Category: San Francisco CEQA

Millennium Tower residents and Mission Bay Alliance in court

nbcbayarea – excerpt – (includes video)

Condo owner, a lawyer, says building inspectors conspired with Transbay terminal and developer in cover-up

In extraordinary legal claims filed Tuesday, Millennium Tower owners accuse officials with the San Francisco building inspection department and the next-door Transbay Transit Terminal of conspiring with the high-rise’s developer to hide evidence that the building was sinking. Jaxon Van Derbeken reports. (Published Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016)..(more)

Beware of retired patent attorney, claims Both City and Transbay knew about the sinking and tilting and hid it from the public and home owners, admits it will be hard to prove but looks forward to the effort.. (more)

and

Mission Bay Alliance appeals Ruling

Members of the Mission Bay Alliance will be appealing a ruling that was levied earlier this year quashing their desperate legal fight to put a hold on the Golden State Warriors’ new arena. Pete Suratos reports..(more)

Proponents claims include: the proposed arena “violated a zoning established by a current redevelopment plan.. the city’s transportation plan can’t accommodate the new arena.. ” They also cite possible health issues from possible contaminants being emitted from this proposed arena … (more)

RELATED:
Sierra Club Opposes the Proposed Warriors’ Arena in Mission Bay
Nation’s Largest Grassroots Organization Focused on Environmental Protections Says the City of San Francisco Ignored Major Negative Environmental Impacts.
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Today the Sierra Club passed a unanimous resolution opposing the proposed location of the Golden State Warriors arena in Mission Bay… (more)

Full speed ahead, and damn the facts! CEQA in operation in Berkeley

OpeEd By Becky O’Malley : berkeleydailyplanet – excerpt

Last weekend I had two more lessons in how powerless the California Environmental Quality Act is to inform politically-based decisionmaking. One was at the Wellstone Democratic Club’s endorsement meeting and the other was the Superior Court hearing on the EIR for 2211 Harold Way.

It was disappointing, but not surprising, to hear both candidates for Berkeley’s District Five City Council seat who spoke at the Wellstone Democratic Club meeting on Saturday endorse the ongoing plan to cut down many of the blue gum eucalyptus trees in the East Bay Hills and kill off the stumps with Roundup. Coincidentally or not, both are trained as lawyers.

This is a controversy that has been going on for quite a while now, all over the country in many contexts. For my money, the best analysis of the politics involved, with a side of science cites, can be found in a story which ace reporter Andrew Cockburn wrote for Harpers Magazine last year: Weed Whackers: Monsanto, glyphosate, and the war on invasive species. It’s well worth reading end to end, and you can do it online for free.

A lot of environmental decision-making is mistakenly based on the Sesame Street principle: Which one of these things is not like the other? When the eucalyptus tree has been scrutinized, a lot of the analysis comes down in the end to personal preference: love ‘em or hate ‘em: natives good, introduced bad—or maybe it’s the other way round. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

We attempt, with inadequate data and cumbersome legalistic processes, to make decisions which are more properly scientific, or would be if the data existed. For a decent view of what facts we have, see Management of blue gum eucalyptus in California requires region-specific consideration in the January issue of California Agriculture.

As near as I can determine, the Achilles heel of the East Bay Regional Park/FEMA scheme is the promised “restoration” plan: what will happen in the park after the trees have been chopped down and the stumps nuked with Roundup. We just don’t know enough to be sure that the lovely native grasslands which preceded the trees can be sure to come back as before, and some park users might prefer woodlands to grass, an even more difficult goal. In situations like this one, the paper’s authors suggest, eucalyptus roots may have altered the soil in which they grow with persistent chemicals which kill other plants.

A professor of environmental studies of my acquaintance tells me that “restoration is a moving target, an evolving field”. It’s frequently a promised mitigation in an environmental impact study, but more often than not it just doesn’t happen as planned, either from unforeseen scientific impossibility or lack of funding. And sometimes it’s cynically promised by governmental bodies with no intention of enforcing compliance. In Santa Cruz there’s a “restored wetland” which was promised to mitigate a building project elsewhere that is routinely clearcut by city officials worried that criminal activity might thrive among those “weeds”.

