Home Care In Fillmore, IN

The corner of Fillmore and Geary Streets was once the heart of the “Harlem of the West,” a stomping ground of John Coltrane and Billie Holiday at the height of the Fillmore’s “jazz district” heyday of the 1940s and 1950s. But an urban renewal movement in the following decades destroyed the neighborhood of much of character and legacy, and in recent decades, the corner of Fillmore and Geary Streets has merely housed a Money Mart check-cashing place beneath the Fillmore theater.

But that check-cashing place has checked out, and a real urban renewal for the neighborhood is moving in. KPIX reports that a new marketplace called In The Black will be the home of 22 Black-owned retail small businesses, and the video segment below gives us a sneak preview of its progress.

“The goal is to create generational wealth within the Black community,” Pia Harris, the “driving force” behind In The Black and San Francisco Housing Development Corporation economic development director tells the SF Standard. “The reason why we chose the name ‘In the Black’ is because it’s an idiom that means to be profitable and not in debt, but it’s also about celebrating the beauty and resiliency of Blackness.”

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The lineup of businesses that will be represented at In The Black is coming together; the above clothing brand CIK Apparel will be there, plus Belle Noire Accessories seen below, and more to be announced.

And naturally, In The Black will open on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at the corner of Fillmore and Geary Streets.

In The Black opens Friday, November 25 at 1567 Fillmore Street (at Geary Street), and will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A long troubled but still very active and popular Safeway location in the Fillmore neighborhood is slated to close in early March, with the site being sold to a residential developer. But this means that the only full-service grocery store in the Fillmore is disappearing, and residents of the neighborhood will have no nearby grocery options, potentially for years.

Safeway announced the closure Thursday, and as the Chronicle reports, the company has entered into an agreement with Align Real Estate, which plans to redevelop the entire 3.68-acre property into a mixed-use development with potentially thousands of units of housing.

The site is zoned for 130 feet in height, or around 13 residential stories, but a developer could build higher by taking advantage of the state's density bonus program.

The Safeway site, which was part of the highly controversial and derided first redevelopment of the Fillmore in the 1960s, encompasses a large parking lot flanked on three sides by the grocery store and two strip shopping centers with office and residential above.

Safeway issued a statement saying it had "proudly served the Fillmore District for 40 years" and that "decisions like these are never easy, nor are they made without a great deal of consideration."

“San Francisco has struggled with housing shortages and Safeway sees this as an opportunity to positively impact the community and to be part of a solution to bring much needed housing to the city,” the company says.

Mayor London Breed issued a statement saying, "This is a real and rare opportunity to add a significant amount of new homes in this part of the city, and even a new grocery store, and it shows a real interest in investing in housing in San Francisco."

That new grocery store likely won't arrive for at least four or five years, however, and Safeway said it has no immediate plans to be a part of the project. Breed suggested that neighbors could enjoy the new Trader Joe's that's expected to open later this year at 555 Fulton Street, however that is more in Hayes Valley, and that's cold comfort to anyone who lives in Japantown or the blocks surrounding this long-established store.

The nearest Safeway will now be the Church and Market location, 1.1 miles away.

Up Geary Boulevard, a Whole Foods is also expected to take over the former Best Buy location at Masonic.

Supervisor Dean Preston, whose district includes this Webster Plaza Safeway, said he only learned of this sale this morning, and he tells the Chronicle, "We are extremely concerned with the potential loss of this grocery store in the heart of the Fillmore, and especially the possibility of losing it as soon as March, which we view as unacceptable."

That statement hints that the Board of Supervisors could maybe try to strong-arm some sort of extension for the store, given how long development timelines are in this city. But we'll see.

Preston seems to have had a hand in keeping CVS from closing its store in the Lower Haight — CVS reversed its decision there last month, within a week of announcing it.

Safeway has been closing some stores in the local area, though it is also opening others in new locations. The company announced the closure of its under-performing Bay Street store near Fisherman's Wharf last spring, and in November it closed a Santa Clara store that had been open for 67 years. A new store in South San Francisco, meanwhile, just broke ground in 2022, and is expected to open this year.

The Fillmore Safeway had some recent trouble with theft via its self-checkout area, a problem that it ultimately solved by removing the self-checkout area entirely. (The Castro location makes those in self-checkout scan their receipts to exit the area.) And the Fillmore location sparked controversy last year when it began blasting classical music in its parking lot for several days in order to deter loitering, annoying many neighbors until it was shut off.

Photo: Google Street View

A large sinkhole opened near Fillmore and Green streets in San Francisco Monday morning following a water main break that snarled traffic and Muni lines and inundated nearby dwellings with a surge of water.

