>> >> >> >> october 6, 2014, >> city of san francisco >> small business commission

>> stand and the please stand by... >> >> city of san francisco

>> small business commission >> please stand by... roll

call. item no. 1, roll call. president adam. catherine dooley is absent. commissioner mark dwight. here. commissioner white? here. >> commissioner paul sarkissian? >> here. irene yee riley. mr. president you have a quorum. >> great. next item, please. >> next item is general public comment. >> do we have any members of the public who would like to make any comments on items that are not on today's agenda. we have one. welcome, mr. appender

>> hello, i'm a proud member of the association. on monday november 10th we will be celebrating at the opera house. i brought invitations for those who may want to participate in this historic event and at a future meeting governor jerry brown just signed the ab 78 which lgbt businesses have now been included in the california public utilities. and this is now an opportunity for

lgbt businesses and if you would allow us to make a presentation on that legislation, that would be great. >> absolutely, thank you. any other members of the public who would like to comment on items that are not on agenda ? seeing none. public comment is closed. i want to hold onto item 3. i will agendaized number 3. >> i would like to thank sf sf gov. tv. san francisco television for going live in this room. if you do plan to speak, we have speaker cards in the front.

you are not required to do speaker cards but it helps in terms of the meeting minutes. that is the end of my announcements. >> thank you. so let's skip to item no. 4. item no. 4 we do not have a presentation today by the office of the city administrator, however it is agendaized and i will call public comment on item no. 4. city clerk: mr. president, for the public and the commission to know that the legislative sponsor both the city administrator and mr. chiu's office requested today that this item be continued to the october 27th meeting. so with that we'll take public comment. if there is any public that is here tonight to speak on this

matter. any member for public comment on item no. 4, discussion and possible action to recommend to the board of supervisors file 140999 local business program. >> scott haucke. a quick comment. this is a very significant item and i think it's really important to the small business community that many of these actions get put into effect and want to encourage you to support this and want to work out any of the bugs. what's really important is that we need to have the departments buy into this. if they don't get buy in, it

won't work and part of the problem is data information. i think one of the forgsz informations you should push for is to collect the data. >> right. thank you. any other members of the public? seeing none, public comment is closed. next item. city clerk: item no. 5. discussion and possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors on file no. 140919 health code gas station bathrooms an ordinance amending the health code requiring the gas station provide bathroom facilities for men and women. today you have a presentation by the legislative aid to supervisor mark farrell. >> good evening. i'm here tonight to talk

about our gas station proposed ordinance. i will give some context to give some light on how to ordinance came to be and i will talk about the current law in place and the simple changes that we are requesting. back in february stemming from supervisor farrell's work and the non-profit government foundation they helped the city build a platform for the city's website code called san francisco code and we have a grant for city graduates to interact with the laws that they felt were outdated to interact with the policy issues that they cared significantly about. this law is coming from direct feedback wechl had a student at san francisco state go on this platform and suggest that this code

was outdated. the current law states that gas stations must provide a bathroom facility, one for men and one for women. san francisco state felt it was outdated and supervisor farrell agreed. the current law we are proposing is a current law. which is to strike the dual bathroom requirements and i think supervisor farrell recognizes that these are small franchisee owners and we wanted to eliminate an onerous requirement on them and just simply state that city law states that they should provide one unisex bathroom for their customers to use at any given time. that's the simple change. it's a two page ordinance. we humbly ask for your support tonight and we are happy to answer any additional questions you may have. >> any questions? >> are there going to be anymore gas stations in san francisco? >> i was going to say in the

san francisco chronicle today where a lot of the gas stations are being used to develop their housing crisis but given many of the franchisee owners, we felt he was the an onerous requirement and this is a broader context of using new technological tools to help better civic engagement to help our city to better interact with law codes and this is another example in our office to be accountable to them. >> any questions? okay, we are going to public comment. do we have any members of the public who would like to make comment on item no. 5? seeing none, commissioners? >> i move this part of legislation as it's written. >> roll call? city clerk: commissioner adams, aye,

commissioner dwight, aye, commissioner ortiz, yes, sarkissian? yes, and riley? yes. congratulations. that motion passes. >> i know this is one of the most contentious pieces that will come. next item, please. city clerk: item no. 6 discussion and possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors on file no. 141006 interim zoning controls new ground floor office uses facing second street requiring conditional use authorization for new office use facing second street from king to folsom street to 18 months and make

environmental findings policies wtd planning code. tonight for you, commissioners is april a legislative aid from supervisor jane kim making the presentation to you. >> welcome. >> good evening commissioners again my name is april from supervisor kim's office and it's around the second street and while the central soma planning process is taking place. the in intent of these interim control are small businesses that are faced with various displacement pressures related to the hot market currently. the idea is to promote and stabilize second street in emerging region retail corridor and providing stability to small businesses that are on the ground floor on second street. our office has been

working with members of the south beach merchant's association on this legislation. i think there was a recent poll that stated that 91 percent of voters believe it was important to protect small businesses and artist from being displaced by development. these controls will help us continue the work of the development controls and the planning department and the south beach association. it's intended to promote the character and art spaces as well. the south of market continues to face tremendous growth thanks to the proximity downtown and existing and proposed transit. this growth is important for the city and the residents there and yet there needs to be preservation and enhancement of ground floor neighboring serving retail that makes this area attractive to residents in