Another manifestation of the flaws in our environmental decision-making was on view Friday in Oakland in the court of Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch, hearing the challenge to the environmental impact report on the project for 2211 Harold Way in Berkeley, which was approved on December 8 by Berkeley’s clownish City Council. Petitioners were citizens James Hendry and Kelly Hammargren, appearing individually on their own without benefit of lawyers, a Herculean task which they executed remarkably well, all things considered.

Next time you hear Governor Jerry Brown whining that his developer pals are suffering mightily under the heavy burden of the California Environmental Quality Act’s reporting requirements, please laugh out loud with me. Here we have a multi-million-dollar project to construct 18 stories of luxury apartments, tearing down in the process a film center which is a mainstay of the downtown Berkeley economy, tunneling under a historic building which is built on infill on a creekbed with a ceramic foundation.

(Some of you may have seen the reports of a building in San Francisco also built on fill which has started to sink…) .

Despite CEQA, we were in the last round on Friday, and the chances of two private citizens stopping the project were slim.

In the developer’s corner: the Manatt law firm, the great big one which has historically represented all the bigtime Democratic pols.

Representing the public interest: a retired nurse and an economist, doing their damndest to figure out what CEQA should have done to inform the decision-makers adequately.

Here again, it’s a matter of separating the weeds from the flowers. CEQA is supposed to do that, but it fails…

There is an election in November. A better city council might be the only way to prevent future travesties like this one…  (more)

The failure to protect valuable community spaces is seems to often be on the part of the politicians who are still buying into the Plan Bay Area theme that anything new and expensive that increases the value of the property is better than whatever it replaces. Some efforts to stem that reasoning are taking root in San Francisco as artists, cultural institutions and small businesses situated in post-industrial PDR (Production, Distribution and Repair) zones, fight back with Prop X. If you can figure out which candidates agree with your vision of your city you should vote for those people, especially the ones you send to Sacramento and Washington. That is where the damage is being done, as the author is finding out. There are so many bills aimed at tearing down CEQA it is hard to keep track of them. We try to track some of them here: https://discoveryink.wordpress.com/california-bills-2016/

Transportation expert opines on the Plan Bay Area and other subjects.

americandreamcoalition – excerpt – (videos)

Downloads of Tom Rubin videos and reports:
http://americandreamcoalition.org/?page%20id=3979

Thomas A. Rubin, CPA, CMA, CMC, CIA, CGFM, CFM has over four decades of experience in government surface transportation and finance, concentrating on public transit. As a consultant and auditor, he has served well over 100 transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, state departments of transportation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, suppliers to the transit industry, and not-for-profits.

He founded and directed the public transportation practice of what is now Deloitte & Touche, LLP, growing it to the largest of its type. He has also served as the chief financial officer of two the largest transit systems in the U.S., including the Southern California Rapid Transit District (now Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority), the third largest.

Since 1996, he has been a sole practitioner consultant, helping government agencies to improve their capital, operational, and financial planning and overseeing contraction projects. He has been named “the world’s funniest transit accountant” (not in reference to transit agency financial statements he has worked on)…

Expertise: Transportation, transit, rail transit, transit systems in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and many other cities

Best way to reach: email to tarubin at earthlink.net

Cost: Travel expenses (from California) plus honorarium based on ability to pay and distance traveled

Downloads:

…(more)

California! Eye-Balling the Lesser Evil Up Close: No Climate Change Advantage with Dems in Charge

By Dick Platkin : citywatchla – excerpt

…In Sacramento, Californians have world-class climate legislation, such as AB 32 and SB 375. It is the envy of climate activists and environmentalists from coast to coast. But, even more importantly, Californians have CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act.  It is one serious piece of environmental legislation, and it requires all major projects, whether public or private, to submit a rigorous environmental review, including climate change impacts. With this information at hand, decision makers can then make an informed choice.

So far so good, but unfortunately a year does not go by without Governor Brown, in close cooperation with the Democratically controlled State Legislature, pitching bills that would erode CEQA, including its ability to inform decision makers of the climate change impacts of all major projects.

For example, this year, Governor Brown and his legislative counterparts are champions of SB 734, legislation that would fast track the environmental review of controversial high-rise mega-projects, like 8150 Sunset.

