will also be away from work, thank you. >> thank you, sir. >> next speaker please? >> my name is daniel and i live a half a block from the proposed site. and the previous speaker was right, his restaurant serves delicious food. but that is the basic point is that i understand that you can grant this conditional use permit if it is necessary and desirable to the neighborhood. it is not necessary, as you heard from many people, but that there are two restaurant and there is chilango which is a step up and it is not desirable simply because it would make us look like something else, and actually i have been to chipotle, and very nice, but i live in san

francisco. and i want it to be a unique san francisco thing, and i am very well aware of how seedy that corner is and as a resident i have live there for 25 years on that block i am willing to take the chance that if the commission does not approve this formula retail that there is a good local merchant that can come in and whether it is a restaurant or anything else that will preserve the unique local character of our neighborhood thanks. >> next speaker, please? >> hello, commissioners, my name is sean, and i am the owner of black bird bar on 2124 market street and just two doors down from the proposed location. first off i want to state that i am against another chain business from opening in the neighborhood. and i do agree that it is an eye sore to have a blieted building at such a visible location. however, scrambling to fill a vacant building with chipotle

is a bad decision that will only create a domino effect, allowing other formula businesses down the road. we already have three thriving tacos, restaurant, la taco, and others, it is obviously the majority of the community that chipotle does not care about the livelihood of the smaller businesses that cannot compete with the buying power of the larger chain stores. i ask with these three mom and pop businesses continue to thrive? we do not want to see the church street corner to become another strip mall and i ask you to deny chipotle from moving in, thank you very much. >> call a few names and keep coming up. >> cristina calera, john calera, scott, marrlo, peter

gunned, edward, michael brisben and katherine burns. >> my name is jay davidson and i have lived in the neighborhood for 41 years and i recognize that it is not a simple situation. that there are indeed, many vacantcies in the neighborhood. the storefronts will be better filled and empty, but we have to ask ourselves, with what do we want to fill them. just as you decide when you purchase a burrito what are you going to put inside of it, we have to make the same consideration with the storefronts. downtown san francisco already looks like anywhere usa. our neighborhoods are different. take a look at haze valley, eureka valley, and the volunteer corridor and you can see the thriving neighborhoods

there, made so partly because of the individualization of the restaurants and the other businesses there. you look outside of san francisco to see what kind of an impact, large chains such as wal-mart have done in driving out the local businesses. in this corner has been said there are three other mexican restaurant. i am not anti-change, i am excited that the corridor right within view of this location, there are so many residences being built that will help to revitalize the neighborhood. a message that i would like to see you deliver to the owners of this building, is yes, you are entitled to a fair return on your investment of the building. but, formula retail, is not the means for you to enrich your

bank account at the expense of the neighborhood. i noted on your calendar, that you have already given the preliminary recommendation to disapprove this project, and i believe that the people of san francisco are looking to your leadership to do the same as after you have heard all of these arguments, thank you. >> wait a second, i am going to make a combination with this little girl, did you want to speak? >> i know that you seemed like a family, do you want to speak next? >> thank you. >> commissioners, thank you. my name is silvia and my husband own chilango restaurant at 325 church street. and as you can see this is something very emotional for me. this is our life, our

livelihood, my husband is so passionate about mexican food and all that he knows about his culture and the cuisine and mexico to here in san francisco. we are here, we are not employees, this matters to us. this is our life. i have my daughter, and we want to continue being a part of this community and we have something to offer. i am here today to ask you to deny chipotle a formula retail restaurant a permit to do business at the corner of church and market if they get this permit we will have to close our business and the people that we employ will also have many sacrifices to face. thank you very much for your time.

>> thank you. >> my name is john and i went to grammar school and school here, we bought this property at 2100 market there was an existing tenant and lease in place we did not select a tenant it was burk's drive-in and they lasted four years and went bankrupt, they were a small, locally owned company. >> the next tenant bought the business out of the bankruptcy and we also did not select that tenant. >> i am sorry sure, are you the owner of the building? >> one of. >> that will make you part of the project team, sir. >> no. >> thanks. thanks for pointing it out and go ahead and continue. >> the next tenant john frank

was involved and a spin off of a company called aden sandal which was also a locally owned business and they were doing well and paying their rent in 1985, we extended their lease. they went bankrupt. and after that, the business was purchased from the bankruptcy, also we did not select this person, but a peter herimus bought the lease and the business he was a successful and he owned greek and he had a karls junior and highly regarded individual in the restaurant field. he personally told me that for five years in a row, he lost $100,000 a year, locally owned small business. he asked that we would sublease

it to boston chicken that they would upgrade the building and they did, they took it down to the studs and redid the building according to code and permit it. the boston chicken became boston market. and i believe that they had about 400 locations, and they were in the chapter eleven bankruptcy, and they closed 200 of their non-performing locations one of which was 2100 market. and they went into bankruptcy and the business and the lease were sold then, to home restaurant, which lasted about five or six years, i believe, maybe a little more. and they did well, until the recession hit. and they went bankrupt. and it has been vacant since. what i am trying to say is that a locally owned business, except for boston market has been unable to make this location work. and we look forward to and ask

