and mir -- more uses an that being said there's a vibrant business there that has community support and serving the community. if this were a vacant space or serving the community, i think i would support the creation of another space for a small business to come in and potentially thrive. but i have to say i've been moved by public comment and the voice of the community and so i'm really taking into account and weighing it as a make my decision but i'd love to open it up and hear what other commissioners have to say. >> commissioner: commissioner. >> thinking back to the comments earlier during the meeting about

how there's an issue of food security and i'm puzzled by the process why this owner would apply for a c.u. with an existing tenant of a business that it thriving. it's puzzling to me. almost looking to us for an eviction and i don't feel it's supportive and i will not be supporting this project. >> commissioner: mr. fong. >> i'm not sure i'm giving it a different approach but i'll give my thoughts and i live close to the site outside of the 500 foot radius but close. as you guys know we live in a great area. this store does serve a lot of people but we don't live in a produce desert.

we have clement street possibly one of the best produce streets in the world and gary boulevard and some markets within a block of the location. while i agree it's convenient we're know in a produce desert. also, i'll throw out california street in particular, as you guys know is going through a restaurant renaissance in a good way and maybe a bad way. i think some restaurants coming online are a little bit higher end. i think there's room for medium end things we can all enjoy the store across from angelina's a nice store it's difficult not knowing what the concept will be in the space and an understand the question about the order in which this is coming to us. generally we have some idea what the operator's going to be or the what the storefront will be or if it has a grocery component

next to a restaurant use for a cafe. i'm puzzled by that but would love to learn more. but we have lost restaurants and lost pot sauce and pinko and worried we'll lose cafe bizarre which plays music. i'm supportive of this but would love to learn more about it. i do think that grocery stores add to community. i also think restaurants and cafes add to community. for those who have just walked around the pearl you maybe have complained about it but felt that buzz and you maybe have bumped into neighbors you haven't bumped in to before. and you may have met new people in that block so it's giving good excuse to get out and about and share a glass of wine with somebody or whatever.

i do think restaurants can be great community builders. >> commissioner: commissioner moore. >> it's rare that contradictory comments from commissioners both sound right but i'm responding to commissioner johnson and melgar because what commissioner fong says supports my idea that restaurants are more vulnerable and it's very difficult for this city to attract small grocery stores. it's almost impossible. we have many neighborhoods asking for us to support it but we never can. having said that, the ability for this restaurant operator to find vacant space or potentially line up a space which may not succeed as a restaurant is enough reason to want to support what works -- if it works don't fix it. that means encouraging the current small grocery to stay where it is, find continued

support of the community to thrive, makes improvements which some people don't see at the moment and support the applicant to find a new location. i'm indeed against supporting the current application and encouraging the applicant to find another location and encourage the owner of the building to support the current tenant. >> commissioner: do we have a motion to -- do we have to do an intent. >> we provide the opportunity to draft the motion. >> a motion of intent to deny. >> second. >> commissioner: continue to december 13th. >> yes. >> commissioner: very good. commissioners, there's a motion seconded to adopt a motion of intent to disapprove and

continue this matter to december 13th, 2018. on that motion, commissioner fong. >> commissioner: no. >> commissioner moore. >> aye. >> commissioner melgar. >> aye. >> commissioner: so moved the commissioner goes. item 18 for case 2017-007943cua commission authorization. >> if you're here for item 19, 20, 14th or 16th street or green street, those items have been continued. so we won't be hearing those today. >> we are now on item 18. 3848 24th street.

>> good afternoon, president hillis and commissioners and department staff. the case before you is a request for conditional use authorization for the legalization of an existing real estate brokerage doing business as the agency. within an approximately 903 square foot tenant space of a three-story mixed use building. the proposed real estate brokera brokerage will operate monday through friday and 4:00 to 10:00 p.m. saturday and sunday and it was constructed in 910. the subject building is located within 24th street district and considered a historical resource class a per ceqa.

