Mid-Market Blight - Issues at the Center of our City.

Story Updates

3/10/10

• Sneak Preview: Mid-Market Map Goes Live Tomorrow

  

  I'm just double-checking everything on the map and in the article, and it will all be up tomorrow! Each of the colored lots on the map is actually a link to a window with more information about each property -- you can see a bigger version at my Flickr page. I am pretty excited for this to finally drop.

  Update: The story has been published!

  Posted by Susie Cagle on 03/10/10
3/5/10

• Home Stretch: Mid-Market Today Plus a New Map

  A fair bit has changed on mid-Market since I began reporting this story back in September. One of the biggest changes has been Pearl Paint's closing just a couple weeks ago at 969 Market Street. Pearl had been there for years, a bright spot of retail on a block that is heavily boarded up and abandoned. Now the successful chain Blick Art Supplies is moving in at 989 Market, just a couple storefronts south. There's also been some other tenancy flux throughout the area, but the vacancy rate still hovers around 30 percent.
  
  One of the things I noticed the most walking up and down Market Street for a few hours this week was the flow of the area and its functions, and how these will play into its revitalization. Though they're currently boarded up, and have been for years, retail in the 900-block buildings between 5th and 6th has much more of a chance at succeeding if the neighborhood can erase the invisible line that cuts Market at 5th, just south of the Westfield Plaza and the heavily trafficked cable car turn-around shopping area. On the southern end of the neighborhood, where there are more SROs and bigger, emptier office buildings, Trinity and Crescent Heights will someday dominate with new condos (and hopefully at least some affordable housing). There are also other empty lots down here that, I think, are likely to see new construction and development within the next 20 years or so, such as the condemned Strand theater and its adjoining lot.
  
  I think all these particularities of the place will be even easier to see on the interactive map we'll be publishing on Monday with the article. I'm really excited about this, it's not something I've ever done before and I think it will complement the story well.

  And again, thank you so much to everyone who has donated for far!

  
  (Pictured: St. Francis Theaters, the Art in Storefronts project and the future site of CityPlace. Photo credit David Cohn.)

  Posted by Susie Cagle on 03/05/10
2/19/10

• Update: Funds, News, and Laura Foxgrover

  

  Thanks so much to everyone who has donated lately! We're so close to full funding, and I'm really inspired by the fact that other people are just as curious about this problem as I am. Mid-Market has been in the news a lot lately -- from Proposition D last November, when I originally finished my first draft for the Panorama, to Gavin Newsom's latest declaration to turn the neighborhood around, plus juicy pieces in the Chronicle and the SF Public Press. My goal is to make this story interesting to people who aren't necessarily familiar with the Mid-Market travails of the last century, and hopefully even those who don't live in the Bay Area.

   
  One way I'm trying to make that goal is with the help of graphic designer Laura Foxgrover. Given how visually arresting the Mid-Market stretch is, I think an equally visual representation is necessary to fully understand the extent of the troubles in the neighborhood. Laura was originally hired to do an infographic pairing my reporting and photographs with a map of Mid-Market for the Panorama. I'm going to pay Laura 15% of whatever we raise here for her role in this project, and we're going to be updating the graphic with all sorts of new information. This is just a teeny tiny teaser of what this graphic has in store. I'll have another preview chunk or two for you next week!
  Posted by Susie Cagle on 02/19/10
1/25/10

• Is a shopping mall the only thing that can save mid-Market? Mayor Newsom finally gets into the fight.

  "I've got two years left, and I don't want to be just another mayor who didn't deliver on Market Street," Newsom said last week. 
   
  Bold for a mayor who's done little if anything for the street over the course of his time in office. Newsom is now pushing for millions in federal dollars to give local businesses loans, beautify the street and "create an arts district." He's also talking about reintroducing the redevelopment plan that died at the Board of Supervisors in 2005, on hopes that without a Chris Daly in office to vote it down, the plan could pass.
   
  Part of Newsom's plan is also hinted at in the media as "installing a large retail center in the area." I've got to presume this refers to the CityPlace mall between 5th and 6th, a project that's been underway for years -- but what if Newsom wants even more mall square footage? I look forward to finally getting city hall on the phone! And I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this plan. Do you think it hints at real change coming to mid-Market, or is it just more political grandstanding?
  Posted by Susie Cagle on 01/25/10
12/31/09

• Another origin story, or: How did we get here?

  Even though everyone I spoke with before I began my reporting couldn't remember a time when mid-Market was actually nice, digging into the history of the street revealed more damning details, and a longer history of neglect, than I had originally anticipated...
   
  After the devastating earthquake and subsequent fires of 1909, Market Street thrived as the burgeoning city’s entertainment mecca, lined with retail and restaurants among grand theaters, the pulsing central artery of a growing, vital, increasingly important American city. Mid-Market was the heart of the entire Bay Area's arts community through the '60s; even Lawrence of Arabia debuted at a theatre on mid-Market. The thoroughfare was regularly compared to New York's Fifth Avenue and Paris' Champs-Elyseés. It was nicknamed the Great White Way for the theatre's illuminated marquees.
   
  Then San Francisco's -- and the country's -- priorities changed. In the 1960s, city planners started following the East Coast trend of tearing down the signage that had proliferated along the country's major highways, making driving a more relaxing and clutter-free experience for the new American suburban middle class. As San Francisco's biggest thoroughfare, Market Street was set in the cross hairs of beautification, and in the mid '60s, the city banned major signs of any kind all along the street. 
   
  Then came BART. The street became a gaping maw from 1967 to 1972 as the vast underground train network was installed beneath it, along with much of the existing Muni streetcar service, diverting pedestrian traffic away from the street. When construction was finally finished, so was Market. Over the next decade, the restaurants folded or moved to more desirable areas; storefronts were boarded up as retail closed; formerly grand cinemas devolved into adult movie parlors, then strip joints — if they were lucky enough to avoid police raids. And even a $50 million development plan, which installed redbrick walkways and rows of spindly trees, couldn't save mid-Market from itself, or the city's planning policies.
  Posted by Susie Cagle on 12/31/09
12/9/09

• Origin Story

  This is a story I've been wondering about since I first moved to the Tenderloin from Brooklyn in February 2008. My neighborhood seemed like an illogical flaw on the face of a city with astronomical rents, miniscule vacancy rates and such a liberal political reputation. Why would such prime real estate be overrun with crime and filth? Why did the corner of Turk and Larkin consistently smell like black mold?

  The stretch of Market between 5th and 10th was particularly troubling, and downright odd. Just from looking at it you could tell this was once a grand boulevard lined with gorgeous architecture and stately theatres. I wasn't even yet wondering what had gone wrong: my first thought was, why hasn't anyone fixed this?

  When I first set out to report this story in mid-September, I and my editors presumed the fault lay squarely with absentee landlords who bought investments properties and then didn't care enough to find tenants. What I discovered was a much more richly textured tapestry of problems than I ever would've imagined.

  Posted by Susie Cagle on 12/09/09