Or districts might be rather large or several blocks long and requiring ground floor retail on every piece of that corridor might be too difuse, so there might be places in a district that are more strong locations for our retail, and perhaps retail could be required in those locations. But in other locations that may be weaker will not be appropriate locations for new retail. Supervisor fewer okay. Does that explain it . Supervisor fewer yeah. Okay. Supervisor fewer got it. And then i have another question for oewd, when you said you help with relocation in my businesses, in my district where Small Businesses have been there for 30 or 40 years, and now theres a new landlord, and the landlord wants to jack up the rent five times to what theyre paying, and they have to relocate, but these are stores that are actually on its such a fine line to making it every month, im wondering, so do you help with relocation costs . We have not helped with relocation costs, but we do help in terms of both free legal services, in terms of the lease. If you define a relocation as finding a neighborhood where our programs could be applied to a facade or improvement, to help make shelves more warm or to help improve a site for them, we can help them there. We can help them up linking, depending on the type of business it is, to help them with the bureaucracy thats around there. Supervisor fewer okay. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor stephanie. And thank you, the need for calling this extremely important hearing. Thank you today to bla, oewd and planning to those presentations. Im just thinking over the 17 years that ive lived in cal hollow, i was thinking about all the different businesses, you know, i just want to say its not just the loss of goods or services in the store when a business goes out of business, but these are the relationships that are developed over time, and these are heartbreaking losses to the community. Im fortunate in Pacific Heights we have one of the lowest vacancy rates in the city. Chestnut street is also thriving, but i also represent sacramento street and union street, which have their own unique challenges, and recently there was a story on socket site, and it detailed about 20 vacancies on union street. I was to ask oewd on some of these have a cannies and how long some of these pending businesses have been stuck in these processes while pending approval. Certainly. We can get you that information in a more granular way. Right now, i believe the union street we cover from vanness to steiner, and then from fillmore to lombard, thats about 7 , but we can give you the length of time those vacancies have been in place, when a business changed hand or if it is or is not vacant currently or whether or not it actually has its doors open for business. And just one more question for dbi. As were in the budget process right now, im just wondering what kind of data it has to identify the vacant and abandoned property. This is obviously an extremely important issue facing our neighborhood and commercial corridors. Im just wondering if we can get a sense of exactly what were looking at and exactly what resources would be needed to tackle this problem. Having been brought into this issue at the end of last week, i dont think i have a deep sense of the specificity of what you would need from our department. However, i can see, having heard testimony and having read the analysts report that we are looking to leverage what reports already are in place, and as was mentioned earlier, the oewd, the focus on those 24 business corridors would be a starting point to build at least our internal database so that we can make sure that we have, within our own staff, give them task charges and try to have measurables available as we progress. So ive already seen that report, and we can i would say i can identify about six corridors that could be addressed immediately, utilizing whether its oewd or other resources is to document the ones that are already not in our system, and those would be the ones that are complaint driven. So now were talking about our staff having to get out there in the neighborhood. And again, its a challenge for a department because we have a limited number of Code Enforcement inspectors, and we do have to handle all other Code Enforcement related cases that have to do with permitted either they were exceeded or a permit was not taken out for a project, and we have quite a few complaints that we have to handle in those. I have a sense of what we do because i am a hearing officer for the Code Enforcement cases, and by and large, majority of them are going, have been, and will continue to be related to construction. Construction either exceeding permit scopes or exceeding the description thats provided or no permits at all, and those are complaint driven, and that maintains quite a good amount of our staff time being devoted to just handling that. This additional objective that we will place with a goal of bringing in a better understanding of our enforcement and the efficacy of our enforcement will be something we have to ask the Department Director for Inspection Services to consider. But that is not my program. Im in charge of it. Like i said, hes on vacation. But this is all available. Its all recorded. He will have all this available to him, and our executive team will meet and discuss this and take a look at a holistic approach to this so that we do bring about some changes that are also measurable. Okay. Another question . And this is for planning. Just, you know, one more point i just wanted to make when ive seen businesses try to go through the cu process, and sometimes it takes so long, and theyre paying rent the entire time