Neighborhood commercial district capacity to promote and market their area, to care for the public realm and to activate public space. We think that there should be some changes potentially with storefront regulations and Design Guidelines and aaron just gave a couple examples of some of the ways this those affect Small Businesses in commercial districts, particularly looking at more flexiblity in some areas is one of the implications of our study about what goes in the ground floor and reducing barriers to combining uses within a storefront, the accessory use. We didnt spend much time talking about curb management policy, but clearly, theres a lot of competing pressures on curbs, and so we need to keep in mind the Overall Health of the corridor and the needs of Small Businesses, and we would be open to working with mta and the Small Business community to think through how these pressures and major transit improvement projects taken together some lead to some changes. And then finally, the potential for changes in the dbi program that has been presented today. We have a hearing on the retail study at the Small BusinessCommission Next week, and planning has a hearing on the study on february 22nd. Each of our agencies is willing to go and take a look more deeply at our programs. I think well just open it up for questions now. Thank you for your time. Thank you to the presentation from our colleagues, and now supervisor yee. Supervisor yee i have a couple questions. I think one of the things i mentioned here, and there wasnt much of a report on it. In regards to the dbi, identifying vacancy programs, we already have some regulations or some enforcement programs that we supported and it seems like were having a hard time enforcing it. Is there somebody from dbi here . Can you respond to that piece because it seems theres a lot more vacancy. I dont quite understand what the problem is in terms of enforcing. Good afternoon, supervisors. Ron tall, assistant director, department of building inspection. To answer your question, supervisor yee, the enforcement of this program, holistically, all vacant buildings, including residential and commercial in our department is complaint driven. We do not have a database, and we do not have a system that is able to capture it beyond the ability in an excel program. Having said that, we are in the process of i ever willmentation of a major change in our department with a new permit and project tracking system which most of the supervisors here have heard of, and the go live date is right after labor day this year, september. So perhaps thats one of the avenues we can exercise in terms of enhancing the enforcement capablities of the department. The staff that has been in charge of the Program Since inception, especially were talking about the commercial storefronts, has been reassessed recently. The department of building inspection and Code Enforcement section is in charge under the deputy of enforcement inspections. Hes not here today because he happened to be on vacation, so im here to speak on his behalf and on the department. One of the things that we can bring back to the department are a lot of the suggestions that have been made by through the controllers office, through the oewd, and integration of those into a more comprehensive approach to enforcement. So having said that, we will also need to assess the Staffing Resources we have. That, like all departments can be somewhat challenging at times, but thats something well have to deal with by looking forward and looking holistically at this program. So im a little confused. Is this staffing challenges that you have at dbi or is it were not getting very many complaints . I mean if maybe you dont have any staffing challenges, if youre saying that every complaint that has been made has been have been inspected and assessed in regards to the validity of the complaint. That is a correct statement, supervisor. When we take the complaints, we have a complaint tracking system that we currently are able to utilize, and ultimately, it results in either an abatement because theres no foundation for the complaint or the complaint is valid and we proceed with the abatement process. That includes a notice of violation after an inspector is deployed to go out to the site or the complaint is registered for that address specifically, and then, the process of researching ownership and things of that nature are underway. And ultimately, it results in it a public hearing that we call a directors hearing at the department. Supervisor, if i could chime in again, because our office spent quite, we are also frustrated with the legislation passing. What we did was we actually had our staff go out to all of our district four corridors and document every single vacancy in district four and then turnover an excel list, but because the list is not public, i cant actually tell if its not being enforced or not by dbi. The issue is oewd, they only focus on a certain number of corridors, not every single one, so we initially asked for the two departments to cross share information. I think thats a great starting point. If thats even happening, im not sure, but i would say going forward, what i think im hearing from supervisor yee, we need all of the other enforcing departments to go ahead and do that work. I want to make sure that ten years out, 20 years out, this ability to track is still available. We as a city as a whole should be doing more of that and it should be more systematic. I am very worried about the permit tracking system thats being developed that dbi. I think weve heard for years that its you know, its coming online so i dont want to just hinge it on