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Old Posted Apr 17, 2009, 5:12 PM
BTinSF BTinSF is offline
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Friday, April 17, 2009
Creating nightlife a challenge for businesses, neighborhood
San Francisco Business Times - by Vasanth Sridharan

Khaled Dajani already operates a successful sushi restaurant in Mission Bay called Tsunami Sushi. So it makes sense that when he started looking for a place to open his next venue, a whiskey bar, the fast-growing neighborhood was high on his list.

But Dajani, who owns and operates two restaurants, two bars, a wine store and a coffee shop in San Francisco with his brother Musa, said that opening his lounge in Mission Bay may not be possible.

Navigating the city’s bureaucracy is always a challenge, but it’s especially tough to get approvals for Mission Bay where he said there seems to be a predisposition against bars.

“It’s becoming hard, every time we’re opening a new venue, it seems it should be easier for us, but it seems like it’s getting harder,” he said. “The bureaucracy that’s getting established seems unbelievable. I will, in all honesty, gravitate towards buying an existing venue and transforming it instead of opening a new place in Mission Bay.”

Not everyone agrees with Dajani that opening a bar in Mission Bay has more hurdles than opening one elsewhere in the city. But many believe that nightlife and entertainment needs to be a part of the burgeoning neighborhood if it wants to attract young residents with disposable income. Thousands of housing units and millions of square feet of office and R&D space have sprung up in Mission Bay. But nightlife and entertainment have lagged behind.

Mission Rock Cafe, formerly Kelly’s Mission Rock, was a mainstay of the neighborhood long before it was “Mission Bay.” General Manager Ryan Faviñas said that the neighborhood part is important to remember if you want to be successful.

“It’s not just opening a bar in the city, it’s opening a bar in a neighborhood,” he said. “The neighborhood down here is very protective of itself. They want to keep it as safe as possible.”

Mission Rock Cafe has been a nightclub for the last several years, but has begun adding live music and is transitioning to a performance venue. Faviñas said that by working closely with the current residents of the neighborhood, the club has been successful. Still, he said that the transition hasn’t been seamless.

“Starting a venue in San Francisco isn’t exactly the easiest thing,” he said.

That being said, there are already some bars and venues in the area. In Mission Bay North, by the Giants’ AT&T Park, there are quite a few bars like MoMo’s and The Beacon. In Mission Bay South, which is the less developed side of the neighborhood, there are fewer — less than 10, said Marissa Miller, senior sales associate at Cornish & Carey Retail Services. Miller said that there are about 750 people living on UCSF’s campus in Mission Bay South, and another 3,000 to 4,000 residents. About 10,000 people are there working during the day.

But Terrance Allen, chairman of the San Francisco Late Night Coalition, a group that lobbies on behalf of bars and nightclubs, said that the troubles that operators like Dajani are facing are part of a larger problem plaguing the city. He said that it’s becoming harder for potential bar owners across the city to navigate the city and state bureaucracy in order to open a bar, and that he’s stepping up lobbying efforts to try to reform the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which issues liquor licenses. The bureaucracy slows down the evolution in Mission Bay especially, because the area is just now being developed, so a nightlife scene has to be sculpted from scratch, so to speak, rather than built on an existing base.

Jocelyn Kane, deputy director of the Entertainment Commission, said that there is no sinister plan to curb nightlife in the city. And in Mission Bay, the holdup isn’t because of the bureaucracy.

“As it stands, I think the neighborhood has been marketed as a neighborhood, not necessarily as a part of the larger fabric of the nighttime areas,” she said. “And residential uses and nighttime uses don’t often go together.”

Kane also said that it’s too early in the evolution of Mission Bay to judge whether it will have a thriving nightlife. Once more people move in, then the bars and other venues will likely follow. She said that the police have been a little more restrictive with new venues recently, and that’s to make sure that everyone is safe when a venue does open. And she pointed out that there are definitely no policies specifically restricting nightlife.

Bob Davis, the director of the commission, sees more hope for Mission Bay’s nightlife, especially because the zoning allows for it. The noise ordinances allow the building department to take a stricter look at the specifications of residential development in the area and make sure that they have adequate soundproofing, which will help guard against complaints when nightlife does develop.

But what everyone agrees on is that Mission Bay will benefit from a nighttime economy, and the demand for one is increasing. Faviñas said that he’s recently seen an influx of people coming in, despite the economy. While Mission Rock used to be a place people drove into from other parts of the city, he’s seeing more local traffic.

“This is the new place to be,” he said.

But for Dajani, it might not be — especially not for a bar.

“Should we open another night venue, or should we go ahead and open a coffee shop? It’s way easier,” he said.

vsridharan@bizjournals.com
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...20/focus4.html
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