February 21, 2006

Eastern Neighborhood Rezoning Represents Opportunities and Obstacles

By Alison Fromme
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

San Francisco is growing, but its land area, obviously, is not. As a result, there’s increasing pressure to make the best use of available space. The challenge is, what constitutes “best” depends on who you are, where you live, and what economic interest you represent.

The Bayview-Hunters Point, Mission, Potrero, and South-of-Market communities are “ground zero” for efforts to determine how best to direct new development. Since 1998, neighborhood activists, City planners, developers, and others have been hammering out a master vision for future development-- known as the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan.

The Plan is supposed to provide a systematic guide for development; a way of dissuading piecemeal projects that don’t meet the neighborhoods’ needs. However, over the past seven years, while various stakeholders grappled with how best to accommodate growth, a significant number of development projects have been approved, including a 120-unit building on 15th and Mission streets and a 68-unit building on Harrison and 23rd.

“Basic land use decisions have to be made, and this issue is becoming more and more urgent,” said Amit Ghosh, San Francisco’s Chief of Comprehensive Planning. “Right now, everything is uncertain and that’s not a good way to be.”

Some Mission residents believe that new development could bring improved infrastructure, expanded open space, job growth, affordable housing, and other valuable enhancements. But there are significant obstacles to achieving this vision. “These changes have been evolving very slowly for many years, so I’m not really sure what will happen if anything,” said Beth Weintraub, a Mission District resident and printmaker. “I’m also not entirely clear about what they are proposing currently, after years of going to City Hall to hear the debates I have all but given up on the whole process.”

As part of the Plan, the Planning Department has proposed zoning changes that would allow residential buildings on land that is currently designated as “light industry”, a catchall category that includes caterers, animal boarding facilities, taxi services, furniture production, clothing manufacturing, and even “big box” retailers. Under one option, industrial land located in northeast Mission, approximately bounded by 13th Street, Folsom Avenue, 19th Street and Potrero Avenue, would become residential mixed with commercial or light industry.

Market demand for light industrial land is expected to continue a decades-long decline over the next 25 years, mostly due to the high cost of doing business in San Francisco. As a result, even with the proposed changes, the remaining land zoned for light industry should be adequate through 2030, according to a study by Berkeley-based Economic and Planning Systems commissioned by the Planning Department.

Approximately 20,000 light industry jobs are currently on land that under the Plan could be zoned for other purposes, mainly residential. More than two-thirds of those jobs, particularly associated with publishing, audio-visual, and design, are expected to be displaced over the next quarter century regardless of changes in land use policies due to market forces. The City would have to take affirmative action, as it’s done to recruit biotechnology to the eastern neighborhoods, to retain this employment base, which so far it has declined to do.

Many San Franciscans lament the loss of light industrial land, which provides the basis for “blue collar” jobs. “This zoning change is obviously targeted at moving the ‘have-nots’ out to the East Bay and elsewhere so that the ‘haves’ can live in the city. San Francisco has always been characterized by its diversity and changing these zoning laws will create an economically enforced apartheid that will destroy this diversity,” according to Mission District resident Tyler Anderson.

The Planning Department’s rezoning proposals are limited to addressing the balance of land for commercial and housing uses, according to the Department of Public Health Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Assessment, a project that aims to predict the effects of rezoning on community health. The proposal excludes visionary planning for public spaces, schools, transit, and community services.

This concerns Potrero Hill resident Marty Wall, despite his excitement about neighborhood development. “Lack of funding and after-school programs are a big problem. When kids get off school and there are not very many parks or activities for them to take advantage of, it can cause them to be restless,” he said.

Residents are also concerned about a host of other land use challenges, including a lack of affordable housing, and displacement of existing residents and businesses. But according to the Plan, “many of these concerns do not address changes in the physical environment… and therefore are properly addressed in another context.”

The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan won’t move forward until its environmental impact – including potential effects on visual quality, transportation, noise, air quality, and contamination from former industrial sites -- is assessed sometime later this year. In the meantime, interim zoning controls -- measures to prevent any zoning changes until the Plan has been adopted -- have already expired. New controls will be considered by the Planning Commission later this month, but even these short-term measures are controversial, with the Potrero Hill Boosters Neighborhood Association calling them “dangerously vague and ill-considered.”

One way or another, City planners and community activists hope to finally get ahead of the development deluge before the end of this year. “The world changes by the time we’re ready to approve changes,” the Planning Department’s Ghosh said. Mission District residents are hoping that these changes will be for the better.

For more information, visit the San Francisco Planning Department’s website: http://www.sfgov.org/site/planning_index.asp

The Eastern Neighborhoods Initial Study can be found at http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/planning/EasternNeighborhoodsIS.pdf

This is the second of a series of three articles focusing on land use changes in San Francisco’s eastern neighborhoods.