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in the neighborhood. and they sponsored having the civil rights academy spring fling and they want to give back and be part of the neighborhood and trying to be good neighbors. as far as the big bad ugly formula retail goes, they are really the kind of negotiations that we want to see in form law retail they besinger want to be a good neighbor and resource locally and give back to the neighborhood. and for that they should be congratulationsed. as men have said, that corner is a hard place to stay in business. every single restaurant that has been there has gone bankrupt and we really, really need to see it filled with something that is sustained and help the neighborhood. thank you. >> i will call the last batch of names. >> david troop, dylan macavin. >> dennis richards. and allen nelson. >> and my name is gary wiess and i am the president of the heights neighbors and on the planning committee sxim also the owner of a small business on market street, two blocks from the site being discussed. and i have owned and operated my flower shop for 30 years now. san francisco, is a very popular destination and millions of people visit each year and come for the beauty and uniqueness, the castro upper market neighborhood are visited by hundreds of thousands each year, and those people come to see a vibrant neighborhood with the businesses that don't exist anywhere else and they do not come for the same stories. and each formula retail business that moves in, dilutes our uniqueness. formula retail establishment cans and do afford to pay as much as 4 times when the non-formula retail business has been paying at the same location. >> property owners see this opportunity and frequently are content to leave the buildings vacant. as there is no rent control no small business will be able to afford the leases. the rents will remain at a more affordable level and i want to make a couple of corrections from the things that people have said, one is that of all of the vacantcies in the area, there are a number of those vacantcies that are in discussions to be leased. that is number one, and number two is my first visit to san francisco is in 1967 and restaurant was there, burks, and it was in business for many years before going bankrupt and also the john frank, and later, the same ownership were in business for many, many years before going bankrupt. boston chicken went bankrupt. very quickly and that was a chain store, so i don't see that having a chain store is the answer to a viable business in that location and the last thing that i want to say is that allen beach the president of the valley association had to leave, and i just wanted to say that our... the board as well as our membership supported, and it was definitely opposed to this coming in, thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioners, good evening, my name is dennis richards and i am the former president of the bose triangle association and also the sitting member of the market citizen community advisory committee and i have to tell you that i love chipotle. i love their lime chips and i love the burrito bowls and i am the one wanting to go to chipotle across the street in oregon and my staff says why chipotle every time because i love chipotle, unfortunately it is not about the burrito bowl it is about whether this is necessary or desirable. it is part of the upper market and i want to you look at it, to look at it from the church street subportion and there are nova , vacantcies and people are coming in and spending money and it is a destination. i don't think that adding a chipotle there is really going to add anything to the neighborhood, i don't think that it is necessary, it is probably not even desirable because in fact if it puts the other restaurants out of business what is the net employment gain when you lose 13 and 12 and gain some, they have incredible financial and campaign to get the supporters on-line and a big size matters and at the local bay and i think that size matters sums it up, they are going to put the other restaurants out of business these are their words not mine, i take exception to mr. genus's characterization of the vacantcies, 2223 market, he flashed too fast, it is already rented out, and the associates rented it out to peske and they are opening up another restaurant on market street and our neighborhood is happening and under construction, trigger bar is going to become bow and the owner of the edge bar have rented that out and you can see the construction is happening there. there is 7 vacantcies from what i can tell and how many? what is the percent and let's put that in context. i think that mr. serina was dis enginueos, i was sitting at the restaurant and after the dot com bust that was not a business model that was going to work and then home took over and they were there until 2011 and after the second dot com bust and the rate recession they went out of business which is kind of obvious, it was hard and a lot of restaurants went out of business and so those two restaurants were there 13 years total. it was not like they were open and closed in six months. >> if you look at the letters of opposition, all of the neighborhood businesses would house the fish, and inspiration, all voiced their opposition and all have jamba juice, two starbucks and the gnc. that is what this will do, thank you. >> good afternoon, maybe good evening, commissioners, my name is david troop. and i am lived in the triangle for 13 years and i am on the board. there are more reasons to disapprove this project than i have time to talk about and many of them have been covered, the existing mexican restaurants within a block of this location, the dramatic impact that formula retail has on neighborhood character and on setting expectations for land lords, and encouraging them to hold out for these credit tenants and yet the commercial real estate is a cycle business it is not reasonable to think that you can rent the space and you will have the same tenant for 30 