well, itll go live in september, because i dont know if it well. Any way, i hope that that addresses kind of the legislation that weve had on this for years now. Supervisor yee no, no, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I guess im beginning to be getting to your level of frustration on this. When it comes to staffing, it seems that dbi has the ability to staff up if they really wanted to. They certainly have the Revenue Source to do that. Thank you very much, and hopefully, we can hear maybe sometime this year the results of their efforts. I have one other question id like to ask. Its for city planning. So as i mentioned in my opening remarks, im interested in some of the zoning changes that would make it easier to do certain things and hopefully we can start seeing fewer of these commercial commercial spaces empty. And one of them, as i mentioned, is in regard to child care, but i guess my question is really in regards to what seattle did, for instance or other cities where they changed the zoning to be a little more flexible, do you know if theyve been successful in reducing the percentage of vacant commercial spaces . I dont im sorry. I dont have that information with me, but we can look into it and see other cities that perhaps have similar zoning controls that relaxed them. I think seattle did that, as was presented. I do know that San Francisco does have a very fine grained planning code, more so than other cities, where we really look at individual uses very carefully, so were unique in that respect. Supervisor yee thank you. Thank you. Supervisor fewer . Supervisor fewer yeah, thank you very much. So i just have a couple of questions. From oewd, im wondering how do you inform commercial Property Owners of programs that benefit Small Business owners, and to what extent is that effective . In terms of Property Owners, it depends on the district were working. If were talking about a commercial property district, we tend to connect them with the programs that are available. In terms of the job squad that goes out there on a quarterly and biannual basis that go out and walk the corridor and make sure that Business Owners are aware of the services that we provide, were very active on that. Its part of the process of the job squad. So you actually go door to door. And talk with Business Owners, in addition to getting an assessment of the business stock itself, and that oneonone interaction with merchants and community members. Supervisor fewer so you actually keep date other on that . Mmhmm. So data presented supervisor fewer so we could see it through our commercial corridors. Mmhmm. Supervisor fewer okay. And i just wanted to know what efforts have been made to reach out to Business Owners that conduct business in other than english. I know that sometimes you do not reach out to russian speaking or vietnamese speaking or taiwanese speaking, im wondering how you reach out to those Property Owners. That is next hololistically that we would like to expand, given the linguistics of an entire corridor. At the same time, one of the things im very proud of, we do have a very strong bilink well staff, spanish, chinese, cantoo so soon cantonnese. Supervisor fewer i see to those are the Business Owners is that struggle with regulations that they have to abide by. Also relocation cast costs, just the nuts and bolts of running retail in a really competitive environment, and they dont have a lot of access to a lot of mainstream information, so i also wanted to know what kind of measures are taken to actively record the efficacy of your program. Certainly. I mean i think its based on the number of clients that are served, but i think we need to be fine grained about that, as well. Its one thing when were outreaching to businesses, whether its monolink well communities or others, and they decide to definitely take up the services that we provide. Thats actually one of the difficulties that we have right now, specifically with monolink wemonolink monolingual communities. We can make the education available. Sometimes for a diversity of reasons, they may not choose to take the next step. I think one measure that we want to begin taking on is what level among those populations can we increase the receptiveness to those programs. Supervisor fewer have you ever discussed having satellite sort of storefront Resource Centers along commercial corridors . Actually. Thats actually two entities provide that for us. Job squad is present and holding workshops, being present and letting owners of know of workshops available if the need is raised to us. For example in chinatown in the past, when there were issues related to the department of public health, we made sure that the city and its programs could be accessible to that community. As it relates to the Small Business center, one of the next steps that they want to take is what are the diversity of ways that they can provide workshops online and test out the ability for that to be absorbed by communities who may or may not be able to is being ses those programs. But we have seen when we talk about the potential for increasing resources or increasing attention relating to ecommerce needs for Small Businesses, one of the hesitations that some have brought up is would those communities be willing or wanting to or to benefit from that adaptation or those adaptive services, and those answers is absolutely yes, so i think its something worth trying out so that we can begin doing that, and just continue on building what our outreach is, the engagement is in a community and culturally based way. Supervisor fewer okay. Thanks. And then, i just want to comment on this healthy range of vacancies, and