The water main ruptured near Union and Fillmore streets shortly before midnight Sunday, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Crews “worked through the night to stabilize the situation,” the agency said in a statement.

Normal water service was restored shortly before 2:30 p.m., the commission said, though the agency warned that tap water could appear brown “due to sediment stirred up because of the break.” Officials recommended running cold water through the closest tap to the water meter for up to five minutes.

The water main that broke was installed in 1949, the commission said.

The massive sinkhole was still being repaired Monday afternoon at the corner of Fillmore and Green streets. Nearby customers were enduring water service disruptions, the commission said. No fire hydrants were affected, though.

Michelle Ung, manager of Union Street Coffee Roastery — a business at the corner of Fillmore and Union Streets — said she and other employees at the coffee shop arrived to the business Monday morning to find pools of water everywhere. They spent the morning mopping water and sand and are still working, she said.

“We just have to try to clean up and keep the business open,” she said. “It’s a lot of water.”

Some of the worst damage befell the Cameron James Salon, a basement-level beauty shop at 2185 Union St., next door to Union Street Coffee Roastery.

Several inches of muddy water swamped the entire salon, and owner Mohammad Sheikh said it could be weeks before the salon is up and running again.

“This is beyond anybody’s control,” said Sheikh, as he watched his son Omar trudge through the pool of water at the salon’s floor, covering his lower half in a garbage bag. “I’m worried about the tenants that are going to suffer from the losses. … They’re not going to be able to have any business.”

Sheikh said the city was responsive and are responsible for the repair. Crews will be cleaning out the dirt and pumping out the water in the next days and will be fully responsive for any mold-related issues that arise from the damages, he said.

Sheikh’s experience with the city did not appear to be universal among those affected by the surging waters.

An employee at Lombard Nail Spa said she had been waiting hours for city officials to help clean up the damage at the nail salon. The salon, located five blocks away from the sinkhole, was also badly impacted by the rushing water, and its newly renovated floors will likely have to be replaced, said Sue Wong, manager of the building.

“I was shocked,” she said. “When the main broke, there was gushing and flooding in the streets, and it seeped into the salon.”

Reach Annie Vainshtein: [email protected]

Sep 11, 2023|Updated Sep 12, 2023 11:45 a.m.

Annie is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously was a digital producer for The Chronicle’s Datebook section. She graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2017 with a degree in journalism. During her time there, she spearheaded a culture column, produced radio pieces for NPR-affiliate station KCBX, and was a DJ and writer for KCPR, the campus radio station. Before joining the Chronicle, she was an associate producer at SFGATE and interned at VICE and Flood Magazine. She’s particularly interested in communities and scenes that are often misunderstood.

She can be reached at [email protected].

Welcome to The Landmarks, where Curbed takes a look at one of the many San Francisco landmarks, listed either locally or on the National Register of Historic Places. Landmarks will be chosen at random, but do drop us a line if you'd like to see a certain landmark highlighted

Curbed has covered the Muni substation at Fillmore and Turk before, but it's been sitting vacant for so many years that we thought it deserved to be in the spotlight again. Listed as Local Landmark #105 in 1979, this was one of the first and one of the largest substations built at the turn of the century when street cars were first converted to electric power.

San Francisco gets to lay claim to the first street railway on the Pacific coast. The Market Street Railway Company was established in 1857, with its first cars powered by steam and later by horses. Most of it was converted to cable power in 1882, but turned electric 20 years later. When that happened, all the various street railroads were consolidated in the United Railroads of San Francisco.

The Fillmore substation was built sometime around 1902, and managed to survive the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Good thing, because it was instrumental in making the Fillmore Street line the first to go back into service - in turn turning the formerly sleepy neighborhood into a bustling commercial corridor.

In 1944 all the street lines were absorbed into the Municipal Railway that we know and love today. The Fillmore substation fed power to streetcars in the western half of the city until 1978, when a new substation was built at Sutter and Fillmore and the old one was declared surplus. That's also when it became a local landmark.

You'll notice there are no windows or anything on the south side of the building - that's because originally there was another building there. It's since been replaced by the Fillmore & Turk Mini Park.

The building has been sitting vacant and in bad shape - the ventilation tower collapsed and for a while the back wall was held up with posts.

Over the past decade, there's been a bunch of ideas for reuse of the building. At first the Redevelopment Agency bought it about a 11 years ago with hopes to convert it into a kids venue/community center. The plan didn't go anywhere, so five years ago they sold it back to the city. Then three years ago, grad students from USF took on a project to assess the future use of the building. There's been no word from the city since, so who knows if any actual projects plans are in the works.· City Landmark #105 [SF Planning]· Previous coverage of the Fillmore Substation [Curbed SF]