When U.S. federal prosecutor Melinda Haag forced the Mr. Nice Guy pot club at 176 Valencia Street in late 2011 to close, she didn't do our neighborhood a favor. The club employed dozens, paid the rent on what had been a long vacant storefront and kept the building free from graffiti.
Since the club went out of business because the Obama administration's war on medical marijuana clubs, Mike and I, who live two-blocks from the site, along with a few neighbors, have been displeased the store remains empty and its facade serves as a canvas for graffiti and blight.
Today I called 311, San Francisco's municipal service hotline, to register a complaint about the ugly situation and the service agent took the info and soon found that someone else called in a complaint yesterday. Many thanks to that neighbor! The agent assured me he would note the second complaint on the record that will be sent to the graffiti-abatement program.
One solution to this blight would be for Colliers International Real Estate, the firm trying to lease the property, and its agent Karen Hoke who is the realtor for it, to regularly visit the property and clean up the graffiti within days of it appearing.
After months of seeing this blight, I label Colliers a bad neighbor for allowing the storefront to stay ugly for so long. It would help our neighborhood, not to mention Colliers having an attractive property to show potential renters.
The amount of money Colliers/the building's owner want for the space is likely to keep it empty for quite some time. Between greedy landlords and city licensing/permitting systems that drive many would-be business owners insane and into the waiting (and cheaper) arms of other municipalities, you're not likely to get a good neighbor at that address for a long time to come. So many people to thank for this one starting with Obama for his broken promises that turned out legitimate businesses, to Ed Lee (our promise-breaking wasn't-going-to-run-mayor) for his sweetheart deal with twitter that has caused the whole city and most especially the landlords of the Valencia Corridor to suffer from fantastical dollar signs flashing in their eyes, blinding them to any sense of community wellness, cohesiveness, or the benefits of (truly) small businesses, to Colliers and that space's landlord who oversell that space and that block in their ads and demand a rent only another chi-chi, high-dollar restaurant with massive funding will be able to pay, or another tech company that will refuse to pay into the city's coffers and/or go boom when this bubble bursts just like the first one did.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for presenting a larger picture of things, and pointing out the various political agendas at play. While there is plenty, ok, too much gentrification happening along the Valencia Corridor, I don't want to see that space empty. A balance must be struck btwn the needs of a business to go in at 176 Valencia and not aid or abet displacing more longtime residents.
ReplyDeleteMike, I think the address is 174 Valencia, not 176.
ReplyDeleteI went to the SF 311 Customer Service Center website and posted a complaint about the graffiti.
http://www.sf311.org/index.aspx?page=118
(The complaint requires you to know that the property is on the WEST side of the street.)