their workers. >> i like that. questions? commissioner riley? >> are there any vacancies now? >> i'm not sure about the vacancies. >> i don't think so. i live on that street. any vacancies that had been there are currently being renovated for restaurants. >> or office. >> mostly restaurants right now i think. i'm actually curious that there is pressure to put offices on the ground floor. >> for a point of information, our office has received calls from a couple of businesses as a result of that. >> it doesn't surprise me. >> you want to take public comment first on this. if anybody doesn't have anymore questions? let's take public comment on

item no. 6. city clerk: i have one speaker card. patrick pal tino. vlp law group. >> good evening, my name is patrick valentino, the president of the south mission bay business association and we've seen a significant amount of growth in our area of south beach. we certainly welcome the growth of cannabis -- of business and residential and however some have already been threatened on the ground floor. from a landlord perspective they can pay more dollars per square foot. we are trying to preserve that storefront space. we want to do it in a manner that doesn't necessarily inflict

pain in the small landlords in the area but a storefront that is essentially a door that you can open and walk in and that can serve as a variety of uses from a basic retail as well. merchants cannot just compete with a lot of the dollars per square foot that we are seeing in some of these leases. you have venture back small and mature companies coming into area which is extremely hot market with a lot of commercial brokers referred to it as just a ground zero for one of the hottest places to be in san francisco. i also live there so i'm also a neighbor and second street can be dark at times. we have some spaces that are in flux and we have some merchants under pressure as their leases come up. i think this is a very timely legislation and we would be

extremely appreciative of your support to get this passed through interim controls and move forward with the more developed legislation for permanent controls. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please? >> good evening, commissioners, nilo with the business association. what makes for a vibrant thriving community is foot traffic. what happens is people come into office and they come out for lunch and they are gone. and that said, sir, the whole area really becomes very quiet. it really doesn't help the community. i think it's very important that we have and support not just existing businesses but also we encourage new businesses to move into these areas south of south beach area. we do have more of that activity and as i have said at the end of

the day the community is going to benefit from it, it's not just the store owners but everybody there to be able to go to a place, sit down and relax and be able to meet others. i urge you to support this. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good evening commissioners. >> i'm sorry, i'm having difficulty. can you hold on a moment. >> good evening commissioners, i'm alice rodgers, the vice-president of the board of the south beach mission bay neighborhood association. the association has worked together with the merchant's association to try to help develop this legislation and we encourage you to support this as patrick and henry said before

me, this is really a motion dest effort but an important effort to try to maintain the neighborhood serving businesses that exist now and toen currently en -- encourage going forward. south beach area is a new neighborhood emerging and trying to serve smaller businesses that are on the ground floor and we are looking for legislation that will address this ground floor scale and encourage the kind of activity that's important for sort of cross fertilization and community building while not sacrificing returns for landlords and we are looking for ways to do that so offices that have large floor

plate might subdivide and have the smaller area occupied by a small business but the rear floor can be a high rent business. and another thing that we are really after is activating open windows and transparency. what's happening with so many of the offices that are coming in are high rent payers put on shades and dead ens the sidewalk. we urge your support. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please? >> hungry? you can order online. >> my name is nate, the owner of american cheese. i was asked to speak about how this can be

beneficial for retail restaurants and fortunately we recently took quite a bit of negotiations and we have good landlords and we reached a deal with them but at a major cost. my rent is going over 50 percent and i pay more than higher than most in the area. the grilled kitchen is where it's going to stay. we've seen many other retailers pushed out and residents pushed out for developments of more commercial, mostly office space and negotiations with my landlord and hearing other stories, the general consensus is, we can get an office tenant and flip this rental property so it doesn't matter. so what we are seeing is a lot of these developers and property

owners don't even live in san francisco. the damage that is happening to these sort of neighborhoods as far as the vibrant community that people want to live in and be in and walking, it's damaging. these people don't even live there and they are setting the terms for who gets to operate there and who gets to enjoy it. for me as a restaurant business, for me there will be many more people coming in to my business because we offer food and beverages. we almost lost a lease because we couldn't come to an agreement. we've seen other places close their doors, we have seen art gallery shutter because they couldn't come to an agreement with their landlord and we have agreed to their demands and it

works for us. it's hard because i can see it in both ways but there needs to be something that protects the viability of these business in the small neighborhoods. to speak about how this business impacts mine, that we love these businesses coming in, but they are not there on the weekends. they don't leave the offices. our actual revenues are down this year, lowest ever. why in because they get catering. our catering revenues are up, but the actual people walking up and down the streets is down because they sit in their offices. >> thank you. any other public comment? seeing none, commissioners, i just going to say for myself i personally support this.

i actually do shop jeremy's and i would be devastated if they moved anywhere else. you have grilled cheese factory and i see what's going on over there too because when i do go over there whether it's to go eat or shop or visit friends, it does get dark in certain parts of that corridor. and this is important to maintain in my opinion the vibe sea -- vibrancy of that neighborhood. >> i totally agree. i have lived in that area for seven 1/2 years so i'm very familiar with that spot between 7th street and market street. i think it's really important