the project site is a property located on the north site side of 24th street between vicksburg and noe street. and the immediate neighborhood has mixed use development with commercial tenant space the neighborhood includes a mix of land uses including residential, retail, restaurants, gym and personality services. the space was last occupied in 2016 by a retail store doing business as cradle the sun. the retail occupied the space approximately 33 years. since the departure the business has been occupied without the

proper permits. in 2017 the case by the planning department was opened for the illegal conversion of a former existing authorized retail services to professional sales use as real estate brokerage. since 2017, the department has made various efforts with the project sponsors to debate the existing planning code violations. the item is required by planning code section 728 for the legalization and establishment of the arrest brokerage in the vicksburg, noe street and for the existing planning code violations. the sponsor has received 50 letters of support, 26 were provided after the publication of the project's packet and received 25 letters of opposition after the publication. additionally, there are two requests to rescind two

previously provided letters in opposition of the project. the department does recommend approval with conditions and believes it's desirable consistent with the policies of the field goal plan and meets the planning code. the project will provide a service that both enhances an reinforces the neighborhood's existing commercial corridor and the project will not displace an existing business but provide new business for the neighborhood. this concludes the staff's presentation and i'm available for any questions. >> commissioner: thank you, very much. project sponsor? welcome. >> good afternoon, commissioners. chloe angeles here on behalf of the agency. i'd like to clarify what we're seeking since there seems to have been some confusion among the neighbors. we're not looking to change the zoning at the property. the ncd permits the use.

approval will allow this particular use of the space which has operated for two years to stay. this is not an enward -- inward facing use. they have 25 people using the space each day. these people shop on 24th street, eat luncheon 24th street and buy coffee on 24th street. rachel swan, the managing partner of the agency unfortunately couldn't be here today. she prepared a summary of how she wound up in this space i'd like to submit for the record and then i'll get highlights of. for starters, she was in negotiations for a space on castro street when approached by another noe valley merchant to share the space recently located and a month later they signed a lease for the space and given the support of the noe valley merchants an started cosmetic

upgrades and they asked rachel to be president of the group and is today. a couple weeks later the partner rachel was going to share the space with bowed out. in designing the 24th space another group agreed to share the space and they moved out a year ago. in any case, the agency has proven itself to be a model how a real estate brokaerage can be an asset and it's garner the agency twice as much as support as opposition. we received 50 letters of support compared with 25 against. if i could have the overhead, please. much of the support come from noe valley businesses. while most of them couldn't be here during work hours, this map shows 25 neighborhood merchants

who have submitted letters. before i hand it off to agent dykes i'd like to read a letter. agency employees and owner shows what a business can and should do. rachel not only donates to community events and puts her boots on the ground and donates her time and energy and helps make the event happen and a regular sponsor of the noe valley garden tour and almost every event in the town and has scooped ice cream, passed out balloons and handed out snacks and multiple events and the space is also used for new artists gallery in the neighborhood.

it's clear this is not your average real estate brokerage. earlier this week, we counted 13 empty store sfrofronts between diamond and delower he is -- e delores. the approval will merely result in another vacancy. and we ask you to approve the c.u. thank you. i'll pass it off to jenae dykes. >> good afternoon. thank you for having me. my name is jenae dykes from the agency. i'm a proud university of san francisco alum and studied and played basketball there. after that i went on to play professionally. i lived in multiple countries

and actually supported usa and played for them. for many years i did a lot of community outreach. after my career playing basketball, i wanted to turn it over to real estate and the agency was the one company that said hey, i want to take on a 24-year-old who may know not much about the business but has a lot of drive and we see the passion in her. so then i went onto the agency. i'll keep this very short. i just wanted to go over a few of the community events we supported. we do support and participate in the noe valley wine walk that gets residents up and down the streets trying wines at different merchants an another event we do is the vodka lodka event and we try to support that community and keep it fun and let them know we support all people during the holiday season. we also do christmas pictures at santa at the office. people bring their dogs, their

babies, all the residents. we invite everyone from the community or outside the community to come take a picture with santa. another thing we do is ice cream scoops during the summer season for children and parents to get people out and about in the noe valley town square to enjoy. another thing we supported was the noe valley shop out event that supports the lgbtq community to spread the love up and down our 24th street noe valley area. we recently host the 24th annual spooktacular event bringing many to the town square and there was face paint and also host ica students and help support their tuition. they come in as interns and get to learn how to do things they'll need to go on to be young adults in the business world. we also open our conference room

to any organizations that need conference space as i know that's sometimes a hassle to get. before i step off the podium i just want to say one thing to everyone in the room, if you support us to stay here at the 24th street location, we'll continue to spread our love throughout noe valley and give back to the community. thank you very much. >> commissioner: we'll open it up for public comment. i don't have speaker cards but if you want to speak up, step up and approach in any order. welcome. >> i'm anna burke and i've been a resident of noe valley for 30 years and speaking in opposition of this real estate agency coming in. i realize we moved here 30 years ago and stayed and raised our children in noe valley and one reason is because we can walk to all of our necessities. we can walk to get our groceries. there was a hardware store. everything you needed you could walk to. i never had to get in my car.

