More downtown pop-ups coming by early summer
Those city-backed pop-ups in San Francisco’s Financial District show signs of taking root.
Eight of the nine tenants who opened commercial storefronts last October in the vacancy-riddled blocks between Montgomery Street and Embarcadero Center are being invited to stick around through at least March, City Hall announced Thursday. The program also intends to add another cluster of downtown pop-ups by early summer.
“This is proving to be a really cool way of exploring how ground floors might be different in the future,” said Sarah Dennis Phillips, executive director of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
For their part, several business owners are now negotiating long-term leases to stay in place when the subsidized program comes to an end. Another, Pacifica’s Rosalind Bakery, already has signed a lease to continue selling such fare as morning buns and olive sourdough loaves in its narrow space along a walkway leading from Sacramento Street to the waterfront.
“The program has worked out well,” said bakery owner Matt Kosoy, who signed the lease with Embarcadero Center owner Boston Properties. He described his clientele as “predominantly people in the nearby towers. Some will stop in and order a dozen pastries for everybody in the office.”
Dubbed Vacant to Vibrant, the initiative is one of many that Mayor London Breed and her administration have rolled out over the past year to try to energize the city’s commercial core, which has yet to recover from the mass departure of office workers and storefront businesses during the pandemic. This program tries to bring the entrepreneurial flair of outlying neighborhoods into the skyscraper zone, using a mix of grants to the businesses and free rent from participating landlords.
Where an outpost like Rosalind Bakery or Devil’s Teeth Bakery focuses on food — an obvious allure — there also are participants such as KALW-FM, a public radio station that holds public forums and does live broadcasts
from a Montgomery Street storefront in the historic Mills Building. Or GCS Agency, an art gallery on Jackson Street in the Golden Gateway.
“Things take time, but everyone’s really happy we’re here,” said Victor Gonzalez, owner of the gallery. He described business so far as “pretty good … we’re trying to fill the gallery with as much activity as possible,” including a mezcal tasting
with a live DJ to coincide with this week’s San Francisco Art Week.
That said, when the offer was made to remain for at least another few months at the corner of Jackson and Battery streets, “of course we said yes.” GCS has also begun talking about a lease with the building’s owner; legal assistance is being provided by SF New Deal, the nonprofit group that partnered with the city in starting Vacant to Vibrant.
The next launch is now getting underway, though details remain vague. According to Dennis Phillips,
businesses or organizations interested in downtown beachheads can apply through Feb. 23 via the website vibrantsf.org. Selections will be announced in the spring, with storefronts stirring to life as businesses move in.
As for lessons learned, Dennis Phillips suggested that the city won’t try to arrange the next set of openings en masse, which was the case with the first round in early October. City Hall and SF New Deal wanted to make a splash, but the experience taught them that an array of small operators can’t be expected to synchronize
their build-out efforts.
Another unknown is where the second batch of pop-ups will sprout. But it won’t be the Financial District.
“We want to bring energy to another part of downtown, and we’ll be clustering them a little bit more together,” so that curious urban explorers will have an obvious destination to explore, Dennis Phillips said. The fringe of Union Square is a possibility, as are areas south of Market Street and east of Yerba Buena Gardens.
However things play out, the initial round of entrepreneurs won’t vanish from the scene.
“Has the effort been worth it? Absolutely,” said Hilary Passman of Devil’s Teeth Bakery, which was founded in the Outer Sunset but opened a branch with Green Apple Books at Sacramento and Front streets in Embarcadero Center. She’s now in talks with Boston Properties to remain: “We’re excited about the idea of staying long-term.”