April 25 , 2007

Citizens Work to Protect San Francisco’s Light Industry
by Harry J. Johnson
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

“Light industry in San Francisco is being threatened by land developers whose only interest is maximizing profits,” said Peter Cohen, chair of the City’s Back Street Business Advisory Board.  “Developers want to get maximum value,” according to Cohen, who is a community planning program director for Asian Neighborhood Design, which provides architecture and planning services to low-income neighborhoods. 

“Industrial is not the highest and best use from a real estate economical standpoint,” said Cohen. “It’s all about who gets to build on what land.” Cohen believes that developers want to promote the story line that since San Francisco industry is in decline anyway the City should simply allow it to vanish, replaced by housing and new economy jobs.

The Back Street Business Advisory Board was created in late-2005 to tell a different story.  The Board -- whose name comes from the notion that many light industrial businesses operate in back alleys or out-of-the-way warehouses, out-of-sight of many San Franciscans – is developing recommendations on how to support light industrial enterprises located in Potrero Hill, South of Market, the Central Waterfront and other neighborhoods. The Board of Supervisors appointed the Advisory Board’s 14 members, who serve on a voluntary basis.

“We are a proponent of and seek to protect and enhance light industries,” said Cohen. “Our charge is to make recommendations on policies, programs or operational activities that could support and potentially grow these businesses.”
The Advisory Board expects to deliver their findings to the Board of Supervisors by this summer.

“The report will explain to the supervisors and general public about a sector of the City’s economy that is misunderstood and largely invisible to most people,” said Cohen. “It will tell a story about the role of industry today, compared to what it was in the 1950s. There’s been this simplistic story line -- that’s wrong, but that’s been repeated over and over -- that says San Francisco was an industrial city with large factories through the 1950s. Industry slowly declined from that point and in the last 10 or 15 years has been replaced with a new economy of research and development related to bioscience, Internet businesses, tourism and conventioneering.”

“Therefore, the story goes, industry’s dead,” Cohen continued. “Get a new job in the new economy. This is a simplistic and false story line. Industry has declined but also has morphed into different types of activities. It has a different place in
the economy than it did in the 1950s. But this does not mean that it’s dead or not viable.

“The scale of industrial activity has changed. It is no longer giant factories pumping out big product with 500 guys on around-the-clock shifts. Today light industry businesses are scattered into a million parts.” These businesses include small-scale specialty manufacturing, warehousing and delivery, construction contractors and suppliers, and other enterprises.

Cohen cited a 2005 study by Economic & Planning Systems, Inc. (EPS) which found that, like the United States overall, the size of San Francisco’s industrial sector has decreased significantly since 1980, and is further endangered by pressure to rezone land to non-industrial use.  The loss of an industrial base, in turn, has reduced the number of “blue collar” jobs, and encouraged business that provide services needed for a thriving urban economy, such as wholesalers and food processors, to move further away from population centers. 

However, even amidst the decline the EPS study found that San Francisco hosts 118,100 production, distribution and repair jobs (PDR).  More than one-third of these jobs are located in the City’s eastern neighborhoods, with small employment increases expected over the next two decades.

“PDR jobs serve an important function in the economy of San Francisco,” according to the EPS study.  “While large-scale manufacturing is not the major employment sector it once was in American cities, PDR jobs still provide goods and services that support other primary industries, such as tourism, office headquarters, or high technology. In addition, PDR businesses provide many of the personal and business services that enhance the population base’s quality of life, ranging from auto repair and kennel services to the distribution of foods and clothing sold in retail stores. Such linkages are critical to maintaining an efficient local and regional economy.”

Cohen said the Advisory Board policy recommendations will include increasing the amount of land zoned as industrial, providing workforce development and training, and encouraging the City to work proactively to support light industry similarly to how it treats the tourism and biotechnology sectors.

According to Cohen, preservation of light industry will help keep San Franciscans employed. “Our research has shown that back street businesses have a higher percentage of nonwhite workers, with a high school degree or lower. These are folks who have limited choices about where they’re going to get a job. We’re talking about San Francisco residents. They have fewer choices about where to work to make a living wage. They are somewhat vulnerable if those jobs disappear. We need to recognize the importance of maintaining jobs for that segment of the population.”