i walked my child to public schools. it was wonderful. now it's changed and i know economies change but 24th street is become -- becoming a corridor of commercial business. on that corner there's three raefltd real estate agent and i don't think noe valley needs three real estate agents on the block. we need to support local retail. i'm not quite sure how to solve that problem but if we do mixed use and allow more commercial companies to come onto 24th street we're going to ruin the character and will open a pandora's box for more owners to raise rents and not only commercial ventures can be on 24th street. we need to continue to support local small businesses and somehow support them to be on

24th street and not have another real estate agent. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker please. >> hi, i'm meg young a noe valley resident and walk on 24th street probably every day. i wanted to oppose the agency for a few reasons. as the previous speakers have noted, i don't understand why we need to change the permitted use of that space for another real estate agent. i don't understand. there's vacant spaces. it's not a business that promotes foot traffic. and contrary to what that staffer said, i had no idea they did all those things because i haven't seen people going in and out of that space. i do think 24th street is special. i think it's very community oriented and i'd lake to see businesses -- like to see

businesses promoting retail foot traffic and community. lastly, i have a little bit of an issue with an agency that has such deep knowledge of the building code. i find it strange there was no knowledge and suddenly knowledge and i think there's a deeper history of how that all evolved and a would like to see a business that has enough money to pay rent go and should be very cognizant of all these codes go rent a space already permitted. i don't understand why we need to change the permitting on this space. >> >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you for having me today. i'm lisa bose. i'm a resident of san francisco for 20 years now. i'm a business owner in the mission district and have a community organization for the

last 15 years worked with a lot of people. i have never worked with anyone as benevolent and kind as rachel swan and her agency. i'm here to support her from a pure place. rachel swan reached out to me several years ago with an intention of developing a noe valley mural project. there's so many vacant storefronts and it's a little bit of a stale commerce. her idea was to template what i've done in the mission with several mural projects and bringing in local artists to paint beautiful murals and work with the san francisco travelling agency. we talked about the idea. respectfully for noe valley. her heart was so pure and benevolent about the project, the agency at the corner would be the heartbeat of this mural tour to bring in generated

revenue from tourism. in addition to this noe valley mural project we've been working on several years now, rachel and the agency support a first-sundays art community fashion and food bizarre. without their support this would not happen. it takes place on valencia street and opens its doors to 75 local artists an small businesses every first sunday of the month. without her patronage, this would not be. what she does fortunate community is better than anything i've worked with in the last 20 years of generating community help and organizations. for christmas we're giving out 2,000 teddy bears to the homeless children on behalf of the agency. i think losing the agency in noe valley or area would be a travesty for the community and

art scene and neighborhood. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> i hope we remember why we're here today. i'm sure we can cite some not so nice things as well. we're here to debate an illegal use of a space in noe valley and if we should allow it to continue. the main issue is rachel swan, the owner of the agency set out to deceive the city and shun the community by sir kim -- sir come venting the conditional use process and knew what she needed and came up with a plan to not have to go through the process not including the community probably because she knew the last thing noe wants was a fourth real estate agency and

sixth agency westbound a two-mile block and came up with a way to circumvent the system. rewarding her would place the planning department in the position to chase down offenders after the fact. you can see in her application it took multiple letters and multiple site visits to secure her compliance. she was first cited in february of 2017 but didn't bother to respond until a notice of enforcement was issued and her lack of compliance cost the planning department valuable time and wasted the taxpayers' money. san francisco's conditional use permit ensures local retail businesses an community services are allowed to thrive in neighborhood would otherwise be

