Revitalization project threatens shops
impediment on a map. In a presentation to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority in April, Van Ness project manager Peter Gabancho said his team had “discovered all sorts of infrastructure” underground, including a large number of abandoned, century-old gas lines. Each time workers find such a line, they attempt to locate its original owner.
That explanation apparently has not satisfied Walsh Construction Co., the contractor for the Van Ness renovation. In April, the company filed three claims against SFMTA — totaling $21.6 million — for holding up the work while it sought a utility subcontractor. Walsh would be required to pay $50,000 for every day the project is delayed, a price tag that would likely balloon as more complications arise.
A spokesman for the company did not return phone calls.
Sitting on the sidelines are business owners whose barstools and beauty salon chairs are empty as bulldozers and guardrails eat up parking spaces.
“Well, they pretty much took all our parking away,” said Juan Alvarado, the front of house manager at Tommy’s Joynt, a hofbrau where tourists eat bread slathered in barbecue sauce beneath a papier-mache deer head. It’s wedged between two big sites — the one on Van Ness and a new hospital that’s nearing completion on Geary Street, just around the corner.
Business appears to be inching along at Tommy’s, but other places aren’t so lucky.
“I’d say our rental business is down about 50 percent,” said Brian Buckner, the owner of Big Swingin’ Cycles, a bike rental shop at Van Ness and Vallejo Street.
The patch of road outside his store is a dirt gulley surrounded by orange barricades and “No Parking” signs. That environment inhibits customers but welcomes thieves, he said. Recently, trespassers threw a concrete block through his store window and tried to break the lock on his back gate with a piece of iron left behind by the work crews.
“I’m sometimes sleeping here at night because I’m so afraid thieves will come in here and take my stuff,” Buckner said.
Residents of the nearby apartment buildings say they’re also annoyed by construction equipment blocking off parking spaces and machines rumbling day and night.
“The main thing is the noise,” said Kelly Carroll, who lives a block north of Bootleg Bar & Kitchen. “It’s crazy — sometimes they go 24/7, and you can’t sleep.”
Infrastructure projects surged under the late Mayor Ed Lee, a former public works head who took office at the beginning of an economic boom. During his administration workers tore out old sewer lines, repaved bumpy roads and redesigned sidewalks throughout the city’s 47square-mile grid. Streetscape improvements are under way in the Sunset District and on Polk Street — a block away from the Van Ness rapid bus lanes — while the MTA’s huge Central Subway tunnel inches toward completion in Chinatown.
But while new roads, sewers and sidewalks help revitalize the city, the work also has warping aftereffects. Complicated projects that involve multiple city departments often get delayed for years. And the Van Ness Avenue work is a particular quagmire, hobbled by inaccurate street utility maps that lead workers to dig blind.
“We can’t just stick a backhoe in the ground and start marching down the corridor,” Gabancho said at the April hearing.
The delays cause businesses to wither. Last year, Lee offered up to $10,000 in subsidies to Chinatown merchants who said they were being battered by the Central Subway. He provided other forms of assistance, as well: new signs and paint jobs, consulting services, free parking for customers or a “buy local” campaign to highlight a particular corridor when the street gets torn up.
Although the city no longer hands out cash to beleaguered shop owners, MTA is still supplying other types of relief, including signs, advertising and technical support to stores on Van Ness Avenue.
Waugh, the co-owner of Bootleg, said the city donated a graphic artist to create ads for her business during the construction period. Yet she’s not pulling in enough income to pay the $1,200 it would cost to print them, she said.
She and her business partner are beholden to the two years left on their lease. They considered selling the lease, but realized no one would take it up while workers are jack-hammering outside.
“Business used to be good,” she said, recalling how regulars flocked in to the small watering hole for football games and Taco Tuesdays.
“We’re still open,” she said with a hopeful smile. “The best thing people can do to help is — please come.”