An Alternative Future for the North East Mission Industrial Zone

Mission Coalition for Economic Justice & Jobs (MCEJJ)
One member of the group suggested establishing a housing overlay for ‘big-box’ uses such as
‘Best Buy’ and ‘Office Max’.
There was some agreement that it may make sense to focus housing development along South
Van Ness north of 16 th Avenue.
There was general agreement that ‘destination restaurants’ should not be located in the NEMIZ
because of the lack of proper transit and the influx of traffic and parking needs this would bring
to neighborhood streets. Neighborhood-serving restaurants would be allowed.
There was some agreement that commercial development should primarily occur on Mission
Street. Neighborhood-serving commercial would be allowed.
The group largely agreed that the area south of 20 th Street should become a residential area with
the opportunity for residential mixed-use development to occur within.
It was pointed out that several underutilized sites exist in the area that could be put to a higher
use if the air rights would be used to add appropriate uses (such as offices) on top of existing uses.
The PG&E property was named as a particular example of this kind of site/use combination.
A group member in strong support for protection of PDR uses in the NEMIZ, suggested
designating the area north of 17 th and east of Folsom Streets as ‘Core PDR’. Here PDR uses
would enjoy a stricter protection from encroaching non-PDR uses and be supported in their
needs for infrastructure such as street access. It was furthermore suggested to designate the area
between 17 th and 20 Street for ‘PDR-light’ and ‘Mixed-Use’, depending on already existing use
patterns.
The two sub-groups had different ideas about how access to PDR uses in the NEMIZ would be
maintained:
Needs to be neighborhood-friendly; should be determined business-by-business or
cluster-by-cluster but not in a simplified corridor approach, which creates barriers within
the community.
Appendix A.26
Should not be restricted in a way that makes it unattractive for PDR uses to locate in the
NEMIZ.
Opponents of too much residential development and uses that follow residential development
maintained that the NEMIZ could not accommodate too many new units and destination-type
uses because public transit was serving the neighborhood well enough.
Proponents of continued residential mixed-use development agreed that transportation and
parking was a key issue. It was suggested that the neighborhood should not get into ‘housing
cars’ and rather rely on low parking ratio requirements to build up enough demand for public
transit becoming a viable option.
Implementation Tools
Two ideas relating to implementation of ideas and goals came up during the discussion: