Adults and children and more we have at any given time, go in on a sunday morning and youll see everything from toddlers to people my age there, and they are indeed playing mini golf, ski ball, basketball and they are eating, because its a full service restaurant, and they are drinking either alcoholic beverages if they choose to and of course theres nonalcoholic beverages. We have kids until 8 00. And we have many of them. So im going to talk a little bit about the economics of the situation. And i can tell you very clearly there would be, no, you are ban putt if we didnt have a restaurant and a bar. We only charge 12 for miniature golf. We have a full Maintenance Team that has to come in every morning to do work on it. It would not be financially feasible for us to have that. So, in fact, having food, and it is a full service restaurant, which is important. I have two kids. And they are there quite a lot. Ive lived in San Francisco, it will be 30 years next year. I live in vernal heights so i know about this. I can also speak to the issue of crowding and uber and everything else. You know, once you check the records, weve had no literally no complaints about this, no police incidents, nothing like this, no alcoholrelated incidents that have come up in the five and a half years that we have been in business. We do have a door person. We dont think of them as a bouncer because its meant to be friendlier than that. But we have door people that are there every evening. And that actually also really helps in keeping everything safe and neat and making sure there are no incidents. Joey can speak to how he wants to handle that, but there is a model here that he may well use. Sir, your time is up. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. I live near this project. And im a real estate agent. I work with a lot of Small Businesses. And im shocked about how hard it is to start a Small Business, just being an entrepreneur is incredibly difficult. The odds are so against you. And it takes so much persistence and so much courage. To take a game like ski ball and turn it into your business is even more impressive. And to do that in San Francisco, to raise a family, takes an incredible amount of responsibility. And a person that takes on these odds and that has the responsibility and persistence and passion is somebody that i want doing business in my neighborhood. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is vincent. I live on 20th and treat. I lived on mission for about six years now. And i live at my family house my grandfather was born in. I approached joey about three years ago to start an art program in his arcade to help use his walls as canvass and create a system for a few artists in the neighborhood to get together and paint some murals. Thats just part of the reason im here though. A few years later we were in a bind and a friend of mine had two daughters and one was sick and we needed to have a fundraiser. There were very few places that could aaccommodate and he lent his space to us. The point is not the sob story. The point is that he gave me and my wife and my friends a Community Center that we needed at the time. And allowed us to use the space to raise 4,000 for a charity called madelines movement that we believe and participate in. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is matthew. Im the owner of a small bizarre cade. Its just me. I do arcade repair around the city and do Event Rentals with my arcade games. Ive known joey for a couple years. I work for him on a contract basis fixing his games. I do some design work for him. And when he mentioned this project about a year ago when this first started dreaming about this, he mentioned in the plans there a mezzanine which is like a second story that would be created in this which hopefully would contain some of my games, miniature games i make. They are 40 percent size. [off mic] they are literally childsized games. [laughter] so i make those games. And ive lived in the mission when i first moved here at 21st and florida. I lived in the upper hayes the last ten years. Theres an arcade in the upper haight which again echoing the economic concerns is both a print shop, they make screen print tshirts which is how they support the arcade. I work there on the weekends and if i had to encourage you to go there any day, its full of kids playing my games, specifically parents showing their kids the games and the kids being approachable for the kids as well. Im a blue collar worker. I repair arcade games. I need clients like joey to be able to live in the city. So i would encourage you to approve this request. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, there. My name is dan baldwin. Im an employee of joey the cat as the events manager. Im tasked with the rental sales and delivering the arcade games throughout the bay area to private events of all types. I have a parttime team of two event assistants that help out with the delivery of the games. Ive been a resident of the mission for about five years now and have enjoyed working with joey in supporting a business that is owned by somebody that lives in the mission. And a vote for this discretionary review may jeopardize my position as well as my parttime assistants so i would ask that you reject the discretionary review and support the arcade. