between ten am and two pm could you comment on that i didn't really see it in our output ok there's two parts to that the shadow studies show that there is no change in sunlight access between ten am and two p the staff report agreed with that and also referenced the weather that was an impact and solar access and referred to and i would like to bring the staff reported actually referred to a solar access study that said that that would that the loss of any shade at two o'clock i mean after two o'clock would not impact ability to have solar panels or to be able to  be able to track solar energy the other part is the staff is asking for some cutbacks and cut outs there's no evidence that any of the cutbacks they want are going increase our add to that one that was my question or at least in my weaving of it it did not speak with you and it's worth noting that our recommendation is based on the solar access to the house to the east it actually refers to those other policies that were listed in the staff report for europe oh i actually was just going to make an amusing comment that i did just drop my oldest child at college and i hate to inform the applicant that colleges are now competing over the quality of their dorms and i can assure you that there are dorm rooms no had united and universities in the united states that are as nice or nicer and certainly larger for individuals to its than the ones you provide you should take a look there go nuts ok any other comments or questions from the applicant well you want to keep the public you're hoping when you give your comment i just so thank you for your comment and we're going to call it a public hearing and now have the staff open up our board discussion it's my small town southern boy nature not to speak very loudly so i will try to avoid doing that there was a couple of points at the beginning of the meeting i definitely felt some of the comfort some discomfort from the board and you know part of my job was to not make the board uncomfortable so i just wanted to speak to them briefly and and and succinctly regarding the d r s and the interface for this particular project i would say it would be normal if after a preview we received enough comments that we believe the project need to be alterations to it in some fashion we would normally request that it go back to the review based on our recommendation we have met with the applicant team regarding our discomfort with the design of the building and its interface with the residences to the east they indicated clearly to us that they were not interested in making changes do one of two things bring in findings for denial or in this case what we did was to not bring findings at all and i think part of our thinking in doing that was based on the fact that there was much about the project that we were not opposed to but there was some parts of it that way and in this instance we just decided not to bring forward the findings for denial but i just wanted to relay that to the area building quite a while ago over in san francisco those microbes and i just like to admit it made quite common sense three ways in general i'm not adverse to micro units i think i think that they have a place in the market and i'm not sure you can just say these are going to be student units it is possible and i've read quite a bit about seattle and boston but these could be young professionals who want to be near the ashby bart station with easy access  and and not having cars because a lot of young professionals don't have cars so it would possibly be a mix of there is a market place for it and the quality of the units sounds like it's a decent quality so i don't see that as as the big issue it's not that one would you know i personally would live in them i'm a i have a family with kids my daughter currently rents a room in berkeley not far from there pays nine hundred dollars a month for the room this is not that much more for an entire unit and a lot of people would find this affordable for new housing if you look at the market rate for new housing so looking in that range i think i i can see that's a positive  you know that the city's recommendations of taking your terracing back to building on that side might my concern is that even if we did that i don't think it would satisfy any of the negative comments of the neighbors they want something much smaller so we're in this conundrum of they want something that's not as big this is technically approved the way it's designed with some modifications so i don't think we can satisfy all the concerns of the neighbors  and i believe that the project genuinely serves a purpose in the market so i tend to think that this is a positive thing and i think we should take a look at improving  i am not going to comment on the size of the units i know i believe that to my colleagues actually i understand that individuals will make decisions that whitefoot them you know i i live in a one bedroom and i always voice how the space is getting utilized because even in the one pet home i think i just have too much stuff it's all the papers  so i know i wouldn't fit in one of these units but i'm i'm going to ask you comments on that i will talk about the height density massing and placement of this building that this would be built on the interception of shot it can be which is why the beginning of that fifty foot buffer area within c s a it just seems like the wrong location i'm sorry to say if it was a little bit closer to the downtown core perhaps i would feel less uncomfortable about it i do also want to say actually  that i appreciate receiving this packet from the applicants i look through it and it's helpful to me to get as much information as possible and so i was trying to weigh that against the to other parts of the staff report well going to the issues and analysis policy l u three in full development encourage in full development that is architectur environmentally sensitive perhaps embodies principle sustainable planning and construction perhaps and it's compatible with enabling land use is an architectural design and scale and again it's just t conflict of having a seventy plus foot building at its tallest point right next to one of the two story buildings in an