kat. commissioners, any questions? i'll just call you. commissioner huie. she is struggling to find the button. >> thank you so much kat for your presentation. this is really something that we have been looking forward to. let's see--i dont know if i have a lot of questions so far. some of the things you brought up made me think about ideas for different events and different things. maybe i'll rattle off a couple and maybe a question will form. >> great. i will take those. >> this is a little off subject, but i was recently watching cbs sunday, it is like the feel good human interest stories and they had the whole thing about the public libraries and how they are turned into resource centers in a lot of different towns. some large cities and small ones. san francisco was highlighted as well as forget what we did really well. we did something really well so highlighted on the story. but it made me think how something as established and traditional and conservative in many ways, like a library full of books was now transformed into tech hubs, tool lending libraries like where you could go borrow making tools or youth programs. there were spaces for dance, for theater for kids to learn music and jam together so it made me think there so much hope for us to reenvision many of our spaces we believe to be such solid institutions to be something very dynamic and exciting and so if anybody wants to you tube that, that was a good one. that was one idea that i in terms of some of the places we have where many people dont feel privy to yet to be able to open those up for people to feel more welcome in because i think sometimes thinking about the downtown core or economic core, for me living and working in a neighborhood i always felt i dont really fit in there. like that is not my space, that is not the city i understand the city to be and so i think somehow perhaps opening up the culture of downtown to be more inclusive of san franciscans and san francisco i think would be interesting, because we have so many people coming into the region and they have their own ideas and culture and people who live in san francisco have a whole another idea what san francisco means. >> that is really well taken and a really big outcome of the forum was that--so, the-one thing that the downtown has going for it, it is a central repository for all of these regional transportation and national and global transportation hubs and it has a scale that you just can't replicate in the neighborhood. the neighborhood are much smaller scale and have transportation that serve the neighborhood but not meant to move people at scale but the thing that makes san francisco san francisco and that world class destination is its culture, its community, the creativity and neighborhood and if the downtown core is the place we show case all that makes san francisco so unique, then that just seeds the transformation that it can-that we can grow into, so it is a place of business and has creativity and business and jobs but really compelling and engaging dynamic place to be and the thing that will do that is our neighborhoods and communities so that is absolutely well-taken. sorry, i get going. not to be insensitive, but in the let no good crisis go to waste, we have a tremendous vacancy rate in the economic core now and we can start to seed programs that give local businesses, local entrepreneurs, industries and shops and businesses that were priced out and not able to access our core a foot in so it can-they can leverage the economic tonight the core really represents so those are going to be very big priorities for us, and again your ideas about how to do that and how we protect that are very very appreciated. >> thank you. i had a couple more. leading into that further, i think for recovery of hospitality and travel, what i have been noticing is that san francisco has always been a food city. always been a exciting place to try new things but as i travel i notice other cities are also very exciting in the food, but the other piece i have been noticing in addition to food is that people are traveling for truly authentic experiences, and educational experiences. i was in new york recently and i looked up api owned businesses and i wanted to know like where are these businesses. i recently did a tour in our san francisco downtown area on the african american experience and what did that look like during the gold rush and so i think we have so much to office in turchls of social justice and so many things happened here to make travel recover in a way that is really substantial i think would be really interesting to me if san francisco is saying we have a specific culture, certain values and certain things that make us who we are to kind of speak to the narrative is out there in terms of san francisco has all these things happening to the city right now. do people even care? we do. we care a lot about people and think to be able to show that within our tourism and hospitality seems like to me something that i would want to invest into. >> thank you. >> the other things are just-thank you so much. >> thank you. >> you can hit it again later if you want to revisit. >> i'll do it like 5 times. >> commissioner ortiz cartagena. >> thank you for the presentation and thank you commissioner huie. i want to reiterate ideas commissioner huie had-this is a opportunity like you said just now. small business you never would have thought we could be downtown and cultural small business bringing san francisco flavor like commissioner huie said, locals and people that come to the city and have people experience what san francisco really is about and at the end of the presentation you said the narrative and media and what are we doing currently? what is the pr blast? we should do something madison ave style like how las vegas did. something like that, right? san francisco. only in san francisco. something dope. and letting people know that we are not this city the media portrays. you come for food and regionally will segue to my next question. you said people want to work, of course because the food-you are not-east bay dont get up set, you will not get the food you get here in east bay. food and tourism as always been-going to that what is it correlation between the surrounding counties? is the correlation and seeing the trends because we have a huge commuter workforce and how do we take advantage? one thing that popped in my head, the regional mta are working on a plan to charge commuters to come in. that was prior to the pandemic and now we probably don't want to discourage things like that. just making sure that everybody's on one master plan that nobody is operating in silos to insure things in place or planned prior to the pandemic, maybe we have to wait a long time for that to be implemented. lastly, the latino impact and latin ex impact and undocumented economy how is that reflected and the thriving and future of san francisco, because we contribute a lot. we are the ones that are the dish washers the housekeepers the infrastructure and backbone and you can't quantify it because we are not documented in most cases so just making sure that that is always in our mind as well. but thank you katherine and thank you commissioner huie. that was dope. >> thank you. >> thank you. commissioner carter. >> that was a great presentation. i think we are headed in a good direction. wondering if we have a timeline for these things? and it is one thing i keep hearing in these meetings as we talk about downtown and it is san francisco culture and i love what my fellow commissioner said, commissioner huie and ortiz about the campaign. like vegas. what happens-i would love to see something like that to really draw in and the marthing marketing of san francisco and culture. what elts else do i have? my train of thought just left me. but yeah, i love to see if we actually have a timeline and also i think it was you who said that, but how are we showcasing the history of san francisco? everybody that contributed to the city and i know when i traveled some things that i want to look for in the city is the history. specifically for the black community and i think all bipoc communities, is what i fall back on when i think of san francisco. it is so diverse but how are we telling those stories to attract more people to come to san francisco? >> to your question about the timeline, the funding for the economic core recovery initiative, those three, the street vibeerance and vacant to vibeerance and marketing campaign will hopefully be approved by the board finalized and approved tomorrow and we are working on a rfp now that should go out in the near future within a matter of days or weeks, so we can start to get responses to these areas so we can hit the ground running as soon as we have the funds hit our budget, and so we hope that we would be able to stand up programming in the fall with a contracting and the study, the covid impact analysis study is kicking off in august, and should-we should hopefully have data and the responses to surveys in the late fall for that, and then finally the economic recovery dash-bord is something we have been working on. i spoke with you all i think just about a year ago and that has been-we have been building that over time so we hope that will be something we are ready to put in front of users for user testing in again in the early fall so that we could make it public once it has been vetted. so, that gives you a sense of timeline. in terms how we are planning showcases-we are certainly requesting and prioritizing responses to our procurement that have a thoughtful and inclusive approach that specifically addresses what came out of this economic forum, which was that like san francisco's core needs to be the place where we showcase our community, the culture and neighborhoods and history and giveathetic san francisco experience so hopefully will get strong responses with that lens. >> great. i think one last thing, the vacant store fronts downtown, how are we getting that out to the communities before other people come in and take it before the mom and pops are able to? how are we getting that information out that these spaces are available? >> can i talk about what will be in the procurement? okay. our strategy will be described in the procurement. i can get back to you in a matter of days. if not earlier on that. >> great. thank you. >> to speak generally and information that is publicly-we can share completely publicly, what we are hearing from the stakeholders that we are talking to about the needs in order to facilitate pop ups happening and happening in a equitable way, is there needs to be focus attention on outreach, both to the property owners because there is nobody who is really susing out opportunities with building owners and to potential pop upees whether the businesses, the entrepreneurs, the art organizations et cetera and that we-many of those entities, particularly the smaller scale sort of more mom and pops need support and going through and getting through the process, so working with landlords on licensing agreements, and on navigating the city permitting process so we are hearing clearly that if we want to make this a opportunity that is available to everyone, that we need focused support in those areas. >> great. vice president zouzounis. >> thank you and that response actually was really helpful. thank you for the presentation and engaging our questions. i think it is just-we have a racial equity evaluation tool that we use. we developed part of the city mandate and as we look at the demographic of businesses that make up the core, soma, business district, downtown, i work there with my sba role several times a week and a lot of businesses that shuttered are formula retailers and we have a lot of small businesses that have been trucking along, maybe have shuttered and some are just starting to reopen and a lot are from specific demo graphic communities. there is tons of arab and afghan businesses. we have a trade association. i would love to see how the plan is to partner with smaller small business and ethnic trade associations and certain demo graphic communities in rolling out some of that marketing and not just sf travel, not just chamber, because i know in south of market, the merchant groups are getting together and putting a directory of all the businesses. they are coming up with their own ideas about lunch passports and how to make that a visual presentation of what is available in the neighborhood and i think a lot of those partnerships would go a long way and would also address the issue that we see so many times with oewd outreach of it not getting to who is not