years or ten years, if you do you are lucky. but a certain amount of turnover, it is just the nature of that business. the point of market is literally the gateway to the castro and the market, whatever we put in that spot sets the tone for the whole neighborhood. and putting a fast food chain in that location, and chipotle is a wonderful fast food chain as fast food chains go, i eat there myself sometimes. it is a national chain and you can find it anywhere. and it won't attract people to the neighborhood and it will not attract people from other san francisco neighborhoods to the neighborhood because you can go anywhere and find a chipotle. >> and it was interesting to note that on the petitions that were gathered chipotle did not have too many more signatures than the opposing petitions, despite the act that they ran these ads and ran to sign the on-line petition. anyone that comes in there is going to clean up that location but the lease was locked up over a year ago by chipotle and so, you know the potential other restaurants since then have not had an opportunity to vie for it and i hope that you will make the right decision for the neighborhood and disapprove this proposal. >> are there any additional speakers for public comment? >> if not, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini? >> well, thank you, very interesting discussion. i have a few thoughts on this issue a number of things that were pointed out and there are a few comments that this would be the formula retail and the signage will be like everything else and the project sponsor made it clear that it is understated and custom built squ not be in the same mode as all of the other chipotles i think that is an important issue for me. it seems to be understated and there is another speaker that talked about the parking and the parking existed since it began and chipotle is eliminating three parking places so it is less parking and so i think that there is a need for parking in this particular situation because it is the kind of restaurant that i don't prefer, i like to go into a place and sit down and relax, and maybe have a drink and at least spent a few minutes looking over a menu and then leisurely order and be served and eat there. there are instances that i do take out food, that happens. but i don't often go to swat and gobble for the same ren that you have to make a choice in line and you have to make this choice and you get the food, brought to your table and some enstances you have to actually bring the food to your own table so it would not be my first choice which leads me to my position that everybody points this out to be competitive that it will drive the other mexican restaurants out of business. i don't really see this happening. i would assume and i have not been to them, i think that they are very good from what i have heard and everybody speaks highly of them. and although many of them do have take out, i am sure that all of them allow people to go in, order, sit down and order and be served. that is an entirely different model than what chipotle is presenting. so, i don't really see it being a situation where they would drive people away in a blieted corner and crime and things like that drive people out of the neighborhood. but having another business there does not drive people away. the other thing that i want to talk about is this business about the 20 percent. and i also wins when they say it was unanimous and i thought that i could not have voted for that but i did because i was assured by the staff that the commissioners could vote otherwise if they felt that the benefits of the particular proposal out weighed the 20 percent, but now, as i look at it more, i think that it is really a poor matrix to use. i still believe that you have to look at the entire district from octavia to castro and see what kind of a concentration of formula retail you have when making a decision not just a real isolated area and it is even worse in this enstance because a lot of it is parking lot, and a lot of it is unused space, and so, it looks a lot worse than it really is in terms of the concentration. one speaker brought up the point that she felt that there was a huge concentration of formula retail within the entire district upwards of 30 percent. and i have been told that there are only 12 formula retail establishments total in the district. and it may be two different things and we both may be right, the number of the establishments in the square footage of the establishments it could be that upwards of the high 20s of square footage might be formula retail, and some of them may be larger, and i am not sure that is correct any way. but at least, whether we permit this or not, i think that the matrix that we are using is not a good one with this 300 foot radius because you could have a situation where all of the formula retail is in one area and there is none throughout the rest of the district and you know you have to look at kind of the big picture. i have heard about the vacantcy and that concerns me. but the other thing that is more important is we are going to be bringing all of the units on-line, we have at least 7 new buildings that are being built with housing. and some are condo and some are rental and it does not make it any difference, there is going to be over 1,000 new units almost all of them have ground floor retail and now what should be done and i am not sure whether we as a commission did this, but, these areas should be restricted to divide up the retail space into smaller spaces that are more appropriate for local businesses to be able to pay the rent, and to thrive, where they don't have a huge piece of land that has been a problem for a long time. and these triangles have been problems as long as i can remember, many of them eliminated the problem by being demolished and now there is housing built on those. but normally, they were businesses that did not last too long. and they were not that successful, and where there were gas stations. but, as far as putting a small independent