been in business for over 100 years in san francisco. orchard supply and these chains in the short period of time will further destroy the things we have come to expect and rely on from our local family home improvement industry. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. my name is david peterson and i own the property on the end of kate street, 52 kate. and i have the largest piece of property on kate street as well and i have not been contacted by anybody from orchard supply. i have two issues that i want to discuss, and one is the use of the loading dock and another is the traffic issue. i'm sure you guys are aware that 88 brannon has reorganized their main entrance to their parking lot to decatur street,

there will be a much larger volume on brannon and [speaker not understood]. one of the biggest problems with kate street using it as a loading dock is the street is very narrow and along that street is everybody's driveway and entrance to their building. in the past sfpd has recognized anybody using that loading dock is blocking my driveway and we have ticketed and towed cars in the past. it is not a legal loading dock and it's not really designed to be a loading dock because of how narrow it is and how it obstructs everybody's ability to go from their property. i'd like to see a traffic study done at least to understand the impact of what's going to happen to both our area and 88 brannon street has changed their traffic, and there is both entrances to free ways there and many other things

that have changed and will be changing in the next six months. and please consider the kate street access for all of us. thanks so much. >> thank you. next speaker. my name is jerry wolf. i own a property on kate street also. i was going to come to this meeting today to talk in favor of this development, but then i tried -- i reached out through diego sanchez and through anthony [speaker not understood], the architect, to talk to orchard. we had an agreement about kate street until about one hour before 12:00 noon today. the agreement was [speaker not understood] they want to use kate street from 9:00 to 5:00. the original plan was 6:30 in the morning to 7 o'clock at night. kate street has three residential buildings with 18 people living in those. all the commercial business on kate street is a small

business. the profile is a far different thing than having an orchard supply hardware type of business. if they were to use kate street, kate street has got -- it's an 18 foot wide alley, has parking on one side with no limitations. you can park there 24 hours a day which means there is only 9 feet left for a vehicle it get down. they're talking, if you heard his words, he said that the trucks will come to load from orchard supply hardware down kate street and that the little door that's on the other side in the parking lot will only be used for customers to pick up. do you realize what it takes to supply an orchard supply hardware store with the merchandise that's in that store and the amount of trucks that would be going up and down the street that's only nine feet wide? it would completely change the profile of kate street. not only for now, but there are three [speaker not understood] on kate that are under used buildings and some point in the future i guarantee would like to become residential which will add to the south of market mixture. and that will not be able to

happen if kate street becomes orchard supply hardware street. and if you allow them to use kate street for that access -- there was a loading door on the other side pacific sale. pacific sales blocked that doorway with bricks thinking they could use kate. they had difficulty getting a truck down kate. they used double doors for deliveries also because -- that's why they're going out of business. i've been there, maybe 30 people in that store. orchard supply is going to have about 300 people in the store. so that alley, our little kate street alley is going to change forever in the fact that, that it's actually ludacris for them to even think that should be the only way to get all the material in and out of the orchard supply hardware, that 33,350 square feet. please think about that. thank you. >> thank you. sam [speaker not understood]

lee. good afternoon. my name is nori lee. i own speedy's hardware and independent local hardware store and member of the [speaker not understood] co-op. i'm also certified by the city as a micro local business enterprise. our store is located at 1061 folsom street in south of market two blocks away from the proposed orchard supply location and i find it funny they said there's no hardware stores around so i guess maybe i should do some more advertising. i'm strongly opposed to orchard's moving into our neighborhood because it will be detrimental to us and many other small businesses in the area. not only hardware stores will be affected, but other specialty shops as well such as the -- because they're proposing their street, the flower mart is close to us,

too. i think they will be greatly affected as well as appliance shops and paint stores, et cetera. we've been -- we've been in the neighborhood for four years and the neighbors are just starting to get to know us. we're not opposed to competition, but there's so much -- there is a tremendous amount of competition here already. if you let orchard's move n you're telling us essentially you don't care about the small businesses in the south of market. you know many of us will lose business and we'll have to layoff employees and eventually shut down. what you think the city will gain in additional payroll and sales taxes you will lose many times over when you see effects of the mom and pop shops like mine and many others close up. is that the intent of the city, to drive out local small businesses, especially women owned businesses? i hope not. please do not let orchard's or

any big box move in. thank you. >> thank you. hi, good afternoon, commissioners. i'm sam lee and i'm nori's hz band. -- husband. i own a contracting business on folsom street. and i find it funny that i did not get notified. we did not get notified for this project. i found out this project maybe a week ago from the grapevine. i finally got the, i guess the, the proposal and looked it over today. and i find it funny that the planning code specifically says a formula 1 retail is limited to 25,000 square feet. well, the building is 33,000 square feet. the gross square footage of the property is 51,000 square feet.