that you grant the conditional use permit so that a strong financial operator can go in and maintain that property >> i am going to ask that whoever is making the whisper sounds to cool it, next speaker please? >> good afternoon and i along with my six siblings, own part of market street, i want to talk about the positive that it will have and first i will do the opposition. >> in the current newsletter it

describes us as absentee and out of town land lords who also stated that we let the property go into disrepair, these statements are not true, the family all seven of us were born in and raised in and around san francisco, we have owned this property since 1970. for 17 years i was on the board of the san francisco museum and historic society and at the time i was vice president, as an infant our dad, a small business, survived the quake of 1906. we are not fly by nighters, or out of towners, the family has strong ties to this city. the owners walked away with food in the fridges and we removed the garage and trash

and we had the parking lot steam cleaned and the trash and graffiti removed. the castro upper market community benefit under the leadership and the executive director, have been and continue to be supportive in us in trying to keep this property clean and graffiti free. >> keeping a vacant property has been an overwhelming challenge and since the building has been without a tenant there are numerous break-ins my husband and i have been called to the site late at night when the front broken in and the bolt unlocked, the police were there and had to enter the building guns drawn to make sure that no one was lurking inside, the same scenario has happened in the

daylight hours as well. i have a lot of photographs, but i will leave them for you to look at. in closing, what i hope for this site is to have a clean, lively place where healthy food is served, a business that is operated by people who are experienced, and who have a proven track record for success, people who care about the neighborhood and care about the environment. people with a sense of aesthetics and of the community and i think that we found such a tenant with chipotle, i thank you for your time. >> (inaudible) we support our

families with this business, we are like 52 members that are held together and we support it. and, i am being in this restaurant for 20 years. and why, just in 50 feet we are a mexican restaurant, chilango and (inaudible) and (inaudible) and we are doing good. fairly good, we support our families. chipotle just one more restaurant, for us, it is our life. we depend on that restaurant. and our families, and we have our really (inaudible) food. the problem is we need to start thinking that they can put us out of the business. we cannot support that kind of (inaudible) for a long time. if you allow them to work there.

it will loss our jobs, we loss the way that we support our family and how that we support our children, thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> good afternoon. i am in favor of chipotle coming in for a couple of reasons. and express the jobs that will be available or coming to, and as as far as the renovation, and the city jobs at the restaurant as well. and in addition my other comment is the housing that is coming on-line, to that area, there will be choices for people to eat, and chipotle would offer that. as well as the other mexican restaurants that are in that area, they all offer a different unique to their menu, so we have chipotle, thank you.

>> hi, my name is katherine and i am a resident of the area, at 15 and this church street, and i have lived there for seven years and i feel so grateful as to be able to move from my adult life to a place that has culture and has neighborhoods, and i am so devastated to see that this potentially are going away. and i am, personally friends with the business owners and they support me and i support them and that is the culture of our street. i am not talking all the way up and down market i am just talking about church street and i know that is in danger with this coming in. and chipotle is a great business, i look forward to seeing it up and down the highways on i5:singer, i hope that there is more options for people out in the suburbs but, we don't need it.

period. we just don't need it and i am here supporting the local businesses that i want to stay. >> >> i am going to call a few more names so we can up here. >> jennifer ewing, ken >> j ennifer ew ing, ken s2no waldic. steve zimmerman, tim, dun n and gary wiess. >> good evening, my name is mike and i have been a resident of the castro for the past 20 years. i support the chipotle coming in to the church market street, 14th street, restaurant. and the reason that i support it is because if you walk up church street, all the way to castro, if you walk up market street from church all wait to castro and you walk down castro to the market to 19th street,

there are 15 vacant buildings in the neighborhood and we have all of these other buildings that are coming on-line in the next 12 months, which there is going to be more space for which will have more open space that the storefronts in the area. you have to use the common sense here. there can be formula retail, chipotle, and small businesses, in the same district, it does not have to be one or the other. when you have as many vacantcies as we have in this neighborhood right now, it only invites, light and filth, if you walk up market street from the castro and down to 19th that is what you see, we can't have more vacantcies because if we do, it is going to continue this cycle of the delap dation and bliet. we should welcome a good

corporate sit ten like chipotle and into the neighborhood and celebrate them being there and generating a thriving business for the people who live in that neighborhood. thank you very much. >> >> whoever is ready come on up. >> i am a local artist for 30 years and i was close to the project site and i am a business owner, and i do murals. and i am here to give you a little personal story, because one of the highlights of my mural business and my business of late has been (inaudible) and i have worked with them in three capacities, i have done signage and exterior panting and a mural inside, it is part of the process that they are proposing and i wonder if the people of chipotle realize how hard it is to get a group of

