A reflection on advocacy, frustration, and the failed policy behind the Hayes Street closure.
We never imagined we’d have to fight this hard for fairness. Like many others, we simply cared about our neighborhood-its businesses, its streets, and the people who live and work here every day. But once the aim evolved to keeping the street closed, and the impacts on small businesses became impossible to ignore, we realized someone had to speak up.
What followed wasn’t easy. We’ve spent years asking for fairness, transparency, and inclusion, often getting little in return. Meetings felt like formalities, gestures to check a box rather than genuine attempts to listen or solve anything. Concerns were minimized. And somehow, the small business community, the very backbone of this corridor – was written out of the process.
We’ve been told our voices are too negative. That we’re anti-progress. That we don’t understand the bigger picture.
But if “progress” means closing a street without broad support or a functional plan, then the picture is a lot smaller than it looks.
Turning a corridor into a crowd-pleasing spectacle isn’t vision.
It’s aesthetic politics…where a European fantasy gets more weight than local survival.
And frankly, it’s exhausting.
It’s hard to keep showing up when every conversation feels like an uphill battle, when you’re constantly having to re-explain your worth, your impact, your lived experience. When decision-makers don’t just disagree with you, they act like you’re not even in the room. It wears on people. It discourages others from stepping forward. And it chips away at the belief that everyday residents and small businesses still have a voice in shaping their own neighborhoods.
Still, we keep showing up.
We’ve also watched as the narrative has been further rigged, right down to the physical community board on Parcel K, installed on public land, where only one voice gets to define what “the neighborhood” wants. It’s become a mouthpiece for a single interest group pushing for permanent closure. When a small number of individuals control the messaging and preemptively shut others out, it creates an illusion of consensus that City Hall is all too eager to embrace. Those of us raising red flags are treated like the opposition…as if advocating for small business, balance, and fairness is somehow radical. But we’re not going to be erased by a curated version of community. We’ve been here too long, and the stakes are too high.
And let’s be clear: this failure isn’t just local…it’s institutional. Government has failed us. A temporary program with no precedent has been allowed to evolve into a permanent disruption, without compliance, without oversight, and without accountability. A noncompliant permit being used to justify continued harm isn’t just bad policy, it’s negligence hiding in plain sight. Like a thief in daylight, it strips power and stability from the very people it claims to support.
Because it’s about demanding a process that values real world consequences over curated narratives.
We’re not here because we enjoy the conflict. We’re here because the stakes are real. When leases are high, margins are thin, and the street outside your door becomes a stage for someone else’s vision —you either speak up, or you watch your livelihood disappear.
So when people ask why we’re still at it, the answer is simple: because we live here, we work here, and we know what’s really happening on the ground.
That’s why we’re still here.
That’s why we’re not going away.