that's well over -- that's double. and on top of that, they said they're not adding more square footage. that's false. they're adding another 8,000 square feet on top of the roof. so, just looking at those two items on this proposal, it doesn't make sense. and when mr. diego said there's no hardware stores around, i chuckled. come on. you know, center hardware has been there for over a hundred years, you know. yes, i moved in 15 years ago when the south of market, you didn't want to be in the south of market. but now south of market is thriving because of all the small businesses that moved in. so, you know, we took a risk of opening our hardware store to south of market, to serve the south of market. and now it's thriving. people want to move in because

of the uniqueness of it. and if you let orchard's come in, that's the first big box. what's next? home depot. what's next, wal-mart? i mean, it's not going to stop. and the funny thing is that, yes, pacific sales, who owns pacific sales? >> best buy. best buy, correct. so, something is going on there. what happened? how did that happen? they took over the lease, they took over the business. was that their way of coming in, you know? under the radar? so, i just urge you not to grant them the conditional use. thank you. >> thank you. is there any further public comment? please come to the podium. thank you, commissioners, president fong, vice president wu.

good afternoon. jim miko from south of market. i'm going to really limit my remarks because i would assume and hope that the majority of your time is going to be spent addressing the formula retail aspects of this. but if you do move beyond that and do move to the point of considering approving this project, my particular interests have to do with pedestrian experience on this project. it reminds me so much of the tj max project that came before this commission a few years back. at the time it what a good partnership with planning department staff and, in fact, staff said at the time the idea that we're looking at here is when formula retail comes to san francisco, we try to get them to conform to the character or improve the

character if you're in a neighborhood that's less pedestrian friendly. to meet the standard of our city rather than us conforming to whatever their business model is. that's the reason i attended the pre-application meeting and that's why i've been in communication with project sponsors. * ever since then to try to assure that this had a greater street presence to what they originally proposed. bear in mind those fancy architectural renderings you're looking at are only appropriate if you're in a helicopter hovering over the project site. the reality on the ground is blanch street is a one-way street going eastward towards the embarcadaro. and in general, what you will see on the ground is the backside of this project and the blanch street frontage. so, if you do approve this project, please ensure that

bryant street gives back something to the community. thank you. * >> thank you. next speaker. hello, my name is rick carp, i'm the president of cole hardware here in san francisco and i'm asking you to please reject this project based on the formula retail issues. it's been my passion since the early '80s to try to keep big box and formula retail out of san francisco. i'm the veteran of the home depot wars that went on three to four different times when we finally lost about five years ago. they left because of their business model that screwed up at the time. lowe's came in. my whole deal for that whole time period was if you let one big box into san francisco, then all of their cousins follow. since we lost the home depot, lowe's moved into their project.

best buy has come into san francisco. there's one target open, one you approved on masonic. their business model is for four or five within san francisco. orchard supply is coming. the list is going to go on and on and on and you're going to continue to hurt our neighborhood shopping districts. and it's real easy to think that it may not, but i'll tell you just the reality in my business alone, when lowe's opened in san francisco, i am the closest hardware store to them at 2th and mission. we lost 25% of our business and our business overall has shrunk by 7 employees. and it's the same, in essence, for my brethren in the hardware business throughout. i don't know what's going on in the paint business, et cetera, et cetera, but the efficacy of our neighborhoods are going to

suffer as you keep opening these formula retails. and i really think you need to look at it holistickly from 5,000 feet up to see what's happening. this is in the pipeline. home depot is in the pipeline right now, forgetting the do it yourself industry which we're all obviously concerned about today, you are letting big box after big box after formula after formula come into the city and it's gonna be a huge detriment to the neighborhood shopping districts that are such the character of the city. and i would respectfully ask you to consider that in your deliberations today. thank you. >> thank you. if i can get this to the commissioners. hi, my name is stephen cornell and i own brown use hardware on polk street. i like the rest of these businesses have been in san francisco a long time. this is our 107th year. we have 12 people working in

our business. 90% of them are full-time employed. like everybody else we pay our people more than minimum wage. we pay them health benefits. not because the city-mandated it. we've been doing it for years. all these companies are coming in, asking to come in. they have to pay health benefits because the city makes them do that. we are here for a long period of time. we help people. i'd like to address the issue of how there is not hardly any other businesses that this is going to affect. i think in the map that you got from the planning department, it was very gerrymandered. i gave you a map that is perfectly square by blocks around. the first one is for two blocks around square. the second one is four blocks around, five blocks around. and the third one is 10 blocks around. within that area there are 33 businesses that are -- can be affected.

