tv [untitled] July 7, 2013 3:00pm-3:31pm PDT
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the 3-year period, which may be forgiveness, depending on the standards that are reached. >> okay. >> just so what we do is that we'll go into the store and we'll actually measure the complete store. so we now have what is called an as-built and we can put that on auto cad and relayout the store based on that and determine the refrigeration and equipment and shelving. that is part of what we do in getting the store to look the way it needs to. >> thank you, commissioner dooley. >> can you tell us a little more about the centralized resource center? is that like a brick-and-mortar spot or online portal? what is that going to be like?
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>> thank you. actually, we were thinking about a centralized resource meaning the consultant, small business development center, our community partner, which we provided grant funding for this program and other programs in our office. not a location, but a place, where somebody can talk to you to guide them through the process. >> great. thank you. commissioner yee riley. >> i want to know if there are any new staff requirements or just going to use existing staff? >> this is going to utilize existing staffing. and we have a $60,000 commitment that is in the mayor's budget right now. that money is going to go for the consultants, the staffing that is going to be coordinating is between dph and oewd is already there. >> the $60,000 is for additional staff? >> for consultants. >> for consultants? >> yes. >> so the gentleman before you is a consulting group that does
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all of this for a fee? >> correct and it would be an open-process for once the program is up and running for consultants to work under this program. right now there is no program. once the program is up, that money is going to get rfp'd out. >> thank you. >> commissioner dwight. >> the upgrade funds, i guess in the form of a grant and loan, is that from the department of public health? and how many are you prepared to fund initially? >> well, we have been piecing it together. actually some of it comes from a kaiser permanente, and in the tenderloin it comes from dignity health and the san francisco foundation just gave them a small grant as well to replicate the same work there. >> so public-private partnership on a case-by-case basis or neighborhood by neighborhood basis? >> yes. to pilot also, we have been
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piloting for a couple of years to put this together to see how it works and to take it to a different level. >> there are three pilot sites? >> right now there are two stores. >> two stores. >> in the bayview that have been reset/redesigned. one is going to happen in the tenderloin in the fall. and then there is an additional one that is going to start in september in the bayview. >> the two in the bayview that are existing how long have they been up and running? >> one since last august and one since january. >> and results there? we heard one is successful. >> yes, his pos, his point of sales system, they went from 0 produce, and added a category for "produce," and for the month of february, which is where we have the data shows an estimate between 60 and 100 pieces of produce selling a day. >> wow. >> the other is of purely
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paper format, so we have a different tracking system. >> i imagine this is a new skill for these new owners to deal with perishible products of this nature and are you coaching them through the business aspects of how to deal with that? >> sure, within the team is an individual scott schaefer who specifically knows produce extremely well and he is the one working with the food guardians teaching them as they go into the stores. so the food guardians start developing the skills as well. it takes a number of years to develop that skill, but he is teaching them and they are there with him in the store as he is teaching the opener. >> so the food guardians are serving as detailers? >> that is right. >> okay. >> great. commissioner white. >> actually, commissioner dwight asked the question i was going to ask in regards to how many stores were being somewhat funded through the pilot
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program. going forward though in the certain neighborhood that you have identified, do you have corner stores that actually want to sign up for this program? that actually know about this? >> i spoke earlier by the two-phased program. this is implemented through the neighborhood framework and we'll go into these neighborhoods in addition to others as nick suggested and create assessments. based on the assessments we'll see if they are prepared and have the interest and moving forward we'll choose 2-3 or 3-5 pilot projections where moving forward this will be implemented. >> so the funding is just for these? >> for the future, yes. >> great. thank you. any other commissioner comments? seeing none, let's take public comment. do we have any members of public who would like to make comments on item no. 3?
