S.F. to block off Valencia Street to aid business

Restaurant tables, shelves of merchandise and maybe even barbers’ chairs will replace cars on two blocks of Valencia Street in the Mission District four nights a week in an experiment that seeks to resuscitate a business district choked by the coronavirus and shelterinplace restrictions.

Starting next week, Valencia will close between 16th and 17th streets and 18th and 19th streets every Thursday through Sunday from 4 to 10 p.m. The lanes usually used for parking, biking and traffic will become outdoor extensions of nearby businesses between 5 and 9 p.m., giving them a little extra breathing space and Mission residents more room to stroll, dine and shop while staying the recommended 6 feet away from others.

Meanwhile, city transportation officials are adding parts of 14 more streets to the Slow Streets

“This is about helping us to survive. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but it’s about survival now. And all we have to work with is outdoor space.”

Manny Yekutiel, owner of Manny’s restaurant in the Mission

program, which uses barriers to steer away through traffic to create more space for neighborhood residents to maintain social distancing while walking, biking or exercising.

The Valencia closures are part of a program designed to help business districts by allowing them to use sidewalks, street parking spaces and sometimes entire streets. Chinatown’s Grant Avenue, which often closes for community festivals, was the first commercial district approved for business in the streets, starting Saturday, said Robin Abad Ocubillo, director of the Shared Streets program. Valencia Street will be the second.

Before the coronavirus arrived early this year, Valencia bustled with popular restaurants and shops. That activity vanished when shelterinplace orders locked down the city, emptying the streets and sidewalks, and prompting merchants to cover their doors and windows with plywood.

“It looked like an economically depressed area or a war zone,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents one side of Valencia.

Slowly, as the city has allowed some businesses to resume, Valencia has started to regain some of its lost vigor.

“It used to be a crowded street,” said Steven Garcia, manager of the popular Limon Rotisserie on Valencia. “Then it was dead. But now it’s starting to come back.”

The threemonth experiment to turn Valencia into a parttime public retail and restaurant space was conceived by the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association. Manny Yekutiel, who runs the politically flavored event space, gallery and restaurant Manny’s in the Mission, wrangled merchants, supervisors and city bureaucrats to make it happen.

“This is about helping us to survive,” he said. “I wish I didn’t have to say that, but it’s about survival now. And all we have to work with is outdoor space.”

Garcia expects the extra space will equate to more business — and jobs — at Limon, which laid off all but a chef and manager after the city imposed stayathome orders. Business has been climbing back since San Francisco began allowing outdoor dining in midJune, and Garcia has been rehiring some of his 50 workers.

The Valencia Street takeover should allow Limon to expand its outdoor dining space significantly, Garcia said.

“I like the opportunity,” he said. “It’s attractive to people, especially with families. With the right logistics and the right marketing, I think it will be way better for all the businesses.”

Supervisors Ronen and Rafael Mandelman, whose districts are split by Valencia, embrace the plan as a bold attempt to save businesses while also repurposing streets as public spaces for pedestrians and bicyclists.

“These businesses are at risk of closing forever, and the fact that they came together and worked with each other to attempt to stay alive is a great thing,” Ronen said. “The city should be supporting them.”

And it has, said Jonah Buffa, incoming president of the merchants association and coowner of Fellow Barber on Valencia. He said both supervisors and city agencies cooperated to push the project through the red tape.

“They’ve been nimble and adaptive and helped facilitate getting this started,” he said. “I’m happily surprised.”

Mayor London Breed said the city realizes that it needs to help small businesses survive, because COVID19 won’t vanish anytime soon.

“We need to be willing to try new things and adapt as a city to protect our residents,” she said. “Our small businesses have been hit hard, and the Shared Spaces Program is one way we can help them continue to operate while protecting the safety of their workers and customers.”

Barbershops and salons aren’t yet allowed to resume business in San Francisco, but Buffa hopes outdoor haircuts will soon be permitted. Even if that doesn’t happen, he said, turning the streets over to merchants — and customers — should benefit both.

Abad Ocubillo said that more than 50 business districts around the city have applied for similar street takeovers and are being reviewed.

“Other people in the city are looking at us to see if it works,” Buffa said. “If it doesn’t, at least we tried something.”

Photos by Nina Riggio / Special to The Chronicle David Hemminger (left) and Eric Pascual, who live in the Mission District, enjoy margaritas and chips on the sidewalk outside Puerto Alegre on Valencia Street.

Luis Rodriguez, owner of Los Amigos on Valencia Street, helps a woman pack up her food outside his restaurant. Los Amigos, which opened three weeks ago, can expand its dining when the street is closed.

Many restaurants on Valencia have already been approved for outdoor business, but now they’ll be able to serve more customers on days the street is shut.