on site is the determining factor. there are many factors that determines how it interacts with the neighborhood and the surrounding residences. for example, on pine street by fillmore. people stopped double parking in traffic lanes to pick up some bread. this is honking, swerving, traffic safety. it is an inappropriate location for that type of service. but this would permit a. i recall my graduate school days in cincinnati when we would go get chile at to 30 in the morning. again, no alcohol. size, location, saturation. these are all important factors in have nothing to do with an alcohol permits.

i hope we can also view can -- and do some constructive work. >> good afternoon, commissioners. we worked with supervise mirkarimi of this ordinance. i want to applaud the staff's work on this in your direction to them. a lot of them don't make sense, especially self-service full- service. most of the restaurants are self service but if you read the definition, i think what they thought they were trying to do is to stop a fast food places from an opening up. these additional restrictions

are usually on a self service. there are restaurants that are all self-service restaurants. a lot of the food is great. and may not be healthy food, but it is fresh and high-quality food. it is reasonably affordable. we should really open up the city and the that kind of creativity. the other thing, of course, rest fronts fulfill a different role in people's lives right now. busy people increasingly rely on restaurants the the war for take-out. it is more of a popular thing, i think. i just wanted to fly the few issues for consideration. rather than having a c.u., there

is a circuit breaker or soft cap idea. will aim at 20 percent, i think. that is probably too low. but restaurants are principally permitted until a block of saturation. then they become conditional. it would address a lot of the concerns about too many restaurants. and the other thing and it might do is encourage trust runs to not dominate certain blocks. if i move somewhere else, i will go down here where there are fewer restaurants. you get them to spread out a little bit. it is something we are working on to loosen the controls in other neighborhoods. right now, the additional

controls in the district's only apply for the most part to the locally owned restaurants. we think they have outlived their usefulness. do we really need these anymore? he will have to do something if you get rid of the full-service definition. americans don't want any more. president olague: thank you for your work with staff on this. >> i believe something should be done. the past the -- does it pass the abc laws. this is over saturated. you have to balance what you're looking at.

they are the expediters for these restaurants. we have a new one, it is doing a very bad job and breaking the law which starts problems with neighbors. we got to restaurants to open up within two months. five blocks away. one has the police called all the time. and you have to start looking at how you mediate the problem. we have something similar to market street. it is young people, a-z. is pretty brutal to the

neighbors. this has to be all considered in this plan. i think a narrowing in doubt as a good idea and seeing if we can stop confusing the process, but we have to look at these others. i believe that the department is not in the job of collecting fines when bad offenses happen and they go against the rules and regulations of this commission and this department. just make it legal. this is why we are having problems. i will discuss that at a later date and in detail. but this all goes into the restaurant industry. and for someone who has worked off and on for 30 years, their great managers and there are very bad ones. >> any more public comment on

this item? >> i support the idea of revamping the regulations for fast-food establishments. as he listened, a lot of these things are misapplied these days. fast food and coffee are different things. and regarding retail, we are in a different world out. we are not in the world, we were in 10 years ago. retail has been under attack by the internet. recant mortar establishments are being supplanted by people that can order whatever they want and get it delivered to their door. the brick and mortar retail establishments are going out of business had a thing that is why more restaurants are supplanting

those locations. there are less and less uses that are viable these days. if there are more restaurants, it is because there is less retail. thank you. >> in the afternoon, commissioners. very happy to be here harriet in general, looking at the legislation, a lot of the things that we support in life, we look forward to working with the staff. one area that i think might have some concern is if you have 1300 fillmore. a great place to eat. they would be called a bar.

the wayfare tavern, these are becoming bars. that definition is awkward and we would like to work with you to find a way -- the direction you're going makes some sense. what we see as a fine eating establishments that provides mixed cocktails and a bar. and that is the definition we can work together on. thank you for the efforts. president olague: additional public comment? >> good afternoon, commissioners. the oldest and one of the bigger associations in san francisco.

on behalf of our association, of like to put in a couple of comments. we feel strongly that the fast food said district has really outlived its usefulness. second of all, fast food, taquerias, coffee shops are a huge part of the culture and the neighborhood. we like to see some of the shackles lifted and for things to be made a little bit easier. that is the long and short of it. i appreciate your time. president olague: public comment is closed. commissioner moore: i think we are at a good start. announcing other people to comment and interact, that is

really where this is going. it is open for everybody to step in. i like to comment on the video that i think is totally wonderful. we ourselves have been in the middle of the complications. who made this video? you did? where did you learn to do that? >> it is a website that says if you can type, you can make a movie. you just type in the text and it renders it for you. you can put their clothes and hands going up - quotes and have their hands going up. -- commissioner moore: congratulations for that extra skill. together with the invitation, i

commend you for doing it this way. i very much appreciate that. commissioner borden: i wanted the staff to clarify some things. it is something in the staff report that i have also seen. we have been talking about definitions and it sounded like a restaurant and a full liquor license would be considered a bar. in the chart, you show that a bar is something that doesn't serve food. >> once you get a full liquor license, the planning code considers it a us currently. if you are a full-service restaurant and you do this, we will deny that application.

