San Franciscos acrimonious relationship with chain stores might be on the mend as empty storefronts pile up.
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| American Apparel: unwelcome in San Francisco even among its customers. (Getty Images) |
Todays San Francisco Chronicle notes that the Noe Valley neighborhood is rethinking a 1987 law that banned new restaurants on 24th Street, a commercial vein that runs through the community. The point of the law was to help out local businesses in the neighborhood, but that was before the recession left many storefronts empty.
The article notes that merchants on Union, Clement and Haight Streets — all of which are walkable neighborhood streets with restaurants, small gift shops and the like — have overturned similar restrictions on restaurants over the past three years as the economy has been ailing (the recession began in December 2007).
The restaurant law is one of many San Francisco laws that aim to restrict what kind of businesses can open where, the most restrictive of which was Proposition G, a measure that passed in 2006 — an economic peak — and makes it much harder for businesses with more than 11 locations to open up stores.
The San Francisco Business Times recently opined on the unintended consequences of the citys harsh anti-chain laws, such as the pain inflicted on local landlords or how it has stunted the growth of local shops that have grown into chain status.
Of course not even the worst recession in a generation is likely to completely mend the long and thorny relationship San Francisco — a liberal bastion that elected its last Republican mayor in 1959 — has had with chain stores. On Valencia Street, just a short walk from 24th Street, protesters donning American Apparel T-shirts recently prevented American Apparel from opening in a vacant storefront.