In front of San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission this afternoon, the application for exterior alterations and site work at 937 Valencia yields a rather bizarre background photo labeled “only known historic photograph of property” (top right circa 1931).
As proposed, the alterations for the Italianate residence within the Liberty-Hill Historic District include “replacement of the main entry staircase, relocation/replacement of the secondary stair, replacement of the side entry door, construction of a concrete garden wall, and replacement of the existing garage door.”
∙ San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission Agenda: 2/16/11 [sf-planning.org]
∙ 937 Valencia Proposed Alterations Hearing Packet [sf-planning.org]
Time marches on, but MUNI accidents remain the same.
Ridiculous that the historical society for the coating of SF in Amber must weigh in on this.
I am sure they will need to get planning commission approval as well.
Why dont we just take a pound of flesh too?
I see no problem with allowing the Historical Preservation Commission to review changes in a historical district. If the HPC consistently makes bad decisions then change the commission, not the process.
Kurt – Where did you learn that this was a Muni accident ? When I first looked at the photo I thought it was an automobile accident but perhaps that thought was triggered by seeing those cars in the photo.
MOD: I was just making a bad joke, in poor taste, as I often do. Given the wobbly dotted line, I actually suspect an auto accident as well.
Well, at the time all the bikes on Valencia had only one speed.
Wait.
They still do. No free wheel though.
31 pages just to say “looks OK to us”.
This just shows us that the Historical, I mean Hysterical Preservation Commission has too much power and wastes too much of our taxpayers money.
Yup, and those thousands of pre-flight checks that are executed every day on our passenger aircraft fleet are excessive because they almost always just say that the bird is airworthy. What a waste!
Well, I don’t think there has ever been a case of 100s of people dying in a flaming wreck because someone – the owner of the home – replaced their own garage door or rebuilt their front steps.
This was worth the taxpayer expense of one knowledgeable person in DBI taking a look for 5 minutes and saying “OK.”
Well maybe my example was a little dramatic but the point is that a report stating “nothing wrong” isn’t necessarily wasted effort. If you don’t investigate then eventually you’ll let problems slip.
MoD, we’re in complete agreement that some work product resulting in an “OK” is appropriate. But 31 pages by two different guys at Planning for something so simple sure seems like expensive overkill. Sure, a lot of it is boilerplate, cut-and-paste, but what do you guess, maybe 25 man-hours of work to put this together? My point, and I think BobN’s, is that this level of analysis for this job is a waste of taxpayer money. Multiplied by how many of these every year? I can think of a thousand better uses for that money, particular in a time of extreme budget-cutting.
Yeah I agree that overkill is a waste though I’m not experienced enough on historical review to properly judge whether or not this is overkill.
I’ve read some EIRs that looked like overkill to my naive eyes though.
Yea, this really is overkill..and a waste of public money…and it can also be seen as a job “saver”.
Of course, the best part is that (if I’m reading correctly) the subject house is that two-toned stripped-down box on p 22 of the SF Planning PDF. So all the detail now present on the building isn’t even original.
The fees for this type of work are paid by the homeowner, so the preparation of the report is not funded with taxpayer money. Planning just generates the summary page at the front of the packet.
I am supportive of the HPC reviewing renovations in historic districts. Mostly people make innocuous changes like this one, but they often do not and it’s good to have the HPC to protect San Francisco’s unique historic architecture.
My problem isn’t with review. It isn’t with meaningful reports. It’s with page after page of commentary about individual points in the code/regulations answered with lots of verbiage when “n/a” would be entirely appropriate.