The SFMTA will be hosting an Open House to discuss separated bikeways on Fell and Oak Street between Scott and Baker Street. You can drop in any time between 10am and 2pm on Saturday, December 3rd, and help weigh the benefits and trade-offs for their various proposals.

Where: San Francisco Day School, 350 Masonic Ave (at Golden Gate)

At the first community workshop in September, many of you joined your neighbors and came up with project goals and gave some input on the different options proposed for these three blocks. The SFMTA will be coming with much greater detail on these options, presenting all the benefits, constraints, and trade-offs associated with each.

Your support and thoughtful comments are essential at this stage. The community is ready to move in a clear and well-thought out direction – you can help shape that.

At our general meeting last week we discussed redistricting and what it might mean for Hayes Valley. Please keep reading to find a meeting that you can go to and give your input into the process.

For current and more in depth information, go to: http://www.sfgov.org/rdtf

· In 2010, a census was done and revealed that our supervisorial districts are not equal in population.

· Redistricting is needed because federal, state and local laws require that districts be equal in population.

· District 6 is 29.49% over. District 5 is 3.45% under. District 8 is 5.38% under.

· The Board of Supervisors has convened a nine person Redistricting Task Force to redraw the supervisorial district lines. The Board of Supervisors, the Mayor, and the Elections Commission each appointed 3 people. The members of the task force are unpaid.

· The Redistricting Task Force must present a final plan outlining the new supervisorial district lines to the Board of Supervisors by April 15, 2012.

· The task force works with City staff and outside consultants to determine how the supervisorial district lines should be redrawn. The community can also weigh in its option.

· It is important that new lines don’t dilute the voting power of minorities and that they maintain recognized neighborhoods intact.

· The Redistricting Task Force hold regularly scheduled meeting open to the public and will hold multiple community hearings to receive input from the people of San Francisco. See schedule below.

Community Outreach Meetings – Month of November

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 – 6:00 p.m.
District 1, 2, 5 – Hall of Flowers, 9th Avenue at Lincoln Way

Saturday, November 19, 2011 – 10:00 a.m.
District 3, 6, 8 – Tenderloin Community School, 627 Turk Street

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 – 6:00 p.m.
District 4, 7, 11 – Balboa High School Auditorium – 1000 Cayuga Street

Regular Meetings – Resume after November
The Redistricting Task Force meets on the first Wednesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. in City Hall, Room 406, and the third Friday of each month at 3:00 p.m. in City Hall, Room 416. These meeting are open to the public.

PLAZA INTERVENTION THIS SATURDAY!
Featuring the Imagination Playground and screening by
Rick Prelinger and Melinda Stone

Saturday, October 15
1-5 pm playspace/7-9 pm film screening
UN Plaza (Market Street, between 7th and 8th Streets)

In 2015, Market Street will be remade as the culmination of a four-year public process called the Better Market Street Project. Reclaim Market Street!, created by the Studio for Urban Projects, augments this ongoing community program by staging a series of interventions that engage the public in changing the street. Accompanying these events is an exhibition at the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR) that provides context for these pilot projects by highlighting the many ways in which cities, nationally and internationally, are engaged in reimagining their public spaces through experimental urban planning.

EVENT DETAILS:
This one-day event will transform UN Plaza into a play space for children, parents and friends, and will feature a ilm screening in the evening.

By day, UN Plaza will feature the Imagination Playground kit by David Rockwell. It asks if children can be better integrated into the life of the street, learning to become citizens through their participation in the city. The event examines ways in which plazas may be made more dynamic by serving different age groups and interests over the course of a day.

By night, this space will host a public screening of the 1906 film A Trip Down Market Street and its 2005 remake by Melinda Stone and Liz Keim. Archivist Rick Prelinger will show films from his collection focusing on the history of Market Street as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers.

Food will be provided by Off the Grid. This event is part of the exhibition Reclaim Market Street! created by the Studio for Urban Projects and exhibited at SPUR. Please visit the exhibition at 654 Mission Street, San Francisco.

The plaza intervention has been created with the support of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. The Imagination Playground is on loan from the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito, CA. Special thanks to Karen Mauney-Brodek, Dana Ketcham, Lisa Beyer, Brianna Cutts and Jennifer Caleshu. Reclaim Market Street! is made possible through the generous support of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

This events is free and open to the public. Help us gauge the expected turnout by Registering here >>. Donations appreciated.

