I like speaking to of us with experience in areas the place I’m extra primary. Years in the past when Philz Espresso began increasing from a single store right into a multi-storefront, multi-city enterprise I discovered myself in a chat with their CEO Jacob Jaber. Luckily he was recreation to reply a bunch of my questions concerning the espresso biz (I’m a little bit of a fan) with depth and persistence. Considered one of them actually caught with me as a framework to grasp city growth.
Philz was opening a handful of recent shops in fast succession round SF and I requested Jacob a model of the next: I do know website choice is a science unto itself however clarify it to me in a easy manner. His reply was tremendous attention-grabbing, and I’ll paraphrase it right here. Neighborhoods have three use circumstances – Stay, Play, Work – and as long as two of them exist, it will probably assist a Philz. So for instance, if it’s only a Stay neighborhood (perhaps a suburban city and not using a huge business district and residents commute out of the city to work), isn’t an A+ possibility. Identical factor if it’s *simply* work – no Stay or Play – in all probability nice throughout early morning commute however can that location assist afternoons/evenings/weekends? We then ran via a bunch of Philz places and he shared his POV on their Stay, Play, Work traits. Made good sense!
Quick-forward to San Francisco 2023, which is mainly 25 years within the Bay for me and nearly 30 for my spouse. So much has modified in our little metropolis, particularly over the previous few years. And I’m very supportive of teams like GrowSF working exhausting to evolve us in a optimistic path. However the simplest way for me to explain us proper now’s harkening again to Jacob’s framework. And it goes one thing like this:
“In the course of the pandemic loads modified on the subject of how individuals use areas, and for quite a lot of causes, it’s not snapping again in SF to the way in which it was earlier than, nor ought to we count on it accomplish that absolutely. Neighborhoods that anchored round Work and Stay or Work and Play (FiDi, SoMa specifically) are actually feeling deserted due to adjustments in workplace house utilization. So we have to suppose actually aggressively about the right way to get these again to a minimum of two of the three attributes in some stage of density. Then again, neighborhoods that have been primarily Stay or Stay and Play even have gotten much more attention-grabbing because of WFH/distant/hybrid. Fillmore/Divis/PacHeights, Hayes Valley, Noe Valley, West Portal, Union Avenue, Presidio are all as lively as they’ve been since I moved right here.”
Clearly there are longer discussions available about high quality of life points, rise of YIMBY and so forth (like I stated, GrowSF), however Stay Work Play is the lens via which I perceive my metropolis.
