The Business Journal reported today that the owners of Sam's - the iconic restaurant that served our community so well for 64 years until a fire took it out in 2023 - want to lease the space, but not for a restaurant. A restaurant would have to have a costly fire suppression system. According to the article, the owners would rather lease the space for a medical use, like a clinic, veterinary practice or a plasma center. Mom and Pop veterinary clinics are going the way of the Dodo these days. It's hard to imagine one at the corner of Watt and El Camino. So what the owners seem to be looking for is a Doc-in-a-box clinic or a plasma donation business (a medical industry way to exploit the poor). It's not like there aren't any such facilities already here. But, yeah, we get it, the County will keep its hands off and just let the owners do whatever they want to do. Kind of like how the Saving Center on Watt was left to decay for so many years. Or like Mike's Market on Mission and the old Flaming Grill on El Camino.

Thing is, we wonder why it always comes down to favoring owners of failed businesses over what's best for the community. And why our Community General Plan - supposedly the blueprint for our community's future - has not been updated since it was adopted in 1980 (except for the fake "update" in 2006). It's almost like there has been a deliberate strategy to look away from our community, to let it just spiral downward, to let it rot. Sam's, along with the equally iconic Tower Books/Tower Records store has evolved into an unsupervised homeless shelter. It's not good for homeless people. It's not good for us. But, hey, let's not interfere in any way with somebody's business plan - out-of-area owners should call all the shots, right? What do you think, dear readers?