Message to the Hayes Valley Community from Karen Mauney-Brodek, HVNA President

I am deeply saddened and distraught by the events of the last week in our neighborhood. We have provided links below to some of the news coverage of both the tragic shooting and murder on Monday and the traffic-related death on Thursday. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association board, other local community groups and partners are working with the Supervisor’s Office, the police department and others to try to determine what has contributed to these tragic events and what we as concerned community members can do to make our neighborhood safe for all who live and travel though it. I encourage you to attend our next neighborhood association meeting on July 28th, Thursday at 7pm at the Korean American Center located at 745 Buchanan Street. We will discuss both events. The neighborhood association takes events like these extremely seriously and both our safety committee and planning and transportation committee will be addressing the issues that may have contributed.

Our hearts go out to all of the victims and their families and all of our community members.

Please see the links below for information and a tip line.

Man Fatally Shot

Shuttle Van Accident

If you have any information on the shooting, call SFPD’s anonymous tip line at(415) 885-5187 or text a tip to 847411 with “SFPD” as the subject.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) which operates
Muni will be hosting a community meeting to present and discuss options
for improving transit and pedestrian flow by converting a segment of Haight Street between Octavia and Gough to a two-way street.

To learn more about the proposals and provide comments:

Day & Date: Monday, June 20, 2011
Time: 6:15 p.m. Open House
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. Meeting
Location: One South Van Ness (at Market St.)
2nd floor Atrium

Questions and concerns prior to the meeting should be directed to:
SFMTA:
415.701.4685

by Mari Hunter

Long time Hayes Valley resident and member of the San Francisco Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) John Alex Lowell presented the PSAC Annual Report during the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association meeting in May.  John’s involvement with PSAC and his work on the Report was not only a civic contribution but it is also personal—John is a survivor of a pedestrian collision from 10 years ago.

One hundred percent of all trips have a pedestrian component and 20% of all trips in San Francisco are entirely pedestrian trips.  From 2005 to 2008 there were over 3,500 pedestrian collisions which totaled $74.3 million, 76% of which was paid for with public health care funds.  To initiate a movement that would address these statistics—one that would identify the who, what, where, how and why, PSAC members researched and worked with numerous City departments (e.g. Municipal Transportation Agency, Planning Department, Department of Public Health, etc) and created a report that provided a baseline of the existing pedestrian environment; reviewing the policy, engineering/design, data, enforcement, and health & education.  The report also identified a number of recommendations for each of the five components—key recommendations include:

1. Develop and implement observational studies to monitor rights-of way and other traffic code violations, by and of pedestrians, bicycles, and wheelchairs to identify hotspots.

2. Fines for traffic-related offenses that endanger pedestrians should be increased to an appropriate level and a citywide effort to enforce pedestrian and road safety laws should be made.

3. Police, health, transportation and planning data shall interface.

4. Police collision data shall have the capacity to be accessed in real-time by all transportation and health agencies with prior approval.

5. Identify a funding source to establish a pedestrian information registry for all pedestrian-related projects, studies, and activities.

Since the committee started its work on the Annual Report, which was presented to the Board of Supervisor’s City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee in April, several other pedestrian safety related efforts have been initiated, namely WalkFirst SF, spearheaded by the Department of Public Health and the Planning Department; former Mayor Newsom’s directive forming a Pedestrian Safety Task Force; and efforts by Supervisor Kim (District Six) including a pedestrian safety hearing that was held in April.

District Six tops San Francisco’s most dangerous pedestrian regions, followed closely by the Financial District.  One might expect these two locations to be hot spots for pedestrian accidents given the density of pedestrian activity (see Map 1), but also more residential areas like Hayes Valley have a disproportionate number of pedestrian collisions (see Map 2 for collision data), likely due in part to traffic along major arterials connecting to Highway 101.


Data has indicated that the geographic imbalance may be attributed to heavier local traffic and density of residential and employment centers but also socioeconomic characteristics including communities of low-income, minorities, and the youth and elderly.

This recent surge to improve pedestrian safety is just the beginning; there is significant work to be done so residents and visitors feel safe.  Fortunately groups such as PSAC, Walk SF, the Pedestrian Safety Task Force and all of the city departments that influence the pedestrian environment are working to curb these preventable collisions and costs in a way that is both equitable and cost-effective.  For the full report please visit https://sfmta.securesites.net/cms/cpdsafe/19509.html

By Jason Henderson

If after years of community involvement and compromise, you thought the future development of the former UC Berkeley site would move forward as approved, you may be wrong!  The new developer is proposing that instead of building the 49 affordable housing units required under the approved plan, they will pay a fee to the City, which would then use that money to underwrite the affordability of the Openhouse (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-friendly senior housing) portion of the development.  The development would look the same, but would contain 49 more market rate units, generating more income for the developer, and reducing the diversity that makes this neighborhood so great.

