By Rupert Clayton, HANC Land Use Chair

HANC's monthly (except August) general membership meeting is usually held downstairs at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street (between Cole and Shrader) on the second Thursday of the month, beginning at 7 pm.  Our meetinngs are open to the public and free to attend.

Even a brief trip to Haight Street or one of the city’s many so-called “neighborhood commercial districts” (NCDs) is enough for a visitor to see that there are a whole lot of empty storefronts around San Francisco. This clearly is a bad trend for merchants and residents and the discontent has now reached the Board of Supervisors.

 

Effective action requires a clear understanding of why these vacancies exist in the first place. Any merchant can identify many challenges in operating a profitable business, but two causes for vacant stores are cited most often: e-commerce and astronomical commercial rents.

While local government has almost no control over e-commerce, the City does have some leverage on commercial landlords. One suggestion being examined by Supervisor Aaron Peskin is a tax on vacant storefronts to tilt the economic balance in favor of leasing empty stores sooner at a more reasonable rent.

District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown is pursuing a different approach that contends empty stores can be filled at high rents if only government didn’t make things so difficult. Brown and Mayor London Breed introduced their Small Business Permit Streamlining legislation back in December. The logic is that merchants should quit whining that “the rent’s too damn high” and start running some side hustles to differentiate themselves from Amazon, Zappo’s and Walmart.com.

It’s all about creating a “consumer experience”. While this differentiation is an entirely valid way for retailers to fight global e-tailers, it seems facile to see it as a substitute for affordable rent. The contention that providing an “experience” requires permit deregulation is also unproven.

Brown’s ordinance is a grab bag of permit deregulation mostly pulled together by the Planning Department. Some changes are eminently sensible, such as deleting the separate Planning Code definition for an “Amusement Game Arcade,” added in the 1980s to protect SF youth from the evils of Donkey Kong.

Two sweeping provisions, however, threaten major changes to neighborhoods where residential and commercial uses coexist, like the Haight Ashbury. These changes could be beneficial or harmful; the HANC Board’s concern is that residents are generally unaware that they’re coming.

How many liquor stores is enough?

One change relates to how neighborhoods can regulate the proliferation of alcohol sales. In 1999, faced with increasing conversion of Haight Street retail space into liquor stores, Supervisor Sue Bierman pushed through restrictions on new permits for alcohol retail businesses. These restrictions apply to retail properties within a ¼ mile of the Haight Street NCD. In effect, no new liquor stores and alcohol-serving restaurants were allowed within this zone.

The proposed change would shrink that buffer zone to 300 feet, opening up about 25–30 properties around Haight Street for alcohol-related uses. Importantly, there would be no changes at all on Haight Street, so there’s every reason to think it would worsen conditions for Haight Street merchants.

Is your backyard someone’s outdoor activity area?

The second big change would require only an over-the-counter permit for a business to run a commercial operation in back- or side-yard areas for up to 16 hours a day (6am to 10pm). Right now a restaurant can get a permit like this to set up tables and serve customers on a street-fronting part of its property, but it would need conditional use authorization to serve customers in a backyard area.

As a result, there are almost no commercial operations in the backyard areas of the 12 square blocks between Waller and Page from Central to Stanyan. That means that most apartments in the neighborhood have at least some rooms where residents can get away from street noise, a valuable respite for shift workers and anyone who needs a little downtime from city life.

After the proposed change, almost any business owner with backyard space can get a permit to convert it into part of the business operation so long as it doesn’t operate overnight. Brown’s original proposal would have included bars as a permitted use but this was deleted at the request of the Planning Commission.

Again, there are pros and cons. We’ve probably all enjoyed eating at a restaurant patio, and we’ve probably also been kept awake by someone else’s party when we’ve been ill or trying to grab sleep before an early start. What’s lacking is the conversation around how to balance these demands.

If you’re interested in how the City decides what retail activity should be permitted, please join HANC’s member meeting at 7pm Thursday May 9 at Park Branch Library 1833 Page Street.