Keeping out the Big Nasty Corporations
There's an article in this week's
San Francisco Independent about the new proposed rule to require anyone planning on opening a coffee shop or drugstore to notify everyone living within 150 feet, some number of months beforehand. The stated purpose of this rule is to prevent the 'big corporations' such as Starbucks and Rite-Aid from coming in and destroying the Victorian neighborhood character. Not that the rule explicitly prevents Starbucks or Rite-Aid from entering a neighborhood, that sort of discrimination against a particular company or companies would be just as illegal as allowing only one company to open coffee shops in San Francisco. But it gives opponents enough time so that they can mount a fight against the interloper, using the various city approval processes to extend the application process and hopefully wear down the Big Corp. until they decide to just walk away. The specific incident that prompted this law was the approval of a Walgreens in Cole Valley, the 'community activists' were apparently 'blindsided' by the quick approval process.
These types of laws/rules and so-called 'community activism' offend me for multiple reasons. The first reason is that it's a very small part of the community telling others what they can and cannot do with their property on an arbitrary basis. Don't want coffee shops or drugstores in your neighborhood? Fine - zone it all residential. If the community allows coffee shops and drugstores, it shouldn't be able to use official or unofficial barriers to arbitrarily allow one coffee shop to enter while another cannot. There's a Tully's right in the middle of Cole Valley, an independently owned coffee shop a block closer to Haight, and another independent further down on the corner of Cole and Waller. I frequent Cole Valley Café at Cole and Waller all of the time - in fact, when I went into Tully's the other day I was really taken aback by the artificiality of the environment.
I strongly prefer the environment of independently owned shops. That said, I don't think it's fair to take the choice away from other members of the community. If they like the Tully's environment, then they should be allowed to frequent Tully's (which they obviously cannot if the 'community groups' prevent it from opening in the first place). I have no problem with building regulations that restrict what the storefront should look like, what types of signs are allowed, etc. But in the end, I don't think the community should be able to deny someone the ability to maximize the value of their property (within general community guidelines) and deny consumers the right to choose which stores they want to frequent. After all, the community group can always raise some money and buy the property themselves, if it's really that important to their members to prevent Starbucks from 'infiltrating' the neighborhood.
The second reason why I find this type of 'community activism' so offensive is because it works against the needs of both the majority of the members of the community as well as the needs of low-income and elderly residents. When we first moved into this neighborhood last month, I noticed pretty quickly that there's no drugstore nearby. Sure, the convenience stores have some supplies, as does the (relatively close) Cala Food supermarket. But they don't have all that much, and none of them have a pharmacy. This isn't that big a deal for us, since we have a car and can drive to the nearest drugstore. It's a bigger deal for low income and/or elderly residents who don't have access to a car. In addition, it ultimately detracts from the community atmosphere (supposedly the main concern of the 'activists') by forcing residents into their cars and out of the neighborhood.
So I'm looking forward to the Walgreens. It will make life more convenient for all residents of the neighborhood, especially low-income and elderly residents, and it will further encourage people to walk down to Cole St to run errands, instead of driving to the nearest strip mall.
UPDATE:
Nate informs me that
Pharmaca, our local 'Integrated Pharmacy', does indeed carry some standard (but overpriced) drugstore supplies, in addition to the full selection of new age paraphanelia that I had assumed was their only offering. So we're not completely drugstore-less.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at June 11, 2003 01:31 PM