hard to area that doesn't square for me policy l u twenty seven avenue commercial areas encourage sensitive info development of a can toward underutilized property that is compatible with existing development patterns and again i feel like we're going in the wrong  and for building taler than three stories that the plan calls for the sign that takes into consideration the land use in the urban design context including the use in scale of a body properties and adjacent presidential properties need for access to light and i've been very clear from the beginning to end design proposal during the previous stage when i said i would be more comfortable with the project if either it conforms to the fifty foot limit and i'm not opposed to mixed use as a matter of principle but if you take out the commercial space perhaps you could fill it just as many units and still just be one floor left all i do have a little bit to say about the argument that this would provide affordable insurance payment of one point four million dollars to the housing that fighting for scraps around the portable housing it wasn't too long ago that we had up for unit housing mitigation fee of twenty eight thousand dollars for a unit now it's twenty now the neighbor that spoke about the cost of providing an affordable housing unit being three hundred thousand i've actually seen perform with that pencil out as less than that but i think the scale is why don't the money it's a six digit figure this would be providing one point four million dollars so even if we said a unit of affordable housing cost two hundred thousand dollars that would be seven units now it wasn't that long ago that the city of berkeley had a buy why it inclusionary housing ordinance of twenty percent  affordability if the developer put in one hundred units in a building twenty percent of them would be required to be affordable without the need to go through an excess study by the city and without the need for the developer to argue well they could provide in lieu housing but they wouldn't have to make the type of argument that i'm seeing here and you know this is this is not a policy making  unnecessary but we're really putting forth quotes here and i appreciate the opportunity to have new affordable housing however and whichever way it can be created but paddles if some neighbors have them on their roofs and i'm satisfied with that comment but there is no discussion whatsoever on the impacts to a neighbor or school may have the benefit  to work from home or may be at a stage in their lives where they no longer work and they're enjoying the quiet peace and enjoyment of having sunlight go to their window while this just seems to me like a project and it and i know some mitigations have been made along the way but it still looks to me like a square peg trying to fit into a which i would be supporting i feel that this at least begins its it could be perhaps a starting point to addressing some of the and so i was my judgment should step back commendation path to see what the new what the new design would look like but i think that is a step in the right direction and on dot aspect of some step back to the neighborhood i think that's what staff is suggesting i think they based on how similar projects have sort of evolve through the review process and approval process and appeal process that we have in the city it's very common for projects like this to be lopped off to step down to neighboring properties however  know this project is on shattuck out of a new we have a climate action plan that's one of the most recent plans the city has adopted in addition to a downtown plan which is not covered this particular area but i think there's a new there are new beliefs about what is appropriate development in not just berkeley but throughout the region and we have responsibilities to accommodate different types of housing affordable housing sustainably built housing there are immense needs for housing in this b area that are not being met and the best place to put that in berkeley is downtown and on major corridors like shattuck avenue it's unfortunate that the adjacent homes are much smaller scale that there's a one or two story home right next door to this project site under beyond it but derby street apologies you know if if that was a vacant lot right next door under the street maybe wouldn't we wouldn't have such a concern but we still have a huge amount of people here that wouldn't like to see the scale of building on shattuck avenue in their neighborhood and i understand that but i think  there's a lot of needs that we need to look beyond the immediate neighborhood here and i'm fairly supportive of this design but i understand why staff is recommending something that's more of a mitigation but i don't know if the  that i clearly hear is that the effect that it has on community and it is a person who really loves home community and understands what those impacts are all around berkeley now being forced to absorb it more and more one of the things that steve said that i totally agree with is regionally housing is changing and unfortunately there are ways in which we have to change with it and it's painful it's not an easy process and we have the area of south berkeley that has needed for more than forty years it is unfortunate it's really unfortunate that in our community of south of the southside of berkeley that it requires us always to go to the north side or into the center in downtown there is nothing very little that accessible to families in walking distance with the same amenities that we have on north side and more of that should be and should be available to us in our communities and that's personally how i feel about it i really think that major development has to happen on major corridors and this is one of those situations  opportunity for this type of development in regard to these being micro units i think that terminology is something that's just one of those slang things that's just out there but like george says from the old school way it's really just a studio  affordability in berkeley six hundred dollars it's outlandish for a lot of communities but it's more what's considered affordable in our town i would be in support of