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Board of Supervisors January 28, 2013 Page 5 proposed project are so great that a reasonably prudent property owner would not proceed with the rehabilitation. (See San Franciscans Upholding the Downtown Plan Y. City and County of San Francisco,supra, 102 Cal.AppAth at pp. 693-694 [applying prudent person standard to determine economic feasibility of proposed alternatives].) (Uphold Our Heritage, supra, 147 CaLApp.4th at pp. 599-600(emphasis added).) Distilled to its essence, the legal standard for assessing the economic feasibility of an alternative to a proposed private development project is whether "a reasonably prudent property owner" would proceed with the alternative in light of its cost differential compared to the "project" as proposed. The CEQA concept of"feasibility," however, is sufficiently broad to embrace concerns other than pure private-sector economics.Fiscal considerations are also relevant. Thus, evidence indicating that a proposed alternative would generate less tax revenue than a project as proposed may also be a legitimate ground for rejecting the alternative as infeasible. (Foundation for San Francisco's Architectural Heritage v. City and County of San Francisco (1980) 106 Cal.App.3d 893, 913 (Foundation) (noting that CEQA "specifically provides for the weighing of economic, social and `other' conditions"); seealso Pub. Resources Code § 21002.1, subd. (c).) In Foundation, which involved a legal challenge to a proposed retail project requiring the demolition of an existing historical structure, the respondent lead agency's decision-makers properly rejected project alternatives that called for the rehabilitation of the existing structure. The lead agency's analysis showed that the alternatives would have generated between 15 and 20 percent less sales tax revenue for San Francisco than would have been created by the project as proposed. This information, combined with other data regarding the economic costs of the alternatives, constituted"substantial evidence" supporting the Board of Supervisors' finding that the alternatives were infeasible. (Foundation,supra, 106 Cal.AppAth at pp. 913-914.) As the Foundation decision makes clear, the broad definition of feasibility under CEQA does not limit the thought process of agency decision-makers to the question of whether a proposed alternative is infeasible due to purely financial considerations. Rather, the definition impliedly recognizes the inevitable need to allow elected officials to legislate or to otherwise consider the policy ramifications of their actions,while requiring them generally to strive to find means to avoid or reduce significant environmental damage where reasonably possible. CEQA case law also supports an even broader, more discretionary notion of feasibility. Thus,agency decision-makers are free to reject an alternative that they consider undesirable from a policy standpoint, provided that any such decision reflects "a reasonable balancing of the relevant economic, environmental, social, and technological factors." (City of Del Mar v. City of San Diego (1982) 133 Ca1.App.3d 401,417 (City of Del Mar).)As the California Supreme Court has emphasized, "[t]he wisdom of approving . . . any development project, a delicate task which requires a balancing of interests, is necessarily left to the sound discretion of the local officials and their constituents who are responsible for such decisions. The law as we interpret and apply