San Jose could learn lesson from lease rescue

I was glad to hear that the Punch Line in San Francisco — in danger of losing its lease after 40 years — will survive to make people laugh for at least several more years. And it was interesting to see how the city rallied around a cultural treasure to ensure that a familiar story — big tech pushes out a small business — had a different ending.

It should be a lesson for San Jose, if not all of Santa Clara County, which has seen too many of our favorite theaters, restaurants, bars and mom-and-pop retailers disappear because of rising rents and encroaching development.

Google is often presented as the bad guy in these tales, but in the case of the Punch Line, the Mountain View search giant made it clear that in leasing space in the

comedy club’s building from landlord Morgan Stanley, it had no interest in causing the adjacent club to be shuttered.

But another key factor was that San Francisco has a Legacy Business Program, intended to help small businesses that have been around for at least 30 years (or 20 years in some cases) that contribute to the character of the city. The Punch Line joined about 200 other businesses on the Legacy Business Registry just hours before a new lease agreement was announced.

If such a program existed in San Jose, it could help our cultural treasures — such as City Lights Theater Company, which continues to search for a new, permanent home because of the planned redevelopment of its theater on South Second Street, or the small-business tenants of City View Plaza who are being forced out this fall before that project is leveled. With BART’s construction and Google’s planned campus both expected to upend downtown in the next decade, longtime retailers and businesses could use all the help they can get.

And this isn’t just about downtown San Jose. What happens if the development bell tolls for La Villa or Hicklebee’s in Willow Glen or Mark’s Hot Dogs in East San Jose? In Palo Alto, the Stanford Theatre is probably safe, but what about the Aquarius? Could this have kept Wing’s open in San Jose’s Japantown?

Not every business can be saved (and not every one wants to be), but a program like San Francisco’s in the South Bay would go a long way toward letting small businesses and cultural venues know they’re appreciated and help is available when they need it.

NEW SPEAKER SERIES IN SAN JOSE >> Nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently that applies to the speaker circuit, too. With the discontinuation of the Celebrity Forum at De Anza College after 50 years (and the coming demolition of the Flint Center), a new speaker series is being launched in San Jose this fall.

The inaugural series at the downtown San Jose Civic — available by full season subscription only — kicks off Nov. 21 with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Other speakers in the lineup are former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (Dec. 5), astronaut Scott Kelly (Jan. 16), political strategists Donna Brazile and Michael Steele (Feb. 6), Bill Nye, “The Science Guy” (Feb. 12), arctic explorer and photographer Paul Nicklen (March 3), and former FBI Director James Comey (April 9).

The new venture is a partnership between a group that runs a similar series in Salt Lake City and Phoenix and the MPSF Speaker Series, which has had a successful run in Marin, Oakland and San Mateo. In a letter to MPSF subscribers, President Jim Weil said the loss of the Celebrity Forum was the major factor. “Our new series in San Jose will provide Silicon Valley and South Bay residents the opportunity to continue this long tradition,” he wrote, adding that he’ll be involved as an adviser in speaker selection.

Season tickets run $499 to $599, not counting venue fees. Get more details at www.sanjoseseries.com.