News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FILLMORE STREET CONTINUES to remake itself into a mecca of high-end fashion labels from around the world, despite the city’s professed intent to limit chain stores in neighborhood shopping districts. Partly that is because the rules limiting “formula retail” — defined as companies with 11 or more stores — do not include stores outside the…
By Chris Barnett THE FOUR CORNERS of the dingy intersection of Divisadero and Bush won’t win any architectural awards today, but the location is increasingly prized by investors, and all four corners are in transition. Bulldozers are rumbling over the dirt on the southwest corner, home for decades to the San Francisco Community Convalescent Home.…
AFTER PAYING $25,000 a month rent for seven months on a key corner location at Fillmore and California streets, the New York-based fashion retailer Rag & Bone finally on February 20 got the blessing of the city Planning Commission to open a store there. Rag & Bone will occupy the two spaces that were home…
By Chris Barnett SCIONS OF TWO San Francisco real estate dynasties are racing toward a costly collision on Valentine’s Day after seven months of legal jousting. The prize: the storefront on the prime northeast corner of Fillmore and Pine occupied for the last 10 years by Paolo Shoes. The lease there is officially up on…
PETER LUONG has created a serene oasis for those who step into his just-opened door at 2120 Sutter Street, the new home of Song Tea & Ceramics. Soft music plays. Comfortable chairs are arranged on cozy rugs near bookcases and neat white canisters line shelves along one wall, with labeled drums of teas in rows…
AS FILLMORE STREET continues to rapidly remake itself into a mecca for fashion labels from around the world, supplanting basic neighborhood services, legislation has been introduced at City Hall that would subject more businesses to the city’s limits on chain stores. Under the existing “formula retail” ordinance — enacted by the voters in 2008 to…
BY THE TIME it moves downtown next year, the University of the Pacific’s dental school will have made room for a lot of attractive — and expensive — new housing in the neighborhood. Trumark Urban has now bought the dental school’s longtime home at 2155 Webster Street, at the corner of Sacramento, and will convert…
SIGNALING IT WILL be harder for chain stores to open on Fillmore Street in the future, the city’s Board of Appeals on May 15 revoked the building permit secured by German-based clothing company Oska for the space at 2130 Fillmore, where it had intended to open a new boutique. Now that Oska has been adjudged…
NEW NEIGHBOR | Liz Fanlo Hair and makeup specialist Liz Fanlo lives near Fillmore and already knew she loved the neighborhood. So when she decided to open a beauty boutique, she persuaded a friend to rent her the tiniest storefront on the street at 2335 Fillmore. “Isn’t it cute?” she beams. “It’s tiny — 50…
NEW NEIGHBOR | ELITE FINE JEWELRY A dream of a new jewelry store is now open in the neighborhood. But it began as a nightmare. Jeweler Simon Khurin and his family lived only 80 miles from Chernobyl when the Russian nuclear reactor imploded in 1986, spewing radiation across the landscape and forcing the relocation of…