some of their names are on the back. these are not just hardware stores. they're paint stores. there's plant stores. all these businesses are affected by this particular company coming in. i don't think it was a very fair assessment by planning to say it doesn't affect anybody. this is what's going on here. but what it also affects is these kind of businesses, home depot, lowe's, orchard supply, they're not just looking here. they're going to be pulling in customers from all over the city. so, it's going to affect a business out in west portal or the sunset or in the marina. people are going to come from there. they're going to come for their needs which they were buying in their neighborhood. they're going to go driving there. it affects a large area of the city. please, we ask you to turn this down because it's affecting the small businesses of san

francisco and that's what the formula use business legislation was in there before -- was signed up for. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. good afternoon, i own center hardware. center hardware has been in business -- >> excuse me, sir, if you can state your name for the record. i'm sorry, my name is keith gantner and i own center hardwarement center hardware the earliest records i have are from about 1880. so, we've been around a long time. i haven't been there quite that long. i did a little homework. i went on orchard supply's website and i went to their career page and i pulled up over 300 job openings at this time. 44 of those 300 were for

corporate people, people are going to work in their san jose, in their main office, accountants, actuarial people, what have you. 19 of them was for sales lead full-time positions, full time 30 hours plus. all the rest were 29 hours or less, part-time, temporary or part time or temporary positions every, every job opportunity was a part-time or temporary opportunity. it doesn't say well to the company that they try and -- it's a formula outside of san francisco, they can get away with and not pay any benefits because they stay under federal guidelines. here in san francisco they will have to pay some benefits. even if they have somebody working 12 hours a week, because i think the law says 8

hours. anyway, i thought it was unusual that somebody would hire mostly or seems like all to me, part time people. the other thing is i'm the third generation in san francisco in the hardware business. my daughter works in my business. she's the fourth. my grandchildren have grown up in my store, and hopefully they'll be the fifth. if we can maintain the character of san francisco with the community-based and supporting small business. if all these big businesses come in, we're all going to close and go home because we can't survive. thank you for your time. >> thank you. any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini. >> thank you. well, this is an interesting

case and i'm just going to give you some of my views on it. it ha been mentioned, an existing formula retail so you're going from one formula retail to another. and they do purport to hire 74 new people or employees who are presumably now not working. so, that is something in their favor. and the other argument in their favor, and i do buy this to some degree, there are people, for one reason or another, who presently live in san francisco and for price reasons or the type of product that this particular organization has, it serves a destination. they'll drive further away because they can get it at a lower rate or they like their particular products. it's almost like you see particular people who will drive to a women's clothing store that doesn't exist in san francisco and they're going to

go there because, you know, they like that particular product and there may be one really close to them, but they like the particular product. and it's not like people are going to shop at a local store, you know, and now going to go from the local store to this particular inch truetion. a lot of these people are already going to orchard supply or going to others outside of san francisco. that's just what people do. i've talked to a lot of people who do drive away for hardware-type services any particular reason. however, there are some reasons why this -- they do need to work a little more. first of all, i hear there's been a lack of outreach, particularly with the people on kate street, and not working with this loading thing. and i also have heard from the council district merchants.

they haven't outreached to them or to alliance for district 6 or various groups that have been in san francisco for a long time. and i'm not quite sure what's going to be worked out. but it seems to me that it's important if you're coming into an area that you should make contact with your potential competitors because it may not always be a lose/lose situation. you might have a situation where, you know, the store will bring people in and they won't be happy with the big box that they go to and they'll go across the street to the hardware store and find something that, you know, they like better because they get better service because they get -- i don't shop at big box stores for hardware products. i go to small hardware stores because part of what you get there is you get individual attention. you get a little counseling, you can ask somebody about how is this going to work, what do you recommend, the kind of things that you get from

