Three and a half years ago, on May 1, 2002, Sprawl-Busters reported that Home Depot had been repeatedly rejected in San Francisco. “After six years of trying to persuade some neighborhood to take them,” we wrote, “Home Depot may finally get a San Francisco store.” The city’s Board of Supervisors had voted not to override Mayor Willie Brown’s veto of anti-big box legislation. With the Mayor’s veto left standing, Home Depot was free to continue to press for a 140,000 s.f. store on Bayshore Boulevard in Bayview. Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano has frustrated those efforts more than once. Ammiano got his Board to vote 7-4 in March, 2002, for a measure that would require all big box stores to get a conditional use permit from the city’s Planning Commission. Requiring a conditional permit would have forced developers to work more cooperatively with local residents, and given the city more control over the site plan. But Ammiano needed eight votes to override the Mayor, he didn’t have the numbers. Home Depot selected Bayview, a community with one out of five workers unemployed. That was 3.5 years ago. On October 25, 2005, the San Francisco supervisors voted to delay for one week a final decision on the fate of the Home Depot project. The Supervisors voted 6-5 to delay making a decision, in an attempt to convince Home Depot to shrink the size of their store. The project had been stalled when Cole Hardware, a local hardware store, appealed a city Planning Board approval for the store on the grounds that the project has fewer parking spaces in the approved report, than the actual project. Home Depot has promised the city 100 jobs and $2 million in ‘affordable housing fees’. Cole Hardware President Rick Karp said his supporters have come up with as many as 300 jobs that could be filled by low-income people needing work. He noted that Home Depot causes “urban decay” by taking business away from smaller outlets, especially hardware stores, with close to a 40% drop in business. Supervisor Tom Ammiano has remained steadfastly against the Home Depot, echoing resident complaints over traffic, pollution, and the financial effect on local mom-and-pop shops. Supervisor Bevan Dufty made a motion to reduce the size of the store to between 100,000 and 107,000 square feet. “It’s not just the size,” said Ammiano. “There are more issues that are extremely important.” Dufty’s motion prevailed, and the Supervisors will vote on the plan next week.
Home Depot has told the city it will bring in $500,000 in sales tax to city coffers, and restore some of the estimated $300 million in home-repair purchases that San Franciscans currently make outside the city. These figures are gross figures, and do not count offsetting losses at other businesses already selling home improvement goods in the city. Studies have shown that most big box store sales are “captured”, or transferred from existing merchants, and the cost of lost business, and increased public safety costs, can outweigh any projected economic benefits. For now, Home Depot continues to shed plenty of orange blood in San Francisco.