muralists together because it takes a lot of hard work, but i have enjoyed my work because i know of the owners there and the passion they have for really good food, and in the destination place, it is distinctive and it is original. and this is a kind of business that i like to see as a local person supporting it, i don't think that i would be one to really want to walk into chipotle because i could go to the mall and have that experience, it is very unique environment and i feel that the balance is at risk here and i ask that you if you have a choice today to choose in favor of keeping something that is really a very unique experience instead of upsetting the balance which i feel is at stake here. thank you. >> we can try to use that

overhead. >> i am the only one in the room that has negotiated on behave of the corela property for the lease that chipotle wants to get. i was the one that negotiated with david wiess also, so when i heard about star belly, i honestly right now today, have never talked to star belly. i want to correct that misrepresentation and also the associates and a number of areas, but specifically let's

talk about a couple. they say that we know that chipotle out maneuvered a very successful san francisco business from opening in this location. and this statement is completely false. we negotiate a lease with wiess on the ability to obtain a liquor license, these were costly in terms of times and money and ended at the 11th hour as we discovered that the restaurant did not have a lk or license for the patio of the restaurant with no guarantee that you could secure a liquor license in that area, he

terminated our negotiations. chipotle is not going to increase the rents in the district, at least they are not, they are going to pay us exactly the same amount that home paid us in 2010. with the respect of the move, they have received it of locals and wendy is mistaken and steve will talk about that. and i want to conclude by in a letter sent to the planning commission stated and i quote while i understand the need to carefully strutize every

merchant, i do not believe that we should be unreasonable. the location 2100 market is 4,000 square feet. chipotle is a business that can maintain such a pace. >> thank you. >> i am a company called restaurant realty company and a former restaurant owner san francisco and my family owns restaurant and i was appointed by the bankruptcy court in august of 2011 to represent the debtor at 2100 market to sell the assets subject to obtaining the lease with the landlord and we proceeded to market the property by putting the signing on the building and we marketed it through the 12 business web sites and we do an e-mail blast over 15,000 buyers every other week and very well exposed and we had a number of interested

parties approached the bankruptcy court and they were deemed to be financially and operationally not qualified. and after several months of marketinging the trustee for the bankruptcy court decided that it was not feasible to continue the administrative cost and moved to discontinue the process. >> chipotle became aware of this opportunity and although i was not being compensated i am in favor, it will enhance the neighborhood, and they provide a high quality product for the customer and chipotle serves the food with integrity and support and sustain the family farmers and respect the land and the animals in their care, and they use the meat from home grown, without the use of antibiotics or added hormones

and they source the organics and the local produce. they use the dary from the cows raised and they use recycled paper products and for reasons that i believe that chipotle will be an asset for this project. thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners, my name is tim dunn and i live a half a block away from the site and i would like to voice my optician for the project, but i would like to sort of broaden the discussion beyond the formula retail subject and we are talking about in the urban design at this location and it is a very core of the system and the core of san francisco and church and market street and in 2008, the planning commission passed the market plan which the basic premise of the plan was the negotiations

between the neighbors and the city that the neighborhood was willing to accept significantly higher densities, provided that the planning department pursue measure to reduce congestion in the neighborhood and to limit the parking in the neighborhood. and this site, as a surface parking lot and curve cuts on to market street which are on the right adjacent to the bike lane and adjacent to the stairs and the elevator to the church street station and this is very inappropriate use for the site. and the market activity plan that passed five years ago said that these types of uses the parking were to expire after five years and so, i urge that the commission to if it were to pass, this in this, that they should be a requirement to

eliminate the parking and the surface parking and the curve cut but again i will pose it as proposed thank you. >> hello commissioners, i was the first jennifer ewing on the list. >> my name is leo and i am the partner here in the business, and i am also the ceo of the developing environment which is a artist coop in the commission district. i am here to support victor and edwardo specifically because i don't want to see them, their businesses or their families pushed out of the neighborhood. i learned a lot about chipotle today. and a lot of what has been said is admirable. this is just a wrong place.

thank you. >> go ahead. >> my name is terry and i am the president of the merchant's of upper market and castro. i also was born and raised in san francisco, in the castro and my family has owned a business in the castro for over 77 years, the merchants of upper market and castro support chipotle going into this location. and i just want to talk a little bit about the relationship about the merchant formula retail and because a lot of time we talk about it as a big, ugly, chipotle has not been that from the get go. they reached out to us when they started the negotiations of the lease of the property at 2100 market street. the express showed us the plans that they had in mind and they immediately changed the plans with every certain that we

expressed. they wanted to serve alcohol in the outdoor patio that went into the parking lot and we asked them that and they removed it from the plans and we talked about how filthy it is right now and what they can do for the graffiti and beautifying that corner and safety coming out of the muni station and they tried to address all of those things. and i know that you are guys are constantly talking about signage which you might not have control over, but you talk about it all of the time. and they have tried to work with that and they have minimized the signage and it is not brightly lit and it is small. and they have tried to work with the neighborhood. most of the time, when formula retail comes to the merchant association, we are pushing them to give back to the neighborhood. i didn't even have my mouth opened before they were saying how can we work with the neighborhood? >> what does the neighborhood need? what does the neighborhood want? they have alrey