Hayes Valley is the neighborhood of “yes” when it comes to accepting all kinds of diverse housing needs (affordable, special needs, formerly homeless).  We are as enthusiastic about accepting dense urban infill as we are a temporary farm or ice cream shop operating out of containers along Octavia Blvd. We are a rare breed. But now we have a development that is having difficulty getting us to accept them because it is shirking the affordable component. How strange. How can a developer have a problem with us?

In 2003 the nearly 6-acre UC Extension campus (aka 55 Laguna) was shuttered by the University of California.  Since the land was zoned public, the University could only use the site for educational purposes and thus the land was not that valuable. UC teamed with a developer, AF Evans Company, and in 2008 got the city to rezone most of the 6-acres to allow mixed use housing. The value of the land skyrocketed.  Because the community at-large made the land valuable and facilitated profit-making for the developers and UC, the city and surrounding neighborhoods expected substantial community benefits out of the redevelopment.

HVNA urged the developer to include affordable mixed-income housing, adaptive re-use of the site, and more emphasis on walking, bicycling, and public transit.  It took years, and not everybody got what they wanted, but the development that was entitled included 49 affordable housing units out of a total of 330. This is the basic inclusionary housing requirement that is used by the city in all new housing developments, and was minimal given that the site belongs to the public.

In the meantime, a separate piece of this project, 110 units of senior LGBT housing developed by Openhouse, was added onto the project as part of a political deal between the Board of Supervisors, our State legislative delegation, the developers, and Openhouse.  The LGBT housing, composed of very small one-room apartments with services like kitchens and elderly care on-site, was at first market rate, but then switched to being underwritten by grants from the Mayor’s Office of Housing through conventional affordable housing funding sources.

When 55 Laguna was entitled in 2008, and value accrued to the UC and the developer, there were to be 110 LGBT senior housing units AND 49 affordable units available to anyone that needed them.  That was the negotiated settlement between the city, the community, the University, and the developer. However, the project was delayed due to the global real estate bubble, and AF Evans went bankrupt. The project was in limbo.

Over the last few months a new developer, Atlanta-based Wood Partners LLC, has entered the picture and is negotiating to take over the project.  They have stated that they will not deviate from what was originally entitled and are eager to build in San Francisco.  Their entry reflects the broader real estate trend of larger-scale developers interested in urban infill, and particularly in rental housing.  With our work on the Market and Octavia Plan, we’ve made the neighborhood a very attractive place to live, and to invest, and so once financing is in place, we’ll see a lot of development like this.

But there is a BIG change in the Wood LLC proposal for 55 Laguna. The 49 units of affordable housing are in jeopardy. In December 2010, without community knowledge or input, the developer and the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) came to an agreement that the developer could pay an in-lieu fee instead of building the affordable housing on site. The in-lieu fee would then be used to underwrite most of the Openhouse component of the project because the Mayor’s Office of Housing had no money to fulfill its part of the 2008 deal.

If this looks like a classic “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” that’s because it is.  And it is very unfortunate for our community.

HVNA is urging the developer and the city to rethink the loss of 49 units of affordable rental housing open to all who need it. It would be a major loss because the Hayes Valley and Upper Market Street corridor are ripe for development, but rents are sky-high. If this deal goes through, it further solidifies the alarming-trend of making this area exclusive.  So we’ve asked the city to consider finding the money it originally promised, and we’ve asked the developer to consider reducing parking, which is very expensive to construct, as a way of building in more affordable housing. We believe that the Mayor’s Office of Housing, mapping future development in the city, can identify forthcoming development fees or other sources that can be used to help with Openhouse.  The developer, standing to make huge profits, should be expected to also give a little to Openhouse without robbing from our community desperately needed affordable housing. We believe something can be worked-out to keep the project on track and to ensure affordability for ALL of those in need. But this will only happen if the community demands it.

The plan by the MOH and developer would set a terrible precedent where monied developers could petition the City to make changes against the social interest, claiming that they will leave properties derelict unless they receive concessions.

Please contact your supervisor and planning commission members to tell them you are in favor of keeping the development structured as is, and NOT making a change that benefits only the developer. You can get a sample letter and addresses on the HVNA website. Web address: 55 Laguna Letter draft

A hearing on the affordable housing at 55 Laguna is scheduled for August 4th at the San Francisco Planning Commission (City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 400).

The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association would like to thank all the neighbors and friends that came out to support the organization and enjoy the company of community members.

We would like to especially thank Suppenküche for making the entire event happen. It was a great preview of their future biergarten space.