already a city partner and rfp recipient. that is one thing. i think also we would all love to see the vacancies for the outreach staff so we can share those with the merchant communities at large that we are all connected to and a timeline on when that hiring would happen would be really great to know as well. and i guess my kind of last question, comment is, in real estate or in the vacancy and real estate placement work, is that the same-that you are trying for big business to fill office space and maybe bigger commercial lease spaces, is that the same pipeline that are small businesses that are just looking to change their business operation? i know a lot of small businesses that are trying to move from store front to pdr but they want to stay in the city. i know a lot of small businesses that are-weird things are happening with developers downtown and in the core and small businesses are getting caught up with huge sales of buildings they are leasing a space from and people want to retire or want to sell the business or just stay in that lease, about they are-i have been hearing horror stories with businesses being caught with developers telling-getting them into situations with no accountability or third party representing them, the business. i would just love to understand what we can tell our small business community to expect from the outreach and these resources being put forth, like what do we-how can we make them aware of the outreach coming down or some of the money and focus that may be directly related to them. so that is kind of my question with that pipeline of vacancy support. >> yeah. i mean, i guess-i would say we definitely want to create for the pop up for the vacant to vibrant program, we definitely want to create a outreach strategy and as we are developing that, having groups and commissions like yours look at what that is. say everybody we missed-i think we would build off what we have. add as much as we can to it and get input from stakeholders who are on the ground and who have the sense of other nodes to get information out and into specific communities that are being left out and under-represented. i think that's probably how i would approach the outreach on the pop up front. as far as the-your question around the business attraction activities, we are doing different kinds of business attraction for different kinds of uses so a lot of the--the office and the upper floors of these giant towers or what not is going to be more focused on your traditional office tenants, and businesses and entities that can make good use of that space based on how the space is configured is cut up. one thing that we are really interested in exploring as part of the economic analysis in this context where thinks have changed so much, is there a opportunity to bring in different kinds of industries that have not traditionally and historically been part of our office eco system to date. still going into office uses, but just are there different industries we could reach out to and find a strong value proposition in san francisco. in terms of the retail spaces and pdr space and other things, i think those will be strategies that are specific to those types of uses, but in everything that we are trying to do, we are really trying to just take a fresh look, because things have changed so much, at what is the opportunity, what has changed and what new can come in or you know, not just sort of revert back to our assumptions based on what was prior to the pandemic. that is how i would sort of describe the approach to attraction. in terms of businesses who are facing hardship because of the changing environment, buildings sold and what not, then i think that is probably a largely osd and investigate in neighborhood and liaison and support and legal technical assistance and the grants those departments or divisions are creating is really geared towards those situations. >> commissioner huie. >> i guess-you know, i feel like through all the conversation i'm realizing and know my fellow commissioners realize this too and we have been talking about it, but we really are kind of on the stage now to champion business and to champion small business. like i think with all these innovative ideas or exciting ideas, i think people are not dpoeing going to try them unless we lower the barriers. unless we make the cost of doing business accessible for people. i mean the things that-the reasons we are all sitting here and said yes to volunteering our time has been because we want to make it easier for people to start a business, and i think that is really going to be the crux of our recovery efforts because i-especially in the small business communities these are people livelihood and savings. this is not disposable income they are coming to invest in a great idea i had last night at dinner. these are ventures families come together and support. for me it is really important to recognize that you know, it is my you know, i guess duty at this point to really point that out at every moment i can and i think in this moment as we talk about recovery i think it is important to just recognize how hard people are working and in order for us to meet them there i think we need to continue to advocate for the cost of business to be much easier and lower. i think about how for years people will move to like brisbane or daly silly to y city to do office administrative elsewhere because it was 20 to 30 percent lower to do business there. that is a good kind of like metric to also kind of look at in terms of what were those things that you know, even talking about accounting business, they probably have all their numbers to look at line items and say where the areas san francisco is not making it and making it easy for people to say yes. because many of those businesses could come back into the city but it needs to be worth it for them. >> that's right. >> it is either economic worth it or it is a soft worth it, like a cultural worth it and think we need to answer that in a real tangible way. i think about most recently as a good example, our hearing last time on graffiti and how the city is going to be taking care of that for a small business owner. i feel that is a huge win. because it is like, we finally are going to have some actual support and saying we are not going to put you on the hook for it this