overrun by franchises but ensure we have a say in what comes in our core -- corridors and this can show a lack of respect to the system and how it was designed to safeguard against imbalanced commercial corridors that do not work. please, do not reward this illegal occupancy and encourage others to not circumvent the system and deny the conditional using system for 4838 24th street. thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm steve may a resident of 24th street two blocks from the agency. i'm not supportive of the project. i've been in my home for 35 years and a consumer on the services for the entire 30 years

and been an eyewitness to the deterioration to the commerce and ability to buy goods and services on 24th street and aware of the ability to buy more real estate or get my medical issues taken care of or get my banking needs but not get ordinary day to day services. it's beyond me why the planning commission would agree to some exception for a property intended to be for normal retail commerce-related use. the other comments before me i'm in 100% agreement with with the exception of one. this summer and fall i've actually been working from home which puts me more in the 24th street corridor than i normally had been and i walked by this property daily, sometimes twice, three times daily. what i don't see and this is what's critical to it, the woman

referenced 25-person real estate agency, which they may be, from my view point and somebody else can comment, 70%, 80% of the time the place is locked up. nobody's in it. the lights are off. i don't see that kind of traffic. i want to say the people buying goods and services in that neighborhood, i'm certainly not witnessed it on my casual up and down the block. i don't see people in the office and i question whether that's the greater good for the local retailers trying to make a business and for the people who live in that community. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you, i'm a resident of noe valley. i wasn't going to speak but i

felt compelled to because i felt it's important to our corridor. i'm the person rachel pointed out in her presentation earlier. i'm around the corner on vicksburg street and have an olive oil shop. i've been there six and a half years and i learned if you're not on 24th street as a merchant you're losing a lot of foot traffic and rachel and i were friends and used to support my business and we talked about becoming partners and being innovative in trying to stay alive as a small merchant and partner with somebody who had more capital, let's say. there's always two sides to the story and i have a different side. we got into an agreement and was fill -- fully aware she needed retail and close to overlook it.

i went in with the full intention of being a retail person in that space and things went quickly south once she moved in and our agreements and the things we discussed were not at all what we planned. it became an impossible situation for me. i did introduce her to people that were integral to her getting support to be on 24th as a real estate agent and had an interior designer in there initially. i'm a very small merchant and been there six and a half years as i said and have a very close following. in those six and a half years i've seen the neighborhood change a lot as well. the hardware store now is one medical. the toy store is now an interior design and real estate agent and it's only open maybe one day, sometimes two days a week. very sporadically.

now, cradle the sun which was a legacy retail spot and when he got evicted he left. that's when rachel decided she wanted to be in that spot. i met a lot of customers because i'm directly across from the space and they'd come see me because they were on the street. my last thing is she does do a lot of things and works hard as the president of the association but can do that from any place. it doesn't have to be on the 24th corridor. as a small merchant, someone mentioned shop out and merchants were expected to give 10% of their sales from that and noe valley wine walk was on a saturday. that's our biggest day for

merchants. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. i'm danni mariscal and a small business owner and san francisco resident since 2006. i'm here to support the agency. what they have done and continued to do for the community is essential for community building. the agency continues to add value with community events which benefit and support noe valley and san francisco community such as fund raisers like some people pointed out and with volunteering their time and effort. i believe that would be an asset and add incredible value to the noe valley neighborhood. thank you. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hi, my name is stephanie. i've been a noe valley resident 13 years. i know it's tough when you live

in san francisco and have in a high rise and have everything delivered by amazon and never see anybody. those of us who live here like the neighborhood. it's a vibrant part of the neighborhood where we walk to get our groceries and go to the drug store and i'm concerned about the precedent this may set. 24th street is a prime area. landlords want as much as money as they can get and people like banks and title companies and realtors can afford much higher rents than some of our retail businesses. and i would hate to see this space which could be used for something that could really keep

the vibrant could be used for yet a sixth arrest firm in this prime area. i hope you will leverage access. i want to applaud the agency for it's community efforts and funding things and all of that. i think they can still do so if they were located in a space that is properly designated to be a real estate firm and not a retail space. thank you so much. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> laura clark, nb action. not speaking on the merits of business because we don't touch that. but i want to bring you guys to really appreciate this moment of a conditional use. because we're talking about in the future of adding more places in the process for conditional use permits. it's something that is debated