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step forward. >> public comment is limited to 3 minutes. we ask if you could kindly state your name, but you are not required to. >> yes, hello, my name is ryan thier, a community organizers with tmc and run the food justice campaign and served doing some of the project coordination with the tenderloin. i am glad to see this type of work going forward through supervisor mar's office and really sets the way of how i think legislation and support should be developed and working to expand that. it's really something that we need to support in san francisco for the access to foods in low-income communities in particular is really not at the standard it should be for a city as wealthy and as resource-rich as san francisco. it was really something we need to work on and makes sense for the merchants. a lot of
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conception or misconception that healthy food and fresh product is not profitable is not true. we surveyed over 640 residents living in the tenderloin and find out that they are spending out half their money each month on groceries outside of the neighborhood because they are not able to buy healthy food purchases in the stores. they have go to safeway and catch the bus and it's hard for people with disabilities and physical impairments. you have to search for healthy food products and we're guessing that people through the survey process, people are spending about $50 as half of their food budget and you extend that to 17,000
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households that is $9,000 leaving the neighborhood. we can do that with this type of work. thank you. >> thank you. any other members of the public? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners? commissioner dooley? >> i would like to thank supervisor mar and all of the departments for putting this together. i know you have been working a long time and it's such a worthy project. you know, i just think it's a fantastic thing and i hope you all have great success with this and we can expand this throughout the city. >> commissioner dwight. >> i would like to commend you. it sounds like you have a good team put together, a multi disciplinary team and who is to argue with the goal here? more power to you and good luck and i hope that you find some private partners to step up in those neighborhoods and help you out. i think you already have a few
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with the vested interest in the health of the citizens of san francisco. so good go for it. >> my time comment, i would definitely support this legislation. we are resource-rich here and the majority of healthy food here is grown within two hours of san francisco and there should be access in a lot of these neighborhoods. i also want to commend the department of public health and supervisor mar's office for reaching out to oewd and the department of public health, and the groceries association. i think it's wonderful and you did a great job. so do we want to make a motion on this one, anyone? >> i will make the motion to support it. >> second. >> chris? >> commissioners, i have a motion by commissioner yee
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riley to recommend approval of board of supervisors file no. 120996, administrative code healthy food retailer incentive program, seconded by commissioner dooley. on that motion, commissioner -- president adam [stph-fplz/] yes. >> commissioner dooley? >> yes. >> commissioner dwight? >> yes. >> commissioner brien is absent, commissioner ortiz-cartagena is absent. commissioner white? >> yes. >> commissioner yee riley? >> yes. >> that passes 5-0. >> thank you. next item, please >> commissioners that brings us up to all right 4 presentation and discussion on the mayor's invest in neighborhood program by jordan klein, office of economic and workforce development. >> welcome, jordan. >> thank you.
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good afternoon commissioners. thank you very much, jordan klein with the office of economic and workforce development. here to tell you about investment in neighborhoods which was actually referenced multiple times in the last preparation. i want to thank you for your time this afternoon. i know i have spoken to self of you individually about this program, but i think it's great to have the opportunity to present to the commission and i also want to acknowledge commissioner yee riley, who last summer served on the working group, the investment in neighborhoods working group, that helps to oversee the creation of this program. do you have my presentation in front of you? okay, great. i'm going to give you an overview of the program. the elements, the baseline services, the commercial district assessment and customized services and do some q&a. so essentially the
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mission of this program is our neighborhood commercial districts will thrive and it's born out of the mayor's commitment to economic development as a central platform of his administration. at the end of 2011, after he was elected to a full term, he directed our office to greatly expand the scope of our neighborhood economic development work. so we have been doing neighborhood economic development for years at oewds's economic development division and invest in neighborhoods represents an expansion in that work. i will tell you how it's different. a bunch of new things have happened, but we have done a way better job in partnering with other city agencies in leveraging resources to help neighborhoods and i think you just heard a great example of that. so this is where we're piloting the program in 25 neighborhood
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commercial district across the city. i will give you a handout at the end of the presentation that has this map. historically, we have worked in ten neighborhoods, ncd neighborhood commercial district across the city and this is a substantial expansion from 10 to 25 and this list was created based on feedback from the community stakeholders, the district supervisors and the mayor. so i want to talk to you about the theory in invest in neighborhoods and what makes up a healthy commercial district? obviously you want existing businesses to thrive and really meet the needs of local residents. you want attractive physical conditions, good-looking facades and trees high-quality of high, public safety and public health issues and we want community-based entitis that can advocate for their