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is josh morris. I work at joey the cat as well. I also live in the neighborhood. And have for seven years now. I repair arcade games in this warehouse and also at other locations. We have our arcade games and i would like to be able to keep my job because if we dont have more arcade games, then theres nothing for me to work on. The best thing about this is that when you see people playing, if you share the experience. We are in the business of creating champions. We are here sharing the board walk experience that really cant be achieved any other way than playing arcade games. And i want to continue making people happy by sharing that winning feeling with them, because im not olympic athlete but you get that sensation when you succeed and when you win. Thank you. [laughter] thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, my name is ryan. Im bay area born and raised, been a Business Owner in the Mission District for two decades, lived in San Francisco for about the same. Im also a member of the Mission Merchants association and thats how i found out about this project. I feel like theres a lot of obvious tension in the Mission District over gentrification and tech use use coming in and having a blast. And to be honest, it pisses me off when i see crappy behavior by people that arent from here and whatnot but i think blaming joey for that and having him be the punching bag for that kind of anger isnt quite fair. I dont feel its fair to characterize this as its going to be strictly a techy hangout. I think we know that techies live in San Francisco and people with money live in San Francisco. But theres nothing about this that has that nasty smell of money. It just doesnt. This is a place that i would if i could afford to have a kid, i would bring a kid to hang out there and play ski ball or whatever. But this doesnt have an elitist stink to it. And i know theres some people that have a drive and i respect what they are protecting. But i think that maybe this particular project should maybe get a little more slack and think about someone as trying to open an honest, independent, hardworking, workingclass business and i know theres been some past and i dont know about that but i know his plan sounds good, and i back it. I think independent business is what San Francisco needs, i think its what the Mission District needs and providing jobs, kids, sounds good to me. I back it. So thats it. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is pete. I am a resident of the block where joe is proposing to operate this business. I also have been in the neighborhood probably somewhat longer than mr. Ortiz has been on the planet. I was the president of the Mission Merchants association back in the 90s when there was a lot of discord about the tech boom back then. And it seems silly, not really realistic to continue to vilify the industry that drives the economy of our city today. In terms of all the Different Reasons why folks are brought up that we shouldnt have alcohol on the block, i can tell you that they all, every person that opposes every project that ive listened to kind of uses the same stuff and hides behind the same stuff. I can tell you having lived on the block for quite some time that the only places where the hookers arent hanging out and the pimps arent hanging out are in front of the bar over there on the corner of shotwell and 20th. Thats the only spot. So having more nighttime activity that doesnt revolve around the sex trade would be fantastic. Having opened a dozen or so different businesses, all over the city, i can tell you that alcohol makes things viable. Its not always a bad thing. In fact usually its a great thing. Its very, very difficult to make a business go without the help of alcohol sales. Im trying to yeah, i mean all the different things, the no alcohol, the closing at 9 00. These are folks that have never operated a business. They just dont care. They are naysayers, and thats not what San Francisco is about. Ive been here 40 years. Ive heard a lot of this stuff. And it rings as hollow now as it ever did. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, commissioners. Steven bus. I want to say congratulations to commissioner diamond on your appointment and confirmation. I hope future meetings dont go quite as long, because i know this must be grueling for all of you. So i would like you to support joey the cat and reject the dr. You know, i feel like we have the opportunity to start having a higher bar for drs and we should not take such frivolous drs just on principle. It should be reserved for exceptional cases. And clearly that doesnt meet that bar. So, you know, its hard for Small Businesses in San Francisco. It costs anywhere it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It could be several months until you get permits. Weve made a system that is difficult for anyone without connections, basically anyone who cant organize 20 people to come out to a hearing to open a new business. And thats not a healthy city. So, again, please reject the dr and let the small Business Owner continue to flourish. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. Im joe. Recent graduate. Im speaking in favor of joey the cat. I think that direct discretionary reviews should only be used for extraordinary and extreme circumstances. And it seems a lot of things have not met up to this standard, and this case certainly is one of them. Joey has been here for 11 years. He has gone through the permitting process. Its not an easy task. It takes about 86 days according to a census report, about 26 hours of processing permits. He has dotted his is acrossed his ts and added a couple of objectionford commas and at this point hes faced a roadblock. I think about my mother who has always wanted to open a business and how if she was in this position, you know, she doesnt have the best grasp of english. She didnt come to this country with a lot of resources and connections. If she was in this position without this host of great supporters and host of people who know her, she wouldnt be able to defend herself. I dont think she would have a chance of succeeding through a dr. I think that is broken. I think joey is doing great things for the neighborhood. I really think that you should accept this dr and set a standard that drs arent supposed to be used for something frivolous but extreme situations that haunt the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is daina. And i like Small Businesses. Small business is dying. A lot of outwardly successful businesses are barely hanging on. There are places that are packed every single night and still they havent been able to pay rent in months. And without a Liquor License you cant begin to think about it. The businesses i talk to are terrified of dr. If you are thinking about opening a business its like a sword over your neck. If it can happen to someone as awesome as joey, it can happen to anyone. And thats what potential Business Owners are thinking. Our Small Business community cant afford to pay. Please show your support for Small Business and please dont take dr. