Late last year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution, authored by District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder and cosponsored by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, to require operators who test drones outdoors in a Production, Distribution, and Repair (PDR) district to obtain conditional use authorization from the San Francisco Planning Commission. The legislation also increased scrutiny of proposed laboratories, and urged the Planning Department, with input from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, to study whether additional controls would ensure that laboratory uses are consistent with municipal goals for PDR space. The controls will remain in effect until mid-2027.
PDR districts span formerly industrial areas in San Francisco’s eastern neighborhoods, including Bayview, the Mission, Potrero Hill and Dogpatch. The intent of the zoning designation is to retain PDR activities and promote new business formation, with restrictions on residential, office, retail and institutional uses.
Fielder proposed the legislation in response to June 2025 correspondence from DoorDash to San Francisco Zoning Administrator Corey Teague. In the letter, DoorDash said it planned to test autonomous delivery inside a warehouse and outdoors in a gated area during normal business hours. According to DoorDash, the property had a large outside space with surface parking. DoorDash had leased a 34,325-square-foot building at 1960 Folsom Street, likely for this purpose. The company expected to employ approximately 200 people at the facility, which is about two miles away from its 303 Second Street headquarters.
“Over the past decade, Production, Distribution, and Repair zones, which were created to preserve high quality blue-collar jobs in San Francisco, have been taken over by an increasing amount of use for artificial intelligence and automation industries,” stated Fielder in her 2025/2026 winter newsletter. “One of the most recent examples are companies attempting to test drones for food delivery–which can go up to 150 feet high, at 60 miles per hour– in the Mission District. Now, because of my legislation, outdoor use will require a conditional use authorization from the Planning Commission.”
“My own thoughts are that this is backwards-thinking legislation,” said Keith Goldstein, Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association (PDMA) president, who indicated he couldn’t speak for the association about the issue since its members hadn’t discussed it. “I have finally come around to thinking we should be encouraging and embracing our innovative tech bros! Supervisor Fielder and the unions are concerned about DoorDash drivers losing their jobs to drones. Should we ban Waymos because Uber drivers will lose their jobs? Should we ban AI because jobs will be lost? I think in the long run that we will all prosper from these new technologies.”
Goldstein added that PDMA has no tech industry members.
It’s “…a clear signal that San Francisco is becoming hostile to innovation,” said Adam Gould, Dogpatch Art & Business Association president. “Forcing businesses to seek special permission to use their own outdoor space hurts local entrepreneurs and risks driving investment away, without actually protecting jobs.”
“Safety and privacy are shattered if unregulated delivery drones are allowed to fly around our City. Delivery drones that weigh the same amount as bowling balls hovering over San Francisco streets and neighborhoods at 50 to 100 feet high are not welcome,” said Tony Delorio, Teamsters Union Local 665 principal officer, during the public comment portion of a December Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting.
According to Asia Nicole Duncan, a member of Build Affordable Faster, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates for faster affordable housing construction, PDR zoning wasn’t created to prop up tech billionaires and lead to technology advancements that’d phaseout working-class jobs.
“We are increasingly concerned about loopholes with Artificial Intelligence companies and technology companies coming into a neighborhood…that has historically already had intense gentrification,” said Jeff Sessions, San Francisco Labor Council member, which represents 100 unions. “But we are increasingly concerned that zoning and laws that were intended to protect…blue collar workers, working class people, is now being used by large corporations…DoorDash is…not a science company or a cancer solving company but a company that historically exploited workers.”
“For the past 24 years, my partner and I have designed and fabricated furniture and architectural metalwork in PDR-1-G space, 23 of those years in the Mission. We cannot do our work anywhere other than industrial space. We don’t have the luxury of choosing from multiple zoning options. Which means if we lose our space we have to move out of the City at high risk or…risk losing our livelihood altogether,” said Larissa Petrocelli, a member of United to Save the Mission, a coalition of community groups and individuals opposed to gentrification.
Petrocelli added that most of her colleagues and vendors have been forced out of spaces by landlords seeking high rents as their leases came up for renewal.
“We don’t have a vacancy issue in PDR. We have a displacement issue that has hyper-accelerated with AI,” said Petrocelli.
Petrocelli said she and her partner have lost all their San Francisco-based steel and hardwood vendors and spray and metal finishers. These businesses had to move to less-expensive areas, including South San Francisco, Half Moon Bay, and Petaluma.
“Really, the only vendor we still have is our sheet metal shop who’s still here because they own their buildings. This means that we now have to take hours out of our week to drive to procure basic materials. It causes an inefficiency of time, increased fuel use, and makes it even harder than it already is to survive here, let alone thrive,” said Petrocelli. “(They’ve) turned it into what feels like a dystopian competition for survival.”
“I’m grateful for Supervisor Fielder’s legislation as the only form of opposition to the glad-handing of corporate interests,” said Hannah Haber, a District 9 resident. “We need to be focused on protecting our blue-collar workforce and ensure that international corporations operating here are paying their full business taxes and contributing to the resources of our communities.”
The View contacted DoorDash and Supervisor Fielder’s offices to request responses for this story; neither responded.
Steven J. Moss 
Mark Steensland