Hard caps on storefront sizes in some San Francisco neighborhoods aimed to protect small businesses. Supervisor Myrna Melgar's ordinance seeks to eliminate these caps in five commercial corridors, changing the way businesses obtain larger spaces. Currently, businesses needing over 4,000 square feet must go through an exemption process. Melgar believes the ordinance will enhance flexibility for new businesses, but many local merchants oppose this change due to concerns about potential rent increases and the influx of bigger retail stores displacing small businesses.
"What it does is open the door for much bigger and wealthier tenants to come in and artificially increase the rent for our small neighborhoods and displace small businesses," said Deidre Von Rock, the president of the West Portal Merchants Association.
Melgar touts the law as providing more flexibility for businesses, but merchants groups from three of the targeted business districts have come out in protest.
Removing those caps, merchants from West Portal, Castro, and North Beach neighborhoods wrote in an opposition letter, would bring in large retail stores and "catalyze rent increases."
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