1095 Market Street
San Francisco, California 94103
www.shapingsf.org/grant_bldg
grantbldg@yahoo.com
Hon. Willie Brown
October 18, 2000
City Hall, San Francisco
Dear Mayor Brown:
We write to you on behalf of the Grant Building Tenants Association, the tenants organization of the building that Seligman Western Enterprises Ltd. recently purchased at 1095 Market St., San Francisco, just across the street from UN Plaza. (This was the second sale of the building in one month.)
Constructed in 1904, the Grant Building has long been home to many small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Tenants include over a dozen nonprofit social service and community activist organizations, almost two dozen small businesses, and a number of artists, architects, lawyers, graphic designers, writers, and independent media producers.
Our livelihoods and ability to serve our San Francisco community depend on reasonable rents and a stable work environment. Seligman Western Enterprises has threatened us with rent increases of 300-400 percent, which would spell eviction for many tenants--and the probable dissolution of many small businesses and nonprofit organizations that are a vital part of the City.
As you are well aware, affordable commercial office space is next to impossible to find in San Francisco--we cannot just pack up and move to new quarters at a moment's notice, if at all. Thousands of artists, nonprofits, and small businesses have already been displaced in San Francisco. Even your office has made this untenable situation an election-year issue.
The new owners have rejected our repeated requests for good-faith negotiations on rent increases, renovation of the building, and the prospects for relocation within the building and elsewhere.
We cannot wait for legislative or administrative remedies. We are facing eviction now .
Given your expressions of concern for the dire straits of nonprofits, artists, and small businesses facing skyrocketing and unaffordable rents, we are asking for your immediate help: we would like you to place a telephone call to principals at Seligman Western Enterprises to encourage them to act like responsible citizens and immediately open good-faith talks with the Grant Building Tenants Association with the goal of continuing our tenancies. Please advise our representative, Bradley Angel at Greenaction (252-0822) as to the status of our request.
The parent company is Seligman & Associates, 1 Towne Square #1913, Southfield, MI 48076. The local division, Seligman Western Enterprises, Ltd., is in the Transamerica Pyramid, 600 Montgomery Street, 40th floor, SF 94111. Telephone (415) 989-1056.
Sincerely, for the Grant Building Tenants Association,
[signatures]
cc: Seligman & Associates, Seligman Western Enterprises, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Candidates for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Bay Guardian