The San Francisco planning commission voted Thursday to grant Therapy Stores, a gift shop with 10 locations around the Bay Area, permission to open its 11th outpost in the Inner Richmond.
That number would not ordinarily require a special hearing under San Francisco’s “formula retail” law, which curbs retail chains and is generally triggered after 11 locations, not 10.
But Jing Chen, Therapy Stores’ owner, had 11 stores when she applied and, even though her store in San Bruno subsequently closed, the city’s planning code “also counts locations entitled for operating,” not just ones currently open, Chen said.
“Rather than arguing any technicalities, both we and [the planning department] thought it better to engage with the community” and go to the planning commission for the Clement Street location, Chen wrote.
Members of the Clement Street Merchants Association, who have been organizing to kill the expansion, told Mission Local they would consider appealing the decision.
Chen made her case a few minutes into the hour-long hearing over the proposed location at 32 Clement St. near Second Avenue, which has been vacant since 2024, according to city planner Sylvia Jimenez.
“If there’s a chain, this is the chain. I am the chain,” Chen said. She applied for a conditional use authorization in May. “I’m not some faceless monster that some try to portray me to be.”
Those words were a pre-emptive defense; some subsequent comments turned highly personal against Chen. One Clement Street vintage shop owner, Lindsey Hansen, called Chen “dishonest and unneighborly.” Hansen was one of five merchants who spoke out against Therapy Stores Thursday.
“How does allowing a formula retail chain that carries the exact same stuffies, onesies, S.F. merch, hats, hair clips, candles, cards, socks and jewelry lines as several other existing businesses within the same three blocks fill a need?” asked Amanda Weld, who owns Tantrum toy store.
Five people spoke in favor of Chen.
One, a neighbor of Chen’s, came to her defense, saying, “She loves her community. She loves people.”
She and others spoke of Chen’s generosity and charitable donations she has made. Sales agent Rick Salazar said he had worked with Chen for years, and felt her original location in the Mission was “responsible for the renaissance on Valencia Street.”
“I feel very uncomfortable by the fact,” Commissioner Mike Chen said later, “that we are being asked to decide this on the basis of character attestation.”
“I think, in some ways, we’re judging people, and not necessarily whether this is good for the city,” he added, saying he perceived the 11th location of a local chain as different from an outpost of a national retailer. “I’m inclined to approve, with conditions.”
Clement Street merchants have long opposed the proposed store, and have not been shy in sounding the alarm around what they perceive to be dubious business practices by Chen.
Chen bought the 32 Clement St. building in December 2025 for just shy of $2 million, and registered her business there that same month.
Clement Street merchants complained to the city after Mission Local reported the opening of Therapy’s then-11th location on Irving Street, arguing that the Clement location, which would have been number 12, would make the business a chain. One location has since shuttered, making the proposed Inner Richmond location an 11th spot.
Commissioners eventually agreed that Chen’s business poses no inherent threat to the businesses there, and voted unanimously to move her a step closer toward opening.
Chen has promised to work with Clement Street merchants to ensure her offerings don’t overlap with theirs, though planning staff said at the hearing “we cannot dictate what a particular shop sells.”
Commissioner Sean McGarry, who said he has lived in the Inner Richmond since 2011, said he understood concerns around competition.
But, the Irish-accented commissioner said bluntly, “Neighbors are neighbors.”
“One neighbor cannot just tell another what they can do and what they cannot do.”
Glad to hear a business is going in the space. It is good for the neighborhood to have the storefronts filled and the streets busy with shoppers. The overlapping merchandise argument against the Therapy Store is pure nonsense and biased. Where I live, there are FIVE coffee shops and dozens of Asian restaurants within one block. Do they serve a unique need? Should we also legislate to limit the number of coffee shops and Asian Restaurants within a given area or should we leave this to the market place to determine if a business offers something of value?
I love me an Irish accent, don’t get me wrong, but are you trying to convey something by including that seemingly unrelated observation? Are we intended to view the commissioner’s statement through some lens due to him immigrating, or ???
“Chen has promised to work with Clement Street merchants to ensure her offerings don’t overlap with theirs”
Promising in a public hearing to violate the antitrust laws might not be the smartest strategy.