[BTinSF]

^^^I'm very much with you on this one roadwarrior. Bloomingdales is a "chain store". So are Saks and Nieman's. But you can't buy laundry soap and pet food there. If San Francisco is to be home to "real people" with real budgets, it needs shopping venues for daily necessities that keep prices in line with what the rest of America pays--that's places like Target (and Wal-Mart but the politics of that are just prohibitive). Mid-Market is almost the perfect place in San Francisco for such a store. It is well-served by transit from all over the city. Retail there will serve not only the rich, but all the low income people from the Tenderloin, 6th and 7th Streets and the surrounding neighborhoods. And they need precisely the kind of shopping Target would offer.

Market St. itself cannot all be high end retail from one end to the other. San Francisco long ago decided NOT to gentrify the Tenderloin and that decision means we will not see high end retailing in the adjacent blocks of Market. But we can see modern, efficient basic retailing in clean modern locations. New York has done it for decades. It's time for San Francisco to do it.

By the way, the description Tyler gives of the neighborhood around CostCo makes me think he's talking about a different city. It certainly has no relation to the CostCo in San Francisco. The neighborhood around that has only gotten better since CotCo moved in and the only parking lot--badly needed for the nighttime enetertainment in the area--is inside the CostCo store. But, again, urban sort-of-big boxes, don't need parking lots if they are well-served by transit as any store on Market St. would be.