and they call us, and can you please get us on the Planning Commission calendar. You know, id really like to work on some processes around to make sure theyre not waiting around and paying rent while we wait for a hearing an cu planning. If theres something we can put in place to fast track that, thats something id like to look at. Yes, supervisor, thats a complaint we do have often from the Supervisors Office and applicants. We do have a program called cb three peat. If you do meet certain criteria, with you expedite your petition. Not all uses meet that petition. If youre massage use, formula retail, we dont expedite those. It is a limited program, but we have had success with it. We are looking for ways to speed that up, especially for smaller businesses. Okay. Any other further questions, comments . I think theres a lot of work were going to have to do internally on this issue. At this point, im going to turn it over to Public Comment. If not, if i dont call your name, just come on up. Anyone who wants to come up and speak, please come to the podium. Good afternoon, supervisor, first of all, id like to say congratulations to supervisor tifani for being appointed to district 2. I think you can do a fabulous job, and thank you for being there. Its actually pronounced stephanie. Supervisor stephanie. And second, thank you to oewd for doing such an excellent job on the report of the status of Retail Business in San Francisco. As we all know, the for the longest time, Small Businesses really relied on pot traffic, and were feeding coming foot traffic, and were feeding coming off the Online Retail sales. Foot traffic has dropped off, so the thing is how do you bring foot traffic back in. One of the things is if you have vacant storefronts, they create blight. Not only that, but you dont get the foot traffic you normally would have if you didnt have these blighted places. I was fortunate to be out with may mayor lee the friday before he passed away at the excess i dont remember. He said look at these beautiful storefront windows. They were all decorated. He said couldnt we do that with all of the storefronts, couldnt we work with oewd to get artwork in them, put displays in them, and i really think that would help. I just want to say the businesses that have been surviving are because theyve had to be creative, but having events, and by having pop ups. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. I represent the castro Business District which streechs along Market Street from octavia to castro and then to 19th is a thriving and creative Residential District and we are open for business. Despite some of the pressures afflicting neighborhoods across the city, were struggling with a 17 to 18 vacancy rate. Over the past five years weve addressed many problems facing or neighborhood and commercial district. The problem is we need a stick to deal with these few owners who are absent and nonresponsive. They are wreaking havoc on our business landscape. They each have multiple longterm storefronts. Its shifted from mom and pop storefronts that have deep roots in the community to Corporate Investors who arent connected to our community. Theyre often abbott other than to collect rents and seek the highest return on their investments. The evna strongly supports more comprehensive and aggressive vacancy fees and penalties. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, chair tang, supervisors. My name is karen flood. Im the executive director of the Union Square Business improvement district, and we look forward to working collaboratively with you on this very important issue. Union square bid does provide Important Services to the area, many of which were mentioned earlier in terms of what a management district does. We enhance our public realm to create reasons for public to come downtown and shop. So i really want to thank supervisors, fewer, yee and ronen to bring this issue to our attention. Its a really important discussion that were having today, and thank you to oewd and dbi for the study that weve all done. We create a vibrant Hospitality Industry downtown. Tens of thousands of well paying jobs, and retail managers take pride in their storefront as do Property Owners, and we want to maintain the area. Overall the state of union square is strong. We maintain a 5 to 10 range, although there are pockets as supervisor fewer mentioned earlier, maybe some on the northern side have more vacancies than the southern part of the district. There are many reasons why stores were vacant as were also mentioned today, and weve seen that uptick. Right now, we have some of the Bigger Department stores in union square. Now we need smaller core plates. We look forward to working with you on this important issue, and look forward to you being part of the discussion. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Eileen bokin, president to speak her on my behalf. In this presentation, two implications stood out, could management policies may need to be revisits, and land use policies may need to be modified. This suggests that oewd is promoting current and proposed mta and Planning Department policies, some of which are controversial. Regarding the mta, the Small Business commission has weighed in on the Mission Street project. From the dais, commissioner doolye referred to its an autocratic. The same could be said of the mtas terastreet project. Two merchants have gone out of business closer dry cleaning and hunters thread, such as marchellos restaurant have seen a significant dropoff in business. Has this report been vetted before the Small Business commission or the San Francisco council of district merchants associations . My understanding based on today, eithneither