and i don't think that, i will go into that any more. but, it is, there are... and one example, is like subway sandwiches too and not just grocery stores and he did not do food, did he other goods. but any way there are neighborhoods where they wanted a subway sandwich and it is an afford option and it is formula retail. and another hurtle, that we are trying to solve for, is the ability to fill long term large footprint vacantcy and many of you that have the study and there was an example there that commissioner adams knows and ocean avenue and walgreens space and there are challenges attracting a new tenant and the study pointed out that in cases like that it is possible that the regulation on the formula retail will make it even harder and finally, we want to make sure that there are as many opportunities as possible for small home-grown business to

grow and multiply and create more entrepreneur opportunity and more jobs, any job, whether it is formula retail, or whether it is not. it is still something that is important to the city. and so, we agree with the planning department, that adding the subsitary criteria right now would not only be a bureaucratic challenge, but would also stifle the local economic growth, opportunities. thank you. >> now, commissioner questions, commissioner dooley? >> i wanted to ask about can you give me the details on if a business corridor does not allow any formula retail, the new planning that you are suggesting, does that mean that any business that has under 20, it will not be considered formula retail any more? >> that is correct, let's say that north beach, where there is a prohibit of formula

retail, if it changes to 20 locations the businesses that now have less than 20 locations that perhaps more than 11, would no longer be considered form formula retail. >> at the planning commission hearing last month, at the end of the meeting your department stated that they were going to meet with stake holders since the majority of the people there spoke about their problems with raising this threshold to 20 and the subsitaries, as far as i have known that has not been done, is this and it looks like the same plan as was presented there,; is that correct?? >> that is correct. it is the same that was proposed to the planning commission, we have not done a coordinated fourth round of focus group meetings we have been meeting with the groups individually as they approach us to discuss this. >> yes. >> and hi, anmarie rogers again and this is an effort that is

an unfunded effort from the planning department and it is something that we were supposed to do in a quick time frame of three months and we spent the time and kanishka has a full load in addition to working with us and for this particular project, the vast majority of the out reach depends upon the public hearings just like this public hearing as well as we have been able to do some limited stake holder groups, we also since the last planning commission hearing that you were at commissioner dooley, we did offer to meet with groups and we have the pending groups that we will be talking with and some of them over the phone and some with the individuals in person and certainly, e-mails and so if you know of the interested parties that would like to talk to us about it, we would love to make that connection. >> any other commissioner comments? >> okay, let's do a public

comment here. mr. president, i have two speaker cards, in addition just to remind the commissioners i shared several items of written public comment submitted prior to the meeting and one did arrive just prior to this meeting from mitchell berg in opposition to this proposal. and so with that we will go to the speaker cards, first we have daniel macarine. >> hi. my name is dan macarini and my business is macarini creative design which was formed in 1948 by my father and now spans three generations as i work with my daughter proudly and we are the largest ongoing metal arts studio combined with a gallery in the united states, for modernist design. and i am also a board member and i am speaking on behalf today of my association of north beach business association. and recently, our board reviewed the proposal for you

this commission to redesign what cons taouts a small business as opposed to a corporate chain and took a very rare unanimous vote opposing any alteration in the current definition, further it is my understanding that it is the mandate of this small business commission, to support small business and not corporate chain stores. and in light of that, it behoofs this commission to not raise it from eleven to 90 or 30 or 50 or whatever it is that is the flavor of the day that some corporation may want you to do. and if these corporations are so popular, it should be easy for them to currently get a conditional use permit. and if there are problems and complaints concerning the length of time that it takes to go through the permit process, then reform of the planning department is needed to improve

and stream line their systems, not just letting more corporate businesses open with no oversight at all. and most important, it is appalling to allow the corporate spin offs, not to even to have to apply for a conditional use permit, and as if they are independent. and as if this proposal will do. and corporate chains have significant financial clout that no real independent does, and it must be considered a subsitary of the parent chain, and thus, required for you to gain a conditional use permit and otherwise, even the neighborhoods that banned the chain stores like north beach can fall victim to what is actually a corporate business opening while not be considered legally a chain. >> finally this is critical for the neighborhoods who have worked very hard to create and

retain the unique personals who do not want to be invaded by corporate businesses this is just a loophole for the big business and could lead to san francisco being turned into one giant formula strip mall and the complete destruction of the small and medium businesses along with the unique cultural character, whispering to our neighborhoods and our city as a whole. and defend small business, and neighborhood businesses, and please vote know on this proposal. >> next speaker, please? >> our next speaker card was from susan landry if she is in the audience please? >> good evening commissioner and director and i need to follow that. i can ditto everything that he just said. but for me, i am with a small business of the animal connection in san francisco. and in the marina and we have

