The 112-year-old, way-too-early in the morning institution known as the SF Flower Mart will have its final day of operation at its longtime SoMa location on Thursday. But it will reopen at a new Potrero Hill location just a week later.
Have you ever woken up somewhere around 4am to head down to the San Francisco Flower Market, one of the last remaining wholesale flower markets in the US? It’s been at Fifth and Brannan streets, it's been there since 1956, but it actually dates back much further. It originally started as an informal flower vendor market on Market Street next to Lotta’s Fountain in 1912, and was formally established at Fifth and Howard streets in 1924, before moving to its current 640 Brannan Street spot in the mid-1950s.
Though the flower market appeared to be teetering on extension ten years ago when a big corporate developer bought 640 Brannan, with dreams that the office market boom would never end. And the market will indeed close, with Thursday, December 26 being its final day at Fifth and Brannan. But it will reopen the following week at a new Potrero Hill home.
The Chronicle reports on the final days of the Flower Mart at its 68-year Brannan Street home, including a celebration this past Tuesday that included a mariachi band, accordion players, and elected officials. Yet the Flower Mart will still have one more day of operations that are open to the public on December 26 (8 am -1 pm, though badge-holding wholesale members can show at 4 am, and will have additional availability on Monday and Tuesday).
Then the SF Flower Market will open at their new 125,000-square-foot location at 901 16th Street on Thursday, January 2 (8 am for the public, 6 am for members).
It’s a pretty rosy ending after a decade-long saga after saga after Kilroy Realty bought the Brannan Street building in 2014, and it looked like curtains for the Flower Mart. But Kilroy announced they would provide the Flower Mart a new home later that year. It took six long years from there, and right before the pandemic hit, we learned that home would be at 16th and Mississippi streets. Understandably, the pandemic held up that transition, which is finally happening now for this extremely unique, one-of-a-kind marketplace.
“A lot of workers don’t speak English or have formal education — but you don’t really need that here,” SF Flower Mart general manager Jeanne Boes told the Chronicle. “There are not too many jobs left in California that you can say that about.”
Related: New Flower Mart to Rise In Potrero Instead of 395 Units of Housing [SFist]
Image: Camille C via Yelp