this project and i'm going to go out on a limb here and make a motion that we approve it and that staff work to come based on the vote that comes into night that they support it and  come in with the findings and i don't know where that's going to go or who's going to be in agreement with it but that's where i'm going to stand right thank you for the motion and if anyone's ever been there but it's so lovely neighborhood little bit far out from from the center and its big victorian houses that are just people in their backyards it's very unusual for that part of the city and right next to these these neighborhoods are the six seven storey apartment building just built right in the middle of this nice neighborhood and i was actually staying in one his apartment buildings and it was ok but i was not even knowing that this was  an issue happening in berkeley i was aware that it was it really hurt the character of those nice neighborhoods i felt very uncomfortable with it and that i think we're looking at something similar here i do like a lot of things about this project i want that lot to be developed i think it would really improve that order of shattuck a lot if we had a nice new building with space commercial space i think would be wonderful but it's just too big and i think sta recommendation is is good it's a good start i would actually like to just lop off one story and it sounds like the neighborhood would approve that as well and i think that that's telling i think that might be the right size i think that's  everyone's saying it's you know it's hard to define what what is compatible with the neighborhoods that awkward thing between commercial and residential but i think for stories is pretty typical for shaddix ordering a residential neighborhood high i'm not i'm not even quite sure the type of housing is a good fit for this neighborhood and i want to see this law to develop but it doesn't mean we have to be forced to do this particular development so with that in mind so to apologize to my colleagues i often am long winded but i usually try to be organized and i have to say my thoughts are a little all over the place so i ask you to bear with me i do have a lot to say and i think it's quite different from what's already been said in an attempt to be tidy as i can with what i say i in terms of emotions and where i would like to see this go i would either like to continue it but i would have many many more requests of the opposition and i will delineate those or i actually would like to go ahead and deny it today and for two reasons the first is that i find detriment for a variety of reasons and i'd be happy to draw them out in full put out a novel idea for the folks here of the diocese another reason that i think we should consider denying it today is that this is a very novel idea and now i'm talking about the tiny studio micro unit whatever you want call in micro units because that's what they've been called i did go visit the units in san francisco let's be clear they are not being used by the general public they are leased to california college of the arts and their dorms every city that has and they are mostly cities i know berkeley likes to think of itself as a city but we're not we're just a little town that happens to be dense we are not seattle we're not new york we're not boston and i've even been here when people have said oh well in london they have this and it's like it's many cities i do not know about those particular ones have heard where zoning and planning are the same board so at the same time that they might approve one micro unit project they're also able to immediately turn around and say that's it and you know for three years let's see how it works out etc our board doesn't have that opportunity i feel that there are policy issues but are novel and that neither our planning commission or our city council who are the policymakers have had a chance to weigh in on the way to get this in front of the people who i think are really best positioned to reflect whatever the community's wisdom may be on whether these are a good idea or not as a concept is to deny it and allow our well financed developers who have a very very good lawyer already with them to appeal it to the city council and the city council can decide to they want this unit this project just one several none i'd like to put out there the possibility that members and that there's a market for them and my opinion that they are substandard housing and that i do not see a market for them other than as dormitories and that as such they should be built as dormitories and we have different rules about doormen you know why don't we just send it immediately to the city council and let them make that policy decision so i am now going to backtrack from my last point and i'm going to come back to my first should we choose to continue with i absolutely would indorse staffs request that a reduction a step back  i would endorse the whoever it was who suggested taking the whole story off i think that should be looked at when this was previewed i had a lot of concerns i never said i was against a micro units what i said was if you're going to provide living units that exclude so many functions exercise our will kitchen to cook healthy socializing in your private space that i wanted to see those spaces creatively provided elsewhere in the building and i think i was misunderstood i did not mean that you drew in another straight line of kitchen stuff in the existing common room and you drew in a table i meant you give up some more space and not just space on a lower level in a dark corner admittedly giving on a garden but prime space sunny space good space i didn't see you do that it might be acceptable for these tiny units that i i wouldn't call them a living space i think they are spaces in which one can exist at the most minimal level of human existence then at least part of the other things that allow for a full life somewhere else in the building your common room provides less than ten square feet of common space per unit you probably could not have a meeting of all the tenants in that room at one time so i would ask should we send this back that we also request that the applicant make a much better