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 developments that combined with existing freeways and Caltrain stations negatively impact the air quality in the area.

The concern echoes those of residents in Southern California's Inland Empire, who have been beset by a series of environmental and transportation headaches since buying into the jobs-centric development schemes starting around a decade ago. 

“Hundreds of people now have come in to make this their neighborhood, and this just really turns the clock back to a massive usage that is antithetical to a livable neighborhood for people with children, seniors,” one Seventh Street resident told the Chronicle. “It’s contrary to that.”