It’s not just John King who’s expressing misgivings over what planners for the America’s Cup yacht race have in store for the city’s waterfront: officials from the Ferry Building have joined the chorus of concern, saying that road closure plans could put merchants there in hot water.
Since reopening in 2003, SF’s Ferry Building has been a highly successful waterfront market area for tourists and locals alike, with 46 retailers, nine restaurants and cafes and around 85,000 shoppers stopping by weekly. So an event that is expected to attract 10 million visitors from outside San Francisco should be a boon, right? Not necessarily.
At a standing-room-only Planning Commission meeting on August 11, an official from the Ferry Building said she worried that the proposed closure of The Embarcadero’s northbound side during the races will negatively impact merchants there, who rely on vehicle access to deliver their products.
According to the Biz Times, Jane Connors, the Ferry Building’s senior property manager says that closing northbound lanes of the Embarcadero between Howard and Bay streets between 10 AM. and 5 PM “would choke off an average of 250 daily deliveries.”
The closure “would be devastating to our merchants and tenants,” says Connors, anticipating a future where the Ferry Building is filled with customers, but the delivery-blocked merchants have nothing to sell.
The environmental impact report for San Francisco’s part of the project is available on the city’s Environmental Planning website at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?recordid=45&page=2719.
For more information about the federal portion of the project, visit www.americascupnepa.org.
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