business in there, you have more space and you will particularly if parking is more restricted as it will be in the market plan and you will have a lot of land that you will not have a use for, it is going to be hard especially with the restaurant to use up that much space. i think that a better way of looking and another way of looking at it might be that if you take the block, that chipotle would be on, and look at just the stores along that side, which would be the northern part of the block, between i guess that it is church and sanchez if i am correct. and there are only two formula retail, if you consider state farm insurance one of them and the other as sterling bank. and so, on that particular block on the north side, there are very few. they have talked a little bit about their philosophy as an organization and i was told that the founder a man was originally at stars and went through the san francisco culinary academy and he certainly has the right credentials to run a business that is done responsibly. it has been said that the rent will be same as what home was paying three years ago, which is pretty amazing in itself. and i think that these are the main points on this particular issue. there are a couple of other things that i wanted to mention. there is always the possibility if you don't support something just because it is there, it does not mean that you have to patronize it and it gives choices to those who do want to patronize it for a variety of reasons and there might be nights when someone goes to chipotle because they are in a hurry, or it is daytime and they are in the middle of work and they want to come in quick and get something and they want good quality food. but at night they want to sit at one of the other restaurant and relax and have a nice meal or some of them may try chipotle and say that i liked it but it is not the style of dining that i like and i am going to go to these other places. i don't think that it has to be competition, and so i am in favor of the proposal, but we will see what the other commissioners have to say. >> commissioner hillis? >> thank you all for commenting, we have actual hi leder a lot about chipotle and a lot about this site and it is similar to what we heard about starbucks a couple of weeks ago. i mean the reason that we are here is because the citizens of san francisco voted yes on prop g, when kind of set a high bar for formula retail and i think rightly so, you know, we want san francisco to maintain its unique neighborhoods and its unique neighborhood character. that is why the voters passed it pretty overwhelmingly and that is why we are here discussing this. and i don't think that this is necessarily about chipotle and whether it is a good chain or a bad chain. i don't think... i mean, you think back to when and i was here when boston market here and when home was there and it was a very different feel for that block. when home was there as opposed to the boston market and both of them did not work out and they were there for a while and i don't think that this site, we can argue that this site works better for formula retail, or a independent restaurant and both went under and there was a vacantcy for both and so the argument about vacantcies is suspect and it was vacant because the formula retail as well as independent restaurant after a years of operating. it is vacant because we are in this process and because it has been trying to get the support on working on this process and we heard that it has tied up the site for over a year and i think that it boils down to neighborhood character and preserving our neighborhood character and kind of what the balance is for chain stores, prop g set the bar high, for formula retail and the policy that we adopted for upper market set the bar higher, and is it a signal to those who want to open formula retail establishments in this neighborhood to go and talk to the neighbors, and in the neighborhood groups and make sure that it is an appropriate fit, which i think that cvs did and we approved that. and i just don't think that we have made the case that this is appropriate use for this site, which i agree with one speaker which is kind of the gateway to the neighborhood and so i am not supportive of this cu. >> i would like to ask a question of the staff and if they would try to address the argument about the 19 percent verses 20 percent and if in fact the parking lot of the safeway falls into the radius, and i guess that i have a question of whether it is maybe not retail there, if that parking lot is zoned for retail, or not. >> the calculation is based off of commercial frontages and frontages occupied by the commercial uses and for calculating and for in regards to telling the parking lot that it is considered a special lot situation and that parking lot and that serve for parking. and formula uses. and that counts toward that, that frontage calculation and for in this case, there were a couple of parking lots and there are a couple of lots that operated as parking for the shopping center, so they do count. they do count towards getting the 20 percent, or the 27 percent calculation for existing. we are counting the parcel and there is formula retail in that parcel. yes, what we counted at that shopping center serves safeway and starbucks and jamba juice. they do count, we are counting it for a policy for the calculating. >> i have a couple more questions if you want to follow up. >> that one point that i made a note to myself because it seems to me that the staff is correct. and in using that approach it is similar to when the commissioners have conflicts on properties within 500 feet. i will give you the example the auditor um on california and you pay the ticket and you sit in the auditor um that subpoena on the higher end of the block the property that masonic is 500 feet and my condo is not within 500 feet but it is the property that counts and their driveway and their loading zone comes all the way down to pine street. and so i am my property, and it is within 500 feet