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Home Depot Abandons San Francisco! On March 31st I was contacted by the nice folks who own Floorcraft on Bayshore Blvd.: “Rick, I thought you might like to know that Home Depot’s PR person just came in to tell us that Home Depot is abandoning San Francisco!” I couldn’t believe it! A coalition of neighborhood groups, residents and locally owned businesses had been fighting to keep this big box project out of San Francisco for more than five years. We ultimately lost that battle in 2005, when the Board of Supervisors approved the project by one vote. The final attempt to stop the store from being built failed at the Board of Permit Appeals just a couple of months ago. In the end, while we lost the battle, we ultimately won the war. Officially, Home Depot cited their poor business performance and the current state of the economy as the reasons for abandoning San Francisco. One can’t help speculating on what the real reasons were. San Francisco is an incredibly expensive city to do business in. Locally owned business can adapt and are committed to the ideals that make the City so great. For Home Depot however, they may have been reluctant to abide by the City’s ordinances to better the standard of living for those working within our borders: A high minimum wage, mandatory health care and our paid time off ordinances just to name a few. While we’ll never really understand their reasoning, I’m sure that this played a role in their decision making process. (Curiously, Home Depot also abandoned a project simultaneously in Harlem, New York. Perhaps their commitment to providing jobs for targeted communities wavered as well.) Regardless, with Big Box retail off the table at this point, San Francisco has a unique opportunity for a planning renaissance for the Bayshore corridor. I am hopeful that the Bernal Heights and Bayview community organizations will be working together led by Supervisors Ammiano and Maxwell. With Mayor Newsom’s support, perhaps positive development will yet come to Bayshore Blvd. I am certain the locally owned business community will gladly participate in the planning process, and Cole Hardware will certainly do whatever we can to help as well. - Hardware Hotline May, 2008
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