Other efforts to erode CEQA are proposed amendments to Governmental Code sections 65400.1 and 65913.3. They would exempt multiple-residential developments from environmental review by considering them to be by-right projects in order to increase housing production. This is based on an urban legend I have previously debunked: the production of luxury housing miraculously increases the supply of affordable housing… (more)

We are getting the same thing in San Francisco. Recently our Environmental Officer who makes CEQA determinations, was asked, what happens when the market rate housing goals are reached years ahead of schedule but the other elements of the plan lag behind.

The answer was, when one plan level is reached we simply shift to using the metrics of another plan. In other words, there is no plan to follow any of the carefully thought out plans to balance housing with jobs and infrastructure needed to sustain the growing population of residents moving into the market rate housing.

Why bother to cut out CEQA requirements legally when you can just ignore them entirely?

Planning Commission opposes Polk Street chain store ban

J.K. Dineen : sfgate – excerpt

The San Francisco Planning Commission narrowly rejected a proposed ban on chain stores on Polk Street on Thursday, with the majority arguing that the legislation was too broad and could have unintended consequences.

Instead, the majority of planning commissioners said that, rather than an outright ban, the current zoning should be amended to let in some desirable formula retail establishments while raising the bar for those opposed by the majority of residents.

“This is a solution looking for a problem,” said Commissioner Michael Antonini, who voted against the ban with three other commissioners in the 4-3 vote. “We’ve only had three applications (for formula retail businesses) since 2011. We approved two of them and rejected one. There has not been a glut of formula retail applications despite a glut of vacancies in the neighborhood.”

Fear of more empty stores

Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced the formula retail legislation in February as a way to block a proposed Whole Foods 365 grocery store, which has filed an application to occupy the former Lombardi Sports store at Polk and Jackson streets. Peskin says he wants to preserve the mom-and-pop character of Polk Street’s business corridor and that he would rather see housing built there, which the property owner had originally intended to do. Last month, however, Peskin agreed to exempt the Whole Foods store, allowing the store instead to have a separate conditional-use hearing.

After the commission’s recommendation, the formula retail ban will go before the Board of Supervisors next… (more)

Panel backs huge project in the SF’s Mission District

By J.K. Dineen : sfgate – excerpt

The Planning Commission approved the largest housing development in the history of the Mission District Thursday night, despite over four hours of passionate commentary from residents and artists who said the project would continue to squeeze working families and artists out of the neighborhood.

Over the past year, the so-called Beast On Bryant at 2000-2070 Bryant St. has become a flash point for what most San Franciscans agree has become a crisis, the impact that an extreme influx of wealth and speculative investment is having on a neighborhood famous for its arts and working-class Latino community.

The plan, by developer Nick Podell, calls for two brick-clad buildings separated by a public alleyway. On the north side of the block would be 196 market-rate rental units, plus three affordable units to replace rent-controlled units that are being removed. On the other side would be a 139-unit, 100 percent affordable development, for which Podell has offered to donate the land, valued at $22 million…

The loss of the arts space became the crux of the 11th-hour negotiations Thursday night, after an 11-hour hearing, with Planning Commissioners convincing the developer to agree to include 19,000 square feet of space that would be set aside for artists and so called PDR, which stands for production, distribution, and repair. Some of the arts and PDR space will take up square footage that had previously been set aside for so-called “flex units,” which are similar to the live-work lofts constructed in the neighborhood during the dot-com boom.

A coalition of artists, residents, and building trades representatives opposed the development. Those groups wanted the amount of affordable housing to be increased to 50 percent and for 100 percent of the work to be done by union sub-contractors. That group — they called themselves “A Better Beast On Bryant” — tried to negotiate a deal where $10 million of private and union money would be put into the deal in order to increase affordable housing and arts. But in the end the groups offering to invest were looking for a market rate return similar to the financing Podell already had lined up.

Podell said that any more concessions would make the development “un-financable.”

“I showed my books to the city, as demanded,” said Podell. “I’m at the edge of what I can do.”

Several Mission District residents urged the commission not to approve any major projects before a new plan under development, Mission Action Plan 2020, is completed…

rick Arguello, Calle 24 Co-Founder/President, said that even the PDR and arts spaces would be too expensive for most Mission groups. “What’s necessary is 100 percent affordable housing,” he said.

