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 ab