Having successfully raised the funds to develop the market’s webstore, iPad app, and other technology last week, the physical development of Local Mission Market continues to make progress with a target opening of the market at 2660 Harrison Street this summer.
Above the market which will focus on local and handmade foods with online ordering and a pick-up window (or delivery), a new story has been added to the old two-story building, with three new residential units in the Mission on the way.
And as a plugged-in reader reports, while one of the new units will be a four-bedroom unit for the building’s owners, the other two units will be two-bedrooms and offered for rent.
The gentrification in the lower Mission marches on. Amazing how many white young people I see down this way nowadays
And that’s bad because…?
Does anyone have the inside story on how this project marched through Planning?
The addition looks like a tasteful update to a historic warehouse, but it is not the least bit “hidden” which I thought was the Planning Department’s norm.
Can’t wait for the market to open!
Yes, why is that bad? share with us.
Should we just accept old concrete warehouses, slabs of empty concrete, tons of graffiti as the norm?
As to the “hidden” comment” No, Planning has no “norm” for hiding upper level additions. Setbacks are required, which is apparent in this new addition, but there is no mandate to “hide” new construction.
The new market looks awesome. Can’t wait.
Oh no! This is Yaron?! That guy has no clue about customer service. I’m suddenly a lot less thrilled about the prospect of shopping there. In fact, I don’t think I will.
Looking forward to seeing what they do with the space. I would really love to have something like the Borough Market in the Mission; this is probably as close as I’m going to get.
“And that’s bad because…?”
Odd as it may seem, I would feel uncomfortable and guilty about buying a house in the Lower Mission even though my small family is having a hard time finding one elsewhere we like, and we could afford one there.
Interesting that immediately people are defensive about my comment
I think gentrification is good and bad like a lot of things
What is bad is the working class people being displaced and new ones forming households are in some cases being pushed very far away from the core of the Bay Area. This is absolutely a bad thing and we have failed as a region in this regard. That the Mission specifically is gentrifying is not a bad thing.
Hmmm. interesting comments by Zig. Not sure of how I would read that.
Ah, you say you feel “uncomfortable and guilty” about buying house in the Mission. Ok, but would that actually stop you, if you found the place? You are not a bad person for wanting to own a home for your family. Guilt is dangerous and not really a healthy way of thinking.
It’s simply the reality of the market system in SF and the Bay area that housing is expensive, along with seriously complex codes and regulations that drive up the cost of housing.
But I’m just wondering. I don’t hear you talking about buying a home in the more southern (and more affordable) part of SF, such as Bayview, Hunters Point and outer Third Street. Let’s be real, lots of people by “wanting” The Mission are making it desirable and trendy AND driving up the costs.
Neighborhoods change all the time. The Bayview was a slaughterhouse and ship building area. Populations move in and out with the local jobs. Some areas get poor when the jobs leave, and the people moving in or staying are poor. Some areas get more good paying jobs and people with more money will move in. It has always been this way and this is what built SF.
Feeling uncomfortable and guilty seems unnecessary when you look at what happens when a house turns over. I bought my small, very decrepit house in the lower Mission for close to 800k from the estate of an elderly Latino couple who I think had paid [less than] 30k for the house. The kids get a big profit, the house gets fixed, and a new family moves in. Nobody was “pushed” or “displaced.” People who sell are cashing in big time.
I’m reminded of Jerry Brown’s tart comment while serving as mayor of Oakland and encountering resistance to his development plans – “The opposite of gentrification is slumification!”
Snark17: The less than symbol is reserved in HTML, which means you can’t use it in a comment, because web browsers will mix them with tags.
If you know HTML well, you can use the equivalent HTML character entity.
Who are the victims here? I don’t see any mention in the article about people being evicted. Neighborhood demographics changing over time is an aggregated effect of socio-economic factors. Happens everywhere and it happens all the time. If there are working-class people in this area today then either they are renters who are benefiting from rent control or owners who are seeing their net worth skyrocket. Are they suffering because no new working-class people can afford to move in or because the streets become safer or because they have more grocery shopping options? I doubt it.
As for feeling guilty, that’s just dumb. Again, if you’re evicting a family and thus somehow forcing them to move to Oakland I can see the point, but if you’re buying a house from a long-time owner or renting a newly constructed apartment that used to be part of a warehouse, why on Earth would you feel guilty about that?
I think I would feel uncomfortable as a middle class professional white family moving in on some level. Guilt was the wrong word to use.
Gentrification as represented by Local Mission Market is selective prosperity along demographic lines. It’s only a problem because they claim to be “local mission” when that is only selectively true. There are plenty of Latino locals who could sell locally homemade foodstuffs here, but they seem not to have been invited. Why not?
