The grassroots fight against Academy
of Art University's plans to buy the Flower Mart gained
steam today as tenants and neighbors took their complaints
to the press.
At issue was a Christmas Eve eviction letter which ordered
30 tenants to vacate their properties by February 29, 2008,
two months earlier than previously required. Six of those
businesses have been able to shrink their shops and find
space at the other side of the Flower Mart, which has different
owners. The remainder will be forced to leave the area,
which has served as a regional flower center since 1931.
The 30 affected businesses together employ about 150, but
many more would be affected should this regional hub close,
including flower growers, truckers, florists, wedding planners
and other neighboring businesses, they said.
Academy of Art University is now prohibited from using the
Flower Mart as a sculpture studio, as it had planned to
do, because of a 45-day moratorium on any institutional
uses in the Western SoMa region. The Board of Supervisors
is expected to extend that moratorium to two years, eventually
rezoning the area to prohibit any institutional uses, which
would include educational uses.
When Academy of Art University entered into contract to
purchase the Flower mart, the zoning laws permitted a sculpture
department there, said Sallie Huntting, a spokeswoman for
the school. "Now they are trying to change the zoning,"
she said.
Academy of Art University was unaware that the Flower Mart
owners had sent the eviction notice that accelerated tenants'
move-out dates, Huntting said, adding that Elisa Stephens,
the university president, is open to discussing terms with
any tenant who would like to extend a lease. Nor did the
school know the tenants had planned a press conference.
"If the expectation is that you don't enforce zoning,
then 'land value' matters," said Sue Hestor, a land
use attorney working with the Flower Mart tenants. But if
the city bars Academy of Art University from operating at
the site and preserves it exclusively for light industrial
uses, the Flower Mart can continue.
The tenants facing eviction say theirs are profitable businesses
that would suffer should they be forced to move and lose
the benefit of sharing a single site with many related businesses.
It would be impossible to find another spot in San Francisco
where they could cluster, they said, citing the perfect
combination of parking and freeway accessibility at the
current Sixth Street location.
"Property values have nothing to do with the long-term
success of this site" as a flower market, said Patrick
McCann, a Flower Mart tenant and owner of Toscana Gardens
and Greenworks. The tenants say they have robust retail
business to complement their wholesale business, and that
means they are all-day operations and for many, revenue
is growing.
McCann said he made a $17 million offer to buy the Flower
Mart, but his was a five-year deal and was dismissed in
favor of Academy of Art University's $15 million all-cash
offer.
"The big fear is that if this goes, it will be harder
for other small businesses in the area to hang on,"
McCann said.
Mike Ferro, owner of Fantastico, a business next door to
the Flower Mart, said losing that anchor will negatively
impact his business, much as he suffered when dot-coms paying
higher rents pushed out factory outlet retailers in the
1990s. The he saw business decline 30 percent. It has come
back since, but losing the Flower Mart might be too much,
he said.
"I can't draw people myself," he said. "If
we lose this, it will be the second big blow to the area
... We're the ones least able to afford another hit."
Academy of Art University has run afoul of city planning
codes, with 44 violations including failure to obtain conditional
use permits to change buildings that it buys into dorms,
classrooms, offices and studios. The fight for the Flower
Mart is the largest organized resistance the school has
yet faced.
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