Haight Gets New Eateries; North Beach Watches Longingly

While North Beach continues to shoot down prospective businesses, nearly every other neighborhood seems to be amending their various decades-old bans on opening new restaurants. The latest commercial strip to modernize its stance on the outdated mandate is the Haight-Ashbury:

New restaurants might be allowed to open later this year in the Haight-Ashbury, after planning commissioners for the third time in eight months agreed to tweak a San Francisco neighborhood's decades-old restaurant moratorium. The Planning Commission voted unanimously and without debate last week to allow as many as four new alcohol-serving restaurants to open along a six-block strip of Haight Street east of Golden Gate Park or in nearby streets

... Off-sale liquor licenses will continue to be prohibited and new restaurant permit applications will be considered on a "first-come, first-served basis," according to [Planning Department legislative analyst Tara] Sullivan-Lenane.

Hear that, restaurateurs? It's open season on the Haight, which desperately could use a couple new restaurants to shake up its (static?) dining scene. Given the massive amounts of foot traffic in the area and the steady rising of Lower Haight (see: Uva), we're of the opinion that the upper half of the nabe definitely has the potential house a few, new successful places with ease. You taking notes, NB?
· New eateries may bud in Haight-Ashbury [SFE]
· First Word: North Beach Wine Bar Denied, Om Approved [~ESF~]
· Eater Exclusive: An Early Look at Haight's Uva [~ESF~]