>> it is a little concerning in the sense that full liquor licenses are very much restaurants. i don't want to make it more complex, but it concerned me in the sense that it is different. it would be a better determination, i am not trying to add another category. >> i think they have different liquor license types. if you are a bonafide eating establishment, [unintelligible] commissioner borden: i don't want to add an extra category, but if there is a way to make

the restaurant distinction consistent with that of abc, it would be easy in some way. i don't know if that is possible, but it is more clear to people in general where they stand. >> one thing that they voted on recently was to allow bars only in conjunction with full-service restaurants. that is a use of these hash marks on the end of certain -- commissioner borden: it is something to think about, how we can pull that out. that is one thing that concerned me. that is something that mr. warner touched on. it doesn't have to be the liquor

license that makes it a great actor. he said the same thing. this is something the planning department and the planning cut cannot control. there is the bigger issue about whether or not a restaurant as a problem and the neighborhood has more to do with the operator and how they treat the neighborhood and treat what they are supposed to do as an operator. i don't know if this is something that the small business commissioned a g in withg dera and -- working with the grgra and others to make sure they're daeling -- dealing with traffic issues, and noise issues that may not be specific to the girl licenses but have major impacts. we need to put conditions of approval of the happens to be a conditional use. >> one of the petitions --

knowing, trash receptacle, pressure on the street in front of the house -- noise, trash receptacle, trash on the streert t in front of the house. it is technically in place now, it is not just listed. those are in different parts of the city code. in the, the public health. these are the rules that you have to abide by. commissioner borden: even for restaurants that are not going c.u. process. to the extent that they can help us in businesses and working to

promote these sort of policies will be helpful. again, the issues that you often hear about restaurants are the verse and it is related to actual impact have nothing to do with the planning code. codifying in a way that's easy to find. the other issue, i liked the idea of 30%. i am not saying it is the right number, but doing a percentage cap as opposed to a numerical cap. it became quite a problem, they set in number and then it changed. i would say that what is really interesting, because they have so many viable restaurants, and every restaurant every day of the week is all packed. and also the retail wasn't as

impacted. because of the people there during the day, there is an advantage of having a vibrant restaurant corridor. it is an important -- the union street did not have a lot of vital restaurants for a long time. the impact of their retail and a few restaurants that were there. people did not have any assurance. i think that is something else. i think that the change with the removing of the video store definition is really smart. i foresee the video stores will be absolutely obsolete within the next five years and they will only come back in the incarnation of novelty stores. like people buy records because it is just so rare.

>> just the rated disposal of the malone is not smart environmentally anymore with all the options you have online. the other issue or around tour buses -- i know that is an issue of navy and g-8. i know there are rules governing it, but we know lots of young people get together and organize for the week and tour buses. they have them outside the building i live in all the time. one of the girls in my building loves to party bosses. that is not a planning issue. maybe this is not the appropriate agency to deal with that. i do not know if you could prevent having a party buses brought people off at restaurants and bars, but i know what she is speaking of and have seen it most often in the marina. but i think the legislation over all goes in the right direction. i prefer the second option where you keep the existing controls in place but you minimize the number of conditional uses.

one of the most salient points in the video you just showed was people paying rent on a space for six months + $4,000, and you are paying rent on a space that you are also going to build out into your restaurant, and that is a lot of lost money and time. a lot of the issues people have concerns about have more to do with the operator then the planning code. commissioner antonini: i think this is very good that we're taking this up. unfortunately, our definitions are a patchwork much like other things. all of these things develop ad hoc rather than by plans sometimes, and this is sort of what has happened here. a lot of these clarifications have come as a reaction to concerns in particular neighborhoods and over saturation, and we have something that is really

impossible to decipher. i think the supervisor, to the extent that he has brought the specific instances, probably almost all of us would agree that most of these individual instances need to be corrected, but it does not really address the whole problem, which is a bigger one. i like the idea of some broad overreaching definitions that would not be all-inclusive. obviously, additional controls would be necessary within these categories under certain circumstances while still promoting business. i do not think you can just have these categories and say something like, a "if you are limited restaurant, you can just go in anywhere if you have food and no of all, or apparently is offside alcohol." i'm not sure exactly how that works, but oftentimes, the problems are not centered around alcohol use. some of the areas of restaurants that are the most crowded and perhaps in the worst repair are