of that property. the fact that it encompasses the property that also has a number of formula retail establishments. >> i actually had church at chipotle, you do run a good operation and a great business and it is different from other restaurants and other restaurants in that category. i am going to stick with the policy that this commission adopted and that is the 20 percent rule and i appreciate the argument that it is 19 percent, if it is property line to property line, i could maybe see, i am going to have to depend that staff is accurate and that calculation in this particular case. and so, i am supportive of following the recommendation, and so as far as two things, 20 percent rule may not be the ultimate tool. and we have had the discussions last week about that. and i think that we are also reminding our heads that it is one tool and there may be others but it is the one in front of us right now and one that we have agreed upon for the moment and that may change and flip and maybe be different from a different district or a different part of the city but i want to send another message out to the larger community that san francisco alone many case and what gets the ink is that formula retail is not wanted and there are certain parts that it is need and desired a grocery store in particular and basic services that we need this particular location is nearby fantastic mexican food and i don't know if it is the best by comparison but there is great food to be had and it is a food mecca for san francisco. and the best thing about san francisco is that we keep rotating in the district scenarios and the neighborhood of san francisco as far as food and this is the hot spot right now and so i think, let it alone, and let it cultivate the way that it should and maybe in time we will look at this very differently and that is the place to put a formula retail but at the moment i don't think that it is necessary and i think or i know that i am not going to approve it. >> commissioner borden. >> i live six blocks from this location and i have thought a lot about it since home closed down and i have seen the building and i do feel for the property owners and the challenges that you face and i don't want to cause the dir res, this is a key lot at the corner of church and market and it is the gateway as you head to the castro and to have that lot which is across the street from safeway and a whole foods being built at this moment and jamba juice and all of those things sets the wrong tone for what is the castro or what is san francisco? and what is upper market? and i understand why the space with a tenant that is credit worthy and i am not dismissing that because that is an important thing. when we talk about the neighborhoods and the vie tal streets it is all about the feeling that a neighborhood creates, the streets and a vibrant, thriving street and it does not have a single other than a chase bank at the one end and it does not have a single formula retail along the way. if every storefront and there is more demand for more storefronts and the neighborhoods that are thriving are not the ones with the form law retail all over them, it is the ones that don't have that. i think that we are seeing, you know, there is a lot of it is interesting because i would mention earlier in the hearing that i was at this presentation for a retail analyst guy and one of the things that i thought was interesting is that he said that mellimials want to live in a place that is unique, and not cookie cut and her not loyal to the brands they are loyal to the experiences. and the community is about the experience and what is growing in the retail market and chipotle by the nature of being a fast food rest it is not an experience, i eat and i leave, but for this lot and size, the nice thing about a full service restaurant where the people linger and have dessert is a different kind of place and vitality and activity that provides the neighborhood that a quick grab and go kind of location does not provide. and i think that is one of the key things that we look at when we talk about cvs and they provide something that a lot of other businesses can't provider don't provide, they do. the pharmacies are not the small businesses any more and they provide something that in a lot of ways that walgreens does not provide. and it was a different kind of business, and we also talked about it as an office store where the people will go from all over the city and places to go to an apple store because people buy apple products and chipotle is not a destination as someone said, people are not going to go from all over the city to go to chipotle and if they wanted to they have nine other locations apparently. which is definitely shows that there is no shortage of chipotle if you would like some. the other thing is that i am so familiar with chilango, i love your carnitos and there are great mexican restaurants while i don't believe the game chipotle verses the other restaurants, i do think that there is, that there is an impact in terms of you know, the type of people that you want to attract to a neighborhood and what you are trying to present the neighborhood to be about. when you invite some of those other kinds of things in. we also heard i mentioned earlier that orchard supply that came to us not too long ago filed for bankruptcy and now secured by lowes and boston market and filed for bankruptcy, and chipotle is doing well and we don't expect that to happen. but the point is that this is a thrive and fail for a vote variety of reasons, that i think it should be a mixed use lot, part of it is the configuration of the large, one story buildings, i don't think that they are profitable kinds of spaces that work well and that is just probably what a lot of the analysts would tell you. so, i actually think that the best thing that you probably could do for that lot is explore some sort of mixed use development that would make the retail more affordable and actually will be a ef
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