has. So this hearing may have been premature. The process could have really started at the council, gone to the Small Business commission and then followed by the board of supervisors. Thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon, supervisors. J. D. Workman representing the San Francisco chamber of commerce. I also want to thank you for having this hearing today. We at the chamber and me in particular have been working on this issue for many, many years, and im very interested to see that its coming up again because im aware of the vacancy rates in our neighborhood commercial district, so i feel that the numbers that were given today dont just really capture the crisis that were in when it comes to filling our retail spaces in our neighborhood and keeping them in our retail commercial corridors. And some of those vacancies, they last for months and years, so im not sure that it really captures that. I think that what we havent really heard a lot of today is how timeconsuming and expensive it is to actually get a retail permit in San Francisco, and i fore formula retail, but for other retailers, as well, and i think there is such a degree of uncertainty with it when you dont even know at the end of the day after months or maybe a year of going through the process whether youre even going to be able to go into that space, that it its very discouraging for potential retailers to come into our neighborhood commercial corridors, so i hope that were going to be taking a look at expediting the process to increase the certainty and enable retailers to be able to get in as quickly as possible. Also, i think flexiblity is key, and i heard a lot of that today. And i i think its with the changing conditions of retail in the city and in the country, i think its very important that a diversity of uses be able to go into ground floor commercial spaces, including professional services. And one of your colleagues, supervisor peskin has been promoting legislation that would restrict that. We would really encourage diversity. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is deidre vonne rock. I am the president of the rest portal rock merchants association. While im proud that we have the lowest vacancy, that is not how it appears on an objective view. In west portal, absentee land lowers who have no interest in the block of a huge problem. For example, we had a discussion in anchoring a project on the west tunnel because they were still collecting rent on a formula retailer. We had a radio shack that sat vacant for years because the owner wanted another radio shack. Finally, verizon showed some interest in it, but its been meyered in planning for well over a year. Just recently, one of the owners of the four buildings where three of our businesses recently has been devastated has been unresponsive, delaying the Recovery Efforts of all the other businesses. The Merchant Association is often asked about the status of the vacancies and what can be done, and our answer is nothing. Not until there is anymore enforcement or accountablity as to the vacancies. We support more stringent rules on vacancies and enforcement, and we would welcome a change in zoning for ground floor retail zoning subject to community input. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is steven cornell. I owned a Retail Business for 40 years in San Francisco. Im here also as a legislative representative of Council District merchants. Nothing can do good for businesses but more money. More businesses more business means the business thrives, it employs more people. More people means that they can buy from their neighbors. More business in, more sales is what does it for business. How can the city help . Well, the city and county of San Francisco is the largest employer in San Francisco. It has almost four times more than the largest private employer, yet when the city has to buy a light bulb up here, theyre going to go to know where mississippi if its one penny cheaper to get it from them. Why arent they buying it from San Francisco. You put the money back into San Francisco businesses, we can thrive. The city does this all the time with their largest purchase, employees. They have a policy of getting prevailing wages, the highest and best wages because San Francisco costs more, and we have very good employees. Well, San Francisco costs more for businesses, and we should also get higher prices for the people that sell here in the city. I think thats a way to help this whole problem. Thank you. My name is hans hansen. Im president of starburg commercial real estate. We actively do retail deals in the neighborhood. We do not represent retailers, and id like to tell two stories about the reality of doing business in San Francisco. One is a bakery that we represented in south of market. It was 1800 square feet. It was his first operation. He budgeted 250,000 for the improvements to the space, another 160,000 for his equipment, and 10 or 25,000 towards his permitting fees, and etcetera soft costs. To date, nine months later, he is now at 750,000 total cost and just opened his doors. The landlord did work with him on holding back rent, but this was a process to get to the cup that took well over nine months. Second story is 3146 Mission Street, the old kragens auto store. We leased that out to a Company Called eagle rider thats been on eighting and bryant street. This was a site that was 19,000 square feet that was auto use previously. It was a chevrolet dealership. We leased out 19,000 feet. They were formula retail because they were 13 stores nationally, and they ended up taking 13 months, losing their tenant. It was their subtenant, and now you have a vacancy of 6,000 square feet tha