faith effort to provide real and meaningful amenities that make up for the ex almost every function except sleep microwave television and potty which i personally do not consider the harm it's just a place to exist so going to the denial detriment this project wants it all they want no virtually no set backs and they want an extra story they've been very upfront about the reasons for that they want the money was quoted in the berkeley side saying you know they just they just need it to make the money and the materials they have got it here if you want it i can read it to you high reduction would be unlikely and that it would lead to a project that was not financially feasible the site ultimately thrilled through because of that limitation for the cost and you chile the land it just isn't feasible to do smaller now it is not our job to make developers on bad investments so i completely reject that line of argument i am not interested in that for them were you to make that line of argument you would need to bring us we are not idiots we can all read a financial statement show me the money and have it independently verified i will not accept that kind of argument of no consequence and furthermore if there is detriment to the neighborhood it is they who bear the cost not you you are asking the neighbors to take a building that is not appropriate for the site so that you can make money and then for a hundred years they live with an inappropriate building so i really have a problem with that so it's the area it's sixty foot in height and the next three blocks it's fifty and then it goes down to thirty six but it's clear intent on the part of the people who created this sounding for a step down the fact in this neighborhood i see no reason to violate it this is supposed to be a first story fifty feet high and i think it is detrimental to the neighborhood as well as in contravenes the clear intent of the planning that went into it i'd like to point to the argument about affordable housing  housing fee is what they pay to get to build a building that is not detrimental it is not a and affordable housing engine if that were that we could just to prove a variance and put a twenty story building then we get lots of money the tail wagging the dog it is not a reason it's not a reason for anything i do the non detriment finding that we're supposed to make goes to general welfare i rarely revert to that but i happen to feel that this is detrimental the general welfare i do not think these are buildings we should the units i feel we should not be i disagree with those who say  people could have their lifestyle that's true but we don't have to build housing in berkeley that is so narrow in use that it has no flexibility whatsoever you cannot have a partner you cannot have a child you cannot have a friend over this is housing that lacks in a life choice it is not it is inflexible and we do not know if there is a demand for this we don't because the project in san francisco is a door so for many reasons i find i actually feel we should just deny this great we don't have any conditions that works  i do feel it's a very good project actually it's quite beautifully detailed inside and whether they're students or are singles that is a market segment that is a demographic of the population in san francisco and in berkeley that we need to address students are living in in squalor and parts of the city and yet we need to address that most people who come to these meetings live in single family homes they have their space but a lot of people don't and i am a supporter of diversity in housing i think it's essential for any city such as berkeley to be a viable city the kind of city that we support the kind of diversity of people of income groups no matter what segment they come from so i think that these units are are good having said that i am frustrated at the fact that at the study session this board made several very good comments i think there are many good comments by the by the members here and i really see very few incorporated i'm struggling with that i'm struggling with the fact that this project has kind of been set from the get go it doesn't seem to have modified itself much it seems like i don't know what happened at the d r c but it went back and forth and i think it became a materiality question and i'm just kind of trying to understand what's happening here i did go i've studied the berkeley zoning very carefully and there was a lot of care on this corridor in terms as i agree with so feel on that and i do think that there was a lot of consideration in the neighborhoods and i've actually walked this neighborhood i've gone there and looked at it and so you know i think this project is good for what it is i support the units in it i support the market that is supporting i think there is a group of people that will need this housing and i think we have to provide it in this but i do think it's a little overly dense i'm wondering how we can massage it i do find detriment in terms of the sun shadows and i find it because i do these all the time in my own work and what's difficult for me is when i see some shadows from above it doesn't register until it actually a roof well shadows hit a wall and that is impacting for much longer than the ten after two p m or before two p m the fact that the house adjacent has a gable that faces east and west will impact the ability for it to have solar panels because you can only face them in the you know in the west in the in the east direction so they will it will impact them and i think everybody has that right to have solar energy i think we're going to need it in the future so i  am struggling with the with the sun shadow debate and discussion here that we've been having i do find it detrimental to the neighborhoods and i wish that there was some kind of compromise i don't know if i told the support  i'm open to that too i don't know denying it is something i'd be curious to hear from the applicant if they are truly willing to negotiate i do know that harriet in san francisco is only four stories and it recently sold for an unbelievable these there's a there's a huge market for this and a profitability i read spread sheets i read pro forma as i do need