The event was also made possible by the generous support of:
The San Francisco Fire Department
The Mayor’s Office of Redevelopment
The Proxy Project
Envelope A+D
Avedano’s Meats
Sightglass Coffee
La Boulange de Hayes
Frjtz on Hayes
Flipper’s
Soul Food Farm
NERT
Recology
Salle Piano
The San Francisco Jazz High School All Stars

Last night the new Hayes Valley Board of Directors was elected. Below is the list of 2011 Board of Directors:

President: Karen Mauney-Brodek
Vice President: Murrey Nelson
Treasurer: Richard Johnson
Corresponding Secretary: Jason Henderson
Secretary: Jay Rosenberg
Membership: Bob Barnwell

Member-At-Large: Bill Bulkley
Member-At-Large: Henry Ostendorf
Member-At-Large: Kassim Visram
Member-At-Large: Nathan Lozier
Associate Member: Lauren Daley
Associate Member: Jessie Allen-Young
Associate Member: Larry Cronander

Continuing Terms:
Member-At-Large: Aaron Hulme
Associate Member: Vladimir Vlad
Associate Member: Jamie Lopez

Other items discussed:

Volunteers needed: Neil Hrushowy of the SF Planning Department came to ask for volunteers for the “Public Life, Public Space” study of Market Street. If you would like to get involved in this survey of Market Street, which is part of the Better Market Street Project, Contact Neil at: 558-6474 or email Neil to volunteer. The department needs volunteers on March 10th and March 12th. If you volunteer you will be trained in street observations by Gehl Architects of Copenhagen, Denmark on March 9th. This is a unique opportunity to complete observations of existing conditions that will help guide the future improvements of Market Street to help it become a world class urban street full of activities that make the street feel alive for pedestrian, cyclist, transit riders and all. Neil noted that SF is a Transit First City and we need to shape public space accordingly.

Robert Reed from REcology/Sunset Scavenger’s came to present some of the services they provide. According to Reed, in 2010, San Francisco was able to divert 77% of the waste we generate away from landfills into compost piles, reuse projects and recycling. Reed noted that REcology has a bid in for the landfilling San Francisco waste. You can view their proposal here: ostromroad.com The SF Board of Supervisors will be evaluating the proposals further in the coming months.

Recology hosts Art at the Dump, and also has tours of the facilities once a month. For more information contact: Deborah Munk, director of the artist-in-residence program: 415-330-1415 dmunk@sfrecycling.com

Also, if you are a tenant and not a building owner, you are allowed to call Sunset Scavenger’s once a year for a large item pick-up. For more information on large items look at recyclemyjunk.com

Here are more Help Tips on Recycling and Waste Removal for SF Residents

David Winslow presented an update on the Living Linden Alley Project. He talked briefly about some of the lessons he learned in the process. Next month marks the five-year anniversary of the Living Linden Alley receiving the Community Challenge Grant and the beginning of a whole set of challenges in coordinating various organizations and neighbors. Winslow remarked at how he thought making a livable, pedestrian friendly, street would be simple, but it turned out to be anything but. This project is a landmark for the future of people-oriented urban design in San Francisco. Contact him with questions at: david

Noah from Opportunity Impact came to introduce himself to the community. Look for him and the youth in his program next week at the Hayes Valley Playground as they help the artist Laurel True install her mosaics.

Daniel Farnan and Maria McDonald, our NERT representatives, came to remind us to check our emergency preparedness kits.
visit www.sfgov.org/sffdnert for more information on free preparedness training and events.

By Karen Mauney-Brodek

Over the next year, our neighborhood will continue to see proposals for new development. We will see pop-up retail and temporary uses of land and buildings that otherwise would stand empty. We will also see some long-term projects. Over the past few months we have welcomed new businesses in the neighborhood, as well as housing and community partners. We in Hayes Valley have experienced much in the last ten years: from a freeway removed, to a boulevard built; new parks, a temporary farm and community gardens, new business, new traffic patterns and new neighbors. We must work vigilantly to ensure that support for our neighborhood’s new and existing residents is there. This includes supporting and improving our public transit, John Muir Elementary School, community services and our parks.

The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA) has distinguished itself as a passionate and active group of citizens. We have a proven track record for working with organizations, developers and city agencies to meet shared goals and improve projects along the way. Last year we reviewed and improved the final proposals for 555 Fulton, which will bring a new grocery store and housing in a new attractive building; the future Whole Foods at Market Street and Dolores; the new SFJAZZ Center; and numerous other projects. Recently, HVNA and other non-profits worked together to ensure that the new clubhouse building at Hayes Valley Playground will open with the services of a local non-profit, Opportunity Impact, in place.

As 2011 opens and the new HVNA board gets to work, creative partnerships and models for community services will be developed to meet the needs of our neighborhood. HVNA will continue to set the bar for participation and collaboration.

Join in the dialogue – come to our next General Membership meeting on February 24th at 7pm at 745 Buchanan St. We will elect our new board, get an update on Living Linden Alley and hear a presentation by Recology. I look forward to seeing you!