smaller stores that you almost will never get from a larger store. so, to me, the price difference which i think is not that significant, it is significant to some people, but for me it's not worth going into a place and trying to find my way around and not getting personal help. so, -- but that's not true for everyone. so, i would probably be in favor. i'm not making a motion to continue, but i probably would like to see project sponsor work with the groups i mentioned and with the neighborhood over the next two or three weeks and try to see if we can answer these loading questions, the questions mr. miko brought up about entry into the store. and also see if we could have more of a cooperative attitude where orchard supply would refer people to some of the neighboring hardware stores and encourage them to go there if they don't meet their needs or

if they're looking for product they don't have, or even if they do. you know, there's probably enough to go around. we do have -- they've said san francisco a small city. geographically it's small, but it's very dense city. we've got probably 900,000 people living in san francisco or close to it and another over 100,000 in daily city. we've got people who are close by and i think there's a lot of potential business here. * so, see what the other commissioners have to say. >> commissioner sugaya. >> yes, i wasn't around for the home depot fight originally, but i understand what it was all about. i don't shop there. my wife and i have gone occasionally to look at products there and frankly have not been very satisfied, but that's beside the point i suppose. just to repeat commissioner antonini's point, i think if

people really looked at their purchasing experience and looked at what they purchased, they might find that it isn't that much cheaper to go to a big box store. costco might be a little exception, but i do -- i know that one of the advantages of local hardware stores is that you don't have to buy 15, you know, nails in a package in order to get five that you really are going to use. and, so, it's little things like that. the service the commissioner mentioned and other things. i think that the city has valued that kind of approach to small businesses and, therefore, we have formula retail. the thing that i find flawed in the staff report is one argument that there's already a formula retail store here that sells home -- but they only

sell appliances. it isn't like there's a broad range of things that are being offered at pacific, so, i don't think the two are comparable at all. and i do think that yet another hardware store -- i don't know, is home depot in the pipeline somewhere? [speaker not understood]. >> in the bayview, okay. so, that one's coming up. this one, we already have lowe's. there is target, but they're a little different. and i assume that since wal-mart is downsizing their stores and looking at urban areas, we're going to see one of those pretty soon also. so, you know, i go back to mr. miko's original comment which he opened with, which was we should really be looking at the formula retail aspect of this first, and that's where i'm not

too happy about it. >> commissioner borden. >> yeah, i think what's interesting about these hearing, if you know about the stores that existed, [speaker not understood], i live pretty close to all these stores. for example, i didn't know the discount builders was a place that i as an individual could go. i always assumed it was a contractor's place. speedies and other placeses in the neighborhood. so, it's been very illuminating for that sake. * i own a car. i have access to a car. i buy everything in hardware stores and small hardware stores and i choose to shop local. this dress in a chestnut street yni, the tag is from them. i am a person that believes in local. you know, what i struggle with is kind of like we want to save ourselves from ourselves so to speak. if people lived the ethos of that, it wouldn't matter if you opened up orchard supply because they would go out of business because no one would go there, right, because everybody would only shop in their local store.

it's an interesting thing. our formula retail legislation just reminds me that to a large extent people are hypocritical. they say that they want only local businesses and support local businesses, but then they're purchasing -- their behavior indicates that they'll go to costco or other places to get things because they get a better price or they'll even drive farther distances to do so. and, so, i always struggle with what is the right balance on these issues. the reality is for people who have means, who have cars, they're going to go to orchard supply or home depot, whatever, whether it's in san francisco or daly city or elsewhere. and balancing that against protecting our local businesses that are thriving in critical parts of our neighborhood. these are businesses we care about. we want to see them flourish. you know, they support our local families. i don't necessarily know what the right answer is in many of these cases because it's not always so black and white. i wish i knew more about the

causally it between what types of businesses directly impact others and, you know, when is it that your customer service can be so superior that no one -- people would pay a higher price for that, right? people buy designer label brands and they're really expensive but there's a quality people get in designer label brands that makes them buy those things. that's not true for everything. maybe that's not true for toilet paper or certain kinds of products. but for other products that is true. you know, on its face, i didn't initially have a problem with this case because it was a large building. i'm familiar with that area. it seemed like a fine use for that space if it were building in that net store, i wouldn't have been excited about it. i don't like the suburban style, big box retail in general. but i do struggle because i don't -- i do care about our local businesses. i don't know that whether i support orchard supply or not that really is going to make a difference, but i do