some proof that it this thing couldn't work because i don't think that that argument holds water for me as well and the last thing i want to say is about the public park interventions in the public realm that are landscaped as such i'm very skeptical of because there are lots of legal issues how will chairs get across them how they're accessibility and how public works will actually define them and actually maintain them and i think there is a big question on what that's going to be so i i  i'm always wary whenever somebody says that there's a public space benefit here and what that means so i take that with you know grain of salt thanks for your comments and we just had a few things and then you're  to go and see where we stand here so i agree with what you're saying and perhaps this works well in san francisco and other cities like san francisco and maybe maybe we need to address that demographic in berkeley but this particular design in this particular location is not a great fit and so i just want to separate the notion of addressing a demographic in the city and this particular implementation and that's what i have a problem with so so if we if you have a motion and we have to we have  the common indoor space to accommodate other functions that i've already shown you know elaborated both tonight and at the previous meeting but what does the order for think or should we say with t i just move to deny on the basis that the project is detrimental oh gosh ok i mean we could restate some of the things we've heard tonight yes yes that's what i what i think i've heard on the i thought it was kind of incorporated by osmosis the framework for the motion to that i could start with the text it's on page eleven which is foreign policy statements to talk about transition and you highlight here someone i laid him out there and that there isn't a transition you're looking for you find the detrimentally can add that there's some shadow impacts and that the type and quantity of units at this location is not appropriate so that maybe there's three sort of topic areas that i've heard so far right and i had a general feeling of detriment after i saw finding a document for the micro units themselves which people can agree or disagree with as a general welfare issue but maybe people don't want that in there and that as a second person on that motion just to say that i just see this is a process and so this is one way to approach this decision is to just quickly have it go to the city council and so you know it could be approved there punting our responsibility to the city council we're all appointed by city council members we're here to look at zoning issues and building massing and that's what this board does i think we should deal with it here but you know that's that's one approach and that's what happens  projects get appealed but i think it's up to us listening to the neighborhood talking with our council members and board members and having more meetings talking with designer view it's our responsibility councils got plenty on their plate with all the other things i do steve you know it's a good point i don't like to have stank so i really think you're right it's our responsibility make a decision but this project can't be tweaked and i don't think so it's either you know we did the policy decisions can be made or we had to comes back to us and maybe with feedback to the applicant to change make radical changes i just wasn't happy with how you phrased your comment that suggested that i would never shirk my responsibility on this board i think you know better than not and i know let me finish ok  i have never suggested that we send anything to council ever and for you to characterize that as a shirking ever sponsibility i find it personally difficult to he so you may disagree but please don't disagree on the basis that i might shirk a responsibility i didn't mean any personal offense so i don't as a second most i don't take it personally so i think we're we're going to give a couple of minutes for the room to clear and then we'll take on item number five hundred forty eight oak avenue oakville avenue i'm sorry commissioner  mike is going to have to recuse himself from this so as the vice chair i'll be stepping in and taking on this subject matter ok forty eight failed his appeal of an administrative use permit zoning officers to approve the permit to construct a major residential addition the project proposes to excavate for mechanical room and interior hallway and stairs and to construct a second story addition for a new laundry hallway stairs bathroom and bedrooms the zoning officers decision was appealed by the neighbor at fifty two out fail she's opposed to the second story addition for several reasons the proposed mass may affect the amount of sky and light from the west the width of the side yard make the properties seem very close together and the size of the addition she feels can be modified and reduced however the zoning officer we were at staff was able to make a favorable recommendation because if there are increase addles at fifty to o b l they will be in the summer months in the evening and it is not expected to create additional shadows for the remainder of the year the side set back that she's concerned about is a conforming set back at this location and it exceeds the district's minimum requirement and the distance between the properties of staff feels is adequate the applicants and the owners actually require bedrooms the requesting bedrooms on the second floor right now there's one bedroom there it's a master bedroom downstairs on the first floor is where their young son sleeps and leading out from that room is to the garden and it's just you have french doors and he's two right now and once he gets old enough he's going to figure that out and go outside and then there's also entrance to the basement level with very steep steps from that remaining bedroom so they're requesting to have bedrooms upstairs so that they can have of course access to their son and when their parents come visit so for these reasons staff was able to make a favorable recommendation however it was appealed and i do believe the appellant is here and the applicants are here to talk a second floor