been there since 1986. and there are principles worth standing up for when one does not stand up for these principles the ones with the conscience, probably will not sleep at night, and probably will end upstanding up any way. given that, the principles that concern me are what this gentleman before me just said. was that going from eleven to 20 makes no sense at all and who picked out this number. and the subsitaries, and the spin offs i mean, really? i mean, who thinks of of these things? and we are paying these people to do this. and it is, you know, it is unjust, and it is not something that is in the independent stores plan. and i for one, would love to have you know, a sit down, i

will be at a meeting and i am willing to go to a meeting to give some feedback, i mean, just, reach out to us, let us know. because, it is, it is just not what san francisco needs, san francisco is unique, in order with the spin offs if you allow them in, as independents, what is the point of having a planning commission? a planning department? any more? it is like, everybody is going to play this game and it is, and the ones that are going to... the one that is going to lose is san francisco. and the one that is going to lose is the small business commission. and because there will not be a need for the small business commission because there will not be any small businesses left so please have a conscience and vote for independent businesses.

thank you. >> another speaker card? >> so speakers in order, please? thank you. >> welcome. >> thank you. >> i am deedee, workman with the chamber of commerce, we put together a working group to discuss formula retail, and the working group was made up of small businesses, and large retailers with the meeting for more than a year to discuss the proposed changes. to study them, come up with our own recommendation and we are pleased with the planning department's recommendations and with the proposed ordinance and we think that it is very balanced and we appreciate the resources that went into the study so that policies could be crafted and recommended based on data, and research. and which means with these recommendations are. and based on facts, rather than antedotes or you know people's ideas of what the impacts might be and they really studied the impacts and so we are appreciative of that and in terms of the specific points,

we very much support the proposal to raise the threshold from eleven to 20. before a business is considered formula retail, and we feel that that does give small local businesses the ability to grow, and modestly, really before they fall under the definition of formula retail, but it still captures the large and the super large retailers that these policies were meant to, and they were intended for and so we do support that. we also support planning decision not to include the subsitary and that really mostly comes from hearing, the planning department staff, and john ram and scott sanchez say that provision is unenforcable by the planning staff and so we will defer to them on that. >> we think that it is a good idea to perhaps, reconsider that atms will be considered under the formula retail and that the atms help the small businesses because the folks can get the cash out of the

atms that they spent in the small businesses in the local neighborhoods and particularly in small businesses that don't accept bank cards or only accept them over a minimum purchase. we think that the people who get the cash are spent in the small business and so we will ask that that provision be reconsidered and we also, we question whether it is a good idea to include, international locations and in the threshold of formula retail, i mean, you know, san francisco is an international world class shopping destination, and i think that it is short-sighted to say that international chains, or stores would need to go through the conditional use process and we think that will discourage them from coming here and go someplace else. beyond that we are appreciative of the planning efforts here

and we do support their conclusions thank you. >> thank you, next speaker please? >> good evening, mr. president, and commissioners i am here on behalf of boma san francisco and we too participate in the chamber working group and we share, the chamber's support of the planning department's proposal. and we think that it is incredibly well thought out and it is well vetted as miss rogers or burns alluded to, there were focus groups, with various people in them and i know that they set them up so that they will have all sides of the issue in one room and working step wise with the planning department staff and the consultants and came up again with the balance and i don't want to abuse that word, but it is a balanced approach. >> what i want to focus on is that i am a land use lawyer and it is incredibly unusual when you see a piece of legislation driven by this much data, i mean a real drill down, let's look at what the data sources say, and let's try to assess

the impacts kind of analysis, and so in, and the number 1 1 to the clear, came out of thin air and i don't think that anybody who historically has been around formula retail and the planning department with point to any source where the number eleven came from it was truly pulled out of thin air and here we are after a month long study with a lot of public input and a lot of analysis with the number 20 really does represent something and as miss burns said as well, we mo*fd up to 50 again, and we would not have that kind of tremendous impacts and i think that there is a lot to be said for standing behind the number 20 as getting us to where we want to be as a diverse economy in san francisco and as they said and the department said, if we can, and we want to encourage our phil and our lee and soup company and we want to have the businesses grow, and move beyond san francisco, and the greater bay area and perhaps northern california,. and i think that the related issue of the subsidiaries is the same and we want to have the subsidiaries that are made

by people that are creative like super duper and the other restaurants that are owned by that same entity and we want to have that in san francisco because that is what makes us san francisco. and, to reiterate what the folks have said, you cannot with any ease or facility always follow the chain of a corporate entity and so from an enforcement standpoint, these guys are not the security and exchange commission, they are land use planners, what their focus really is on is land use and tax and to the credit the main things that come out of the proposal is the aesthetics because that is really where much of the objections to the formula retail, i think comes from in many of the neighborhoods is, the formula retail, the facade do not fit in with the neighborhood character and i think that the proposal will enhance that and we will actually see some wonderful formula retail stores coming out of that process and the people will go, oh, that is a chain store i didn't know. with that i thank you.

