Welcome to the Hotel California

George K · "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08

"Such a lovely place..."

San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly

Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months' written notice to the city before closing down.

Supermarket operators would also have to make "good faith" efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form a grocery co-op, or any other plan they might work out by meeting with city and neighborhood residents.

Lest one thinks this is some heavy-handed City Hall intervention, the ordinance makes clear that owners still retain the ultimate power to close their store. It also creates a number of exemptions to the six-month notice requirement. If a store is closing because of a natural disaster or business circumstances that aren't "reasonably foreseeable," it doesn't have to provide the full six months' notice.

Still, should stores close without providing the proper notice, persons affected by the closure would be entitled to sue the closed store for damages.

Preston has been floating this ordinance since January when a Safeway in the city's Fillmore neighborhood announced it was closing before city officials intervened to keep it open a little longer. The policy itself is decades old.

In 1984, the board of supervisors passed an identical policy to what Preston and Peskin are proposing now, but it was vetoed by then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. At the time, Feinstein described the policy as "an unnecessary intrusion of governmental regulatory authority."

Preston is more comfortable with the intrusion.

"It was a good idea then, and it's an even better idea now," he told the San Francisco Chronicle in January. "We need notice, we need transparency, community input, and a transition plan when major neighborhood grocery stores plan to shut their doors."

Axtremus

Why limit this to only grocery stores?
It should apply equally to all stores!
Video rental stores, record stores, greetings card stores, comic book stores, adult book stores, Apple stores ... all of them.

Axtremus

Say, is there a way for the grocery stores to sue the city for not maintaining a sufficiently safe and orderly environment to allow for them to conduct ordinary commerce?