AY, CONUNDRUM !!!

We have a conundrum in San Francisco! Last week I attended a meeting with a local community development group. The purpose of the meeting was to see if they would support a national retailer leasing premises in their district.

For those of you who might not be aware why such support is necessary it has to do with the City's "formula retail" code the purpose of which is "to protect our vibrant small business sector and create a supportive environment for new small business innovations". (For all you zoning wonks out there you can learn more about it here).

Basically any retailer with eleven or more retail sales establishments in the United States is considered a "chain store" which means that in many of San Francisco's districts these retailers have to go through a long process in order to obtain the Conditional Use Permit that will allow them to set up a store. Hence, the need for community outreach to determine if enough support can be gained to garner enough Planning Commission votes to get the permit.

Conceptually I am in favor of such legislation - we do need to support local business for numerous reasons,  one being that they give the City the unique character for which it is world-renowned. On a pragmatic level the existing legislation is quite broad, cumbersome, costly and time-consuming to navigate - which can lead to the unintended consequence which neither side of this argument wants - storefronts remaining unoccupied for years.

Last week's meeting highlighted this. Case in point: a Chinatown icon, the one hundred year old  Sam Wo restaurant closed down earlier this year for numerous building code violations.  (Digressing for a moment, as a teenager I regularly frequented Sam Wo and hold the dubious honor of being insulted by Edsel Ford Fong appropriately dubbed "the world's rudest waiter" and who by comparison "made The Soup Nazi look like the Dalai Lama").

The conundrum is that the cost of capital improvement required to bring the premises up to code is simply too much for a small business or local landlord to shoulder; and so the unintended consequence is a store that will remain unoccupied for a very long time. This is not an isolated incident as in the older parts of the City this scenario is repeating itself and will continue to do so.

The solution? I'm still thinking about it and if you have any ideas I welcome hearing them.


p.s. I know the songs I conclude with often have a flimsy relationship to the topic and this is perhaps the flimsiest of all! Edsel, this one's for you, wherever you are.