Ingleside Merchants Have Concerns Over Lurie's Upzoning Plan

To support upzoning or not to support upzoning, that is the question on the minds of many San Francisco small business owners.

Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “family zoning” legislation is billed as a way to support small business growth and protect existing tenants. Yet several members of the board of supervisors are working to minimize the proposal's harm on small businesses. The situation has merchants on Ingleside’s Ocean Avenue concerned over the future of a corridor set to be upzoned further and what it will mean on the street and for their livelihoods.

“There’s going to be more people, but at the same time, there are always retail spaces that are put up that are extremely expensive and bring in big companies that don’t seem to last, especially on a street like ours,” said Kim Ramos, owner of Charm Coffee.

The upzoning proposal, intended to add 36,000 homes to the city’s westside, to help meet a state-imposed housing mandate of 82,000 new units, goes before the Planning Commission on Thursday. 

In June, Lurie used Ocean Avenue as the backdrop to introduce his upzoning proposal, calling the avenue a “zoning success story” for its upzoning in 2009. The mayor highlighted the Mercy Housing development on a former Muni parking lot and the AvalonBay Communities apartments built atop a former Kragen Auto site as examples as well as the forthcoming Balboa Reservoir Project.

Lurie neglected to mention two faltering development projects on two prime blocks of Ocean Avenue that have left vacant storefronts and blight for the better part of a decade.

District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents much of the greater Ingleside, has been working to soften the potential harm Lurie’s legislation may cause. In July, she introduced the “Small Business Rezoning Construction Relief Fund Program” as a means to create city-backed grants and small loans for businesses that may face unexpected costs incurred from moving or loss of foot traffic due to construction. The concept was recommended in a study Melgar requested from the Budget and Legislative Analyst and incorporated feedback from small businesses, she told The Light.

“Our merchants invest so much in the spaces they lease and have few protections, so this is just one piece of a bigger effort to try to also incentivize new developments to retain small business tenants,” Melgar said.

City officials will be hammering out details for the upzoning through January 2026. In the meantime, merchants who rent their storefronts are left wondering.

Expert Pet owner Fernando Gomez is unsure of how upzoning measures will impact his business.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Gomez said. “Theoretically, the more people, the more pets, so it would benefit us.”

Developer TJ Development Inc. has kept numerous storefronts on Gomez’s block vacant while trying to develop or sell a multi-story mixed-use development.

A few block away, Ocean Cyclery owner Jeff Taliaferro finds it hard to predict the impact upzoning-fueled construction would have on his bike shop, but said the proposal, in general, sounded scary.

Both Taliaferro and Ramos, the cafe owner, have qualms with the appearance of some of the new buildings across the city, noting that they all look the same: big and clunky.

“I thought it was the same, what do you call it, destructor, I want to call it, developer all over town,” Taliaferro said. “There’s zero creativity. It’s awful, actually.

While the current upzoning plan has brought mixed reviews across the city, Ramos said she can see the pros and cons of legislation: residents may get affordable housing, but it should fit the style of the neighborhoods.

“People move to or stay on the Westside for the affordability, that’s important,” Ramos said. ”But I don’t think luxury apartment buildings are the direction we should go.”