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. Im jeremy, also from indy neoliberal. So recently San Francisco was ranked the number 77th best city to run a business in north america. And that probably sounds pretty bad, but its actually even worse because all of the business all the cities underneath that were in mexico. We are the absolute worst city in the United States and canada to run a business today. And this kind of process is a huge part of that where anyone can come up to the works of a project for any or no reason whatsoever, causing a Business Owner to have to pay rent for months potentially for a business that they cant operate. They have to go and tell their investors they have no idea when they are going to be able to get a return on their investment. Maybe a Big Corporation can afford this. In fact most Big Corporations can, because they can use revenues from other locations. But small Business Owners, they dont really have that option. It creates a fundamentally unjust and unfair system for Small Businesses who just dont have those kinds of advantages. Obviously we cant really solve that process here today. But you can help us by swiftly rejecting drs that are in places where the businesses already principally permitted. As a conclusion, im another small Business Owner. Ive lived here 15 years. I hope to someday wake up in a a city that is only the second worst city in america to run a business. Thank you. Any other Public Comment in support of the project sponsor . Okay. Dr requester, you get a twominute rebuttal. Can reasonableness consistency start my can we restart my time . So im hearing a lot of things. So he brought this property for 1. 5 million in 2014. This is not your mom and pop local im just trying to make a buck and have my business survives. He comes from a very wealthy family. This is not about an arcade using alcohol. This is about changing use so we can sell control. The mission has the highest number of alcoholrelated arrests and ambulance rides in the city. We are taking the cost in the neighborhood. These private events are 25 00 an event. Joey refused to continue the discussions after the fact that alcohol was a nonnegotiable which is right away had we knew that all his intent was. So i would ask when not against the ski ball repair shop or ski ball is familyfriendly space but we would ask for a Community Benefits agreement that gets up held unlike urban putt which has not been up held because they are not following that agreement. The whole point of having Community Benefit agreements is to make sure this is being mitigated and are having effects to make sure our folks cocome in and use these spaces. Since the private event parties are 2,500 an event that you limit the event to five a month. So that way hes recouping a little bit of that. We dont need a private event destination spot where its going to be private events all the time and no families are going to be allowed to be in there at this point in time. I would ask the commission to look at shotwell as a whole because theres a lot of conversion thats happening from pdr into Tech Office Space so thats a big concern, because we are talking about whats legally allowed and thats correct. But the fact is we are losing our pdr spaces and we are in the process of trying to preserve that through map 2020. Thank you for your time. Thank you. You get a twominute rebuttal. So i just want to reiterate , this arcade is not going to hap. I think thats crystal leer so theres not a concession to be had. The only thing in the discretionary review i agree with is kevin checked the box on no, he didnt reach out to the in the neighborhood notification. When he says multiple opportunities, he backtracked to no we cant have alcohol and now hes trying to tell me hours to open my business. Hes using data of how much a private event cost when this wasnt open to the public. [off mic] you are out of order. My pricing is thats what was happening in the past so we are nonprofit events. Hes not hiring those. Thats a mischaracterization im only going to cater to techies. You saw steve walk up here and say a ton of different kinds of people all have events in his space and enjoy his space and enjoy food and beverage. So we bought this building because we know that it could be a public arcade and public restaurant that could provide Community Benefit. And i think that is the reason we bought it, for 1. 5 million, the price doesnt matter. This is part of a dream to open an arcade to the public. And a space that we could stay in because an arcade without alcohol and food and beverage, they dont exist. So i urge you to reject this dr, because i want to open this business to the public i want to put transparency on the building. I want this to be a public space. This is not going to be a private event space anymore. This will be a public space. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner richards. So its late and im really cranky. For those of you that dont like dr i give you two pieces of advice