SF moves forward to track, eliminate empty storefrontsSAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) - San Francisco city leaders took a step toward tracking and ultimately eliminating empty storefronts in a unanimous vote on Tuesday.
The board of supervisors approved the new plan, aimed at tracking vacant businesses and having the property owners pay a fee if they're left empty.
Currently the city doesn't officially count a business as vacant if it has a sign posted that the space is for rent, in some cases the storefronts are left empty for a decade or more.
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Fewer authored the new legislation requiring property owners to notify the city if their building is vacant for 30 days or more and pay a $711 registration fee.
The plan is aimed at first getting a realistic view of how many storefronts are left vacant and to ultimately get them opened again.
Fewer said too often those buildings are written down as a loss for the owner for tax purposes meaning the empty store fronts can attract vandals and the homeless.
OK, I'm not accountant, but how in Hades is it somehow profitable, even in the context of a much larger business, to leave a storefront empty - to receive zero revenue from it, leave it to be broken into and vandalized, and to decay from lack of maintenance? If there are skads of business owners looking for space, that makes less than zero sense!
Let me try a different explanation. San Francisco is such a hostile business environment, has such horrible traffic and street maintenance, has so many neighborhoods that are so depressing no one wants to go there for shopping and/or dining, and so many neighborhoods that are literally crappy (plus used needles) that there are no nascent small businesses willing to risk the investment of opening for business. Because the likelihood of profitability is too small.
Here in Silicon Valley, two malls have failed in the past 15 years, Sunnyvale Town Center and Vallco Fashion Mall (in Cupertino). STC had Montgomery Ward, Macy's, and J C Penney as anchors; VFM had Sears, Macy's, and J C Penney as anchors. MW went bankrupt in 2000; Sears Holdings (Sears and Kmart) went bankrupt in the past year; J C Penney is probably not far behind Sears on the path to bankruptcy; Macy's is struggling.
These were all high-flyers, several decades ago, and probably drove many Mom-and-Pop stores out of business (if those are the term you want to choose). Similarly, Safeway, Kroger, etc., drove A & P to the wall, who before that had driven many Mom-and-Pop stores out of business. Who in the 1940s (or so) foresaw A & P losing their place in retail? Who in 1970 foresaw MW being driven into liquidation bankruptcy? Who in 1990 foresaw Circuit City, Sears, Kmart, and JCP being driven into bankruptcy? Who in 2005 foresaw Borders Books being driven into bankruptcy? Who in 2010 foresaw Walmart, Kohls, Target, and Barnes & Noble being forced to significantly re-balance brick-and-mortar vs. online sales. Now, consider Amazon ... will they maintain the flexibility to endure, profitably ... or will some other unknown using yet unknown technology and business model drive Amazon to the wall?
But back on DU-topic, the woes of the stores DU-member mfcorey1 listed have all been years or decades in the making, and are in the context of the retail industry in which business models rise and are felled by newer, leaner, business models. Two years of Trump's Presidency cannot undo decades of mismanglement, nor restore bypassed/failed business models. DU-member
mfcorey1 is just too TDS-blinded to see and acknowledge this.