At the December board meeting, HANC directors supported Supervisor London Breed's amendment to the Planning Code to require international chain stores to be treated the same way local and national chains are treated on Haight Street.

Currently the “formula retail” ordinance requires a public hearing on the “necessity” for any national chain of 11 or more stores to open a local “branch” on Haight Street. However, international chains are exempt from such a requirement. Two such international chains, CeX (between Masonic and Ashbury street) and Happy Herbs ( at Masonic and Haight), each of which have more than 50 locations internationally, were allowed to open without a public hearing.

HANC argued in its letter to the Supervisor:

“Section 719 of the Planning Code recognizes  the Haight Street Neighborhood Commercial District as a shopping area that 'provides convenience goods and services to local Haight-Ashbury residents'  and establishes controls which seek to 'maintain a balanced mix and variety of neighborhood serving commercial uses and regulate …more intensive commercial uses….'”

Consistent with that base zoning was the application to Haight Street of the City’s “formula retail” ordinance requiring special hearings on chain uses proposed for the street.   In two recent cases such hearing did not occur because the chains were foreign based.  Yet, the impact on both neighborhood-serving retail  and the intensification of commercial uses by the presence of chains on Haight Street still occur even if the stores are “internationally” based.  We fail to see either the logic or justice of the current “international loophole” in the ordinance”

The legislation is currently under Planning Department study and is expected to be heard later this year.