by Randy Shaw on April 10, 2023 (BeyondChron.org)
Drug Dealers Killed the Market
“San Francisco must take urgent action to revitalize its Mid-Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods. There is no more time to waste.” Randy Shaw, “Urgent Action Needed for SF’s Mid-Market and Tenderloin,” August 1, 2022.,
The “urgent action” many of us sought never came. And we now have the first major victim of the city’s failure.
The SF Standard reported today that the Whole Foods Market at 8th and Market Street will be closing due to “staff safety concerns.” It is a monumental setback for the Mid-Market neighborhood and an epic fail for City Hall.
The drug dealers won. They staked out open drug markets on multiple blocks surrounding Whole Foods and the city never forced them to permanently leave. Last October, Leighton Woodhouse described the graphic details of addicts attacking store employees.
This is a sad day for me because many of us tried for decades to get a supermarket to open within walking distance of the Tenderloin. Whole Foods was the first major supermarket to ever do so.
It’s also sad because the new Trinity Plaza was set to be the linchpin of a revitalized Mid-Market. Much of the progress made in Mid-Market during Ed Lee’s mayoralty is being reversed.
There has been so much attention on drug markets near Whole Foods that one has to ask Chief Scott why the SFPD never cleared the area. There needs to be a Board of Supervisors hearing to get to the bottom of the city’s failure to protect two major investors who took a chance on Mid-Market: Trinity and Whole Foods.
First of Many Closures?
I regularly hear rumors of other closures in the Mid-Market and Tenderloin. I’m sure many who have been holding on will respond to the Whole Food closure with resignation and despair.
After all, if the city doesn’t care about protecting Whole Foods why would it protect a small business?
I’ve written dozens and dozens of times that San Francisco’s economic future depends on closing open air drug markets. That so many drug markets still operate near Whole Foods is a testament to a city heading in the wrong direction.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
