An Alternative Future for the North East Mission Industrial Zone

Mission Coalition for Economic Justice & Jobs (MCEJJ)
Appendix A.24
3. Don’t rezone from Industrial to residential. Keep existing uses as is. (Including the type of
zoning that allowed a mix of fine-grained uses to occur in the first place.)
4. Live/Work spaces should be real Live/Work spaces, not apartments. Establish checks through
the business license or a system to prove work is occurring in the space.
5. Do not create non-conforming uses as in city’s “Alternative B”.
6. Maintain /Create clear parking standards for new development.
Summary: Group L
Group L consisted of a mix of residents, property and business owners and one advocate with the Mission
Anti-Displacement Coalition. Several of the participants fell into more than one of the above categories.
The group devoted considerable time to discussing whether or not zoning was an appropriate tool for shaping
the NEMIZ’ future. Early on in this discussion, it became clear that Group L was divided into two factions
with divergent opinions on this issue. On one side, a slight majority of participants favored a ‘hands-off’
approach to regulating land use in the NEMIZ, which would not include strong provisions for the protection
of PDR uses, but rather allow for mixed-use development to occur throughout the area. Land use decisions
would be largely driven by property owners’ decisions rather than by zoning as established by the Planning
Department. On the other side were two participants who strongly advocated the need for protecting PDR
uses in the neighborhood. Their position was based on the notion that clear rules for regulating land use in
the NEMIZ had been lacking for years to the effect that numerous businesses providing jobs for residents
(more specifically the Latino population) of the NEMIZ and the Mission at large had been eliminated in the
past, while others were still being threatened by the influx of more non-PDR uses. The first sub-group
expressed opposition to and suspicion about the zoning efforts by the San Francisco Planning Department,
whose intentions were seen as a threat to gains people felt the NEMIZ had made toward developing from an
unsafe, decaying neighborhood to a safer and more livable place based on the rise of new residential and
mixed-use projects. The group also saw the City’s zoning effort as interfering with the right of property
owners to decide about the most beneficial land use for their property. The second group on the other hand,
was generally in agreement with the Planning Department’s intention of protecting PDR uses and the
introduction of clearer rules pertaining to land use and the tighter control of non-PDR uses pushing into the
area.
Toward the end of the discussion the two groups came closer in their views on several of the discussion points
with some basic differences remaining. Proponents of a rather fluid, largely mixed-use driven future of the
NEMIZ acknowledged the importance of jobs to the Mission as a whole and agreed to the need for some
‘rules’ about the incompatibility of certain uses. They also agreed in concept to the need of limiting some uses
such as destination restaurants and commercial development to protect the viability of other parts of the
Mission (specifically Mission Street as a commercial corridor). These participants remained suspect, however,
of the concept of wholesale PDR protection as proposed by the City. Exemplary for the difference between
the two groups was the discussion of potential land uses on a vacant parcel owned by a property owner at the
table. While the property owner desired the flexibility of being able to build residential mixed-use next to a
PDR-use, the proponents of PDR-protective zoning countered that, in general, most property owners knew
ahead of time that they were buying in an ‘industrial’ area and should not have expected the later ability to
implement non-compatible (but more profitable) land uses.
Overall, it was clear that all participants sincerely argued for what they thought best for the NEMIZ or the
larger Mission neighborhood. The key difference lay in the level of intervention imposed on the flexibility of