Marketplace project for the Tenderloin runs into roadblock
A culinary incubator and food hall meant to bring legal commerce and foot traffic to one of the most crime-ridden blocks of the Tenderloin is in jeopardy because constructioncost increases have put the project far over budget.
For the past two years, La Cocina, the Mission District nonprofit that helps low-income food entrepreneurs open restaurants and other businesses, has been working to take over the former post office at 101 Hyde St., which has been closed for three years.
La Cocina’s vision is to create a commercial kitchen and seven kiosks where graduates — mostly immigrant women — can sell their culinary creations, said Executive Director Caleb Zigas. The project is an effort to “change the relationship our entrepreneurs have with commercial real estate” and to establish an affordable “municipal marketplace” that has more in common with affordable farmers’ markets at
Civic Center and Alemany than with fancy food emporiums like the Ferry Building, he said.
The concept for the marketplace grew out of a community benefits deal struck with developer Shorenstein, which is building a 304-unit apartment complex at 1066 Market St. As part of the public benefits package for that deal, Shorenstein agreed to purchase 101 Hyde St., valued at $12.5 million, and donate it to the city for affordable housing.
But because it can often take up to a decade to plan, entitle and obtain financing for an affordable housing development, Tenderloin residents and nonprofits encouraged the city to come up with an interim use for the property. It is situated in a forlorn corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue where drug dealers do a brisk trade day and night, and where violence is not uncommon.
But the expense of hiring plumbers, electricians and carpenters has skyrocketed in the city. What started as a $2 million project has ballooned to $4 million, with most of the additional costs going toward providing adequate water and power for the individual booths and the large commercial kitchen, as well as multiple exhaust hoods.
Zigas said he is scouring the plans for ways to cut costs and has already managed to eliminate several hundred thousand dollars from the budget. La Cocina has invested $250,000 and raised another $400,000. Zigas said he thinks his organization can come up with $1 million altogether. So far, the city has committed another $500,000, and Shorenstein has committed $1 million to the project.
Since 2005, La Cocina alumni have opened 26 restaurants, all of them still in business. There are currently 35 businesses in the incubator. And about 30 percent of Tenderloin workers are in the food business — chefs, line cooks and waiters.
“We would be able to play with alternative models we have not been able to do at La Cocina,” Zigas said of the main facility on Folsom Street.
One La Cocina graduate who would like to see the Hyde Street project completed is Fernay McPherson, proprietor of Minnie Bell’s, a soul food restaurant in Emeryville. McPherson, who is a Fillmore district native, spent seven years looking for a spot for her restaurant in San Francisco but couldn’t find anything affordable.
“I opened in Emeryville because the opportunity presented itself for me to open here, but the opportunity I really wanted was San Francisco, the city I know and love and grew up in,” she said. “All the landlords are looking for people with deep pockets, not community people. Nobody has been willing to take a chance on people like myself.”
Neighbors said they are dreading the possibility that the La Cocina project might fall through.
David Seward, the chief financial officer at UC Hastings College of the Law, which is across the street from the site, said the defunct post office building has been terrible for the neighborhood.
“The city owns the blight, and the city needs to be responsible for stepping up to the plate and addressing it,” said Seward. “If that costs money, well too bad — it’s their responsibility. If they can’t deal with it, they should sell the site.”
Supervisor Jane Kim said the city is staying involved. “Yes we have been in discussions the last two weeks in regards to cost overruns,” she said. “We will continue to work with them as we move through the budget.”
Brett Walker, owner of George and Lennie, a cafe around the corner on Golden Gate Avenue, said private groups have invested sweat and money into reviving storefronts near the intersection of Hyde and Golden Gate. In addition to the cafe, at 277 Golden Gate Ave., Walker and his partner run Get High On Mountains, an art collective at 276 Golden Gate.
“It blows my mind that the city of San Francisco has owned that building for two years and done nothing,” he said. “The La Cocina thing is great, but it needs to happen today.”
The Asian Art Museum is currently working on the Hyde Street side of its property and would love to see the marketplace, said spokesman Tim Hallman.
“We are very interested in what happens on that corner,” he said. “Having a boarded up building is not inviting.”
Built for Bank of America in 1960, the single-story building on the northwest corner of Hyde and Golden Gate was a branch until 1991. Golden Gate Avenue has been overrun with illegal activity ever since the post office took it over in the mid-1990s. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which has its office at 126 Hyde St., has been complaining about the property since then, said Executive Director Randy Shaw.
Looking at the steady stream of cars pulling up to buy drugs on the corner on a recent Tuesday morning, Shaw said if the city doesn’t come up with a way to finance the marketplace it would mean “three more years of what you’re seeing, at least.”
“The Tenderloin doesn’t get its share of economic development money,” he said. “If the city wants a municipal marketplace, it’s going to cost about $4 million to do it. The question is do you do it here in the Tenderloin, where it’s really needed, or in some fancy condo building in Rincon Hill?”