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HANC Hampers Whole on Haight
You know that juicy rumor that in place of the late, not-so-lamented Cala Foods, Whole Foods would open up there until a new store with condos on top could be built? And you know how people were going "yay!" as among other things, it would mean having something at the end of Haight besides what is now pretty much an empty lot? Well, ain't happening.
At a meeting last Wednesday of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association (the People's Front of Haight Ashbury), the owner of the property, Mark Brennan, announced that Whole Foods wasn't going to move into the spot as the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (the Haight Ashburian People's Front) said no to the whole thing. Rumor has it they put the squeeze on an unknown political type who put the stop to it all. How? Whole Foods could have moved in if Cala left in all the shopping market fixtures there. Because of pressure from HANC, Cala sold all the fixtures so instead of there being an abandoned shopping market, now apparently it's just an abandoned building.
Now, you might be wondering why as apparently most people were kind of psyched on the idea. Whole Foods is, after all, a bit more upscale than the notoriously downscale Cala, it sells organic food which fits into the whole Haight vibe, and it will put something in a spot that in it's current guise fits a little too much in with the whole run-down drugged out mise en scene that is the end of Haight. Also of note is that Whole Foods somehow magically increases property values and increased property values means property owners get rich(er). It is the hope of some people in the hood to actually get a bit more gentrified as for whatever reason, having to constantly walk around and sometimes over 17 year old gutter punks selling buds and doses and endlessly singing "All Along the Watchtower" is not appealing to them.
So then, as the French announcers of the World Cup would say, "pourquoi, quoi?" Well, Whole Foods is anathema to sum because it's non-union. And a chain, albeit a warm fuzzy kind of chain. There are already a few health/organic stores on the Haight and the opening of a Whole Foods would probably be bad for them. The new condos? Despite the fact they're planning on having some of them available to rent, people want "affordable housing" instead. Plus, condos will mean a parking garage (which would be built underground) and parking garages mean cars and cars means more traffic and so on and so forth.
And then there's this: the fact that Whole Foods is kind of upscale apparently chafes some. In fact, the whole complaint against Whole Foods can be summed up by the claim that it is, in fact, "too bourgeoisie." And that's the last thing you'd want on the Haight, something too bourgie. That would be awful.
Well, then, where does that leave us? We guess looking for some sort of other shopping market to be built there, but one that's unionized, cheap, and doesn't specialize in organic okra. Which describes, well, Cala Foods. So then what we need to do is to talk Cala Foods into going back and then building affordable housing right on top of that, housing that won't feature any parking.
Our prediction? One very empty lot will be there for years.