The Wild West of Zoning: Go Ahead, Create DNA-Altered Glow-in-the-Dark Roses in SoMa. Nobody’s Watching.

In recent weeks 48 hills has revealed that the Planning Department’s lax enforcement of San Francisco’s zoning laws has allowed the illegal conversion of hundreds of thousands of square feet of industrially zoned space into offices, thereby destroying scarce, irreplaceable venues for production, distribution and repair businesses and blue-collar jobs and squandering millions of dollars in development impact fees for Muni and affordable housing.

But it gets worse: The city’s so uninterested in enforcing zoning laws that nobody in the Planning Department seems to know or, care that a startup company inside a biotech incubator is making DNA-altered glow-in-the-dark roses in SoMa.

Situated at 665 Third Street, the biotech lab is in an area that’s not zoned for laboratories or life-sciences facilities. And it’s engaging in what is, to say the least, a controversial scientific practice, one referred to as “genetic engineering on steroids.”

Here’s the story:

Last October, the Planning Commission followed the Planning Department’s recommendation and legalized the longtime de facto unauthorized conversion of 123,700 square feet of light-industrial space at the Third Street site into...