The Potrero View, San Francisco’s longest-running neighborhood newspaper, was added to the City’s Legacy Business Registry earlier this year. The Registry recognizes venerable community-serving enterprises as valuable cultural assets, with educational and promotional assistance provided to support their continued viability. To date 239 companies have been listed on the Registry. Administered by the San Francisco…
A proposal to open a cannabis dispensary at 667 Mississippi Street will be considered by the San Francisco Planning Commission on February 6 after a neighborhood group voiced concerns over the number of children living on and passing by the block. Friends of Mississippi Street, which formed last summer when the dispensary concept surfaced, has…
The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a collaborative effort led by the National Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology to gather data on local bird populations throughout the world. Launched in 1998, the GBBC takes place annually over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend. This year, that’s February 14 to 17. Anyone can participate…
The San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) offers medical care to people experiencing homelessness throughout District 10. Two programs, Street Medicine and Shelter Health, play a predominate role in these efforts. According to Rachael Kagan, DPH communication director, Street Medicine is mobile, serving people sheltering in encampments, roads, parks, and under bridges. Street Medicine…
My Gym’s Dogpatch location, which offered fitness classes for children from six months to six years-old, permanently closed at the end of last year. Part of a franchise that has more than 600 locations worldwide, it’d operated at 901 Minnesota Street since 2004. Owner Marci Briskin said her own children, Amanda and Jonah Briskin, were…
Proposals to relocate the 115,000 square foot San Francisco Flower Mart to 901 16th Street and 1200 17th Street, known as the “Corovan” site, or to Indiana Street between Cesar Chavez Street and Islais Creek, appear to be gaining traction, while efforts to repot the blossom businesses at the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market, in…
Al Giddings first opened Bamboo Reef, a scuba diving shop located at Fourth and Brannan streets, in 1961. Ten years later Sal Zammitti bought the store. In 2016 father and son duo, Mark and Brian Stanley, purchased the shop, which also has an outlet in Monterey. “I have to tip my hat to Sal for…
Earlier this fall, the San Francisco Board of Education unanimously denied the New School of San Francisco’s charter school re-authorization request. Launched on Potrero Hill in 2015, currently serving kindergarten through fifth graders, New School had applied to expand to the eighth grade. The Board rejected that appeal and refused to reauthorize the school’s existing…
Townsend Street from Third to Eighth streets – an area encompassing the Fourth Street Caltrain depot – is being significantly renovated to improve safety and transit speed, with the installation of Muni bus loading zones, protected bikeways, and an 1,000-foot-long raised sidewalk where no safe footpath had previously existed. The Townsend Street Corridor Improvement Project…
Over the past ten years California’s four large investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have been rocked by disturbances. The 2010 San Bruno natural gas line explosion was followed by more than 2,000 wildfires in the ensuing decade, sparked by IOU equipment. The 2017 Camp Fire, caused by a Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission line, was the…
For years Walden Development has worked to develop 901 16th Street and 1200 17th Street, known as the “Corovan” site. In 2013 the developer proposed to build housing and Kaiser Permanente medical offices at the site, an idea that was fiercely rejected by nearby residents. A subsequent plan to construct roughly 400 housing units and…
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will install parking meters along both sides of 18th Street between Connecticut and Texas streets by the end of the year. The meters will operate from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. with four-hour time limits, charging $1.50 for sixty minutes. Residents and businesses located along the 18th Street business…
For a timeless moment, the retail economy along Fourth Street from Channel Street to Mission Bay Boulevard North limped along. Early arrivals to Mission Bay kept waiting for a “critical mass” of residential and commercial complexes to be built to trigger a deluge of neighborhood-serving merchants. If the grand openings taking place along the corridor…
In May, The Potrero View reported that according to Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) data there are roughly 6,500 fossil fueled backup generators, “BUGs”, in the San Francisco Bay Area, with some 800 in San Francisco alone. These numbers exclude the thousands of smaller gasoline, propane, and diesel-powered generators located in backyards and…
People are being swept out of San Francisco, washed away by pulsating torrents of tech cash. Children, always in short-supply in this Peter Pan playground, are being replaced by a rising population of designer dogs, who soon enough will have their own dedicated restaurant, probably called “Doggy Diner.” African Americans, making their last stand at…
Denise Smith and her youngest son, Roland Byrd, Jr., 23, moved into 626 Mission Bay Boulevard in 2018. They’re the first family to occupy a two-bedroom, one-bath townhome in the 100 percent below-market-rate (BMR) rental building, which opened last fall under Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) management. Smith was born in San Francisco in 1956.…
Although Styrofoam trays and plastic straws have been banished from its cafeterias, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) still relies on individually packaged meals and disposable utensils for the bulk of the 6.8 million meals it serves annually. According to SFUSD estimates, the school system generates some 6.3 million gallons of landfill-bound trash,…
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) will alter its 22 Fillmore route and field the 55 Dogpatch next year, triggering significant reductions in parking access on Potrero Hill. More than a dozen spaces will be eliminated to make room for new bus stops and provide adequate turning areas at corners. As a result…
In July, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation establishing a one-year pilot program in which Department of Building Inspection (DBI) fees will be waived for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and 100 percent affordable housing projects. Under the legislation, co-sponsored by District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar and District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown, charges…
Following a June community gathering to update neighbors, Recology submitted a project application to the San Francisco Planning Department to develop its 900 Seventh Street truckyard as a Special Use District (SUD) that’d mix commercial and industrial space with housing. Modified from a preliminary scheme the employee-owned waste management company submitted to the Planning Department…
The View turns 49 years old this month. It’s an astonishing accomplishment: almost 600 issues produced, perhaps 15,000 pages, by an un- or poorly paid crew dedicated to civic journalism. By all accounts the monthly is a beloved community institution, a colorful, informative, thread in the fabric of our neighborhoods. It’s a place – now…
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton was quick to deliver on at least one campaign promise after he took office last January, announcing in his first week that switchbacks on the T Third Street Muni Metro line would be eliminated. Mayor London Breed helped Walton secure the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority’s promise to end the…
Associate Capital presented alternative Potrero Power Plant development designs to the San Francisco Planning Commission last spring, which included restoring the 300-foot concrete smokestack and adjacent 131-foot Unit 3 control room, as well as preserving elements of Station A. Claus Spreckels, who founded the company that became the Western Sugar Refinery, built Station A in…
By J. Eric Miller Robots have walked, well, rolled, the streets of 21st Century San Francisco, but whether they’ll do so in the future is uncertain. Led by District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed legislation last year that restricts the use of delivery robots. Initially calling for an outright…
After years of political promises, 53 Potrero Terrace households moved into brand new apartments last month at recently constructed 1101 Connecticut Street. Once dubbed Project X, the building reflects completion of the initial phase of a plan to fully redevelop the Annex-Terrace complex into mixed income housing by 2029. Johnnie Ledbetter was the first resident…