A group of citizen-activists, entrepreneurs and property owners in the Central Waterfront, Showplace Square, and Northeast Mission have launched an initiative to create an Eastern Neighborhoods Urban Innovation Community Benefit District.  The effort is modeled on the popular community benefit districts (CBD) formed around the City's retail corridors.  While those districts focus mainly on sidewalk cleaning and graffiti removal, the Urban Innovation CBD seeks to spur economic development in the recently rezoned eastern neighborhoods. 

Urban Innovation CBD is working to convince property owners in the Central Waterfront, NE Mission and Showplace Square neighborhoods to pay a special tax assessment to fund improvement projects.  According to their website, www.urbaninnovationsf.org, those projects could include "branding, marketing and promotion of the district to businesses, brokers and outside residents and maintaining a website that promotes the neighborhoods."  A nonprofit, public benefit corporation would manage the district, directed by the property owners who fund it.   According to Steering Committee member and NE Mission resident Kate Sofis, Urban Innovation hasn’t yet estimated the cost of the assessment.  "We have not yet begun calculating the various assessment scenarios." she said.  "We will be doing this step once the initial survey results come back from the community, which will in turn help inform the services most in demand."

According to Urban Innovation Steering Committee member and Dogpatch resident Bruce Kin Huie, the current recession is the perfect time to launch the effort.  "In this crisis lays our opportunity," he said.  The CBD effort comes in the wake of recently completed efforts to reorganize land uses under the Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan.  Adopted earlier this year, the Plan rezoned much of Southern San Francisco in a quest to create balanced neighborhoods in what was historically an industrial part of the City, according to the San Francisco Planning Department’s website.  "The purpose of this CBD, is largely to focus on...the primarily PDR [production, distribution, and repair] zoned parts of the Mission, Potrero, and the Central Waterfront," Sofis said. 

Areas zoned as PDR are dedicated to light industrial uses, excluding housing and offices.  Over the past two decades the City has seen a steady loss of PDR jobs, and with them the blue collar wages that used to support families living in Southeast San Francisco.  "We support the range of businesses here and hopefully new business," said Gwen Kaplan, who works at Ace Mailing, and is a Steering Committee member.  "The district should be approved in a couple years.  The mayor and board are very supportive." 
              Although the CBD will ultimately have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, the challenge is to convince property owners to support the new tax.  Urban Innovation has launched a fundraising campaign, and hopes to win a grant from the Mayor's office of Economic and Workforce Development.  Over the past four years CBD's have become fashionable throughout San Francisco.  Seven districts are now operating – including Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf – with three more – Ocean Avenue, the Excelsior, and Urban Innovation – in early development stages. 

Although Urban Innovation CBD’s website focuses on business development, once the district is established it will decide for itself how funding will be directed.  For example, the Central Market CBD pays for guides who help lost tourists and directs street people to needed services.  The Yerba Buena CBD, which was launched in June, supports guides who point out museums and cultural sites around Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and works on cleaning up graffiti.  According to Kaplan, an early focus of the Urban Innovation CBD is likely to be planting sidewalk vegetation, cleaning streets, and pushing for investment. 

Urban Innovation’s next step will be to adopt a draft management plan and outline exact district boundaries.  Under a five step process, a survey of property owners within the district boundaries will be taken.  Under step three, at least 30 percent of district property owners must agree to proceed.  If they do, then step four is to distribute a formal ballot.  If 50 percent plus one of the affected property owners approve the plan it’s then sent to the Board of Supervisors for a final decision. 

Urban Innovation's proposed CBD would give more voting weight to larger properties, according to Sofis.  She added that the weighting could be determined in different ways, but will be decided by how the special tax formula is calculated.  "In our CBD area... the most fair assessment will be based on simple leasable square footage," she said.  "But bottom line, the basic idea is that those who stand to benefit more both pay more and also must have a more substantial weighting in the vote."