North Beach Neighbors is proud to recognize the end of another successful North Beach Farmers Market season. As a founding group and sponsor of the market, we continue to champion the market as it completes its 4th season.

This year included a move to a new, larger location at Columbus & Greenwich next to Joe DiMaggio Playground. As a result, attendance grew by 60% and the number of vendors almost doubled!

The Market will be back open in Spring 2022, and you can follow along with all the updates on the market website.

North Beach Farmers Market Lead Organizers: Melanie Lesser, Miles, Nick Ferris, Danny Sauter, and Sri Artham

We’re thrilled to welcome three new members to our Board of Directors:

Blair Helsing, Kevin Robinson, and Sabrina R Matlin

We look forward to seeing how each will bring their love and passion for our neighborhood to the work of North Beach Neighbors. To learn more about our new board members, see our Board of Directors page.

Sabrina R Matlin

Blair Helsing

Kevin Robinson

Mayor London Breed joined North Beach Neighbors last week to celebrate the end of our North Beach Delivers program. She surprised a family with a delivery from Piazza Pellegrini, and also shared commendations with the organizers Teddy Kramer, Sri Artham, Danny Sauter, and Eric Dew.

The North Beach Delivers program raised more than $150,000 in revenue for local restaurants across North Beach, Chinatown, and Russian Hill. Thank you to so many of you that ordered each week, to our dedicated volunteers, and to our community partners who believed in our work.

North Beach Neighbors has lost a dear friend and the organization's first president, Marsha Garland, who passed away earlier this month. Read a full memory of Marsha’s life and a note of her passing.

In light of COVID-19 guidelines on Social Distancing, North Beach Neighbors conducted a survey of over 100 persons who live and/or work in the neighborhood, asking them how we can accommodate social distancing.

See the survey results.

North Beach Transit Survey Results
Last month, we invited our members and the community at large to give feedback on transit in our northeastern corner of The City. You shared where the system was working well, and where it was falling short.

We're sharing the results of that Transit Survey with you so you can see how your neighbors feel.

See The Survey Results
 

Our work was also picked up by Streetsblog, a national publication devoted to covering transit news. See their full article here. 

Sign our petition now!

Washington Square Playground urgently needs a child safety gate to prevent our babies and toddlers from being seriously hurt. 

The recently remodeled playground in North Beach is very well utilized but in the months since it opened, parents and care providers have been challenged to keep their little ones safe due to the lack of a safety enclosure. 

This playground is designed for young pre-school-aged children when bolting and running away are common normal behaviors.  The playground's proximity and unobstructed access to the very busy Columbus Avenue (at Filbert Street) with its speedy cars and busses make a dangerous invitation to a bolting toddler. 

Join North Beach Neighbors in asserting the need for a child safety gate at Washington Square Playground as an urgent and important safety measure.  Please add your name to our petition and share your stories or concerns that you or your children have encountered since the new playground opened.

Sign our petition now!

Earlier this year, we released a Small Business Roadmap which contained 5 key recommendations on how to make our neighborhood a place where small businesses can not only survive, but thrive.

Our #1 recommendation was to make more allowances for restaurants and limited restaurants, doing so by changing the period in which a conditional use is required.

Now, we have good news. Our recommendation was adopted!

Moving forward, a conditional use will be required after 36 months of non-use, a significant improved from the previous mark of 18 months. This previous period was too tight, causing many new merchants to be caught in a spiral of endless delays if they missed the 18-month deadline.

Thank you to Aaron Peskin's office for their support on this legislation.

Thank you to the countless small businesses across the northern side of the city who supported our effort.

Thank you to Russian Hill Neighbors and Lower Polk Neighbors who endorsed this and see the value in building strong neighborhoods next to one another.

To be sure, much work remains. With vacancy rates in North Beach now over 20%, we cannot count on one change to reverse an environment which has been breaking down for years. We look forward to continuing to work with city departments, officials, and neighbors to make sure our neighborhood is one which is truly open for business.

A new community space for neighbors to gather weekly while Washington Square Park is closed.

Starting this Sunday, join us each week at noon at 699 Columbus Ave (at Filbert). In partnership with Piazza Pellegrini, we're transforming a parking lot into a community space with weekly programs. From recreational classes to social events, we're hoping to give the neighborhood back some of the open space it is losing with the closure of Washington Square Park.