I don’t believe the recent changes to SF and the Bay Area is the same as it always was. In generations past people choose to leave for a perceived better situation. In the current situation people are being pushed out to a worse situation so this is a big relevant difference.
Certainly some people benefit from gentrification as well but there is less blue collar family formation in SF, fewer places for blue collar people to land (or in worse circumstances like living in illegal in-laws) and certainly most of the types of people who used to move here when I was young would even consider it now which I find unfortunate personally.
Big changes are happening. I think it is flippant to try to give locals a history lesson on what “always happened” in SF.
I am not saying any laws should be passed and am not saying I hate tech workers or anything like that. But I am concerned.
If this property worked for me and I could afford it I would feel neither discomfort nor guilt in moving in and living there.
In fact, I can’t even begin to contemplate why anyone would feel guilt about buying a nice house in a gentrifying neighborhood.
After all you are helping the lesser residents by raising their property values.
Again, who’s being pushed and how? Is there a wave of evictions sweeping through the Mission that I haven’t heard about?
Whatever it is, this is like complaining about the weather. There are certainly plenty of people in this fair city who would like to see new market-distorting legislation to create obstacles to gentrification but I’m pleased to hear that Zig is not among them.
I believe we are failing as a region when there is not suitable decent places with good transit access for people of modest means to land and to form families.
It would be possible to do many things about this unlike the weather
I have seen a few multi-buildings sold these past few years that were prime for market-driven “displacement”. The 2 3-units on SVN someone posted a few months back for instance. 6 tenants were artificially maintained in huge dwellings because of rent control distortion: artist types, 20-somethings, large families (3 generations it appeared). The landlord gives up, sells to someone who will get rid of the tenants, either gently ($$$) or less gently (Ellis).
But this is a relative trickle. But combined with infill or underused lot development, this changes the nature of a neighborhood little by little.
It’s happening, despite whatever rules that are being added on the top of existing rules. The pressure is just too strong with current $/sf values and resistance just makes the agents of change the more ruthless (just Ellis everyone).
So, you mean it would be nice if modest income-earners could live comfortably in, say, Sausalito or Alameda. Good schools, transit, etc.
Yeah, that would be nice… heck, EVERYONE would want that!
It’s impossible. Supply and demand.
^ well there is always rent control.
@gentrified
The fact that something happens everywhere and happens all the time does not mean people should not consider the effects of it as well as possible alternatives. There is nothing wrong with the individual act of buying a home you can afford. But I personally think we should consider what gentrification, as it continues, will do to the City’s population and whether or not that is something we want.
I think folks that work the lower paying jobs in SF should have some options to live in SF. Those options appear to be shrinking faster than alternatives can be implemented. Gentrification is not a dirty word. But declining diversity is the unintended consequence and that is certainly not a desired goal of anyone I know who lives here. Of course, the people who do want less diversity in the population probably don’t speak up too much around here.
That being said… I live in striking distance from here and welcome the development.
So, you mean it would be nice if modest income-earners could live comfortably in, say, Sausalito or Alameda. Good schools, transit, etc.
I believe that he’s saying that it would be nice if some other spots in the region were building density as well, so that more housing was available overall.
Jimmy says “you are helping the lesser residents by raising their property values” but he seems to believe that the “lesser residents” own their homes. In reality, less than half of the housing in the Mission is owner-occupied. So who would you actually be helping by raising those property values?
Boo: what you’re not aware of is that a not-insignificant number of regular commenters on socketsite would like nothing better than for everyone who has less than a $115k yearly household income to be priced out of San Francisco proper and be relegated to the eastern reaches of contra costa county. And the sooner, the better to make The City into the Adult Disneyland For The Rich they dream of.
And they speak up on a regular basis, they just employ code phrases like “increasing turnover of housing” and the like.
Luckily for the rest of us, people who think like that aren’t in a policy making role in S.F..
“I believe that he’s saying that it would be nice if some other spots in the region were building density as well, so that more housing was available overall.”
Yes, it is wonderful that young upper middle class people have decided that living in urban walkable area with access to transit is nice. I agree it is nice.
These same types of areas are also a life-line to poor and working class people without cars to have access to opportunities, to jobs, to education, to services.
Here’s my take on “gentrification”. It’s an observation, just a huge socio-political statement, but it reinforces my belief in making The City better, in all ways:
Just back from The Castro to do some shopping. In the course of 15 minutes, there were two older gentlemen fully naked hanging out in the Castro plaza. Yuck.
I was panhandled by two young guys.
There was a guy pissing against the wall at the gas station near the plaza.
There was a disheveled, well actually dirty, homeless man dragging a blanket down Market St. stopping to eat with his hands out of some plates of food left on the tables outside of Sliders.
Our city government has not solved any of those problems/issues mentioned. It seems to be getting worse.