at the board of supervisors and present legislation to add more things to require conditional use, conditional use, conditional use. i don't know what percentage of your day is conditional use permits. conditional use is you guys signing up for an argument. that's what a conditional use process. that's you guys saying, we want an argument every time. doesn't that sound fun. we're not just going to ban it or allow it, we're going to have an argument every time. it's not fun. are you guys having fun? are they having fun? is anyone having fun? it's not a sane way to run a democracy? who can come out to a conditional use permit hearing is always biassed. who hears about it, who cares is always biassed towards people of

either an obsessive nature of caring or a financial interest then there's the process where the entire community gets so mad at each other they decide they're never having a block party again. that's what a conditional permit use permit hearing is. let's have an argument hearing. you guys can decide we're just going to make rules going forward and not have conditional use hearings. you can recommend to the board of supervisors clean up and get rid of all conditional use as a process. let's not have hearings on whether or not my neighbor gets a deck. i'm sick of sitting through those. you're sick of sitting through those. i don't want to hear about decks anymore. it's boring. i don't want to hear about this wonderful real estate agent or

terrible real estate agent. i used to live in the neighborhood. it's awful. we're not having fun. make a decision permanently about reducing the number of conditional use hearings. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> i don't know quite how to follow that. i'm rick french. i'm a merchant in noe valley. the last time i was here, rachel swan was in favor of the c.u. presented to you. it was an issue most of the m merchants and neighborhood groups and ultimately you opposed. at the time she said noe valley needs diversification. one of the quotes out of that side was bring on sephora.

but any retail space in there. a -- agree with her as far as the diversification but as you heard diversification is not the proliferation of real estate. the agency has knowingly violated zoning ordinances. she knew about this they'll was a retail space because brought in janelle and did all this monkey business and janelle's gone and it's a real estate agency in there illegally. it displaced a retail business, the stained glass store and it wasn't vacant two years as was

stated. certainly not two years. displacing a retail business that contributes to the city's coffers by having employees, paying taxes, that's lost when a real estate goes in there or god forbid another nail salon or pet store even. selling t-shirts in an arrest office is not a retail business. if it is a retail business i challenge the agency to produce sales tax documentation which i doubt there is any. ms. swan has shown a pattern of knowingly violating rules and regulations of the planning department. by having short-term rentals in her residence and has been fined

and illegally occupying this retail space. if the commission approves this c.u, like was said before, you'd be setting a precedent for anyone else. if you have rules, let's follow them. i kind of agree, why have a c.u. it says you don't do this, you don't do it. it says you can do this, then it's okay. she's not where she is supposed to be. she can go around the corner or that would be fine. that's all. >> commissioner: thank you, very much. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is colleen acosta. me husband and i lived in noe valley a little over a year and before that we lived elsewhere in san francisco but we'd often venture to noe valley and

because it was a family area and we'd walk down and looking at the merchants. over the last four and a half years we've been in san francisco we have noticed a significant increase in the vacancy of retail stores. quite frankly, we're not so surprised because a lot of the retail stores there are just not ones that we're interested in shopping at. so i don't think making them move so yet another vacant retail store can stay vacant. that's my main argument. i have a personal connection to rachel. i think she does wonderful things for the community but when i think about it logically i don't see how this makes sense to ask them to leave when they

provide a service to the community and make it a distinction through various other means. >> commissioner: thank you, next speaker, please. >> i'm sister lilly from an all girls catholic high school that's been around 135 years today. our school's unique in our girls work at corporate-entry level jobs to help pay the majority of their tuition while also completing a full college prep click -- curriculum. 100% of our girls go on to college. have you freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior and they work

one day per week and they work at insurance companies, tv stations, accounting firms, law firms and hospitals and many more companies. the girls do all entry level clerical work from data entry to preparing marketing materials. imagine if you had an entry level clerical person in that your office. that's what our girls do. the girls who come to immaculate conception academy the average income for a family of four that attends our school is 63,000$63 year and our tuition is $2900 a year and you are looking at me asking why i'm telling you all this. i'm here to speak on behalf of the agency. the agencies have hired our girls the past couple of years and the agency was the only place in noe valley that reached out to us and actually wanted to hire our girls to help change their lives.