often some of them do not have any alcohol service at all. we have to look at this separate from that issue, although i like the categories staff has come up with here in general as overreaching ones, and i liked the fact that the distinction between beer and wine and spirits has become less definite, which was something that -- something out of the past. i remember growing up in the 1950's were children could not go into bars but could going to restaurants. as long as there was food service, you could sit with your parents even though they might be having alcoholic beverages. this was sort of the way. also bars used to close on election day because was felt that they would influence voting by buying drinks for people, so you had to close during the hours of the election. a lot of our laws are no longer really pertinent, so i like the fact that you include a full-

service restaurant or restaurant in the -- not a limited restaurant that has food service and would have, you know, all different categories of alcoholic beverages from what i understand from what you're suggesting. i think -- on some of the other concerns that were brought up, they were certainly good concerns. they were a little further -- about some of the problems that may exist surrounding restaurants and bars, but for purposes of definition, we should begin with an outline, as you have provided, probably including the changes that supervisor mirkarimi is bringing up, but i think we need to go further and bring some broad categories up and try to look at where we can expedite restaurant, but also what tom was saying about the saturation levels. i'm not saying that i am as concerned about saturation levels as in the neighborhoods

where there really are not many restaurants, or there are not restaurants that have broad appeal. we have seen many neighborhoods who have sort of begun to become economically more viable, beginning with the establishment of restaurants that attract people in the neighborhood as well as people from other neighborhoods. if we can direct our new restaurants into areas where we are underserved, i think that would be a good policy to have. those are some of my general thoughts, but i think we are moving in the right direction. commissioner fong: i wanted to speak broadly and remind people that the restaurant business and the epicurean business in san francisco is part of the lifeblood of the city. it adds to the vibrancy of neighborhoods. it adds to the liveliness of the street. it adds to property values. so i am supportive of things overall as they are going here.

as far as problem restaurants, i want to remind folks that while we have problem restaurants, we have hundreds of successful restaurants, and i would hate for us to start to make policy decisions based on a few problem operators, although they are out there. but there are many success stories. as far as bars, we just had one last week that fell into the category where they were applying for a full liquor license but serving obviously find cocktails. i like that we're taking time to ask the community groups. i am interested about what the merchants' associations around the city had to say about it. i understand it will probably be a little different depending on each, but i am in favor thus far. >> thank you, commission, for your comments. i wanted to ask you to keep a couple of things in mind.

as we continue to reach out to the community and hear from members of the neighborhood as well as margin goods, two things in response to your comments. one is that the section 312 process will remain in place for every one of these restaurants, no matter the size, no matter how small, and that process in itself is a bit of a burden. the additional layer of the additional use causes the concern. the 30-day notice, requires submission of materials to the department. waiting essentially a couple of months for that notice to expire. it does inform the neighborhood of typically the individual property owner, although the permissions do run with the land and not the individual operator. it does give a lot of information to the neighborhood about each of these proposed uses, so keep that in mind as we hear about concerns related to individual uses in the smaller category. also, this is by no means meant to be a one-size-fits-all solutions. we absolutely acknowledge that neighborhood controls have

developed over time in response to individual neighborhoods desires. the legislation is flexible, and as he continued year from individual neighborhoods, we are open to tweaking this as necessary, but the goal again for overall simplification should remain in our minds. >> i want to thank supervisor mirkarimi's office for expanding the time and giving the community until august when but, and for all your work on this with everyone, and staff also. i think it is kind of exciting, really. time to, you know, revised a lot of this. in time, maybe people will sort of reject online purchasing, and we will have to come back here and they visit bookstores and record stores as they begin to proliferate all over the city again. that is just probably a fantasy of mine, so, anyway.

but thank you for your work. commissioner sugaya. however i ignore you? sorry about that. commissioner sugaya: i do not have anything to say yet. commissioner olague: that would be unusual. commissioner sugaya: do we have any idea how many video stores there actually are? there was a neighborhood one down the street from me that was an entrepreneur or video store, not a chain, and he went out of business. there's a blockbuster down the street, and they still seem to be open, but do we have any idea how many are around? >> the only one i know of is on castro street. commissioner sugaya: so that prediction that i -- >> [inaudible] commissioner sugaya: not to prolong the discussion, but i think that the other form of distribution may be kiosks. and if there is so much online

going on, especially more with high-definition on the order of what might be contained on blu- ray disks, there's a tremendous implications for bandwidth, which translates into fiber optics, which translates into more little boxes on the street, so it is all kind of connected in one way or the other year. commissioner olague: i never thought i would love and the closing of borders. >> or a blockbuster. commissioner olague: that is beside the point. commissioner borden: i would like to move to continue the item. commissioner olague: we have to period to august 4. >> thank you, commissioners. the motion on the floors to continue the item. continue the item. on that motion