#centralsoma

SFBARF man on the street “Dan” observed some sketchy NIMBY practices this weekend and decided to do something about it.

Photo from April 19th 2015, in Bernal Heights

First, a little background. The last several years, the City of San Francisco has been in the process of creating a plan for Central SoMa. This is the area from 2nd to 6th St around the new Central Subway from the Caltrain Station down 4th street to Market and beyond. 

One of the few sites in the area that is really appropriate for a large-plan office building is the current site of the SF Flower Mart, a beloved institution where 85 small wholesale vendors sell flowers. It is a thriving ecosystem that ties together with Fantastico and other area businesses. Part of the Central SoMa planning process has focused on how to preserve some of these traditional uses in the neighborhood while layering in a denser office scheme appropriate for the new transit axis. 

Developer Kilroy purchased the site and has been in negotiations with the planning department to build something there. The area is currently zoned for 40′, but the Central SoMa plan was already expected to raise that to over 80′. 

After a movement formed to save the Flower Mart, which genuinely would be hard to replace elsewhere in the city, the developer offered to include a new space for the vendors as part of it’s plan, and is negotiating a further height increase and all the details with the city and vendors to make that financially possible.

You can read about how the Flower Mart has already been saved. In fact, at a public community meeting a couple of months ago I heard directly from Steve Wertheim, the head planner on Central SoMa, that the city viewed expanded development on the site as contingent on the flower market plan staying real. Other sources say a final deal is near.

There have been some complaints about putting it underground, but a look at the renderings reveals they have designed a very nice space with skylights. 

( AUTHOR’S NOTE: 48 Hills has run a story attacking my views here. If you have come here from their site, I’d direct you to this article from December about the developer’s offer and the politics behind the continuing negotiations. It’s ok if you don’t end up agreeing with me, but don’t get your news from one highly opinionated source. Check the links and think about what is fair. A lot of your internal answer to that will come from whether you are predisposed to oppose new development or accept change and growth, so you will hear a lot of opinions on both sides. )

So what are we even talking about then? What is going on with the “Save the Flower Market” guy and Dan with his improvised box sign in Bernal Heights?

Well, a small group of the flower vendors teamed up with your garden variety NIMBY’s (including apparently Aaron Peskin, who could probably use a photo-op looking like he's saving industrial things – as far away from North Beach as possible). They have decided this is a perfect chance to stop the up-zoning and development of Central SoMa in its tracks. The forces aligning are people who don’t want any additional development in the city on ideological grounds, even in an area along a subway line. To be fair, many of them did oppose the Central Subway to begin with, so at least they are consistant. 

To circumvent years of community and city planning they are hoping to Ballot Box Zone the block to 40′ permanently, killing the project, and setting a precedent for future battles in Central SoMa. They have hired signature collectors, which every ballot measure needs. 

This would be bad enough if the signature collectors were being honest with people about what they were signing. Except they weren’t. 

This is where we get to Dan, who just got interested in SFBARF a couple of weeks ago.

On Sunday in Bernal Heights, according to Dan, the signature collector was telling people that their signature would “Save the Flower Market”. No mention was made of the plan to include space for them in the new development. No mention was made of the fact that they were signing a petition for a zoning ballot measure. In fact, all of the details of what they were signing was conveniently hidden behind the fold on the clipboard.

Dan’s immediate ad hoc resistance to this deception is admirable. The sign says “Read This Petition First. He is a paid signature collector... You are signing a Zoning Restriction”

I guess the lesson here is be careful what you sign. Know the issue. 

48 Hills has already questioned what someone claiming to be from SFBARF is doing supporting an office development, probably hoping to see it as some part of a vast conspiracy. Just to be clear, we aren’t the ones who collected thousands of dollars for a paid signature campaign to derail a project that was part of an open planning process. In fact, I myself have expressed frustration that the Flower Market project is slated to be 100% office, and that not enough residential zoned space is being added in Central SoMa. I argued that we should use the site as an example of the Plan’s issues with jobs/housing balance. I think we need to continue to work on this with the planning department and city. Ballot Box Zoning isn’t the answer.

Downzoning areas near transit stops and NIMBY’s digging in to resist any change in their neighborhoods is exactly what got us into our current housing crisis. We already have enough places in the city where you get out of the subway to find 1-story buildings or thousands of acres of single-family homes. The people that live in these areas are resistant to denser multifamily development that would bring renters, the poor, techies, traffic or whatever boogyman they can think of into their neighborhood. This mentality that change is bad and that people different than you are bad is already choking our city to death – a slow fiscal death where everyone is paying at least $1000 a month too much for housing.

Ballot Box Zoning won’t solve that. It just puts more ropes on the giant who, for all of our sakes, needs to rise up and be nimble.