The grassroots fight against Academy of Art University's plans to buy the Flower Mart gained steam today as tenants and neighbors took their complaints to the press.
(This story just in from San Francisco Business Times. Thanks to Sarah Duxbury for researching and writing this piece)
At issue was a Christmas Eve eviction letter which ordered 30 tenants to vacate their properties by February 29, 2008, two months earlier than previously required. Six of those businesses have been able to shrink their shops and find space at the other side of the Flower Mart, which has different owners. The remainder will be forced to leave the area, which has served as a regional flower center since 1931.
The 30 affected businesses together employ about 150, but many more would be affected should this regional hub close, including flower growers, truckers, florists, wedding planners and other neighboring businesses, they said.
Academy of Art University is now prohibited from using the Flower Mart as a sculpture studio, as it had planned to do, because of a 45-day moratorium on any institutional uses in the Western SoMa region. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to extend that moratorium to two years, eventually rezoning the area to prohibit any institutional uses, which would include educational uses.
When Academy of Art University entered into contract to purchase the Flower mart, the zoning laws permitted a sculpture department there, said Sallie Huntting, a spokeswoman for the school. "Now they are trying to change the zoning," she said.
Academy of Art University was unaware that the Flower Mart owners had sent the eviction notice that accelerated tenants' move-out dates, Huntting said, adding that Elisa Stephens, the university president, is open to discussing terms with any tenant who would like to extend a lease. Nor did the school know the tenants had planned a press conference.
"If the expectation is that you don't enforce zoning, then 'land value' matters," said Sue Hestor, a land use attorney working with the Flower Mart tenants. But if the city bars Academy of Art University from operating at the site and preserves it exclusively for light industrial uses, the Flower Mart can continue.
The tenants facing eviction say theirs are profitable businesses that would suffer should they be forced to move and lose the benefit of sharing a single site with many related businesses. It would be impossible to find another spot in San Francisco where they could cluster, they said, citing the perfect combination of parking and freeway accessibility at the current Sixth Street location.
"Property values have nothing to do with the long-term success of this site" as a flower market, said Patrick McCann, a Flower Mart tenant and owner of Toscana Gardens and Greenworks. The tenants say they have robust retail business to complement their wholesale business, and that means they are all-day operations and for many, revenue is growing.
McCann said he made a $17 million offer to buy the Flower Mart, but his was a five-year deal and was dismissed in favor of Academy of Art University's $15 million all-cash offer.
"The big fear is that if this goes, it will be harder for other small businesses in the area to hang on," McCann said.
Mike Ferro, owner of Fantastico, a business next door to the Flower Mart, said losing that anchor will negatively impact his business, much as he suffered when dot-coms paying higher rents pushed out factory outlet retailers in the 1990s. The he saw business decline 30 percent. It has come back since, but losing the Flower Mart might be too much, he said.
"I can't draw people myself," he said. "If we lose this, it will be the second big blow to the area ... We're the ones least able to afford another hit."
Academy of Art University has run afoul of city planning codes, with 44 violations including failure to obtain conditional use permits to change buildings that it buys into dorms, classrooms, offices and studios. The fight for the Flower Mart is the largest organized resistance the school has yet faced.
Also Read: Academy of Art University's Big Landgrab
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