Slanted Door returns, Panchitas expands, new Indian restaurant Apna Chulha opens — the block is looking up
Sign up below to get Mission Local’s free newsletter, a daily digest of news you won’t find elsewhere.Sign up
Valencia Street has long been a go-to place for San Franciscans seeking shops, music venues, restaurants, and bars — and a hot real estate location for businesses wanting to capitalize on that foot traffic.
Yet there’s one block of Valencia, between 16th and 17th streets, where six storefronts sit empty, a spot of blight in an otherwise boisterous stretch. A couple of sites have been vacant for months, others for years.
The former Blu Dot at 560 Valencia St. has been empty since the summer of 2022, and Chezchez at 584 Valencia St. since early 2023. Arinell Pizza at 509 Valencia St. has been shuttered since late 2022, and West of Pecos at 550 Valencia St. since late 2023.
There’s also Five and Diamond’s space at 510 Valencia St., empty since January, and former Los Amigos’ space at 530 Valencia St., empty since June.
Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.Sign up
“It’s the block that we are focusing the most on right now. It’s the block I am putting most of my time and energy in as president,” said Manny Yekutiel, the head of the Valencia Merchants Association, whose namesake cafe is at Valencia and 16th. “It’s also a block that I feel pretty optimistic about. It’s got a lot of amazing bones.”
While the area has gone through a rough patch, its future looks bright: Mission Local has learned that several new storefronts will be opening on the block in the coming months.
The former West of Pecos space will become a northern Indian restaurant as soon as this week. The name of the restaurant: Apna Chulha, the name for a clay oven in Urdu.
Down the block at 584 Valencia, near 17th Street, Slanted Door will make a return home after more than two decades away from its birthplace.
“We called it the Slanted Door because the door at 584 Valencia was actually slanted,” said Anh Duong, a marketing representative for the restaurant. “Excited to go back to our original location. That’s where executive chef and founder Charles Phan maxed out all of his family’s credit cards to open his first restaurant.”
The San Francisco Standard was first to report the reopening. Slanted Door is expected to open next spring. That building, along with 582 and 580 Valencia, is still owned by the Phan family.
Near 16th Street, the former Arinell Pizza will be taken over by Panchitas, the popular Salvadoran late-night spot around the corner at 3091 16th St., according to a building permit filed on June 3. The permit notes the creation of an “accessible path of travel” between the two locations, but the exact plans are unclear.
At 560 Valencia St., meanwhile, the owner of the old Blu Dot’s space is looking for pop-ups to come in, before a cannabis dispensary already approved at the location opens next year.
Finally, Raw Sugar Factory, which also operates Krua Thai at the same location at 525 Valencia St., will be fully relocating across the street to 530 Valencia St. — formerly Los Amigos — by the end of next month.
Still, for all the good news, Yekutiel said that a post-pandemic drop in tourism is hitting Valencia harder than most commercial corridors.
“Valencia, statistically, is one of the corridors that has recovered slowest,” Yekutiel said.
Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, confirmed the slow recovery last June. At the time, he said it was the corridor’s focus on family apparel, which he called the “single weakest” industry in the city. That, plus an exodus of young people who drink and dine out and are often the lifeblood of the street.
Those trends, Yekutiel said, have caused “the heart and soul of Valencia Street” to experience more empty storefronts than would be ideal.
Mission Local spoke to employees, managers, brokers and city representatives about what may have caused the spaces to sit empty. The reasons they offer are more numerous than the number of vacant businesses.
To a large degree, Valencia Street’s situation mirrors San Francisco’s as a whole. “There’s a scarcity of tenants in San Francisco. That’s the problem,” said David Noravian, an investment sales broker and the founder of Beckett Capital.
Noravian said San Francisco’s street conditions have received hypercritical press, especially during the pandemic, which may have hurt the ability of corridors like Valencia to draw new merchants.
Danielle Benoit, an employee at Therapy Stores at 545 Valencia St., agreed that a decrease in tourists is hurting business. This year, however, Benoit said more people have been out and about, and sales are reflecting that.
“Some feel a little lost with their business right now,” said Benoit. “But people are coming back. It’s so important to support small businesses. It means so much to us.”
Michelle Reynolds, the spokesperson for the Office of Small Business, said leasing activity throughout the city is reaching pre-pandemic levels.
So far, in the first two quarters of this year there have been a total of 262 retail, industrial and flex leases — those that can be shorter than a year — across the city. In comparison, there were 316 during the same period in 2018 and 254 in 2019.
For Scotty McDade, the bartender at Casanova, at 527 Valencia St., the area’s problems come down to the bike lane. The center-running lane, which was installed last summer and has become the bête noire of Valencia merchants, has made traffic on the street “a nightmare,” he said.
“The traffic build-up on 16th and Valencia is awful,” he said. “Any car turning east on 16th Street has to wait for all foot traffic, and that’s usually the first car in line. So only one or two cars get through per light cycle.”
Since its inception in summer 2023, the center bike lane pilot program has been a sore spot, with at least seven merchants filing claims against the city in the first quarter of the year. At the time, the owners said business was down 30 to 50 percent.
Data released by the San Francisco controller’s office last December showed a drop of six percent in sales-tax receipts in the second quarter of 2023, just a month into the construction of the bike lane. The office released numbers early this year that showed sales-tax revenue from the stretch between 15th and 23th streets — where the bike lane runs — was up by 3.2 percent compared to the same period in 2022.
Diana Portillo has been working in the area for three years, most recently at Often Wander at 593 Valencia St. She has seen many places go out of business, and thinks the bike lane is a scapegoat.
“It’s easy to blame the bike lane because it’s new,” said Portillo. “I’ve heard the rent is really expensive here, so it could also be the economy that we’re in right now.”
Evidently, however, it’s not scaring off newcomers. The corridor saw the addition of Italian restaurant Barberio at 557 Valencia last September, just six months after the previous occupant, Ancora, shut down. Stonemill Matcha also reopened late last year at 561 Valencia barely four months after initially closing its doors.
This recovery in the block is something that Yekutiel celebrates.
“I’m not concerned about the long-term economic health of Valencia Street,” he said. “Valencia Street will continue to be strong.”
LATEST NEWS
Shotwell St. neighbors sue city over vagrancy, sex workers— mayor promises new barriers
Follow the money: $22M raised for San Francisco election, majority in big gifts
For graphic novelist Eddie Ahn, SF Zine Fest is where it all began
OSCAR PALMA
Oscar is a reporter with interest in environmental and community journalism, and how these may intersect. Some of his personal interests are bicycles, film, and both Latin American literature and punk. Oscar’s work has previously appeared in KQED, The Frisc, El Tecolote, and Golden Gate Xpress.More by Oscar Palma
