Supervisor seeks to ease chain-store rules on Van Ness to fill large vacant storefronts

The Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on April 14 took up an ordinance to remove conditional use authorization requirements for formula retail uses on Van Ness Avenue, aiming to make it easier for chain stores to occupy large, persistent commercial vacancies along the corridor.

District 2 Supervisor Steven Sherrill, sponsor of the ordinance, said Van Ness faces “a crisis of persistent commercial vacancies,” citing a planning department survey that found a 53% ground-floor commercial vacancy rate on Van Ness compared with a roughly 7.7% citywide retail vacancy rate and 22.1% in Union Square. “Some of these properties have remained vacant for longer than 5 years,” Sherrill said, and the existing conditional-use process, which…