supervisor fewer: yes, i ll be very brief. supervisor yee, i ll be very happy to work with you on more aggressive tactics. and also, i did not hear from oewd that icon staptly hear from my small businesses is that they are having a harder and harder time getting employees to work in their stores. many of our businesses have wanted signs, and the retension rate is abysmal. they can t keep people working in their small businesses because they can t compete with the wages, and quite frankly people aren t willing to come in two hours to a job that pays $15 an hour, so i d like that addressed at our next hearing, also. thank you. thank you very much. so much to say. i will just concur with my colleagues, and at this time i think i heard that we would like to continue items 1 actually, let s just continue item 1 to the call of the chair, and then, item 2, let ease file that one, if that s okay. okay. we ll do that, supervisor kim, without objection, okay? those motions are
good afternoon, supervisors. my name is deidre vonne rock. i am the president of the rest portal rock merchants association. while i m 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 it s 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 anymo
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 there s a new landlord, and the landlord wants to jack up the rent five times to what they re paying, and they have to relocate, but these are stores that are actually on it s such a fine line to making it every month, i m wondering, so do you help with relocation costs? we have not helped with relocation costs
in place to fast track that, that s something i d like to look at. yes, supervisor, that s a complaint we do have often from the supervisor s 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 you re massage use, formula retail, we don t 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 there s a lot of work we re going to have to do internally on this issue. at this point, i m going to turn it over to public comment. if not, if i don t 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, i d like to say congratulations to supervisor tifani for being appointed to district 2. i think you can do a fabulous job, and than
there is such a degree of uncertainty with it when you don t even know at the end of the day after months or maybe a year of going through the process whether you re even going to be able to go into that space, that it it s very discouraging for potential retailers to come into our neighborhood commercial corridors, so i hope that we re 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 it s with the changing conditions of retail in the city and in the country, i think it s 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, super