I don't think that would have been well received. Locals would have decried that SF gov 'gives in' to big corp at the expense of the local population (i.e. not creating jobs many locals could fill and that land that could be used for affordable housing was being bid up by big corp) and probably would have added that not many from the Bayview would have benefitted directly. That's SF politics. People want the clean baby without the bathwater.

Lowes+HomeDepot (HD started but bailed and Lowes took over) went thru some idiotic approval process to build their Bayshore location --about 12 or more years after Goodman Lumber closed its doors.

Offtopic, but is there any sane reason plastic bags are outlawed here. It really annoys me because it seems like a victory of naive idealism over common sense. Plastic bags are really useful.

Good question. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I think the main disadvantage of plastic is that few people re-use plastic bags --mainly because most plastic bags are designed to be disposed from the outset.

However, petroleum plastics are very durable (else there would not be such disdain for them fouling the enviro), so they could easily be more useful than paper bags. On the other hand, there are bio-sourced plastics (mainly from corn) which are very eco friendly, so I don't know why they'd be banned as well.

I think if SF would make a sensible decision, rather than a political decision, they'd just make people pay the 5 or 10 cents for any store-issued bag. The better option is to use bags made for re-use whether plastic, canvass, or other.

Plastic bags become pollution very easily. You accidentally drop one when it's windy and boom, it's trash circling through the city.

And yet the spelling and capitalization in the "official" Google statement at the bottom is "Bayview."

I was confused and disappointed, too. However, Google already has a (small) SF office, just south of Embarcaderro: https://plus.google.com/116282327849562022127

I was right there with you.