time. and that's a huge huge deal. so, if we could just do that a few more times and get the cadence of actually taking care of people instead of dinging at every mark, i think we can turn this recovery around. so, i think hopefully closing-wont put my name back up again, but it is really that i'm going to be committed, i know we are all committed to paving the path for people, so i think the more initiatives that can come this way where you want our input or review and say like what are the real life ramifications of that for somebody, obviously we are here to offer that so thank you very much. >> thank you, i appreciate that. we will need it. >> thank you. commissioner carter. >> i think you spoke on it somewhat but wondering, are there specific industries you guys are going to be targeting for the vacant storefronts? >> for the store fronts for the ground floor? >> yeah, for the vacancies. >> i mean we are seeing what will come through this procurement process and who is-and what ideas are-i think that the amazing thing at this vantage point is we are at the precipice and had a lot of conversations and conversations about markets and vendor and craft fairs and conversations where we need art and performances, but it is only based on conversations we have been having with the people we have been having conversations with and through this procurement process i'm really hopeful we will get things we have not even considered, and be able to-just have our whole lens expanded in terms of the opportunities. i was reading something as i was looking at case studies on what other places have done and in new york they put in like a huge inflatable bee hive in--not anything you would ever think about and now all these people are coming and partying, so we don't know what is going to come, so in a sense yes, we have been thinking about experiences that are engaging and that draw people in, make them stay, hopefully make them hungry so they go back out to the restaurants and eat at the restaurants around, but-and we know traditionally that has been arts, that has been culture, all is a lot of interest in retail, entrepreneur markets, but we haven't definitively sort of nailed down exactly what it will be. >> i would just consider the language in things in that. what is it rfq? >> yeah. >> so that it is culturally sound so that-because that is going to define who it attracts. >> absolutely. >> and another question i have is, how long are we-are you considering the pop up? from my own personal experience i did pop ups. you do a pop up and you are out and it is over and it is people livelihood so i would like us not to really look at it as like i'm not necessarily a fan of pop ups. i think it has isperks, but it is people livelihood so what comes after the pop up, is there anything set in place for that, any resources for the next steps? >> that is a great question and so the way we have been thinking about it and it is around what comes. this could be-i think in the best case scenario, this could be a opportunity for entrepreneurs to try out the market without risk so able to move into a downtown store front and figure out am i generating enough foot traffic so i can pay the rent that the leasing agent if this is permanent, the property owner and leasing agent would ask of me and i need 3 to 6 to 9 months, whatever it is in order to figure that out at a greatly reduced rate and then i can move into permanent space and again i think there is sort of a inherent hand-off that if we have entity supporting the pop up and temporary basis to then you know, understand with the landlord are you interested or property owners are you interested in this potentially becoming permanent in the space? if so, what is the rent you would need and all those things so people go in with eyes open and if not, if that space is not going to work out, that the experiment, the market testing the market is a success, then potentially being able to hand small businesses over to brokers or to office-whatever it is in order to help them find a permanent location that is going to work for them. and if they determine this is not the right fit for me, that they can walk away without being locked into a 1 to 5 year lease. so, that is one configuration. i'm open also to the fact that it may be that you-that we want to have an entity who is doing a longer term sort of inhabitation of a space but bringing programming in on a much more sort of short term basis depending on it scale-while some entrepreneurs might not be in a place where they are ready to do like a 3 to 6 to 9 month trial of a space, that they would want to do like a saturday activation for like several months running or something like that. we want to be as flexible as possible and see where the market settles and what people need and where the market guests are so we can fill those. >> i like that. i think it should be maybe different type of pop ups that is offered, because for a lot of small businesses it is hard to see what-to have any data in a short period of time to see if it works or not and some people might only want a saturday pop up and some people maybe had a business and want to see if it will work downtown, so i think being flexible will be in good favor. >> great. thank you. director tang. >> thank you so much kat for all your work. i know your job title is really difficult to live up to right now, but i will say we are in really challenging times i want to encourage all the commissioners, this is also the time to be super creative and to think through things that we haven't been able to do before and to please please please talk to your communities, share ideas out with kat or myself. we are happy to collaborate and i think we will be working hand in hand in terms of trying to get our small business entrepreneurs as well as different diverse communities to be part of this solution for activating our economic core, so want to encourage you beyond this meeting to interact and engage and share your feedback and ideas. >> thank you. kat, i have a couple questions, but before i ask them i want to make one i guess two comments for the benefit of the commission. this is something i talked about with our economist teddy, which is in many ways it is scary-can be deceptively scary or deceptively reassur
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