actually, i think its sometimes misleading. Because when you identify a healthy range is there is a concentration sometimes on one or two blocks within a corridor, so if youre looking through a whole neighborhood commercial district, you might say oh, theres a low vacancy rate, but theres a high concentration sometimes within a three or four block radius, and that is actually what leads to blight, but it also doesnt allow a commercial corridor to meet its potential of vibrancy, because we quite frequently in my neighborhood, i just have to say, we have people that own multiple storefronts on a one block, and therefore, it really inhibits the ability for that commercial corridor to start to thrive because they own so many storefronts, and theyre vacant on one block. And so i just think that we should also be calculating a concentration, because that has a different sort of negative impact on a commercial corridor. I think thats have i true, which is why when we apply some of our programs in very specific areas, during the presentation, i made mention that the data is one thing, but then, also, the on the Ground Research is another when coupled of local preferences and Community Perception about whats important to their neighborhood, the blocks around or where they visit. Thats certainly where we actually place or encourage events to take place is important. Its why when we couple the certain improvement programs that we try to cluster them as much as we can. When those are found to be cumbersome, we adapt those programs, but absolutely, i think the concentration factor is something that we do definitely take into account. Supervisor fewer and then, i noticed that in this Research Project that were doing, i i think this is on page 16. It says, some of the conclusions and this is conclusion number three, implications is limiting ground floor retail requirements for new development to the strongest locations for retail could help reduce potential vacancies, so could you give me some examples of that . Certainly. Did you want to im going to ask sarah graham to come up from strategic economics. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Thank you. Hi. Sarah graham from strategic economics. Supervisor fewer hi. So what were referring to there is new requirements for ground floor retail, as you describe some of the corridors or districts might be rather large or several blocks long and requiring ground floor retail on every piece of that corridor might be too difuse, so there might be places in a district that are more strong locations for our retail, and perhaps retail could be required in those locations. But in other locations that may be weaker will not be appropriate locations for new retail. Supervisor fewer okay. Does that explain it . Supervisor fewer yeah. Okay. Supervisor fewer got it. And then i have another question for oewd, when you said you help with relocation in my businesses, in my district where Small Businesses have been there for 30 or 40 years, and now theres a new landlord, and the landlord wants to jack up the rent five times to what theyre paying, and they have to relocate, but these are stores that are actually on its such a fine line to making it every month, im wondering, so do you help with relocation costs . We have not helped with relocation costs, but we do help in terms of both free legal services, in terms of the lease. If you define a relocation as finding a neighborhood where our programs could be applied to a facade or improvement, to help make shelves more warm or to help improve a site for them, we can help them there. We can help them up linking, depending on the type of business it is, to help them with the bureaucracy thats around there. Supervisor fewer okay. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor stephanie. And thank you, the need for calling this extremely important hearing. Thank you today to bla, oewd and planning to those presentations. Im just thinking over the 17 years that ive lived in cal hollow, i was thinking about all the different businesses, you know, i just want to say its not just the loss of goods or services in the store when a business goes out of business, but these are the relationships that are developed over time, and these are heartbreaking losses to the community. Im fortunate in Pacific Heights we have one of the lowest vacancy rates in the city. Chestnut street is also thriving, but i also represent sacramento street and union street, which have their own unique challenges, and recently there was a story on socket site, and it detailed about 20 vacancies on union street. I was to ask oewd on some of these have a cannies and how long some of these pending businesses have been stuck in these processes while pending approval. Certainly. We can get you that information in a more granular way. Right now, i believe the union street we cover from vanness to steiner, and then from fillmore to lombard, thats about 7 , but we can give you the length of time those vacancies have been in place, when a business changed hand or if it is or is not vacant currently or whether or not it actually has its doors open for business. And just one more question for dbi. As were in the budget process right now, im just wondering what kind of data it has to identify the vacant and abandoned property. This is obviously an extremely important issue facing our neighborhood and commercial corridors. Im just wondering if we can get a sense of exactly what were looking at and exactly what resources would be needed to tackle this problem. Having been brought into this issue at the end of last week, i dont think i have a deep sense of the specificity of what you would need