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neighborhoods and can implement neighborhood improvement projects like merchants associations or also cbds. and there are so many city services that are related to these characteristics of healthy commercial districts and obviously oewd has a lot of services, but dph, dpw, et cetera there are so many city entitis that are deploying resources around commercial district in the city. one of my colleagues might go down to bayview to meet with merchants and find out that dpw was there the week before meeting with the merchants. so when we don't work together as effectively as we can, we sometimes duplicate each other's work or missing opportunities to leverage investment. so invest in neighborhoods is at its core, it's a framework for more
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effective deployment of city resources by organizing city departments so that we work together more effectively to respond to the specific needs and opportunities in each commercial district. that is "invest in neighborhoods." and i will tell you how we do that. there is basically three elements to invest in neighborhoods that i want to tell you about. baseline services, commercial district assessments and customized services. so "baseline" services are city programs that are available to all of the neighborhoods in invest in neighborhoods, where we're piloting the initiative. and i have a few up on the screen there that i'm going to quickly run through, but we have identified about 40 city services that we call "baseline services." any neighborhood, commercial district or small business can access these services. so oewd staff support and we have somebody in
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our invest in neighborhoods team identified as the liaison or point person for each of the 25 participating commercial districts. i am the point person for the excelsior and middle polk. jorge, who you just heard from in the last presentation is the point person for west portal and commercial districts in the sunset district. you might know chrissy, who is the point person for bayview and portola and it goes on, so each neighborhood has an advocate in city hall and it's really important, that advocate is staying on top of what is happening in the neighborhood and working with the agencies to get the district the support it needs. the job squad, for the first time, we have -- we have two guys who are pounding the pavement, conducting proactive outreach to small businesses around the city. sometimes we acknowledge that not everybody is going to walk down to city hall and come to
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the small business assistance center and talk to chris and regina and jane. there are a whole lot of business openers owners who are just going to stay many their business and maybe the only interaction they have with city hall is getting their tax bill and we want to change that so we're sending city staff out to connect them or even at the department of the environment, whatever services are most relevant to those businesses. so that is the job squad. storefront sf is our new web platform to track vacancies. so we're tracking retail vacancies all around the city. if you go storefrontsf.com, i
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was able to pop up the site. for each listing we have contact info, we have photos and we have more information. this is a brand-new program. we're really excited about it. we have gotten a lot of positive feedback from brokers, from small business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking for space. and so again, that is part of baseline services. we're trying to is deploy that in all 25 invest in neighborhoods corridors. we have a mini grant program, making small grants to neighborhood-based groups to implement neighborhood improvement projects. we have new loan products and we have community capacity-building projects. with training and workshops for neighborhood advocates, a merchant association leader who really wants to make a change in their neighborhood. i could give you an hour just on this one slide, but i'm not
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going to. i'm going to keep moving. that is "baseline services." so we're trying to get those is deployed to all of these 25 neighborhoods. the next element is "commercial district assessment." so the planning department and our office partnered and conducted a great deal of research on all 25 of these neighborhoods. it included looking at physical conditions, demographics, economic analysis. we looked at the vacancy rates and sales tax trends over time. does the neighborhood have a merchants association? do they have a neighborhood association? do they have a cbd? we conducted stakeholder interviews and surveys. from all of that information and research, we are creating a profile, a snapshot of current conditions for each of these
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neighborhoods. i left my snapshot of the lower 24th neighborhood district on my desk, but they include maps of neighborhood assets and specific strengths and challenges in each neighborhood. a list of the key partners in each neighborhood. it's a treasure trove of information. we have released at this point nine of them at oewd.org. we're distributing them to neighborhood partners, gathering feedback. i hope to have all 25 of them done this summer. and these are intended really twofold. no. 1 to be a resource for community members who are really stakeholders for these communitis and no. 2 they are intended to inform the deployment of city resources and the resources of our partners as well. because based on results of these assessments we're going to create a customized plan for each of the 25 neighborhoods.
