By Roland Li : sfchronicle – excerpt
San Francisco’s leaders have spent the past few years desperately trying to figure out how to deal with a glut of empty offices, shuttered retail and public safety concerns plaguing the city’s once vibrant downtown. Now, a California lawmaker wants to try a sweeping plan to revive the city’s core by exempting most new real estate projects from environmental review, potentially quickening development by months or even years.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced SB1227 on Friday as a proposal to exempt downtown projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, for a decade. The 1970 landmark law requires studies of a project’s expected impact on air, water, noise and other areas, but Wiener said it has been abused to slow down or kill infill development near public transit.
“Downtown San Francisco matters to our city’s future, and it’s struggling — to bring people back, we need to make big changes and have open minds,” Wiener said in a statement. “That starts with remodeling, converting, or even replacing buildings that may have become outdated and that simply aren’t going to succeed going forward.”
Eligible projects would include academic institutions, sports facilities, mixed-use projects including housing, biotech labs, offices, public works and even smaller changes such as modifying an existing building’s exterior. The city’s existing zoning and permit requirements would remain intact…
Wiener said he agreed that CEQA provided important oversight but that downtown’s “concrete jungle” was different than more environmentally sensitive areas…
Wiener is also the author of SB969, which would allow alcohol to be served outdoors in designated downtown “entertainment zones.” Wiener’s SB886, in 2022, exempted university student housing projects from CEQA if they met similar requirements such as being near public transit and did not demolish rental housing. Wiener has also proposed SB951 this year to ease the Coastal Commission’s housing oversight in San Francisco.
Wiener has passed a long list of state laws meant to spur more housing construction, particularly in dense urban areas with access to transit. He has also zeroed in specifically on San Francisco’s housing crisis before, including last year when he passed a bill that requires cities behind on their state housing goals to streamline approval of some projects, including an amendment singling out San Francisco for more frequent assessments of its compliance.
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Scott takes another jab at San Francisco that he claims does not remove local control in one of the densest neighborhoods, because he can? His opponents are looking good these days. Scott needs to pay for all his unfunded mandates and do something about the high cost of living like supporting AB 1999 to cut utility bills. The exorbitant rents and ridiculous costs of operation a business downtown is what cleared the offices. Removing cars and parking did not help either.