The project divided a community that usually stands together: the San Francisco Building Trades Council, with the carpenters supporting it and plumbers and sheet-metal workers opposed.

Commissioners Katherin Moore and Cindy Wu voted against the project.

“After listening to powerful community comment I think this project is still too far apart on too many fronts,” said Moore. “For me, it is shocking to see the trade unions are not supporting it. This is the first time in my 12 years on this commission hearing this.”

Commissioner Rich Hillis said he sympathized with the criticisms, but that stopping the development would not slow the rate of change…

The Bryant Street project could be a bellwether for three other market-rate Mission District housing projects in the pipeline: the so-called Monster in the Mission at the 16th Street BART Station, which has been stalled by litigation between the property owner and the developer; the 157-unit project Lennar is proposing at 1515 South Van Ness; and Axis Development’s proposed 117-unit project at 2675 Folsom St… (more)

 

So long, NIMBYs? Gov. Brown’s housing proposal could mean sweeping Bay Area changes

by Roland Li : bizjournals – excerpt

Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed sweeping statewide legislation that would allow new market-rate projects with onsite affordable housing to be approved “as of right,” in potentially California’s most significant housing policy change in years.

The proposal has big ramifications for the Bay Area, where many cities and well-organized residents’ groups have long fought residential development.

The trailing legislation to the state’s 2016-2017 budget would require state assembly and senate approval. Under the proposal, new projects with 20 percent affordable housing for tenants making no more than 80 percent of the area median income or projects with 10 percent affordable housing near transit would be exempt from most local reviews.

That would be a sharp break from the current policy of most Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, where each new housing project is subject to discretionary review and usually takes years for approval.

The move is a major step after Brown has been criticized by affordable housing advocates for ignoring, or even obstructing, funding for affordable housing. In 2011, Brown eliminated Redevelopment Agencies, which were the biggest source of funding for affordable housing, and last year he vetoed bills that would have provided more funding. Both steps were to improve the state’s finances, he said.

The new measure is consistent with Brown’s fiscal conservatism, as no new funding for affordable housing is proposed. But Brown is taking a significant step to reduce the approvals process for new projects, despite previously saying that potential change was limited… (more)

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The Academy of Art compliance hearing: We should live so long

by Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

After 20 years, school still violates laws with impunity, pays no fines – and leaves some Planning Commission members stunned

More than 20 years after the Academy of Art University began gobbling up San Francisco real estate and violating planning codes all over the map, the Planning Commission heard today that maybe, sometime the summer, there might be some effort to do something about it.

The commission heard an update from the planning staff about the school’s master plan and an environmental impact report on its development future – and then heard from activists who remain stunned that this situation has gone on as long as it has.

“This has been going on for two decades,” Chris Martin, a waterfront activist, said. “I’m not sure that there has ever been in history a property owner violating the planning code to this extent.”

AAU has blatantly changed the uses of property without the proper zoning or permits, has cannibalized rent-controlled housing stock to the extent of a least 1,000 units and turned it into short-term dorms, and acts as if the laws that every other owner deals with don’t apply.

It’s been so bad that back in 2012, City Attorney Dennis Herrera told the planning director that “you continue to allow the [school] to violate the law without consequence.”

Now, Martin pointed out, the city planners have gone a step further: They have agreed to hold what could be millions of dollars in fine in abeyance as part of a negotiation to encourage AAU to follow the law.

That’s right: The city has told the school that if it finally, years later, fixes some of the problems it’s created, maybe it won’t have to pay the fines it owes…

Scott Sanchez, the zoning administrator, told the commissioners that the fines on just one illegally converted property now total $500,000. But “no penalties have been paid,” he said.

Most property owners who defied the city for this much time would have the City Attorney’s Office moving to collect the money, by placing liens on the property if necessary.

Commissioner Kathrin Moore was visibly frustrated by the department’s report. If the school isn’t accountable for its past violations, she wondered, what will make it behave in the future?

“Painful” as it is to say, she noted, “The EIR will be ignored, penalties will be ignored, housing will be ignored.”…(more)

We should all live so long and be so rich as to see our crimes declared legal.