>> next speaker please? >> hi, commissioners, my name is jay change and i am here representing the san francisco board realtors and we are representing over 4,000 agents and from 4,000 small business owners, and each real estate practice is its own company. we are here because our livelihood is depending on connecting people to the neighborhood character that fits them best. and so our interest in having the merchant corridors that are vibrant and exciting and diverse and unique and so in that, and in that vein we are here to support in the recommendation and i echo the previous comments, 11 to 20 is really a smart decision and it is data driven and it shows that the beloved institutions like blue bottle coffee can grow and establish themselves before becoming larger

institutions and limiting the subways and the places that make the corridors boring and the second that i think this we want to talk about is the conditional use and the expansion of conditional use, and it takes into account the neighborhood and the retail uses and it is over all a smarter program for us to put, our small business people through. the one thing that we would like to caution around is the expansion of the formula retail use to include business and professional services and we speak that because the real estate broker actually does fall into the business and professional services and we know the damage that can cause, we sell merchant care, and in the neighborhood character and our architecture reflect that and we believe that we have some of the most interesting storefronts that you can find in the city, having us put on the formula retail use severely limits our ability to do that and our ability to do good business and we are

neighborhood centric institution and we help to find the people in the neighborhood in which we serve and so for us, we believe that we provide a real service, the current and future residents there. and finally, we fill large vacantcies that are difficult to be filled anywhere else, van guard on mission street filled an abandoned bank, no one else but a bank have filled that space, and we fill in the large vacantcies that will normally become a blight upon the neighborhood and we believe that we fill a unique role in that. so we encourage you to broadly support the planning commission's recommendations and also carefully consider the expansion of the formula retail to business and professional services thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> welcome again. >> thank you. >> my name is joan wood, and i live in north beach, and i have lived there since continuously since 1962, and i represent a

whole lot of people just like me, that love the character of north beach, however, it seems to me that north beach has recently been discovered by the powers that be in the city hall and it has become yours and others favorite neighborhood also. however, this proposal seems directly aimed at us, and it was definitely change the character of north beach, i see no virtue in it whatsoever, except including formula retail in the proposal, just directly aimed at in the independent businesses or mr. macarini said something kind of obvious he thinks that you are here to help small businesses. i really have not thought about it that way. but i hope that he is right and i hope that you will listen to people like me. we have lost our hardware stores and we have lost shoe repair and that does not sound

related to this proposal but i am getting at the changes that are happening to north beach for reasons like the proliferation of formula retail and also high rents and other agencies that besides planning, mr. ron who runs a planning, and he is from seattle. and i don't know if he remembers it, it is a very pleasant city and i think that it is character is very nice, but he seems to have forgotten that in the plans for north beach. we previously had a district supervisor that lived on tell graph hill and he seemed to understand very well what was important about saving the character of north beach. where the district supervisor now who does not live in north beach, is on polk street and he has already found that the polk street merchants did not agree with his planning to remove parking and i just intreat you to not approve this except for

including the foreign firms and in addition to that, would i like to inquire why walgreens has never fallen into formula retail, it seems to me that there seems to be dozens of them and a new one went up a half a block away from where i live, why don't they fall under this, and starbucks, recently bought, and it is the name that pretends to be french but it isn't. , it is on stockton street and it is a chain also, and it is a locally started chain, i don't think that they reached the number ten, but starbucks bought it and they are forbidden for coming into north beach and they own it and everyone knows that, what are the controls on this, please, please don't approve this, there is no reason for it, the planning commission has already told you that it has been working very well and we would like to keep our neighborhood the way that it is, thank you. >> next speaker, please?

