Revitalizing Small Businesses in the Richmond

My mother and father visiting Lands’ End in 1968.

My parents immigrated to the United States — my father from Iran, my mother from the Philippines. Both grew up in families with extraordinarily high expectations around education and hard work, and starting over in a new country was the challenge of their lifetimes. I am so proud of their achievements, and feel so blessed they chose this country as their home. I was born at French Hospital at 5th and Geary and remember visiting as a child the shops and restaurants on Clement Street.

Off to work with my youngest.

When I returned to the Richmond District as an adult over a decade ago, married and newly pregnant, I was excited to live near the emerging shopping and dining strip along Balboa Street near the historic theater. After many years spent in government service and campaigns at the local, state, and federal level, I decided to launch my own small business. It shouldn’t surprise you that the first few years were a struggle: here I was, a woman of color carrying an infant, trying to break into the impacted world of San Francisco politics, starting a small business during the greatest economic recession in generations.

In politics — especially in this bewildering Presidential campaign year — people say a lot of things and don’t always deliver. The business world is different. Everybody gets paid before you get paid. You have to pay salaries, pay overhead, and of course do the work that serves your clients. If no money or time is left at the end of all this, you eat the costs. Small business loans are hard to come by. City bureaucracy is difficult to navigate. My own business has never been particularly lucrative, but it has provided a middle-class living and has given our family the flexibility we needed to raise our children to school-age.

“We tried to start the Balboa Village Merchants Association for many many years but it didn’t really get off the ground until Marjan stepped in and helped us move it forward.” — Chet Thong, owner, La Promenade

With Chet Thong, owner of La Promenade Café

Over the past decade I have, on a volunteer basis, worked with merchants throughout the Richmond to help build and revitalize their businesses. For many years, merchants along the Balboa Street corridor near our home struggled to put together an organization that would meet their needs and allow them to work together to improve the neighborhood. I am thrilled to have the endorsements of several of these merchants including Yuka Ioroi, owner of Cassava, José Aguayo, owner of Balboa Grocery, and Chet Thong, owner of La Promenade Café (there are many more — see my website). Together with other business owners, we finally got the Balboa Village Merchants Association up and running.

With Yuka Ioroi, owner of Cassava

The merchants association came on the heels of last year’s well-received BalBOOa Fright Fest, a neighborhood Halloween festival I helped organize that brought over 1500 residents to the outer Balboa Street corridor to trick-or-treat in participating shops and enjoy a fun, family-friendly carnival. This took a lot of work, but not as much work as it would have had the merchants not been themselves so hungry for a chance to engage with the community.

“The primary job of a District Supervisor is constituent services.” — long-time Richmond District resident Lee Heidhues (shown below)

With two of my supporters, David & Lee (quoted above).

At times in San Francisco, elected Supervisors get very involved in the “activist” or ideological side of politics. It can be exciting, and even useful, but it can also get in the way of day-to-day attention to constituent services, which are, for the most part, nonpartisan.

“The first responsibility of a public servant is to his or her constituents.” — the late Congressman Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), my first political mentor.

Taking this concept to the Richmond, this means delivering on an unprecedented plan to work directly and exhaustively with the merchants and neighbors that make up our District.

With the late Hon. Tom Lantos at the start of my career.

Revitalizing our small businesses in the Richmond and making sure there are good, local jobs for our working and middle class families takes more than just blanket policy proposals. It takes an attitude, temperament, and approach that not everyone will bring to the table. I love doing this work and if you meet me you will understand why. That said, here are four steps I would take if elected:

• Open a District Desk or Office. I will open an office or help desk in the Richmond District, so concerns do not need to be taken all the way to City Hall. This seems like a no-brainer, but this is harder than it seems: Supervisors have three paid staff and these staff are plenty busy in City Hall, and for that reason many Supervisors choose not to keep even a part-time office in the District. This needs to change for the Richmond.
• Host Regular Merchant Forums. There is a tendency in San Francisco to take on a ‘do nothing’ stance because merchants and residents feel dictated to by City Hall. We can’t hide our heads in the sand — rather than taking the easy route of demonizing projects and opponents, we have to engage in the tough conversations and build consensus and understanding. Regular conversations with merchants who drive our economic growth is imperative as we move as a neighborhood towards a future that includes everyone.
• Protect Vulnerable Businesses. I was delighted to see Pacific Cafe and Toy Boat Dessert Cafe receive legacy business protection. Neighborhood gems such as Green Apple Books need to be protected as well. The volatile boom/bust economic environment over the last twenty years makes the case for prudent and measured intervention. And we need to ensure that local businesses can compete on a level playing field for City contracts.
• Publicly Address the Status of Blighted Properties. There are properties along Geary and elsewhere in the District that, due to slow turnaround, owner neglect, or a sagging economy, languish in a state of disrepair that drags down the economic potential of the whole neighborhood. Neighbors deserve to know what’s going on with these properties.

If you have been following my campaign these past 20 months, you have seen me move from a vision, to action, and (with just 83 days to go) with luck, to results. I owe my ability to deliver on a positive, issues-oriented campaign, as well as the formation of the Balboa Village Merchants Association, to my experience as a small-business owner. This means the hard limits that come from having to really pay the bills, to really deliver a product or service. But, even more than that, helping small business is simply my passion — like my parents before me, I was born into a world of hard work and high expectations, a world where you work to make your dreams into reality.

I would be honored to bring this passion and love of service into the role of Richmond District Supervisor.

Marjan Philhour is a small business owner, a working mom, and a candidate for Supervisor in San Francisco’s Richmond District (D1).

With my family at our Outer Richmond home.