San Francisco’s Shared Spaces program was meant to help businesses recover. Instead, it’s been used to keep Hayes Street closed for nearly five years.
What began as a temporary Shared Spaces closure on Hayes Street in 2020 should have ended years ago. By late 2023, SFMTA staff were prepared not to renew the permit — citing safety issues, merchant complaints, and the clear intent that Shared Spaces closures were never meant to be indefinite. That decision changed only after Supervisor Dean Preston intervened, mounting a public campaign to preserve the closure and pressuring the agency to reverse course. Even SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin acknowledged Preston was “leading with untruths.” When Supervisor Bilal Mahmood took office, rather than correcting course, his office escalated the situation — coordinating privately with the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association to fold the same block into a newly created Entertainment Zone. Together, these actions show how a temporary Shared Space became a political fiefdom, sustained not by policy or performance, but by pressure and insider coordination.
Timeline
- 2020: Hayes Street closure approved as a temporary emergency Shared Space under COVID recovery orders.
- 2021–2022: Renewed administratively under SFMTA’s “temporary roadway closure” category — with no long-term framework.
- Summer 2023: SFMTA staff signal intent not to renew; internal evaluation cites noncompliance and lack of consensus.
- Fall 2023: Supervisor Dean Preston intervenes publicly and privately, urging SFMTA to keep the block closed.
- November 2023: SFMTA renews the “temporary” closure under political pressure.
- 2024: Closure continues despite ongoing violations and community opposition.
- 2025: Supervisor Bilal Mahmood sponsors the Hayes Valley Entertainment Zone amendment — codifying the same closure into city law, bypassing the original Shared Spaces intent and process.
Bottom line:
A program that was meant to help businesses recover temporarily has instead been manipulated into a permanent street closure, without evaluation, public consent, or accountability. It’s long past time for the City to end the “temporary” permit, restore Hayes Street, and reestablish a process that reflects policy, not politics.
How a Temporary Pandemic Program Became a Permanent Street Closure
What Shared Spaces Was Meant to Be
The following background explains how a temporary recovery measure was transformed into a permanent political project.
The Shared Spaces program was created in May 2020 under an emergency health order to help small businesses operate outdoors during the pandemic. It allowed restaurants and retailers to use sidewalks, parking lanes, and limited roadway areas for temporary seating or sales.
The City emphasized from the start that it was a temporary recovery measure. It was meant to:
- Support small businesses during capacity limits;
- Keep San Franciscans employed; and
- Provide a flexible, low-cost option until normal operations could resume.
When the Mayor and Board of Supervisors later acted to make Shared Spaces permanent (Ord. No. 1-22, adopted February 2022), the intent was parklet-level use, not full street closures. The “Permanent Shared Spaces” framework governs:
- Parklet design and accessibility standards,
- Insurance and safety compliance,
- And renewal processes for semi-permanent outdoor dining areas.
Crucially, it never authorized permanent full-block street closures. Those were treated separately under SFMTA’s temporary roadway closure category — a leftover from the emergency phase.
How It Drifted Into Street Closures
During 2020–2021, SFMTA used temporary authority from the emergency order to allow certain blocks (like Hayes Street, Valencia, Grant, and 22nd) to close fully to vehicles. The idea was to test “open streets” while businesses recovered. Once the emergency expired, those blocks were supposed to revert to normal operations or undergo a new public process. Instead, SFMTA continued renewing these as “temporary roadway closures” under the Shared Spaces umbrella — without:
- A formal evaluation process,
- Environmental review, or
- An established pathway for community appeal.
By 2023, that loophole had turned Shared Spaces from a recovery tool into an unregulated framework for long-term street closures, with no sunset clause and minimal oversight.
The Hayes Street Turning Point
By mid-2023, SFMTA staff had concluded the Hayes Street closure was not meeting program goals. Internal correspondence and community feedback reflected ongoing problems:
- Traffic diversion and access issues,
- Merchant revenue losses,
- Repeated noncompliance by the permit holder, and
- A lack of broad community support.
Staff began signaling that the closure would not be renewed after its upcoming expiration.
Then came the political intervention.
Political Interference — Supervisor Dean Preston (Late 2023)
In July 2023, internal SFMTA correspondence shows Director Jeffrey Tumlin warning staff that Supervisor Dean Preston was “leading with a set of untrue messages” about the Hayes Street Shared Spaces closure. The email, sent to senior SFMTA managers and the Mayor’s Office, reflected Tumlin’s frustration that Preston’s office — fully aware of the issue — had nonetheless launched a public relations campaign to frame the closure as universally supported, despite the agency’s own concerns and plans not to renew the permit.
By October–November 2023, Preston’s office escalated that campaign publicly — coordinating messaging and press coverage to portray the closure as a “beloved community space,” even as local opposition and documentation of violations continued to mount.
As that public narrative gained traction, SFMTA staff backed away from their original plan to end the closure. In December 2023, the agency quietly renewed the “temporary” permit once again, citing “community support,” despite its own evaluation data suggesting otherwise.
That moment — not legislation, not data — kept the closure alive into 2024.
Expansion and Institutionalization — Supervisor Bilal Mahmood (2025)
By January 2025, when Supervisor Bilal Mahmood too office the Hayes Street closure was already in its fourth year. Rather than reviewing its legitimacy, his office embraced and expanded it. Public records and email disclosures show that Mahmood and his legislative aide, Raynell Cooper, coordinated privately with:
- The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA),
- The Hayes Valley Merchants Council (HVMC), and
- Selected allies to develop an “Entertainment Zone Management Plan.”
That plan, created without notice or community-wide input, became the basis for the Hayes Valley Entertainment Zone amendment, which the Board of Supervisors passed in June 2025. The amendment effectively retroactively legalized the existing closure by designating the area as part of a citywide “Entertainment Zone” network — transforming what was originally a temporary Shared Spaces permit into a permanent legislative designation.
Why This Matters and What Comes Next
This is not a story about outdoor dining. It’s about how temporary emergency powers morphed into permanent land-use policy without public consent or process. The Shared Spaces program was meant to help small businesses survive, not to transfer public streets into permanent event zones.
Yet through a mix of administrative inertia and political maneuvering:
- SFMTA continued renewing a “temporary” closure far beyond its mandate,
- Supervisor Dean Preston ensured it survived politically, and
- Supervisor Bilal Mahmood ensured it became permanent legislatively.
A temporary pandemic program, intended as emergency relief, has been repurposed into a vehicle for permanent street closures. Of all the Shared Spaces street closures launched during the pandemic, including on Valencia, Grant, and 22nd Streets …Hayes Street is the only one that has never been restored to regular public use. It now functions less as a shared public space and more as a privatized corridor controlled by a small group of insiders, contrary to the inclusive spirit that defined Shared Spaces at its creation. Five years later, Hayes Street remains “temporary” in name only — a policy relic extended far past its purpose and legality. It’s time for the City to end the closure and restore Hayes Street to public use.