that gives you an idea of the people who work at the agency. i have no hidden agenda. i'm just speaking from my experience. in today's climate and the political climate happen today we won't go there, we need people like those who work at the agency. they're integral to our program and integral to changing society. think about it. they're hiring low-income kids and empowering them to change their lives. thank you very much. >> >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, commissioners, anastacia indionopolis. the location where the agency is located it's an active corner and i pass almost every day since a block and a half from where i live on 24th street.

the site was formally occupied from a stained glass shop where beautiful pieces were displayed and when the rent nearly triples a few years ago my neighbors were forced to relocate their business to ocean avenue. the site remained vacant for a very long time. i believe the attorney said a couple years. a dance studio was slated to occupy the space and that didn't materialize. there were signs of something new coming in and two years ago there was finally a grand opening, heralded by a vodka and latkas open house and an artist shared the space for one year, a one year he displayed art and

hand-crafted furniture. rachel became an active member of our community. she was invited to lead the merchants an professional association and participated in and sponsored community events and donated and scoops free ice cream at events. has been involved in the halloween party and opened up the doors of the agency for monthly merchant meetings, santa claus picture day, dog phottee day and the annual vodka and latkas party and there were virtual tours of properties for sales. if i omitted the teenage girls they're there. considering the number of storefronts that are vacant

including 3929 24th street, it would be unfortunate if the agency c.u. is denied. a space so full of life would revert to a lifelessness and contribute to the hollowing out of our commercial corridor. please allow the legalization of the business in the space. thank you. >> commissioner: thank you, next speaker, please. >> hello, good afternoon. my name is kristin generes i'm an owner of a restaurant and homeowner and here in support of rachel swan and the agency. from all the comments so far, the agency is not just a real estate office, it's a hub for growth and community on 24th street and rachel swan is essentially the agency.

rachel's an invaluable asset to the neighborhood and puts in countless hours of unpaid work to help orchestrate events like the summer vest and wine walk, events mentioned already. as a business owner on 24th street, i've looked at our sales and we typically see business increase 25% on the event days. it's huge what the events do for the neighborhood and they would not happen without rachel. we have had customers asking us for events and when the next events are going to be and in addition, rachel employs the icas and the merchants association recently chartered the cub scouts the pack 88.

we're now partnered with the cub scouts in the neighborhood and they're working the noe valley events as well. i guess lastly, my opinion about the merchants association would crumble without rachel in the neighborhood and without everything the merchants' association does for the neighborhood. there's going to be so much less activity and the neighborhood feeling and community feeling everybody wants so much in the is going to diminish. thank you. >> >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is carol yenney and i'm one of the co-founders of the c.b.d. i've owned small fries so we're a brick and mortar retailer.

i'm familiar with 24th street and many have spoken that she should just move to another space and we know how conditional use works in our neighborhood. she'd have to get conditional use anywhere in the 24th street corridor. the conditional use to echo what was said before by one of the speakers is a tricky situation. if you're a non-permitted or need a conditional use you have to go through the process. maybe you rent the space, maybe you go in like rachel did with the intention of having a retail space and don't apply right away so it's stricky. it's not really fair. i think it can be very unfair for businesses. and i think our conditional use in our neighborhood needs to be revisited because the boundaries for conditional use are very long and wide we have a lot of

vacancies in part of the dilemma. i've gotten to know rachel swan. she's been a stellar addition to our neighborhood. while it is a real estate office and not a retail space which we'd all ideally like to have, she's been a wonderful addition to the neighborhood. her energy level and commitment to the ica students and her commitment to the community, all the things she's done, her energy doesn't stop. she's hired wonderful people and very responsive when we've had questions about things. somebody gets back to us right away and usually after 9:00 in the morning and someone's there whenever you walk buy. i've never seen it dark. as a merchant legacy owner i'm on the block, one down from her,

i would support making sure she gets the conditional use. i do not want to see another empty space. as part of the process, we have to do this like the previous speaker said. it pits us against each other and i hate it. in this case i think we should grant conditional use. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hi, my name is leslie crawford. i wear many hats in noe valley primarily as a parent. i've been here 21 years and a business owner in san francisco and in terms of noe valley, my primary mission has always been my activism in the neighborhood has been about community.

