Planning Ahead
by M. Brett Gladstone
In 1976, the San Francisco Planning Department did what they called a windshield survey of roughly 20,000 buildings in the city. This name reflects the lack of formality and accuracy used in conducting the survey—one that was performed by two planners in the front seat of a car, with one of them driving and the other looking through the windshield and noting buildings of alleged architectural beauty. It contains a number of errors, including an egregious one that recently almost caused my clients’ two-room addition to their unit to become the subject of a one-to-two-year Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The EIR was almost required because the next-door building was mistakenly listed on the windshield survey, even though it was a modern building built in 1974.
Unfortunately, rather than now examine which buildings should be taken off the list, the Planning Department’s preservation staff members are now adding buildings to the survey that were never part of any survey before. In one of my cases, an environmental clearance rather than an EIR was given for the demolition of a nondescript, abandoned, unrated warehouse, in order to make room for 195 new housing units. Then the Planning Department—two years later and before the demolition—decided to place this building on an historic list. Now the city is demanding an EIR before the building can be demolished, despite the ruling in 2002 that only a shortened environmental review, and not an EIR, was required. This is one of the most unfair examples of suddenly appearing on a new survey.
The reason that this ugly warehouse (which even most preservationists do not want to preserve) suddenly got on an historic list for the first time is that the state has, in recent years, funded the Planning Department to conduct a more scientific study of important buildings in many parts of the city, starting in the Mission District where this warehouse is located. The Landmarks Board is about to certify the significance of many hundreds of buildings in the Inner Mission, thanks to this new survey, which will be performed in most older portions of the city in the future.
If your building is rated 1-5 on these surveys (where 1 is the highest and 5 is the lowest) even before the Landmarks Board certifies the rating is correct, your building will likely be made eligible for the California Register of Historic Places or the National Register. If your building is rated as eligible, and you want to alter your building or tear it down—regardless of how bad its condition or how badly the city needs the replacement building—this rating will often trigger an EIR. Such a report takes 9 to 18 months and can cost the owner between $20,000 to $100,000.
In recent memory, such an extensive survey has never been done so quietly and with such an obvious lack of notification to building owners regarding the implications for them if their buildings appear on the survey. This is now starting to happen in the Inner Mission but may soon happen all around the city. As a consequence, building owners are organizing in order to request the city to provide further notifications and individual hearings on the status of their buildings. Currently, designations of all buildings will be heard at a single hearing as a group. If you wish more information on how to make your feelings known about this, or if you wish to be taken off the 1976 windshield survey, please contact your land-use real-estate lawyer.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. The information contained in this article is general in nature. Consult the advice of an attorney for any specific problem. Over the past decade, Gladstone & Associates has carved out an authoritative niche in San Francisco’s often Byzantine land-use landscape. M.Brett Gladstone is often tapped as a lecturer on a variety of topics, including real-estate legal issues, development entitlements, condominium law and planned developments. More information about the law firm’s work is available at www.gladstoneassociates.com. Copyright © 2005 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.