Hospital closure hits S.F. shopping district
After hospital’s closure, center loses more stores
Change is afoot in San Francisco’s affluent Laurel Heights neighborhood.
Two cafes — Noah’s Bagels and Beautifull — closed this month, and questions loom over the Gap Kids store, which has been in the Laurel Village Shopping Center since 1987.
“This is a huge loss for the community,” said Jayne Williams, a local who used to visit the nowclosed Noah’s Bagels daily. “People hung out at Noah’s all the time. I’m so bummed.”
The shopping center lies on California Street between Laurel and Spruce streets. It has close to 20 streetlevel stores, including Sephora, Rigolo cafe, Starbucks, CalMart supermarket and Wells Fargo bank, with doctors and dentists’ offices on the second floor. Free parking, a rare commodity in San Francisco, is available behind the complex.
As in other neighborhoods, fewer people are popping into stores as online shopping continues to rise. Local issues are at play too. The California Street hospital operated by the California Pacific Medical Center closed in March — it moved to a new, seismically uptodate location on Van Ness. UCSF’s 10acre Laurel Heights campus is also closing next year, as part of a move to Mission Bay.
Books Inc. in Laurel Village has seen fewer customers since the hospital moved, according to Ingrid Nystrom, the store manager. The closure of Noah’s Bagels next
door has added to her concern.
“People came to get their bagels and books,” she said. “I hope the space is filled quickly.”
The slowdown also affected Beautifull, a cafeteriastyle restaurant founded by Eric Lindberg, which abruptly closed Sunday. Lindberg said extending his lease would have been uneconomical.
“This is a tough business, and San Francisco makes it impossible to operate a small business,” he said.
Jerry Moskowitz, a real estate broker at the San Francisco firm Edward Plant Company, said Noah’s Bagels — a client — had struggled to hire and retain employees. (So have many shops in San Francisco.)
Laurel Village has also seen a rise in the number of homeless people in its parking lot and walkways.
“The neverending urine and feces are bad for customers, but it also affects workers,” Moskowitz said.
Noah’s Bagels did not return calls for comment. The chain has been closing locations, including one on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, in favor of newer cafe styles with more space and drivethrough options.
The Gap Kids location at 3491 California St. is listed for lease. A Gap spokeswoman said in an email that the store is not closing, but the real estate agent with the listing confirmed the location was seeking new tenants.
New customers are expected in the area in the future. The shuttered California Pacific Medical Center hospital is scheduled to become 273 housing units. At UCSF Laurel Heights, developers want to partially demolish the existing office structure and build 558 new units, including 54,000 square feet of retail.
Some are not entirely enthusiastic.
“We’re not opposed to all the housing that’s being built,” said Richard Frisbie, vice president of Laurel Heights Improvement Association, a neighborhood group. “But the housing project on UCSF’s campus includes retail, and that will severely affect the merchants in Laurel Village.”