Gentrification. Bring it on.
The real test for gentrification will be when young, highly educated and well off African Americans begin to return to the western addition (lower pac heights, filmore etc).
Yes yes, Brahma, we are all elitist millionaires who hate poor people and of course all people of color. It wouldn’t be a proper debate if you didn’t weigh in with your ignorant hyperbole, would it?
There’s a high demand for housing in SF. There’s not sufficient supply so we have to turn people away. I know you want to turn away all the “techies” and everybody with a 6-figure income on principle. I can only assume they make you feel worse about your own life and probably some stupid choices you made in the past (why else would someone identify themselves as an “incensed renter”?)
Those of us who pay the property taxes and get very little for them (certainly not decent schools, clean streets, reliable mass transit or responsive law enforcement) feel differently. I’m raising two children in what you would call a gentrified neighborhood. It used to be unsafe to walk the streets at night and you used to have to rake the sand at the playground for needles before letting your kids play in it. You could also count on at least a couple of trips a year to the auto glass store. Well, it’s not like that anymore although it’s certainly not a crime-free haven either.
But hey, I guess in your world I should have been turned away in the name of “diversity”. Me and my snotty little white kids who will eventually be in private schools really belong in Burlingame because dammit, your working-class heroes were here first. There’s just one little hitch. I won’t tell you what it is but it’s in the Constitution.
I’m with anon on this one. This is a free country.
20 years ago “inner city” was synonymous with drugs and crime. Today “inner city” is synonymous with educated people who want to stay away from what they feel is a dehumanizing suburban lifestyle.
Why would it be a bad thing again? Still waiting for an explanation that doesn’t rhyme with “entitlement”.
My only comment about the “inner city” and dehumanizing suburban lifestyle is who created said lifestyle and urban form? Who abandoned the inner city? And who is now reclaiming it.
Make up your damn minds!
(and I am somewhat kidding and am aware I am generalizing so please no posts about your poor single mother please)
@ Zig: get rid of your guilt. Buy a house in the Mission if you want. Make it a better neighborhood by becoming PART of it.
Best wishes.
Zig, if anything, this is a proof that this change is everything but negative.
2 or 3 generations ago the practice was that a street that saw the first non-white moving in would see all whites moving out. This practice was there to put the fear of god into owners to keep the status quo.
Today, people moving to the inner city are not only diverse themselves (3 tech neighbors around me: 1 latino, one indian and one Kiwi) but are open to cultural and economical differences.
(1)
this project is good for the Mission pretty much no matter how you look at it. it adds housing and retail space where previously there was a giant disused warehouse. bravo.
(2)
jacking the thread to make various conflations of class/race/age/profession is bizarre. the community on this site, like that of the 94110 or of SF more generally, is pretty diverse– let’s try to see each other as individuals and not as categories.
anon: I didn’t mention either race or “elitism”. You brought it up. If you feel guilty about that, don’t put it on me.
I deliberately mention that I’m a renter because folks on socketsite are so fond of ad hominem and tu quoque arguments. That’s it. If you’re offended, that’s your problem.
As far as the video: I wish these guys (the principals of local mission market) and their investors the best of luck and moreover I’ll probably go out of my way to shop there.
“2 or 3 generations ago the practice was that a street that saw the first non-white moving in would see all whites moving out.”
This is nonsense least with regard to the Mission (I am skeptical this happened to a large extent in the West Addition either but not positive) . There was no block busting in SF like in Chicago or Detroit. There was white movement to the suburbs and to outer SF areas but it was nothing like you are describing.
There have always been white people in the Mission before and after Hispanics moved in. I have had white and Hispanic (and white/hispanic) relatives in and around the Mission for generations
Do you have any evidence of your narrative? The only change I see is the white people used to be working class and sometimes immigrants and now they are not
I agree that was poorly expressed. That comment wasn’t specific to the Mission. It was typical of the mentality of the time.
Just to say: newcomers are color-blind, and anyway they are diverse. Ben expressed it much better than I did.
@Futurist
“get rid of your guilt. Buy a house in the Mission if you want. Make it a better neighborhood by becoming PART of it.”
well said!
“I am not saying any laws should be passed and am not saying I hate tech workers or anything like that. But I am concerned.”
Zig – this side of this block has been an abandoned wasteland for around ten or eleven years. Right around 2002, a similar warehouse on the corner of this block at 23rd st was raised and turned into a large multi-unit residential building. The fact that these two new buildings are being completed, bringing in a much needed grocery store to the neighborhood, is, for all of us who have lived here for many years, an extremely excellent and welcome event. Yaron’s contributions to the neighborhood have been really great, and implemented with a lot of sensitivity and care and communication.
As @futurist says, go ahead and buy the damn house already and become part of an amazing, diverse neighborhood.