Two years ago, when Nordstrom shuttered its once-gleaming flagship store in Westfield San Francisco Centre, the city convulsed with anxiety over the demise of local shopping and overall business vitality.

Given that continued state of existential angst, you’d think news of Nordstrom proposing a new store in San Francisco would be warmly greeted. But you’d be wrong — at least in the case of a group of residents loudly opposing the company’s desire to move into their neighborhood.

The kerfuffle is playing out at the San Francisco Planning Commission, where the Seattle retailer is requesting approval to put a concept store called Nordstrom Local into a long-vacant storefront on Fillmore Street. The commission on June 5 plans to consider Nordstrom’s request for “conditional-use” authorization. That Nordstrom needs permission at all to fill a retail space that’s been empty since before the pandemic is a perfect illustration of the city’s outdated and restrictive approach to “formula retail,” or what normal people call chain stores. 

Frustratingly, it’s yet another example of how San Francisco’s kvetchocracy all too often reigns over a commonsense approach to governing and doing business. 

For years, the city has made it increasingly difficult for brands owned by big corporations to set up shop in town, invoking the vaunted “San Francisco values” of promoting and protecting local merchants. But given the current reality on our streets and neighborhoods, with too many boarded-up storefronts and empty sidewalks, it’s time to walk back that tired approach. After all, it isn’t exactly consistent with San Francisco values to encourage locals to shop in the suburbs because the stores in their neighborhoods are shuttered. 

In the case of Nordstrom, approval of the new store should be a no-brainer. The 1,648-square-foot location would be a showroom, tailoring service, and pickup-and-return center for Nordstrom.com, rather than a full-blown shopping emporium. It’s a clever approach for Nordstrom, which knows that many consumers prefer shopping online, but like having a physical location for returns and alterations. It would be only the seventh Nordstrom Local location, the others being in Southern California and New York. In other words, the shop should be a feather in San Francisco’s retailing cap.