from our department. However, i can see, having heard testimony and having read the analysts report that we are looking to leverage what reports already are in place, and as was mentioned earlier, the oewd, the focus on those 24 business corridors would be a starting point to build at least our internal database so that we can make sure that we have, within our own staff, give them task charges and try to have measurables available as we progress. So ive already seen that report, and we can i would say i can identify about six corridors that could be addressed immediately, utilizing whether its oewd or other resources is to document the ones that are already not in our system, and those would be the ones that are complaint driven. So now were talking about our staff having to get out there in the neighborhood. And again, its a challenge for a department because we have a limited number of Code Enforcement inspectors, and we do have to handle all other Code Enforcement related cases that have to do with permitted either they were exceeded or a permit was not taken out for a project, and we have quite a few complaints that we have to handle in those. I have a sense of what we do because i am a hearing officer for the Code Enforcement cases, and by and large, majority of them are going, have been, and will continue to be related to construction. Construction either exceeding permit scopes or exceeding the description thats provided or no permits at all, and those are complaint driven, and that maintains quite a good amount of our staff time being devoted to just handling that. This additional objective that we will place with a goal of bringing in a better understanding of our enforcement and the efficacy of our enforcement will be something we have to ask the Department Director for Inspection Services to consider. But that is not my program. Im in charge of it. Like i said, hes on vacation. But this is all available. Its all recorded. He will have all this available to him, and our executive team will meet and discuss this and take a look at a holistic approach to this so that we do bring about some changes that are also measurable. Okay. Another question . And this is for planning. Just, you know, one more point i just wanted to make when ive seen businesses try to go through the cu process, and sometimes it takes so long, and theyre paying rent the entire time and they call us, and can you please get us on the Planning Commission calendar. You know, id really like to work on some processes around to make sure theyre not waiting around and paying rent while we wait for a hearing an cu planning. If theres something we can put in place to fast track that, thats something id like to look at. Yes, supervisor, thats a complaint we do have often from the Supervisors Office and applicants. We do have a program called cb three peat. If you do meet certain criteria, with you expedite your petition. Not all uses meet that petition. If youre massage use, formula retail, we dont expedite those. It is a limited program, but we have had success with it. We are looking for ways to speed that up, especially for smaller businesses. Okay. Any other further questions, comments . I think theres a lot of work were going to have to do internally on this issue. At this point, im going to turn it over to Public Comment. If not, if i dont call your name, just come on up. Anyone who wants to come up and speak, please come to the podium. Good afternoon, supervisor, first of all, id like to say congratulations to supervisor tifani for being appointed to district 2. I think you can do a fabulous job, and thank you for being there. Its actually pronounced stephanie. Supervisor stephanie. And second, thank you to oewd for doing such an excellent job on the report of the status of Retail Business in San Francisco. As we all know, the for the longest time, Small Businesses really relied on pot traffic, and were feeding coming foot traffic, and were feeding coming off the Online Retail sales. Foot traffic has dropped off, so the thing is how do you bring foot traffic back in. One of the things is if you have vacant storefronts, they create blight. Not only that, but you dont get the foot traffic you normally would have if you didnt have these blighted places. I was fortunate to be out with may mayor lee the friday before he passed away at the excess i dont remember. He said look at these beautiful storefront windows. They were all decorated. He said couldnt we do that with all of the storefronts, couldnt we work with oewd to get artwork in them, put displays in them, and i really think that would help. I just want to say the businesses that have been surviving are because theyve had to be creative, but having events, and by having pop ups. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. I represent the castro Business District which streechs along Market Street from octavia to castro and then to 19th is a thriving and creative Residential District and we are open for business. Despite some of the pressures afflicting neighborhoods across the city, were struggling with a 17 to 18 vacancy rate. Over the past five years weve addressed many problems facing or neighborhood and commercial district. The problem is we need a stick to deal with these few owners who are absent and nonresponsive. They are wreaking havoc on our business landscape. They each have multiple longterm storefronts. Its shifted from mom and pop storefronts that have deep roots in the community to Corporate Investors who arent connected to our community. Theyre often abbott other than to collect rents and seek the highest return on their investments. The evna strongly supports more comprehensive and aggressive vacancy fees and penalties. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, chair tang, supervisors. My name is karen flood. Im the executive director of the Union Square Business improvement district, and we look forward to working collaboratively with you on this very important issue. Union square bid does provide Important Services to the area, many of which were mentioned earlier in terms of what a management district does. We enhance our public realm to create reasons for public to come downtown and shop. So i really want to thank supervisors, fewer, yee and ronen to bring this issue to our attention. Its a really important discussion that were having today, and thank you to oewd and dbi for the study that weve all done. We create a vibrant Hospitality Industry downtown. Tens of thousands of well paying jobs, and retail managers take pride in their storefront as do Property Owners, and we want to maintain the area. Overall the state of union square is strong. We maintain a 5 to 10 range, although there are pockets as supervisor fewer mentioned earlier, maybe some on the northern side have more vacancies than the southern part of the district. There are many reasons why stores were vacant as were also mentioned today, and weve seen that uptick. Right now, we have some of the Bigger Department stores in union square. Now we need smaller core plates. We look forward to working with you on this important issue, and look forward to you being part of the discussion. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Eileen bokin, president to speak her on my behalf. In this presentation, two implications stood out, could management policies may need to be revisits, and land use policies may need to be modified. This suggests that oewd is promoting current and proposed mta and Planning Department policies, some of which are controversial. Regarding the mta, the Small Business commission has weighed in on the Mission Street project. From the dais, commissioner doolye referred to its an autocratic. The same could be said of the mtas terastreet project. Two merchants have gone out of business closer dry cleaning and hunters thread, such as marchellos restaurant have seen a significant dropoff in business. Has this report been vetted before the Small Business commission or the San Francisco council of district merchants associations . My understanding based on today, eithneither has. So this hearing may have been premature. The process could have really started at the council, gone to the Small Business commission and then followed by the board of supervisors. Thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon, supervisors. J. D. Workman representing the San Francisco chamber of commerce. I also want to thank you for having this hearing today. We at the chamber and me in particular have been working on this issue for many, many years, and im very interested to see that its coming up again because im aware of the vacancy rates in our neighborhood commercial district, so i feel that the numbers that were given today dont just really capture the crisis that were in when it comes to filling our retail spaces in our neighborhood and keeping them in our retail commercial corridors. And some of those vacancies, they last for months and years, so im not sure that it really captures that. I think that what we havent really heard a lot of today is how timeconsuming and expensive it is to actually get a retail permit in San Francisco, and i fore formula retail, but for other retailers, as well, and i think there is such a degree of uncertainty with it when you dont even know at the end of the day after months or maybe a year of going through the process whether youre even going to be able to go into that space, that it its very discouraging for potential retailers to come into our neighborhood commercial corridors, so i hope that were going to be taking a look at expediting the process to increase the certainty and enable retailers to be able to get in as quickly as possible. Also, i think flexiblity is key, and i heard a lot of that today. And i i think its with the changing conditions of retail in the city and in the country, i think its very important that a diversity of uses be able to go into ground floor commercial spaces, including professional services. And one of your colleagues, supervisor peskin has been promoting legislation that would restrict that. We would really encourage diversity. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is deidre vonne rock. I am the president of the rest portal rock merchants association. While im proud that we have the lowest vacancy, that is not how it appears on an objective view. In west portal, absentee land lowers who have no interest in the block of a huge problem. For example, we had a discussion in anchoring a project on the west tunnel because they were still collecting rent on a formula retailer. We had a radio shack that sat vacant for years because the owner wanted another radio shack. Finally, verizon showed some interest in it, but its been meyered in planning for well over a year. Just recently, one of the owners of the four buildings where three of our businesses recently has been devastated has been unresponsive, delaying the Recovery Efforts of all the other businesses. The Merchant Association is often asked about the status of the vacancies and what can be done, and our answer is nothing. Not until there is anymore enforcement or accountablity as to the vacancies. We support more stringent rules on vacancies and enforcement, and we would welcome a change in zoning for ground floor retail zoning subject to community input. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is steven cornell. I owned a Retail Business for 40 years in San Francisco. Im here also as a legislative representative of Council District merchants. Nothing can do good for businesses but more money. More businesses more business means the business thrives, it employs more people. More people means that they can buy from their neighbors. More business in, more sales is what does it for business. How can the city help . Well, the city and county of San Francisco is the largest employer in San Francisco. It has almost four times more than the largest private employer, yet when the city has to buy a light bulb up here, theyre going to go to know where mississippi if its one penny cheaper to get it from them. Why arent they buying it from San Francisco. You put the money back into San Francisco businesses, we can thrive. The city does this all the time with their largest purchase, employees. They have a policy of getting prevailing wages, the highest and best wages because San Francisco costs more, and we have very good employees. Well, San Francisco costs more for businesses, and we should also get higher prices for the people that sell here in the city. I think thats a way to help this whole problem. Thank you. My name is hans hansen. Im president of starburg commercial real estate. We actively do retail deals in the neighborhood. We do not represent retailers, and id like to tell two stories about the reality of doing business in San Francisco. One is a bakery that we represented in south of market. It was 1800 square feet. It was his first operation. He budgeted 250,000 for the improvements to the space, another 160,000 for his equipment, and 10 or 25,000 towards his permitting fees, and etcetera soft costs. To date, nine months later, he is now at 750,000 total cost and just opened his doors. The landlord did work with him on holding back rent, but this was a process to get to the cup that took well over nine months. Second story is 3146 Mission Street, the old kragens auto store. We leased that out to a Company Called eagle rider thats been on eighting and bryant street. This was a site that was 19,000 square feet that was auto use previously. It was a chevrolet dealership. We leased out 19,000 feet. They were formula retail because they were 13 stores nationally, and they ended up taking 13 months, losing their tenant. It was their subtenant, and now you have a vacancy of 6,000 square feet that has to start the process all over again. Good afternoon, supervisors. Cory smith on behalf of the San FranciscoHousing Action coalition. I also want to welcome supervisor stephanie to the chamber, as well. Obviously, theres a lot of good ideas floating around. One of the best things we can do for businesses is work to provide more customers for the businesses. I live in a haightashbury neighborhood, and there is just a stretch of single story retail. Its not shocking to me that as a neighborhood purchaser, i dont actually spend a lot of time up and down there because there are a lot of vacant stores. The other thing that this conversation reminds me of is from the old ceo of netscape. He says when it comes to decision making, we should look at data, but if all we have is opinions, were going to go with mine, and this is one of the situations where the city has provided really, really good data. If i could get the overhead, please. So this is all sort of sfmta data. Projector . Nope. Well, its a couple of data points coming from sfmta. The first one is the majority of people actually get to commercial corridors by transit, by foot or by bike. Its a lot more popular than cars. The data also shows that for the people that do take different transportation methods to the actual commercial corridors themselves, people spend more money if they are walking or biking or taking transit. Theres two data points here, both for the comMission Street corridor, for the polk street corridor, as well. So again, in the collaborative, holistic approach that we need to take to solve this problem, one of the simple things we can do is just put more customers in the neighborhood and that will help the businesses. Thank you. Good afternoon. Im leslie lenhart, union Street Association executive director, and i thank you very much for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you this afternoon. I agree with most of everything i have heard already from the previous speakers. I would like to just talk about union street, which i know so well. Ive had my business there for almost 40 years, and ive seen many, many changes. Union street is always in transition. However in last ten years, its been very challenging, and the reason is multiple. First of all, we do have the high rents, and that is unfortunate an attitude of greed from certain people. They will not rent out until they get a certain amount, and that is very unfortunate, very unfortunate. Oftentimes, also, we found out that we have offshore owners of these buildings, and theyre hard to contact and theyre unresponsive, so that goes without saying and it is a problem. We also have to remember that we have an adt situations in all of the old buildings. That is a problem, too, that doesnt go away, and nor should it, but it does add expense to making a possible business come into the district. Id like to say that the tourists, they shop, they shop. Theyre here, they love it. They shop. And we need more tourists. We need to get rid of this ridiculous its not unfounded, that we but we have a very unsafe city, a very violent city, and people are staying away. They are, i talk to a lot of european people in the past. They loved San Francisco. It was wonderful. They came