When Ivor Bradley goes before San Francisco’s most powerful legislative body Tuesday, he won’t be arguing for anything extraordinary. Instead, the Board of Supervisors will spend precious time debating a controversy that could only happen in San Francisco: whether to let Bradley open a coffee shop.
The fight over croissants and cappuccinos promises to be the most San Francisco story of them all — one that covers the city’s tech industry, its small business crisis, its intense NIMBY-ism and its famously dramatic fights over every little change proposed to the city’s landscape.
The latest chapter in the saga that might as well be titled “San Francisco is arguing over what now?” began last summer when Bradley closed his famous cafe, the Creamery, after 12 years in the South of Market.
A drop in revenue because of the pandemic and uncertainty over a planned 960-unit development on the site prompted Bradley to not renew the lease on the cafe that was famous in tech circles for its venture capitalist confabs and the apparent birth of Airbnb.
When Bradley, a genial, twinkly eyed Irishman who peppers his conversation with phrases like “a wee bit,” went searching for a new home for his cafe, he landed on a vacant space at 14th and Mission streets.
And that’s when the intense scrutiny began.
“Who knew that scones could be so controversial?” Bradley, 50, mused as we stood outside the space he’s paid $4,500 a month for since September, but still has no key to open.
The Sunset District resident and father of two thought relocating a popular business to a vacant storefront a mile and a half away that nobody else wants to rent would be a lot easier than this. Especially because his plan fits the zoning rules and many of his employees live in the Mission. Plus, he’s agreed to hire locally for any slots his former staff doesn’t fill.
Between rent, which will rise to $6,000 monthly if and when he can finally open, an architect, equipment storage and other costs, he’s sunk more than $60,000 into the project.
“It definitely makes you stop and think of the process and the hurdles that you have to overcome if you want to make a significant investment in a neighborhood,” Bradley said. “It’s a challenge to move forward knowing the city doesn’t have your back.”
So what happened? San Francisco happened.
The city allows any neighbor of a proposed new business to object to its plans, and that’s what the Cultural Action Network did on Jan. 14. It’s a community organization that, according to its Facebook page, “takes direct action to protect the city’s artists, diversity, cultural organizations and their spaces.”
It has called for banning tech offices in the Mission, opposed state legislation to make it easier to build apartment buildings near transit and opposes red lanes to get buses down busy streets faster.
Its membership is unclear, but its president is Rick Hall, who is also the president of Livable California, an anti-development group derided as NIMBYs by people who believe the state should build enough housing for everybody who needs it. Hall answered a call to the phone number associated with the Cultural Action Network and said somebody else would get back to me for this column. Nobody did.
The other person whose name is attached to the Cultural Action Network’s appeals of the coffee shop is Ben Terrall, a freelance writer. Terrall, who lives 4 miles from 14th and Mission, didn’t return requests for comment either.
At a March 25 Planning Commission hearing, about a dozen people spoke, almost all opposed to Bradley’s coffee shop. They had legitimate concerns — like that they’d rather see a retail store run by a Latino immigrant in the space. But no such proposal exists. So far, it’s the coffee shop or yet another vacant space in a neighborhood already dotted with them.
Bradley agreed to make changes requested by neighbors. He’ll publish his menu in Spanish and English, hang Latino and Native American art on the walls, and keep his prices low. A planned bilingual menu shows pastries priced at $2.50 and the most expensive item, salads, topping out at $11.
He emphasized his clientele isn’t only tech workers; at his previous site, he gave free food to seniors living on fixed incomes, let charities use the space free for their events and donated to local schools.
“They don’t know me,” Bradley said of the objectors. “I’m not the big corporate guy they say I am. I’m just a small-business man with a good concept.”
The Planning Commission approved Bradley’s shop unanimously, but that didn’t end the weird twists and turns. Far from it.
Terrell, with Hall’s backing, then filed an appeal under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, a 1970 state law that requires government agencies to disclose environmental impacts of projects. While important and well-intentioned, the law has become a go-to weapon for NIMBYs to block projects they don’t like, even if their arguments have nothing to do with preserving the environment.
And incredibly, the Board of Supervisors gives them considerable time and merit. A recent proposal from Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Matt Haney to require CEQA appellants to gather 50 signatures in some narrow cases was tabled by Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston in committee.
Terrall cited no evidence in his appeal that the cafe would damage the environment, but just said it would gentrify the neighborhood.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the Mission, said she’d be surprised if the hearing elicits any real justification for stopping the cafe.
“I understand the appellants’ fears, which are that a cafe with an upscale clientele will be the start of the Valencia-fication of Mission Street,” she said, referring to the upscale businesses dotting the nearby commercial corridor. “I just don’t know that CEQA is a viable tool to stop a business from coming into an empty shop.”
She said she supported the change proposed by Breed and Haney and worries that activists’ misuse of CEQA threatens its future. Ronen added that she doesn’t know the people behind the Cultural Action Network and that her office tried to broker a deal between them and Bradley, but “it was just a nonstarter basically.”
Sharky Laguana, president of the city’s small-business commission, said the CEQA appeal is “clearly anti-small business.”
“How can anybody look at the current environment and say, ‘What’s needed now is to slow business down,’” he said. “We need to take a more holistic view of the economy and not be prioritizing the grumpalumps and gadflies and folks who just hate everything.”
Bradley figures he’s got a 50-50 chance of surviving Tuesday. But he already has a Plan B. In April, he spent a week in Denver researching the small-business market. He found cheaper rents, happy families and a city that doesn’t consider a new coffee shop a matter of grave, dramatic importance.
He certainly wouldn’t be the first parent and small-business owner to bid San Francisco, its bureaucracy and its grumpalumps goodbye.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hknightsf