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this slide is a map of the process by which we're going to come up with this plan. so you see it starts in the upper left with the assessment. based on all of that analysis, our team of oewd staff working with our partners and other city agencies are going to come up some ideas, just a list of ideas. how could we respond to these conditions on the ground? what should we be deploying? based on all the tools that we have in our toolkit? and keep in mind, what are the economic needs? what existing social capital is there in the community for us to work with? what opportunities for economic growth are there? based on that, we're going to come up with a draft plan that we review with three very important stakeholder groups. first of all is of course the community. and that might entail one-on-one stakeholder interviews that might mean community meetings, focus
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groups. i know for example, tonight there is a community meeting on lower 24th street to talk about their draft, customized plan. so working closely with community members and you know, wherever we can -- wherever this can be driven by community members we want that to happen. we would much rather see a merchant's association driving this work than city hall driving it. realistically there is not going to be that level of capacity in all the 25 neighborhoods. but where there is that capacity, we really want to leverage it and lean on these community partners and make it happen of we're also working very closely with the district supervisors relevant to each of the neighborhoods and finally making sure that we get all the right city people in the room. the the customized service tools are some of the tools that oewd is deploying, but in
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a lot of cases they are resourced by other city agencies. in the excelsior, they need a streetscape plan and need investment in a streetscape overhaul and there been the planning department and dpw and mta that are going to be the prime drivers of, not oewd, but my role as the point person for the excelsior at oewd is kind of making sure that that happens. so customized service plans. we'll have 25 customized service plans, one for each of these neighborhoods later this year that will definitely inform the mayor's budget priorities and it's going to inform how we do things here. so a couple of examples of "customized services." that healthy retailer program you just heard about. that is a new tool in our toolkit that we're really excited to deploy and the thing about customized services these are the things that will not be
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deployed in every neighborhood. in part because we don't have the neighborhood and also not every neighborhood needs a healthy retailer program. if there is a food desert, they need it, but if there are a bunch of grocery stores and produce markets we won't deploy that. historically we used a little bit of cookie-cutter approach, but since we're expanding our geographic focus, we're responding to specific needs in each neighborhood. a couple of examples of is ss shines and the community-based corridors, which has led to the creation of cbds, which is great. our ada program. and a few others, but also as i mentioned we're also working
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with these other city agencies. this is just random examples of other city services that we're going to is deploy as customized services in the neighborhoods, but we actually have a list of over 100 different services in our toolkit that we're going deploy strategically. right now we're finishing the neighborhood profiles to develop and implement customized plans and identify benchmarks for achievement and then for some of these neighborhoods, graduate them from the program. so that we can cycle through other neighborhoods and make it a citywide program eventually. and then we're working with the controller's office to develop a plan to evaluate the initiative and identify specific quantitative and qualitative metrics that we use to see how we're doing. and refine the program accordingly. so i am happy to
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take your questions. i know that was a lot of material that i just threw at you. we would love it if you would follow us on twitter and we have a newsletter that we just launched a couple of months ago. so if you want to keep track of what we're doing, and we really appreciate your support. >> commissioners, any questions for jordan? commissioner riley? >> jordan, congratulations. you make excellent powerpoint graphs and so happy to see the end result, so much more than when i started with the group at the beginning. i remember we were at a outreach committee and commissioner dooley and i were trying to tackle the vacancy situation and we actually took a camera to go to different neighborhoods to take pictures and all of that. so with your automatic tracking system, it's really helpful. so do you have any like ballpark number of how many vacancies in the city?
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>> well we have 130 listings, and storefrontsf.com right now. we're listing all of the retail vacancies currently available for lease, some of them for purchase. it's actually indicated whether it's "lease/purchase," or both in some cases. so we have about 130/135 and most of those are within our invest in neighborhood-commercial districts. so we're trying to track all of them within our 25 corridors and then anyone who wants to post a vacancy, citywide, no matter where it is, they can post them there. so we have a number that are from outside of the area. so the greater challenge are the vacancies that aren't available for lease and there are a
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number of reasons why they are not available for lease. a non-conforming use like storage or housing. in some cases, the space is not up to code, either it requires, i don't know, ada or electrical or plumbing upgrades that the owner is unabe unable or unwilling to make, sometimes just because the project doesn't pencil. the return on the lease the numbers just don't add up. you know, then we also hear reports and concerns about speculation. so people holding out for higher rents and absentee landlords who just aren't possible to get a hold of, and so the space remains. so right now we don't have great numbers about how widespread that problem really is, either of those two
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problems that i just mentioned. that is one reason we have storefrontsf up and running so it will form polices on what we can do to address those issues. you know, i would say that 130, we have -- an average we have about 4, 5 vacancies in each of our 25 commercial districts. those are the ones that are listed and available. i would say and this is really off the top of my head, but for every vacancy listed, there is another one that isn't, i would say. so extrapolate that number and if i had to guess, 300, around city, maybe. >> that kind of makes sense. thank you. >> commissioner dooley.
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>> actually i was going to bring up the long-term vacancies also, because i consider it one of the biggest blight problems in all of our neighborhoods and when we worked on this, there are a lot of them and many them have been closed for 25 years. so i am hoping that you guys start to think about a way to address that long-term blight. my other question is, so have all 25 neighborhoods been contacted by their community outreach person? >> well, when you say "how do you contact a neighborhood?" i think that is a great question. we do have staff, each of the liaisons, if there is a neighborhood association, or a merchants association, or a cbd, they have definitely made that contact. >> you might want to check on that, by the way okay. >> because i am the president of the north beach business
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