to the rest of the building oh sorry we were to say that's a good point and i was explaining that the existing elevation on page two of the staff report that's a flat roof there so it's not an average it's to the to the top of that flat roof the definition in our ordinance says that you measure to the top of that flat roof so that's the height of the current high the addition will maintain that height of what's there currently so it's a maximum not an your maximum or average but just to clarify it's it's matching that height and extending it towards or for the building i would actually like to yield most of the homeowner and the lord is going to make our primary statement thank you proposing for forty eight oakville we're proposing to extend the second floor of our home to match the footprint of the first floor we're doing this to create four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second story in the process we're going to add eight hundred ninety seven square feet to the second storey of our house undertook this project to correct several limiting elements in the layout of our house and evolve into a true family residence we have one young son as we talked to earlier and plan to have more children in the future and would like more bedrooms to accommodate them the current layout with our bedroom on the second floor our son's room on the main floor is not ideal he has three doors in his room one to the outside garden one to the basement stairs and went to the stairs upstairs in addition my husband works from home so it's important he has a home office one of the bedrooms will double his home office my parents live in new york but stay with us for three or four months out of the year and wallace use one of the bedrooms to accommodate them and we're not using it for other purposes so what we're doing is completely within the bounds of the neighborhood we have received approval from the city planner  receive support from all of our neighbors except for paula scheme who's here this evening to appeal in fact many of our neighbors have written letters to the board on our behalf and you can find those in attachment three the facts are that most other homes on our street have underground similar major renovations over the last ten or twenty years and nearly every home on the street aside from ours is a full two stories so the second story goes all the way up to them to the front of the house when i approach the addition and we've tried to solve for multiple dimensions first  for the space we needed to create a footprint that would accommodate for four normal sized bedrooms second one of the home that would fit with our neighborhood third we wanted to be considerate of our neighbors so you'll find in the documentation that live in our neighbor on the other side was actually worried about privacy at forty four oakville after talking it over with her we were able to reach a compromise where we frosted one of the windows and we both felt much better about the project throughout the entire process we've solicited in the corporate feedback from city planning schemas even who's here this evening objects to the edition and she's here tonight to appeal over the last sixteen months we've talked to paul on numerous occasions about our project and we've carefully read her letters the rationale for her resistance has shifted considerably over time and every step we've done absolutely everything we can to accommodate her concerns when the concern was noise we offered to restrict the hours of construction when a concern was dust we offered to paint the side of her house where we'd like to find a workable compromise we realistically don't see one at the end of the day paul is interpretation of the facts differs from us different from city planning differs from architect different from our engineer and different from our other neighbors pose primary concern is a perceived loss of light into her home where she is rightfully concerned about this kind of outcome the reality is that the city made multiple visits to our home in each of our neighbors homes and found the impact to be nonjudgmental there's no new information to discuss tonight without going into all the details i can share two quick examples first the shadow diagrams do not support the perceive of light these are professionally prepared according to the city criteria and reviewed and accepted by the city despite this policy is that these are not the shadows she sees you can find these in attachment for page five of seven in addition there are no second story windows on the you can find this in attachment for page five of seven these are just two examples so the obvious question is is there an alternative use a space that would not require the full proposed addition own expense lauren architect has studied alternative options there's no realistic use of the space that's going to preserve for normal sized bedrooms and two bathrooms the reality is we want to use the property to create a family home there's very limited square footage and really only one option for the second floor layout given the structural constraints so any compromise comes at a direct trade off against the size of the bedrooms in the front of the house as we cut into the space it significantly compromises thereby build is living spaces that simple the best thing in this process and we're here tonight because we love our neighborhood we'd like to raise our family  i live at fifty two oakdale i was of there for thirty five some odd years i love the neighborhood and i think that neighborhood is really really important and i appreciated many of the comments of some of you made in terms of neighborhood earlier this evening part of being a neighborhood when i was growing up in the city where i lived in a neighborhood was caring about your neighbors it was a mutual concern for their work their well being and towards that end when heather and jason first moved in i did everything i could to welcome them i told them about the farmers markets coffee shops invited them per christmas eve dinner and they came i have been to my way of thinking the best neighbor i could possibly be i've done one thing that they don't care for i understand they don't care for it but my