An ordinance to amend the City’s Planning Code and Zoning Map to establish the 555 Ninth Street Special Sign District in central South-of-Market will be considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee, possibly this month.
In July the San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously endorsed the ordinance, introduced by District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey. SF Planning recommended the change because the shopping center has stricter sign regulations than any other City shopping complex, with many vacancies. More flexible sign controls could attract new tenants.
Ordinance adoption would affect an aging, geographically isolated shopping center, the City’s first, home to a Trader Joe’s. The facility was recently sold to a new owner who wants to revitalize it. The change would allow The Container Store, which recently relocated from Fourth Street, to deploy signs similar to those it maintains in other shopping centers.
Under the proposal the area would become more like a C-3 zone, prevalent Downtown, than an Urban Mixed-Use district. It’d allow video signs up to 10 feet within any pedestrian entrance to an individual tenant and more wall signs on the internal parking garage’s second floor. Video signs could only display content related to an individual business, which’d be required to be open when the placard is on. Sign copy could only change once an hour.
“I may not be the best car driver, but I have an extremely difficult time finding my way (to the center),” Kathrin Moore, Planning Commission vice president said. “It is basically a maze of conflicting intersections, one-way turns and everything else. I think there’s something missing by which the shopping center positively invites pedestrian engagement. I would like to see at least a publicly shared broader discussion of what this center can do in order to ultimately stay strong when the entire district transforms itself…central SoMa is not doing very well. We all know the reasons why. But if this large area is being reconsidered, this shopping center should definitely be part of that discussion. San Francisco has spent a lot of time curating proper signage to make it a not advertising and signage-dominated environment. So, I’m extending my support.”
“It is located in an area where it’s wedged by the freeway, but then it’s also in two major streets that also has residential housing element to it,” said Commissioner Lydia So, a central SoMa resident. “So, with regard to signage, I think that we need to be a little bit more conscientious to the livability. I would like to approve this with a condition of any signage that is glowing…shall be turned off when the business is off.”
Alina Ferguson