from all over, and now they are hesitant to do that. So the city really has to look at that. We need to make it safer. We need more police on the streets, and we need to do something about that. Im very unhappy about this uncomfortable feeling that im getting from when im talking to people coming into my gallery, so those are areas thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, looking at City Government channel, which i had a lot to do to create. Im oh, excuse me, madam. Welcome to the city hall, new supervisor. You call it city hall, i call it silly hall. Maybe you can help change that around. But right now, ladies and gentlemen, im not just here to impress, but to impress on the city and county, the city by the bay, where everybody thinks okay, ive got some news breaks today, doink, cause were here talking about oewd, seems like everybodys scared of me because they spent all the money thats supposed to come to the fillmore. You guys are talking about all the wonderful work that oewd is doing, but youre going to hear it from me, my community of what we think, and we know the deal of what they came into our community, spent millions for fail efforts, misguided leadership, and the most egregious thing that im not going to tolerate is undermining my community. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, im the fillmore corridor ambassador. Right now, im going to try to bring my community together. Weve got to have unity in my community. Theres no more black community, although this is black history month. They gave it to us, the shortest month. We still got short changed. My name is ace, im on the case. Ive got some news reels that i want to show to you in room 200. My name is ace and im on the case. Im mad that i had to go through it to get to it. Back by popular demand, ace on the case, all in your face, and im going to be in this place. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Sue hester here. Im so glad youre having this discussion, because we need to have a discussion. We need to have and expand. Theres a lot of things about neighborhood commercial districts and other neighborhoods that have commercial on them. When the absentee landlords keep a place vacant for a long time, theres a real lighting issue and safety issue as well as a muni issue. Theyre all involved. People that walk down the streets, especially women, older women like myself that may have a cane, they dont have lighting on the sidewalk, feel very uncertain walking. So i dont think theres enough attention paid to requiring lighting on the exterior of a building so that the pedestrian walkway is lit, whether or not theres a store in there or not, it should be the landlords responsibility, not the tenant, because a tenant moves all the time. Secondarily, the muni is only as strong as the retail district. People feel uncertain walking down streets, to a maununi sto as well, if the street is dark. If we should know where muni is intensively on ncds, vanness avenue, a lot of places that have retail districts depend on the muni, and so we need to be connecting lighting and pedestrians safety and focusing on muni connections, as well. It needs to be an ongoing conversation, and i thank you for bringing it up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak during Public Comment on these two items . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Supervisor fewer . Supervisor fewer so sorry. So thank you very much for everyone who presented today. I think i have many, many more questions for dbi. You know, i just think its not working. Complaint driven is not going to work. I think we have to be more proactive and astonished to see that the report says that i didnt have any vacant storefronts in my district is just ridiculous and not true. And so i think that the data is suspect. I think that the way that were handling i have so many questions. For example, i want to know that how many of these landlords or these people who have these commercial properties, how many of these cases are repeat offenders again and again and again . Some in my neighborhood, i know, have had restaurants that have been closed down for decades, and how many are these cases how many times are these cases or how many cases are referred to the City Attorney, and of those referred, what are the outcomes of those cases. And what can we do to escalate . I get that we can have a carrot, and we can help. When i see these abuses, and im done with those out of town speculators who buy up properties, such as speculatas. In my district, my Small Businesses are the backbone of my district. The services there actually serve my districts i mean, we have hair salons, we have restaurants, we have electronics stores, we have repair shops. These are businesses that thrive in the neighborhood, and as the neighborhood grows, these businesses are even more valuable to the people that live there. The largest population in my neighborhood, largest population or growing population is seniors, and they rely on these close neighborhood Small Businesses to serve them. And i think that when we dont have a very good database to even track that, i would like to know an analysis, for example, of the Small Businesses that are empty, the storefronts that are empty in my neighborhood, how long have they been empty, what are the reasons . What can we do . Quite frankly, i think that if you are an owner of a commercial space in San Francisco, that is your business. You should be using that commercial space as a rental business. I think that it is your responsibility to maintain that business, and actually to get a tenant. And i know that there are people who actual buy properties, commercial