house is very important to me and light means a great deal to me and when they first came over to present their plans to me i looked at them and i saw they're very large and i'm a designer but my design business i run a very small business i started as a teacher but i my life evolved and one guy was born i started a small business and i have a business and i hire locally i make the product locally and i design and manufacture greeting cards there at berkeley bowl if you shop there but the point is that i looked at the plants i'm not an architect but i could see it's a massive plan this house started with two bedrooms on the main floor it has one broom in the basement and as you can see by the plans they're adding four bedrooms i think a master bath of ten by twelve or something like that a large laundry room there it's a big plan i'm not opposing the plan but i'm here because you're my only hope to ask for a set back so that this project not at such great loss of my light i have some pictures i'm going to show you the west side of my house where these so called no windows exist and i'm going to show you pictures of windows i'm going to show you a picture of a window taken this evening at five thirty with sunlight flooding into it that light will be absolutely gone on my window seat up stairs my upstairs hall will become dark i've already lived through morning edition which was the first edition  second story addition was put on by the prior owner of five hundred square feet my kitchen used to have so much sunlight that i put up some shades because i was blinded by the sunlight after the second story addition was put on the back part of the house i had to put in lighting on my kitchen ceiling and i use that lighting now all day long when i'm in the kitchen it's made a big difference my dining room went dark well i don't use the dining room much as it turns out but still it's dark and if little by little the shades are drawn on the rooms of your house your house is changed your life is changed and the light is so important issues already been talking about it tonight so i am not opposing their making and addition i understand that the overwhelming support that they have to letters i believe the neighbors say that in addition is not inconsistent with our neighborhood i agree with that i thought i had gone to the neighbors which i am purpose not and i'll tell you why i didn't go to the neighbors because we all live there together and this should be about light it should be about not people or personalities in my opinion so i didn't go to any of said you know look there are trees between these houses true there are trees trees can give you filtered light and they're not my trees they have had allowed of all of trees to go up i have a picture to show you that totally would block my western light if i didn't come out of trying to what i could on my side they mentioned and what they sent to you how they had turned trees for the back part of my house because i brought them in and i said look it's just black so they cut a hole through this total hedge that they've grown up in the back part and i paid i don't know three hundred dollars or so to take part of a tree that was on my roof off i didn't mind doing that but the planet is i don't have a light in my life filtered because of the trees but that's not my choice and i would like to chance to show you the pictures because they will show you that it's significant loss of light not mine or i took pictures at five thirty tonight and i can show you that there is for light on the west side of my house and through the windows that don't exist on my worst side i'm going to have to ask you to  finally show you the pictures you can give them to staff and they will make sure that we get an opportunity to see that i'd also like to invite any of you to come to my house and come through my house and let me show you in the afternoon the sun that's there and the sun is it's going to be gone thank you very much for your comment thank you you can pass the photograph you have the do you want to say anything else ok you have a re personal about this this is about the needs of our family and in addition that we're trying to propose that's consistent with the neighbor by the city and acceptable to our neighbors the second point i want to make is really around the size the size of the addition is modest it's a hundred ninety seven square feet so that we can have four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second story of our home this is not a large addition our house with the full addition is is completely thirty percent smaller would she was worried it was going to block her view of the camera hotel when this when the city planner issued their findings she called us shortly thereafter we talked throughout the whole thing we met a dozen times during that period and we were both very open about the fact we'll see what the city decides and go from there it was a very friendly conversation once the city issued their their decision she called and said listen i respect it i respect what you guys are trying to do it's the right thing i'm not going to appeal it further i mean that's sort of left it ok district now and go ahead question i'm sorry so i just wanted to get some clarification to the height limits for that district is what again board we don't want it to become a personal issue the board is just what the no that's ok i understand the public hearing is now closed thank you very much  information i do you know agenda items we have correspondence that has been received by our board thank you from the berkeley a follow up to the berkeley in a town hall meeting report we are not going to address this tonight but i definitely want to put it in the record that we have received this document and we as a board plan to address it in the very near future and we'll calendar for our next meeting i also want to make sure that we make it a priority for our next meeting in that board members who may have some thoughts on this document i'd be really  happy to hear some input and be prepared with that for our next meeting then be great other than that there are no other is there any other items that we need to address right now there has been through thr