S.F. Ties Downtown Growth to Child-Care Steps

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors early Tuesday passed a comprehensive plan to guide downtown office development until the year 2000, including a revolutionary provision requiring developers to provide on-site child-care facilities or to contribute to a city child-care fund.

Adopted by a 6-5 vote after more than nine hours of heated debate, the Downtown Plan places a 950,000-square-foot annual limit on new development for the next three years and will redirect growth away from the congested Financial District.

While the plan reduces height limits for new buildings and calls for developers to pay housing and transit costs, critics say its controls are too weak and will lead to a “Manhattanization” of San Francisco.

Need for Child Care

The child-care provision, hailed by its sponsors as the first ever adopted by a major American city, equates increased office development in the downtown area to an increased need for affordable child care.

“Child care is neither accessible nor affordable to a lot of downtown workers,” said Supervisor Nancy Walker, sponsor of the provision, before the 1 a.m. vote. “We are hoping that this will make it possible for women to have another option other than not working when they have a child.”

Although there are more than 700 privately and publicly supported child-care facilities in the city, supporters of the provision say there is a shortage of these centers in the downtown area. Citywide, there is a waiting list of 3,000 children for existing child-care facilities.

Abby Cohen, managing attorney with the Childcare Law Center of San Francisco, which helped develop the provision, said this is the first time a major American city has adopted such a policy to resolve this problem. On Monday, the City of Concord, 30 miles east of San Francisco, adopted a similar plan.

Developers Get Choice

Under the San Francisco plan, developers of projects of more than 50,000 square feet will be required to construct on-site child-care facilities or to contribute, at the rate of $1 per square foot of new development, to a city child-care fund.