properties and just sit on it, and thats completely not acceptable in San Francisco, and completely not acceptable in my district. So i would say im a little bit dbis presentation and lack of preparedness for this hearing, and that we hope to i hope that we will continue this hearing so that we can bring dbi back, but also, id like to have some data from the City Attorney on what are the how many cases are actually referred to the City Attorney and that and also, what are some of the things that we can do as a city as a bigger stick for some of these landlords that are just not simply renting out these commercial spaces, waiting for a tenant that can pay more. I think that is to the detriment of our neighborhood and to the detriment of our neighborhood commercial corridors. So as i said, i think its the responsibility of the people who own these commercial properties to maintain them and rent them out. Quite frankly, if you own that, youre not simply a landlord, youre in the business of commercial retail space. And i am just wondering how many times do we have to hear about violators violating this over and over and over again, sometimes for decades, and when does the time come when the city and county says enough, and that we need to do something much more drastic. If they cant manage their buildings, maybe we should and purpose them for the public good. So i am requesting that this hearing be continued at the call of the chair so that we can get more information from dbi when they are ready to present to us with the information that weve requested, along with some data from the City Attorney. Thank you, supervisor fewer, and i would just add that id like for the information, if theres a next presentation, to include beyond just the quarterly updates. Id like to see since the span of the inception of the legislation. And of course, we know the details of the legislation. We want to see where these cases or complaints are actually going. Supervisor kim . Vice president brandon i ju supervisor kim i just wanted to thank the supervisors of the legislation today. This is an issue that our office started bringing up in 2011 as we were working on the midmarket recession. During that time, we were at an economic downturn, and so in some ways, there was an understanding as to why commercial ground floor retail wasnt being rented out, and at the time, thenpresident david hsu had moved forward the vacancy fee. I think its surprising in an economic upturn were still in a same position, and ive lost so many Small Businesses last year, in a year that we were doing incredibly well economically, and i think its a muxture ixture of things. I dont think its all landlords that are unreasonable, but i do think landlords are unreasonable in rent. In south park, we lost a restaurant, butler and the chef, where there are Tech Companies sprouting up around it. I know its hard for Business Owners who have such a narrow margin of profit to a , not get the support that they need from the city, but b , have to deal with landlords, who really have this unreal stake of what they should charge for rent. Everybodys waiting for the miracle chase bank or something thats going to come to their neighborhoods, so sometimes i think we need to educate commercial landlords on what they can do or not do as well. I think that we have to do the carrots, and i appreciate the presentation that oewd gave, but i think we also have to do the stick, as well, and some of that is going to come down to enforcement. And i think that the percentage of businesses that have registered for vacancy is just abysmally low. We do a good job of tagging Business Owners when theres graffiti on their building, so its not clear why we cant ensure that that kind of enforcement is done fore vacancy, as well. Finally, this is slightly separate, but this continues to be an issue particularly in our redevelopment plans, particularly in mission bay. We get a lot of complaints from our residents that we dont have a lot of meenoos and businesses that they want to see. A lot of condos put in businesses that can pay a lot of rent but arent necessarily what people need, and also, the type of restaurants that people want to see, the San Francisco only type sfraunt restaurants with these chef owners that really make neighborhoods more alive. Many bring in more chain stores on king street, but even in those neighborhoods theres a lot of storefront retail. I just feel with these owners that we have a partnership with, we should use any type of city leverage, one to fill their ground floor vacancies, but two, work with them to put in businesses that our residents will actually partake in. But thank you again, and really a good amount of data that went into this, and i think its really good for us to see all of this today. Thank you. Supervisor yee . Supervisor yee thank you, chair tang. I want to thank the oewd for their staff in analysis and reporting here today. Id like to say that we need to urge dbi to do a better job in just following through with the types of regulations that we have already. I also feel like, when i looked at the report and saw what other locations were doing, other locations were taking it much more seriously, and theyre much more aggressive about how theyre going to approach the Property Owners who think that they can just hold on for five years, and hopefully, theyll get 1million for 10,000 square feet or something. I would like to work with anybody that would like to pursue these more aggressive tactics, because thats the only way were going to get this resolved. Once again, i also want to thank the public for coming out and listening to your comments. Thank you. Supervisor