Lucca’s closure another farewell to old S.F.

These are sad days along San Francisco’s hip Valencia Street corridor. The Lucca Ravioli Co., one of those oldline businesses that had a uniquely San Francisco style, is closing. Lucca has been on the corner of 22nd and Valencia streets for 94 years. By Easter Sunday, it will be gone.

Lucca is one of those places everybody ever associated with the city remembers. It looks like a cave packed to the ceiling with Italian goods — two dozen styles of salami, cheese, pasta, pesto, marinara, manicotti. The clerks at the deli counter all wear paper hats and will make a sandwich to order, then ring up the sale on a big, old-fashioned, brass cash register.

The outside of the building is painted red, white and green, the Italian colors, and the windows are plastered with handmade signs advertising panettone, imported rice, Italian plum tomatoes, fresh pizza dough and other goods for sale.

On the Valencia Street side, you can look in the window and see the staff making ravioli on some kind of mysterious machines. Not just any ravioli — Lucca has a reputation for the freshest and the best. It’s the Tiffany of ravioli.

“Shopping at Lucca is like going back into a slice of another time,” said Bryan Smith, a clerk at Dog Eared Books at 20th and Valencia. He likes the service, the neighborhood feel and the style of the place. “Closing Lucca is a disaster for me,” he said.

Lucca has lots of fans like Smith. The place is crowded all the time, even on rainy days. “We’re busy as hell,” a clerk said on the day the building was put up for sale.

The end of Lucca is not just the end of a local institution. It’s part of another San Francisco story. The fact is Lucca Ravioli probably can’t survive in today’s San Francisco. The property is just too valuable.

In fact, the company sold its parking lot just up Valencia Street, which can hold about a dozen cars, for $3 million. For that price, you could buy a villa in Italy. The new owners plan a five-story residential development.

Not long after the parking lot sale, Michael Feno, the CEO of the family-owned store, decided it was time to retire after more than 50 years. He could not find a way to keep the business in the family, so he put the store and two adjacent buildings, part residence and part pasta factory facilities, on the market. The price: $8.285 million.

It’s one of those onlyin-modern-San Francisco stories. You own a classic business and a couple of properties at 22nd and Valencia, and now they are worth a fortune. Now it’s time to cash out.

Feno began working at Lucca, sweeping the floor, when he was 11 years old and has not stopped since. And he doesn’t want to talk about the sale. “Look,” he said, “I’m busy. I’m working every day from 5 in the morning to 7 at night. I got no time to talk.”

NAI Northern California is handling the sale. The commercial brokerage calls it a “monumental opportunity to reposition the current warehouse/manufacturing space ... to a highperforming retail, service, and/or residential use.”

The parcel “is located in the heart of the Mission District directly on the upscale Valencia corridor,” which it describes as “an unmatched cultural environment not replicated anywhere else in San Francisco.”

Across the street from Lucca is a Social Security office and the popular Boogaloos restaurant. A prime location, NAI says. It says that last year, the area within a 1-square-mile radius of 22nd and Mission streets generated “$4.648 billion in total consumer expenditures.”

The company notes that ground floor retail/ commercial lease rates “in this highly popular retail destination” are among the highest in the city. When the sale closes the Lucca property, it “will be delivered vacant.”

The last day for Lucca is April 20, the day before Easter.

“It’s a sign of the times,” said Don Giordano, a regular customer.

“I understand the need for more housing,” said Alex Jones, who lives in the neighborhood and was shopping at Lucca the other morning, “but everything is going to be more high-rises.” He remembers a similar Italian deli in Oakland that closed down as well. “I think places like this are all going away,” he said.

When Lucca is gone, a bit of old San Francisco will be gone forever.

They say San Francisco is losing its soul. I don’t think so. It’s just for sale.

Carl Nolte’s column appears Sundays. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf

Photos by Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Above: Lucca Ravioli Co. has long been a fixture at 22nd and Valencia streets.

Right: The busy store is well stocked with a variety of Italian foods and crowded with shoppers.