More information.

June 3, 2019

San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority

Adrian Leung

Bike Share Program Manager

Re: New Bike Share at Marini Plaza in North Beach

Dear SFMTA,

We are writing to voice our support for a new GoBike bike share station at Powell & Union (Marini Plaza) in North Beach. Improved transit accessibility is an important issue for our 300+ business and residential members, and the new bike station is key to achieving this goal.

Our organization supported North Beach’s first bike share station at Columbus Ave. & Lombard St in November 2018. We did so with the intention of closely monitoring performance and usage to inform our future positions on bike share. Since its installation, we have been encouraged by the demand and believe the station has been a positive addition to our community. The results speak for themselves: 80 average daily trips emanate from the station, and rides are increasing month over month.

Whenever parking is removed, there is immediate opposition. But perspective is needed. Citywide, San Francisco has nearly 275,000 on-street parking spots, enough to line California’s 840-mile coastline. On Columbus Ave, North Beach’s main commercial corridor, only 14% of those surveyed arrived by private vehicle. Studies have shown that bicyclist and pedestrian customers spend as much or more, and more regularly than do motorist customers. Finally, bike share is a critical component of the city’s Vision Zero and carbon-reduction priorities, and District 3 suffers from some of the highest vehicle emissions and traffic injuries in the city.

In deference to those with physical disabilities that may be impacted by the loss of parking from this plan, we suggest that SFMTA consider using a linkage policy to create an additional handicap space near the affected area at the cost of the station operator.

This location is a second iteration of the original plan to place one on Filbert St, in front of St Peter & Paul Church. The modified plan is a testament to Lyft’s sincere effort to work with the community to identify the most appropriate location. This is an ideal location–close to transit hubs, Washington Square Park and neighborhood businesses–and now it’s time to move forward with the installation. We urge you to support it.

In community,

Danny Sauter

President | North Beach Neighbors

cc:

Director of Transportation, Edward D. Reiskin ed.reiskin@sfmta.com

Local Government Affairs Manager, Joél T. Ramos Joel.Ramos@sfmta.com

District 3 Supervisor, Aaron Peskin aaron.peskin@sfgov.org

Adrian Leung, Bikeshare Program Manager, adrian.leung@sfmta.com

Bicycle Advisory Committee, District 3 Representative, Marc Brandt

Charles Deffarges, Senior Community Organizer, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, charles@sfbike.org

Outreach Coordinator, Lyft, Justin Hu-Nguyen, jnguyen@lyft.com

We recently released a Small Business Roadmap that includes 5 recommendations for how we believe North Beach can be a community where small businesses not only survive but thrive. We came to these recommendations based on a year of research and conversations.

Now, we're excited to share that two tremendous neighborhood associations have signed on in support of our recommendations.

Lower Polk Neighbors

Russian Hill Neighbors

Their support indicates that our recommendations not only would be valuable to North Beach but to multiple commercial corridors in the Northeast corner of our city that are going through similar challenges and transitions.

We thank each of them for their support and look forward to continuing to work together on this important topic.

"Lower Polk Neighbors supports North Beach Neighbors 5 recommendations for addressing small business health. Much like our neighbors over the hill in North Beach, the Polk Street corridor suffers from too many retail vacancies due to a variety of factors. While we are working hard to improve the public realm through strategic partnerships, we would love to see the bureaucratic burden on small business eased to make it easier for more interim and creative uses of ground floor retail spaces"

-Adam Mayer | Lower Polk Neighbors

"Russian Hill Neighbors is pleased to join North Beach Neighbors in promoting the recommendations in the road map as well as working with NBN to develop additional data, analysis, strategies and recommendations to support thriving small businesses in our neighborhoods."

-Carol Ann Rogers | President, Russian Hill Neighbors

We spoke in support of Teatro ZinZanni's plans for a new arts venue, public park, and hotel at the base of our neighborhood.

We're happy to share that the entire Planning Commission supported the project. We can't wait to welcome ZinZanni back!

https://www.sfexaminer.com/…/sf-planning-commission-gives-g…