04-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Entrepreneur visited S.F.'s notorious building department 80 times in 6 months: ‘I got so much support'
When she first walked into San Francisco's Department of Building Inspections to realize her dream of opening an escape room in the city, Vy Tran didn't have the highest of expectations.
She knew its reputation.
' Red tape, fees, unforeseen delays and the feeling that no one really cares what you're trying to create,' Tran said. 'Common themes.'
But what could she do? It was the 31-year-old entrepreneur's lifelong dream to create the Bay Area's first combo speakeasy and escape room in the Mission District. She had already signed a lease at 3065 16th St., the former El Tin Tan bar, which had closed a decade before. She was investing her life savings into the escape room, an 'Alice in Wonderland'-themed live action puzzle with brain-contorting challenges, outlandish design and Asian-influenced cocktails.
She had no choice but to keep going, and crack a different puzzle, one that has befuddled and exasperated generations of San Francisco builders: the city's famously Byzantine permitting process, which is, by some accounts, among the slowest of any major city in the country.
So Tran, an immigrant from Vietnam who made national news in 2019 when she founded the first-ever bulletproof clothing line, became a regular at the DBI permitting center on South Van Ness. She would walk over from her SoMa apartment several times a week. Sometimes more than once a day. In a six month period she popped into the DBI offices 80 times.
'It was nice to have an office to go to,' she said.
Tran posted videos about the process on Instagram and Tiktok. When she wrote about her experience on Reddit some commenters suggested the fact that she went there so often was an indication of how broken the permitting process is.
'I was like, 'Guys no, I chose to go. Normal people don't go. I just felt like I got so much support,'' she said. 'When I found out just how many resources were available I kept going. I went there as often as I felt like walking over. Why not stop by the DBI? The folks there are so nice.'
Tran's experience is hardly the norm for DBI — the agency has been besieged by corruption scandals in recent years — and averages two stars on Yelp. A 2022 Chronicle study found a typical multi-family applicant waits 627 days after approvals to obtain a full set of permits. The city's building code is 1,000 pages, with decades of lawmakers layering on requirement after requirement, while rarely getting rid of obsolete codes. It has also been rocked by a series of corruption scandals, probes and indictments. Currently, Mayor Daniel Lurie is working on a plan to reform the agency.
It's unclear whether Tran's experience represents real change for the agency or the experience of one unusually tenacious and dedicated builder with an irrepressible personality. DBI claims that a newly revamped 'over the counter' desk now issues permits in less than two days for 64% of applicants.
Escape rooms — an $8 billion global industry — require teams of players to find clues, solve puzzles in a series of rooms. Tran's escape room, to be called Lore, will include a full-time actor, a flight of cocktails and a 'mad hatter' tea party in the back patio where teams discuss the experience at the end.
She said 'at the end of the day it's about helping people make friends.'
'Loneliness is a huge issue,' she said. 'My escape room isn't going to solve it all, but we do need more immersive experiences where people can come together. Bars aren't really the place to meet people anymore. That is just the way things have come to be.'
It's rare city building inspectors are the object of anything but bitterness or frustration — never mind undiluted praise. But Tran said she is particularly indebted to David Jones, a longtime engineer and plan checker who manages DBI's the over-the-counter permitting desk.
Jones said Tran marched in and made it clear 'she wanted to do as much of the work herself as possible, despite not having planned or built anything like this in the past.' He advised her on how to draft drawings and assemble an application package.
'Vy was a wonderful applicant with a great curiosity about construction and building standards, and an infectious enthusiasm for the unique speakeasy escape room she's creating, Jones said.
He encouraged her to use the 3-D design software Sketchup, which would allow her to create her own plans.
'He was the one who said I could probably do it myself. I was like, 'Sure, I can save $30,000?'' Tran said. 'I talked to architecture firms and, my goodness, it's really expensive.'
She said learning how to use the software was 'very frustrating,' and she 'quit four times.'
'I'd be lying in bed, angry, thinking, 'Let me try it again,'' she said.
After all that, construction is now in full swing on the 16th Street space.
Tran designed Lore's multipart mechanical puzzles and hired a Poland-based escape-room builder, A+ Props, to fabricate them. The fully built out rooms are currently on a ship headed to the Port of Oakland and are scheduled to arrive on May 19, 10 days before the escape room opens. Workers in the 16th Street space are putting in the electrical and plumbing improvements, building the bar, a 24-person communal dining table for birthdays and corporate events.
The escape room will feature a series of puzzles that take 100 minutes to complete. It will cost $89 per person, which will include a flight of three cocktails.
If things go as planned, revenue from the early days will fund more puzzle rooms in a spacious basement, in which she plans a series of go-kart lines carting guests through different experiences.
Tran got a grant from the city's new SF Shines program that gives up to $10,000 grants for storefront improvements. She took advantage of a first-time business program that reduced permitting fees to nearly zero. In that Reddit post Tran encouraged other San Franciscans to take advantage of the depressed real estate market — and a possibly even more helpful city bureaucracy — to realize deferred dreams.
'Building in S.F. isn't all doom and gloom anymore,' she wrote on Reddit. 'If you've ever dreamed of starting something, now's the time.'
True to Reddit's reputation, not everyone was convinced Tran's experience is a sign of actual change in DBI.