i lead a protest against the real food store because of their union activity and we prevailed and were able to open the noe vall valley farmers market and now i work on activating events in the town square and i've gotten involved with many businesses at noe valley and shop at all the places where people have stood up to speak about being shop owners. i know what it's like to have a retail store. and i know how hard it is to build strong urban communities. we have put so much effort into building a dynamic community in noe valley despite the fact that retail across the country is suffering. and for that reason, i'm up here to support rachel because she has been such a dynamic community leader. also, realizing the bigger

retail problems in san francisco in any major city, it's about amazon and about conditional use permitting that's too difficult. to boot out somebody helping in so many ways that have been enumerated to build our community, while we have so many empty storefronts is ignoring the different problems we need to address. i've been in a group with rachel and some other community leaders to try to bring in some good small businesses. sometimes we've been on the different side of that argument of what makes a good small business but we're looking to populate the street with hardware stores, etcetera. it's just quite difficult to get the businesses in because of the real estate prices on 24th street. i hope you'll consider granting her this.

it's about what kind of community you are and neighborhood participant. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good evening, commissioners, audrey brown from noe valley. it's a binary situation. you either approve this or deny it. the reason i'm here is because to me if this gets denied, we're not going to have 15 empty storefronts but 16. truth be told, i do not have any preference for who's going to be going in the said space. i don't know if we get what we are coveting for which say hardware store. if we -- is a hardware store. if we were we'd have them by now and so i don't want to wait. all i'm saying is if this is going to get denied we'll have another empty storefront which is not good for the community.

maybe you have to look at the bigger picture of how we can have our amazon cake and delivery and eating it too. we can't expect to have orders from amazon and a vibrant retail space. we need to make this conditional use or we'll have another empty storefront. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good evening, i'm chris nicholson and i'm a noe valley resident for 15 years. i'll make a few points in support of the conditional use authorization. the speaker before me said what a wanted to say.

there's a problem facing the retail corridor in noe valley but i don't think the agency should be penalized. i don't think the agency is responsible for that issue. it's a larger issue and other factors at work. it doesn't seem to me to make sense to penalize an organization so involved. i've seen that. my kids went to school at james lick a couple blocks from 24th street and i can't tell you how many times they've been to activities sponsored by the agency. if you walk down 24th street, which i do all the time and see a number of storefronts which are vacant i can see them hosting a broad variety of events and want to comment on their association with ica. that organization is changing lives.

we have 450 employees an have four ica interns and the agency has between five and ten and if remove them from doing business maybe the opportunities go away from deserving low-income children from the mission. thank you very much for your attention. >> commissioner: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> hi, commissioners. hi, rich. i'm from a community benefit district. i had to work with rich to develop a c.b.d. most the arguments against the c.u. you'll hear or have heard are reactions to the loss of

retail shopping establishments. people are sad about the loss of retail and claiming by turning down the c.u. we can get a conventional retail establishment or clothing or hardware store or anything in it's place. i sympathize with people who want retail on 24th street in noe valley, i feel that way but too but turning down the c.u. will not bring retail back but make it worse. as you heard, there's 15 empty storefronts between church and die mont some empty -- diamond and many empty for years. many are gone and they're not coming back. i'm sure the planning commission, you're familiar of the study made on internet

retail and construction csts and denying the c.u. will not solve any of the underlying challenges. most notably, when radio shack went out of business it left a big hole on 24th street and that's two years ago. a proposal came to lease the space to a pet food and supply store, after a contentious meeting it was rejected. the radio shack store created foot traffic and interesting after a year of delays the radio shack space is finally scheduled to be filled but not by retail but by yet another yoga studio. do we really want to repeat this? must we watch the same movie again and again? the shift and mix from retail is inevitable. it will not bring the tuggy's

hardware or even sam's news stand which after five years of being vacant has a holiday pop-up store for the month of december and in january they're gone. today we can take a healthy step for the noe valley. the real estate agency has contributed to the community and her unpaid volunteer role as president she brings creativity to the street and produced over 11 major events and why you have 50 letters from merchants and residents thanking rachel. police allow the c.u. to a business owner who has been an exemplary leader. >> commissioner: thank you. >> i know. thanks, guys. >> commissioner: any additional public comment on this item?