Upper Noe Neighbors
May 21, 2025
Upper Noe Recreation Center
approximately 45 attending

Agenda:

• Introduction
• Icebreaker
• Land Use committee and Rezoning/Upzoning with Annie Fryman (SPUR)
• Park updates – playground resurfacing
• Church Street lighting
• D8 updates with Supervisor Mandelman and new Legislative Aide Brad Phelps
• Door prize drawing courtesy of La Ciccia

Introduction (Chris)

Ice breaker (Tony)
Tony divided the room into two teams who competed to organize themselves by street address the quickest. The winning team members each received an extra door prize chance/ticket.

Promotion Committee (Judy & Paige) talked about our new Instagram page featuring lively posts about local merchants instagram.com/uppernoeneighbors and urged members to follow us and tag us #uppernoe #uppernoeneighbors #uppernoemerchants . They also asked that neighbors please join UNN ($20 per adult per year; see link below).

UNN Land Use Committee (Ryan)
The City is rezoning for more housing pursuant to state law. At our March meeting, we hosted the Planning Dept. We then held two public committee meetings in April and May in which dozens of neighbors discussed particulars and ask questions.
View the Planning Dept presentation including the map:
https://tinyurl.com/2x4k37r4.
Interactive version:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6e0e399f9c82456dbda233eacebc433d/

Rezoning 
Annie Fryman, Director of Special Projects at SPUR is our guest tonight.
– her career path: architect, City Hall, legislature, housing development.
– SPUR =  Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Assoc, a think tank.
Annie addressed:
* How will rezoning change the neighborhood over time?
* Policy constraints and objectives
* Ways that the public can engage with the city given those constraints
* How we got here
* City’s strategy to date (why the map looks like this in current draft)
* How you can advocate to the city
* Timeline and Questions

SF is required to do rezoning. It is binding. Every region/city has an 8-year cycle. 82,000 units of housing is SF’s 8-year number. 36,000 of that are not in the pipeline yet. The rest are already large developments at hunter’s point, treasure island, etc. We need to have a path to build before 2031. There is no chance that 100% of these will be done by then, so more area needs to be rezoned hoping to get 10% of those developed. If not, SF could lose our zoning power and permitting authority. This happened to LA cities. The CA Attorney General can sue. Affordable housing, transit, and infrastructure funding from the state government can be cut off. Other cities have been made examples of already. Affordable housing will be proportional. 46,000 of the 82,000 units must be affordable.

Rezoning means adapting buildings or demolishing and then building new buildings. The focus is on commercial and transit corridors and to limit the number of homes that need to be demolished. Land use actions in SF must reverse demonstrated disparities geographically rather than reinforcing them. We down-zoned in 1970s. The parts that were downzoned became wealthy, white, homeowners and got lots of public investment. The parts that used to be redlined have become poorer, more housing-insecure, and rent-heavy over time. So, the city is focusing rezoning in high resource areas in western and northern neighborhoods rather than the tenderloin, etc. That is why Noe Valley is being rezoned but not the Mission.

The City is unlikely to  move rezoning to other parts of the city that are lower resource but there is lots that can be moved around within the high resource area. Rezoning is not an obligation. It just changes the rules moving forward if you choose to build something. Property owners could build something bigger, but they could also do nothing. They are not being forced to redevelop properties they own. Most of Noe Valley is currently zoned for 4 stories. Corner lots and large lots (triple-wide) allowed 6 stories.

The city wants to hear from us right now about where they could do more rezoning. The Planning Dept and Mayor’s Office are actively taking feedback from community and supervisors. As UNN comes to a consensus about what we want in the neighborhood, get it in writing in really clear terms, such as: on this street, between this block and this block, 6 stories instead of 5, this type of zoning here. Be as prescriptive as possible. I will send an effective format for communicating with the planners for UNN to use.

Meet with Sup. Mandelman and include these recipients of your commentary: Planning Director Rich Hillis, Rachel Tanner, and Lisa Chen.
More people to contact:
Ali Bondi – Mayor’s Chief of Staff’s point person on this
Ben White – Chief of Housing and Urban Development
Ed Siegel – Mayor’s Housing Czar
Annie Fryman – SPUR <afryman@spur.org>

Park updates
Friends of Upper Noe Recreation Center  (FUNRC)
Go to the website and drop them a line www.uppernoerecreationcenter.com

• The playground surface is being replaced from June 2 to June 27. Closure could be longer. A state inspection is required before use. The new surface will be Tot Turf (artificial grass) overall with pour-in-place rubber in high-use areas under equipment. The sandbox will remain. RPD has been replacing playground surfaces around the city. Ours is currently the worst and so we are next in line. This operation seems to be part of their regular budget.
• FUNRC has $2,500 left from add-backs and plans to use it to install speakers in the rec center to make it easier for people to hear.
• SF Parks Alliance has $14,000 of FUNRC funds. They owe $200,000 city-wide and don’t have the funds to pay it.
• The gate hinges at this park are prone to failure and are being replaced with better ones.
• Rec & Park is working on getting us a new park bench and a replacement water fountain in the dog park using grant funds.
• FUNRC currently has a mailing list of over 550.
• A park gardening group is desired by Rec & Park. If this interests you, email info@uppernoerecreationcenter.com

Lighting Committee (Rebecca)

• Phase 2 is complete: entire east side of Church St from Day St to Duncan St.
• Phase 3 will cover the entire east side to Caesar Chavez and add limited lighting near merchants on the west side. No lighting will extend north of Cesar Chavez.
• Thank you to the biz owners who provided the hook-ups and power and to Ave Greenlight for the grant funding.

District 8 Updates (Sup. Mandelman)

• No more add-backs for budget. None for last year and none for next. 300M > 500M budget deficits. We might need to fill in some federal cuts, too.
• Can we raise taxes on the rich, and our 83 billionaires in the city? No, we cannot impose wealth taxes, actually, it’s illegal. Also, a bunch of them would be happy to leave FYI.
• We will try to find a revenue measure for SF to vote on to save BART, CalTrain, and Muni. BART and CalTrain are in existential crises. Muni would be significantly cut, but it’s not existential.
• Based on the last few years, we’ve found that fewer people are coming into SF, but everyone is using their car when they come in.
• Hearings RE drug treatment on demand this summer.
• New conservatorship law: has it done anything? Why not? We will also have hearings on this. We don’t have enough beds for the people who need locked rooms. The state used to do this until the 1960s. Now we have a report, at least. We have 27M for beds, to take us from 140 beds to 190 beds for this. Each bed is 500K and 200-300K per year to run them. The state money is just for the capital costs of building it. We have to pay to run them.
• EV charging: 2 in Duboce Triangle. We have a hearing on EV charging scheduled too.
• Rezoning – will look a lot like the proposal you’re seeing now. If there are historic properties we want preserved, we need to identify those and protect them right now. UNN and individuals both need to provide feedback to Mandelman and to Mayor. We have built housing we’ve loved when the rules were laxer. This could be a good thing. This could be useful over the course of decades for the city. We want the city to grow!
• Email me or my staff! mandelmanstaff@sfgov.org

Door Prizes!
Our meeting sponsor is La Ciccia who donated two $75 gift certificates! Two people walked away with prizes. One was a regular attendee and another was a new UNN member! Congratulations!