No CEQA review for Uber

Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

City admits that the impact of all these new cars on the streets doesn’t qualify as an environmental impact

Our March 13 story about San Francisco’s replacement of traffic congestion as an environmental impact with the number of vehicle miles traveled that a new project is expected to generate (VMT), elicited an interesting comment:

Ragazzu:

What’s impossible to measure, and has skirted any CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] study, is the increased traffic from Uber (14,000 drivers by its own admission), Lyft (ditto), Chariot (privatizing Muni), tech buses, and all manner of poverty-gig deliveries: Postmates, TaskRabbit, Munchery, Caviar, Sprig, InstaCart, Breeze, OrderAhead, SpoonRocket, Lugg, WorkGenius, Eat24, Instawash, etc., not to mention Amazon one-hour delivery, Safeway, and on and on.

Rich folks can stay in the condo and own no car, while a Shanghai-like cesspool of traffic roars below. Crave a cup of gourmet yogurt? Poor saps will underbid each other for the privilege of double-parking in gridlock and rushing it to your lobby in hopes of a tip.

I know this is slightly off topic, but this is what’s really happening on the streets of SF.

It seemed right on topic to me, and I forwarded Ragazzu’s remarks to 48 hills editor Tim Redmond. He emailed back:

I can tell you from personal experience that there are many thousands more cars on the city streets thanks to Uber. I can’t even ride my bike home on Valencia, where there’s a bike lane, on a Friday or Saturday night because the Ubers block the bike lane and swerve in and out of traffic.

This is a nice irony. Many of the same organizations that support the replacement of traffic congestion as an environmental impact by vehicle miles traveled—Greenbelt Alliance, TransForm, the Natural Resources Defense Council—also laud Uber and other so-called transportation network companies (TNCs) for potentially reducing millions of single-occupancy vehicle car trips and greenhouse gas emissions. Now it turns out that the TNCs are not only clogging San Francisco’s streets—that’s fine by these groups—but also blocking bicycle lanes—presumably not fine by them…

I got an email from Planning Department Communications Manager Gina Simi saying that Wietgrefe and San Francisco Director of Environmental Planning Sarah Jones had asked her to tell me, astonishingly, that the traffic generated by TNCs and app-based delivery services is not a CEQA issue, which is to say, it is not potentially subject to an Environmental Impact Report and lawsuit…

The Environmental Planning division of the Planning Department assesses the environmental impacts of projects/approvals/legislation that are proposed by private sponsors and/or City departments for approval.  The activities you mention, such as TNCs or app-based delivery services, are not subject to permits or approvals for their operations.  Therefor CEQA is not part of the equation for their operations in that we have no basis to assess their impacts under CEQA.  If a company that provides such services is seeking some sort of approvals in the future that are connected to their operations, we would try to calculate the VMT that would result...

Meanwhile, San Francisco Assemblymembers David Chiu and Phil Ting are supporting AB 828, which would exempt TNC drivers from needing commercial license plates, by “exclud[ing] from the definition of ‘motor vehicles’” any vehicle that is

  • operated in connection with a transportation network company that is
  • operated for passenger service only and is limited to seven passengers excluding the driver;
  • operated exclusively by the person to whom the vehicle is registered or insured;
  • not a paratransit vehicle not operated for public transit services;
  • not operated for school bus services… (more)

Comments at the source are appreciated.

Mission Bay Alliance urges UCSF to dissolve Warriors arena agreement

By : sfexaminer – excerpt

The Mission Bay Alliance group that opposes building a Warriors arena in Mission Bay is threatening to take legal action if UC San Francisco does not dissolve an agreement that opponents claim strips UCSF of the ability to seek remedies for any damage caused by the arena.

Lawyers of the alliance sent a letter Thursday to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, warning that the memorandum of understanding between the university and the Warriors that was executed Oct. 7, a day before the Warriors finalized their purchase of the 11-acre property at Third and 16th streets from Salesforce.com, eliminates many of UCSF’s rights related to the arena.

That means if there are traffic issues, like the overlap of a Warriors game with a nurses’ shift change at UCSF in the evening, for example, the university is legally unable to take the issue to court, said Josh Schiller of the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP that represents the alliance.

“This is something the university has done that we think violates the public’s interest and the taxpayers’ interest,” Schiller said.

The alliance has also appealed the final environmental impact report for the arena, which is scheduled to be heard by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday… (more)