>> thanks, very much, commissioners, my name is stan haze, my wife and i live on tell graph hill. and i am vice president of the board of the tell graph hill lawyers and i am here on behalf of phd along with the colleagues to ask you to take a close look at the formula retail changes that are before you. we all know that north beach and the areas like it in this city are special. they are unique. there are so special and unique that formula retail uses are expressly prohibited by the city planning code and that claims that formula retail can hamper the retail diversity and personality and risk the loss of the very neighborhood character and individuality that we seek to protect. but the changes good reasons these are, and by phd and many others, have opposed formula retail so strongly in the past, and still do. if the changes before you the

prohibition against the formula retail in north beach will not change and that is good. but the changes how many, companies there are who are able to slip through that prohibs hab beer will increase and that is bad, and the changes that is week in the law, and from eleven to 20 establishments exempting outside and larger corporations and their spin offs. that they should really be viewed as formula retail not in the way that they are proposed in the changes to the law, otherwise large corporations who want to open a brick and mortar location, for example, would not be considered formula retail, even though they already have multimillion-dollar catalog and on on-line process. and the spin off like black fleece, a spin off of brooks

brothers, or jack spade, a spin off of kate spade, and be viewed as formula retailers either. so i would like to ask you to please, help to protect north beach. and neighborhood businesses throughout the city, by keeping the exemption, or keeping intact, the 11 business threshold that is currently in the code. and please don't endorse, weakening formula safe guards that are currently in place, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> good evening f, my name is paul weber. >> could you use the microphone. >> could you use this. >> my name is paul weber and i also live in north beach. and i am a member of tell graph

hill dwellers and one thing to keep in mind if you would when considering this, is that tell graph hill dwellers is made up of not only businesses but the people who live there. and live like living there because of the uniqueness of the character of north beach. so, we are very supportive of our local businesses, and i have some comments about that. but, this is not just a business issue, this is a way of life issue for many, many people who live in north beach. and indeed, the value of their properties, in north beach are in part, influenced by the uniqueness of the character in north beach. and so please do keep that in mind when you are considering this. now, as to the proposal itself, i would like to address just two issues. one, the number. and two, the so-called spin off. with respect to the number, according to the representatives here today from the city, the increasing the number does not make much

difference. if that is true, why change it? what is to be gained by putting at risk the possibility of some very good but very small businesses having to compete with others who perhaps are larger and more aggressive? and if it, ain't broke don't fix it and it doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to do so. secondly, with respect to subsidiary and frankly that is a lot of nonsense that they can't be tracked of course they can, and the city is not in a position to draft something, i would be happy to help them. so, to just basically write off all subsidiaries of what is a major corporation in the retail business, whether it is through electronic means or brick and mar tar, if they want to come into san francisco, in an area such as north beach. they have to be counted and

this is not a difficult problem, believe me, this is something that those practicing in corporate law for many, many years have dealt with over and over and over again. believe me, folks, it is not difficult issue to resolve. so coming back again, remember, those of us who are here tonight, from tell graph hill dwellers are here for the neighbors as well as the businesses secondly, please leave the number eleven, the greater number is advancing the ball in such degree, and finally, please do include, subsidiaries whether they are domestic or foreign, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> i am having trouble with the secretary terminal and so i will be tracking your three minutes and three minutes i will give you a signal and i will give you another signal. >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners,

my name is beta pery and i am the president of the tell graph hill dwellers, you have both the vice president and the president as well as the board members that you have the senior officers from the oldest and most historic neighborhood to talk to you, because this issue is so important to us. and the tell graph hill dweller has over 600 members and our boundaries include, north beach, north water front and some of the most historic areas in all of san francisco. so i am here tonight, representing our membership, because there are two key flaws with what are being proposed to you tonight, before i get to that substance, i want to address some of the comments that i have heard from staff, presentations. which seem a little bit incongruent, and one comment was that the changes that are being proposed are around the edges, this is not changing a nail polish colors, or a lip stick colors, changing the

number of stores in the definition of form law retail goes to the heart of this entire legislation. we are driving a stake in and changing that. and if it does not stay at 20, what is to say that another year from now, there will be a push to change it up to 50? we have heard that number floated today several times it is not changes around the edges these are fundamental changes. >> we are talking about changes to the voter bill and proposition g which enacted the formula retail legislation was voted on and won by i think that it was a 58 to 42 percentage back in 200 1k36 so when i heard all of this good stuff there is a lot of data and the number 1 1 is made up and 20 is not made up and it is based on solid data. eleven was based on the voter will, if these folks here, and this commission are willing to override voter will, there is a problem. and i am asking everyone talk about taking a pause, to take a

pause here. this issue of eleven to 20, is critical. it cannot be just overlooked it cannot just be swept over on the guides of data and i also saw that the chamber of commerce was here and which is great and the other folks here and the tell graph hill dwellers we have not had any out reach and this process was going on for a year and i don't know how we got left out of the process, we are one of the big organization theres is a lot of work to be done and conversations to be had this to me is just the beginning. >> so on the issue of the spin off that is another critical issue to us and these are two key issues that we are bringing to you tonight, on the issues of the spin off and we saw the super burger, powerpoint slide and i understand that one, but how does that account for things like black fleece, i think was the name and it is a brooks brother spin off which will be allowed into the neighborhood and how does that account for athleta which is a gap spin off