Amazon's latest warehouse battle has San Francisco lawmakers pushing for a moratorium on similar developments

2022-02-16T13:47:00-05:00

The second most valuable company in the world, Amazon has been gobbling up space throughout the southeast corner of the city, taking advantage of zoning meant to preserve blue-collar jobs in a market in which housing and office space have typically generated higher revenues.

Amazon bought a 510,000-square-foot former sanitation motor pool parcel in the Showplace Square section of the city for $200 million in December of 2020. It has since proposed an expansion of the site’s footprint into an over 725,000-square-foot distribution hub for 400 workers that neighboring tenants, including the diffuse California College of the Arts, say will create a “pedestrian nightmare” of around 2,900 vehicle trips a day.

Now, as a result of the company’s proposal, San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton is seeking legislation that would place an 18-month moratorium on any new parcel delivery services operating in the city. It has already picked up backing from the local Teamsters and UFCW unions. The legislative effort, which the paper sees as another flashpoint in the “war between organized labor and Amazon,” is also backed by more environmentally-minded Prothero Hill and Dogpatch inhabitants, who say the company “has the neighborhoods surrounded” with similar developme...

San Francisco launches new "Green Benefit District" program to improve public spaces

2015-08-20T13:08:00-04:00

Through the program, property owners will pay a small assessment that will go toward maintaining and improving parks, plazas, gardens, sidewalks and more. It’s modeled after the Community Benefit District (CBD) program, but geared toward greening a residential area, as opposed to promoting commercial shopping districts, like more conventional CBDs. [...] “This provides a way for us to not only maintain them [the public spaces], but provide capital improvements over time.”

Targeted specifically in the Dogpatch and Northwest Potrero Hill neighborhoods of San Francisco, the impetus for the Green Benefit District plan began years ago, as development rates were quickly beginning to outpace public green spaces in the area. The GBD program would provide a continual source of funding for green spaces in the neighborhood, by taxing local property owners a small amount annually. San Francisco's GBD is the country's first.

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Amazon's latest warehouse battle has San Francisco lawmakers pushing for a moratorium on similar developments

San Francisco launches new "Green Benefit District" program to improve public spaces