[Pedestrian]

S.F. board sides with tennis club advocates after 88 Bluxome developer pivoted on plans
By Laura Waxmann – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Dec 10, 2021 Updated Dec 13, 2021, 11:07am PST

San Francisco recreation advocates scored big against a major developer on Wednesday after the city's Board of Appeals ruled in their favor in the ongoing fight over a replacement tennis club dropped from a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use project in the SoMa neighborhood.

The tennis club saga started earlier this year when Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a publicly traded REIT (NYSE: ARE) and one of the nation's leading biotech developers, sought a permit to drop a small but key component of its entitled 88 Bluxome project — a 134,000-square-foot tennis club that was planned to replace the San Francisco Bay Club that operated at the site since 1974.

The move angered recreation advocates, who had negotiated the replacement club as Alexandria sought entitlements for the project in 2019. On Wednesday, the Board of Appeals disagreed with the Zoning Administrator's determination that Alexandria's modification to the project to be "less than significant," voting 4-0 to send the proposal back to the city's Planning Commission.

The move doesn't not restart the entitlement process entirely. The commission will be asked to determine if Alexandria will be allowed to drop the tennis club . . . .

SFFSR's appeal hinged on the word "significant." As I reported previously, the project's entitlements included language that required any changes to the project deemed as "significant" by Zoning Administrator Corey Teague to be reviewed and vetted by the city's Planning Commission. But after Alexandria filed for a permit to modify the project's plans, Teague ruled in October that the change was not significant enough to force the developer to start over.

Teague reasoned that while the replacement facility was the result of negotiations and a private agreement between the group and Alexandria, it was neither a requirement by the city nor a condition of the project's approval. He also said that striking the club from the project plans would not alter the project in a major way.

Anthony Giles, an attorney for SFFSR, argued on Wednesday that Teague erred in his judgment. Giles said that the removing a recreation space that spans 3 acres and comprises 10% of the total project — and that was negotiated by community stakeholders — constituted a significant modification.

He said Alexandria touted the tennis club as one of four public benefits offered by the project when it sought approvals from the city, and even recruited SFFSR members to testify on its behalf at public hearings leading up to the project's approval in June 2019. A year later, the developer pulled a "bait and switch," said Giles . . . .

Kevlin argued on Wednesday that dropping the private tennis club from the plans for 88 Bluxome does not breach any conditions of approval set for the project by the city, and likened the change to existing guidelines that allow developers for residential projects to increase unit counts by up to 5% without additional review.

"Virtually all projects make some modifications between the Planning Commission approval and building permits," said Kevlin. "In 2017, I worked on a project at 988 Harrison that was originally approved with a below-grade story consisting of parking. Post-planning approval, we eliminated the floor and planning staff were able to approve the building permit without going back to the Planning Commission."

But the members of the Board of Appeals disagreed.

Commissioner Ann Lazarus said that she was concerned that Alexandria's modification would set a "dangerous precedent" for large projects going forward.

"This suggests to me that in the future, put a project that you need to put in there to satisfy the community in the basement and then yank it, because it won't bother what the project looks like, and it will get the same sort of analysis as this project was given," said Lazarus.

"I see no harm in asking the Planning Commission to revisit this with the revision that is being proposed," she said.

The Board of Appeals is expected to issue a written determination on Dec. 21, and a hearing on the tennis club modification at the Planning Commission has yet to be scheduled.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...me-appeal.html