News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
Breed’s ‘upzoning’ becomes Lurie’s ‘family zoning’ plan FILLMORE STREET between Jackson and Bush would face the same future as most other neighborhood commercial districts and transit corridors under the city’s latest revision to its zoning plan: taller buildings designed to provide more residential housing. A marathon Planning Commission meeting last week kicked off what could…
By THOMAS REYNOLDS Height limits on prime blocks of Fillmore Street may be “upzoned” from 40 feet to 65 feet under plans being reviewed by the city’s Planning Department. The change would allow buildings up to six stories on Fillmore from California north to Jackson Street. The proposed changes would also raise the height limit…
By GARY KAMIYA San Francisco Chronicle Fifty years ago this weekend, police prevented the San Francisco Mime Troupe from performing a play in Lafayette Park, arresting the company’s founder as 1,000 people jeered. The dramatic encounter expanded the frontiers of artistic freedom in San Francisco and indirectly launched the career of legendary rock promoter Bill…
OWNERS OF THE Shell station at 2501 California Street were sent back to the drawing board by the Planning Commission on April 30 and told to return in a month with revised plans — ideally plans that would keep the garage they hoped to eliminate. The owners, a company called AU Energy that owns more than…
FILLMORE STREET CONTINUES to remake itself into a mecca of high-end fashion labels from around the world, despite the city’s professed intent to limit chain stores in neighborhood shopping districts. Partly that is because the rules limiting “formula retail” — defined as companies with 11 or more stores — do not include stores outside the…
AS FILLMORE STREET continues to rapidly remake itself into a mecca for fashion labels from around the world, supplanting basic neighborhood services, legislation has been introduced at City Hall that would subject more businesses to the city’s limits on chain stores. Under the existing “formula retail” ordinance — enacted by the voters in 2008 to…
PRESIDENT OBAMA returned to the neighborhood yet again last night for dinner with deep-pocketed supporters at the Getty Mansion. He was greeted in San Francisco style by a raucous crowd of protesters opposing the Keystone pipeline, then introduced by the Gettys’ down-the-block neighbor, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Here’s the pool report on the event.…
By MARKOS KOUNALAKIS BUDAPEST, Hungary — Many of my Saturdays used to start out with a saunter down Fillmore Street for an early morning cup of coffee while the rest of my family was still in bed. Budapest is also a coffeehouse city, but more famed for the conversations and art that grew out of…
President Obama will be back in the neighborhood for dinner tonight, after stopping in Chinatown to pick up take-out dim sum for lunch. He’s supping and posing with a few deep-pocketed supporters paying $38,500 each at the contemporary Gold Coast home of Oracle heiress Nicola Miner and author Robert Mailer Anderson. Entertainment will be provided…
While other San Francisco neighborhoods are resisting the new high-tech parking meters that now line Fillmore Street, they are generally finding favor with local residents and merchants, despite being difficult to use. And a new report suggests that the experimental SFpark program is having at least some of its intended effects. At the new meters…