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by\u00a0ELENI BALAKRISHNAN<\/a><\/strong> FEBRUARY 12, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"People](\"https:\/\/newspack-missionlocal.s3.amazonaws.com\/mission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG_0335-1200x900.jpg\")
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Help grow our newsroom<\/strong>, joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donate today!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1981, San Francisco\u2019s Redevelopment Agency sold more than four acres of land in the heart of the Fillmore to the Safeway corporation. It was a sweetheart deal, according to public records and interviews: A massive parcel for just $1.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, the 3.7 acres of land Safeway still owns could be worth tens of millions of dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The initial deal included the transfer of public streets into Safeway\u2019s plot, free of charge. Safeway meanwhile agreed to build a grocery store on the site and remain there for the next 40 years \u2014 or longer, many hoped: It was a needed resource in a neglected part of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, just a few months after that 40-year mark, Safeway began closing up shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter<\/strong> below.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n Safeway was supposed to stay \u201cfor a minimum \u2014 minimum<\/em> \u2014 of 40 years,\u201d said commissioner Bivett Brackett of the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Redevelopment Agency\u2019s successor, at a Board of Supervisors committee hearing<\/a> last week on the issue. \u201cIt was not sold to Safeway for them to later make a profit off of it and resell the land, therefore robbing the community of a community resource.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The grocery store\u2019s 40th anniversary was in the fall of 2023; by January 2024, Safeway had announced its imminent closure. Then-Mayor London Breed persuaded the store to remain in place an extra year. Residents protested<\/a>, and city leaders urged the grocery store to stay, but Safeway stopped selling groceries early last month and closed its pharmacy last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the company stands to make millions off a sale that was subsidized by city coffers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a hugely valuable site,\u201d said David Noravian of Beckett Capital, who said current market conditions make it difficult to put a dollar value on the lot. A smaller 2.3 acre shopping center<\/a> that didn\u2019t involve a potential major housing development sold to H Mart last year for $37 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Louis Cornejo of Urban Group Real Estate said Safeway might not make a massive profit in today\u2019s real estate market, but the company profited for years by owning and operating on the land it acquired for so little. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No paperwork has been filed by Align Real Estate, the company expected to build a mixed-use development on the lot. Cornejo said that, in the current market, he expects any development on the site to come slowly. In the meantime, he said, the land could become a vacant \u201cblight\u201d on the neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Safeway has offered no details about the development, but said the site will change hands soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are sitting on very valuable real estate that they got for a huge discount back in the \u201980s to provide a grocery store for the community,\u201d said former District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston. \u201cWhy would they not try to work with the city or the community to find a new grocery store to come into the location?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This scenario shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise. A 1980 Chronicle<\/em> article mentioned Safeway closing a nearby store, part of a pattern of grocery stores \u201cabandoning relatively poorer urban areas for the lucrative suburban trade.\u201d Over the years, the East Bay-headquartered grocery chain has pulled out of different store locations throughout the city, giving little notice to the communities that rely on its services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, despite the store\u2019s track record, generations of San Francisco officials have bent over backward to accommodate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fillmore store was championed as part of a plan to reinvigorate the neighborhood, which saw the razing of businesses and homes in the 1960s and \u201870s<\/a> and the displacement of its Black and immigrant community members in the name of urban renewal and \u201credevelopment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The landmark Booker T. Washington Hotel<\/a> that once sat on the Safeway site met this same fate. The land sat empty for more than a decade before the sale to Safeway, \u201cin the vital and best interests of the city and the health, safety, morals and welfare of its residents,\u201d according to the contract<\/a> signed between the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and Safeway in 1981. The contract referred to the area as one of the city\u2019s \u201cslum and blighted areas.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The agreement waived a $68,000 deposit, more than $230,000 in 2024 dollars, and allowed Safeway to apply that money toward permitting and other costs. A December 1980 Chronicle<\/em> article refers to a $2.5 million federal grant being used to prepare the land for the \u201clong desired\u201d Safeway. And the Board of Supervisors in 1981 approved<\/a> the clearance and transfer of two streets to Safeway\u2019s ownership, without charge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then-Supervisor Quentin Kopp pushed back against the street transfer, calling it a gift<\/a> of a public street to a private corporation. But the transfer and sale ultimately went through, and Safeway opened what was reportedly<\/a> the largest Safeway in Northern California on the lot in 1983. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kopp said he always opposed redevelopment, and said San Francisco should sue Safeway to retrieve the amount of money the company saved in the discounted sale more than 40 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s Safeway\u2019s prerogative to sell a store which isn\u2019t making money or is even losing money,\u201d Kopp said this week. But city leaders who \u201ccared enough\u201d could sue the company, as the city subsidized the original purchase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is unclear how much Safeway stands to make off the sale. The company has remained tight-lipped about its agreement with Align Real Estate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the time Safeway opened its Fillmore store more than 40 years ago, residents about 12 blocks away in Lower Nob Hill were taking action to save their<\/em> Safeway store, action that may be familiar to those in the Fillmore, Western Addition and Japantown today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In October 1983, Safeway abruptly announced the closure of its location at Bush and Larkin streets; it would close within five days. Residents mobilized quickly, with protests and petitions to persuade the store to stay. News reports said the Bush Street store was the last of five Safeway outposts to depart within that decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as Fillmore residents have done over the past year, Nob Hill residents in 1983 \u201cbemoaned the hardship that the closing will have on area residents, particularly seniors, who will lose their access to a conveniently located full-service market,\u201d according to a November 1983 Tenderloin Times<\/em> article<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fillmore Safeway sits among census tracts with some of the highest populations of senior residents in the entire city. Its once majority-Black population has dwindled, due to displacement, to around 10 percent<\/a> in the last census. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then-Supervisor Nancy Walker accused Safeway<\/a> of also abruptly closing a Visitacion Valley store it had \u201cpromised to keep open,\u201d and said the Bush Street closure was another example of the company failing to keep its word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think Safeway has any regard for this community,\u201d resident Don Feeser told the Tenderloin Times<\/em><\/a> in 1983. \u201cThey made their money in this community, now they\u2019re leaving.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The late Rev. Arnold Townsend, upon learning of Safeway\u2019s planned closure in 2024, said something similar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have been in this town for 56 years, and Safeway has been probably the worst community partners you would ever know,\u201d Townsend said before a town hall meeting at Third Baptist Church last January. \u201cThey certainly have not contributed to the community, but they\u2019ve taken millions of dollars out of this community.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similar to Breed\u2019s action last year, then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1983 sent Safeway\u2019s CEO a letter<\/a>, urging him to negotiate with possible replacement supermarkets to take over the Bush and Larkin space, on which the company held a 75-year lease. The store extended its closure by an extra month, but maintained it was losing money, and shuttered in October 1983. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Walker proposed legislation to require supermarkets to give six months notice of closure and hold community meetings, much as former Supervisor Dean Preston did last year before he left office. Records show Feinstein vetoed the legislation in 1984, but Preston\u2019s legislation, though left unsigned by Breed, passed in November. The Board of Supervisors also passed a resolution<\/a> in February urging the store to stay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But again, the present-day legislation and resolution had little effect on the Fillmore Safeway closure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, Preston pushed for Safeway and Align Real Estate to offer up the land for affordable housing nonprofits, to no avail. He urged Breed to consider acquiring the property, and got no response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Safeway, which is today part of a supermarket conglomerate owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, also showed \u201cincredible disrespect\u201d by never meeting with a community that has been \u201cwronged for generations,\u201d Preston said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf they want out, the respectful thing to do is meet with community groups and involve the city,\u201d Preston said. \u201cThey want to cash out and get top dollar selling the lot.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Preston\u2019s successor, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, held a hearing last week to assess the situation, and promised residents who filled the City Hall chamber that he is dedicated to fulfilling the community\u2019s needs. Residents were not convinced, and filtered out of the room grumbling their frustrations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTerrible! Shame!\u201d shouted Gloria Berry, a member of the African American Reparations Advisory Committee, across the room as Mahmood and his fellow supervisors ended the hearing without any new answers or plan<\/a>. \u201cYou should be ashamed of yourself \u2026 how dare you have us all come down here!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe frustration, overall, is valid,\u201d said Mahmood in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s been a year, and there\u2019s been no action.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Safeway and Align Real Estate were notably absent from the hearing. Mahmood didn\u2019t call them, and he told Mission Local<\/em> that he still has not managed to meet with the grocery chain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe take pride in our 40-year history of serving the Fillmore district and are grateful to our neighbors, customers and community members who supported us throughout the years,\u201d a Safeway spokesperson wrote in a statement after the hearing, noting that 15 other stores remain in the city. \u201cWe look forward to seeing more of the exciting proposal Align has in store as they develop their upcoming mixed-use project on their soon-to-be-acquired site.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n City leaders seem unwilling to explore options, like acquisition through an eminent domain process to intervene in the sale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSafeway is a hard-nosed corporate partner, and all they are interested in is a dollar sign,\u201d said The Rev. Amos Brown at last week\u2019s hearing. \u201cWhat we need to do is to put the brakes on and tell Safeway: \u2018Since you don\u2019t know how to be good partners, you don\u2019t deserve being in this town.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re a small, independent, nonprofit newsroom<\/strong> that works hard to bring you news you can’t get elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n eleni@missionlocal.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Eleni reports on policing and criminal justice in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter @miss_elenius.More by Eleni Balakrishnan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The East Bay-based grocery chain\u2019s latest closure drama echoes a similar saga, generations ago by\u00a0ELENI BALAKRISHNAN FEBRUARY 12, 2025 (MissionLocal.org) Read Mission Local often? Help grow our newsroom, joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below. Donate today! In 1981, San Francisco\u2019s Redevelopment Agency sold more than… Continue reading ![\"Mission](\"https:\/\/newspack-missionlocal.s3.amazonaws.com\/mission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/mission-local-logo-300x300.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nA sweet deal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A familiar story just blocks away<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Align and development<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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