Fillmore District Audit Shows Little Oversight
January 16, 2012 Leave a Comment
By MATT SMITH and ZUSHA ELINSON
Published: January 5, 2012
New York Times
Emmit Powell hesitated when he was asked to talk about the City of San Francisco ’s efforts to promote his popular barbecue restaurant as the anchor of a showcase redevelopment project in the Fillmore district. The venture led to his financial ruin.
“I went through a lot there, and I don’t really want to go back into that situation,” said Mr. Powell, a onetime gospel singer, real estate investor and restaurateur. “It was devastating for me. I lost my business. I lost my home. I lost my property. I don’t want to blame them, because I don’t think it would do any good.”
For 30 years, Mr. Powell ran the popular barbecue joint Powell’s Place in Hayes Valley. The Fillmore neighborhood redevelopment project was closed in 2009, and today Mr. Powell’s former restaurant — and $360,000 in San Francisco Redevelopment Agency loans that he could not repay — exist only as line items in a new city controller’s audit.
The agency is being criticized for handing out millions of dollars without proper controls or even standards for evaluating whether grants and loans did any good, and then making inadequate efforts to collect loan payments.
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