San Francisco is Finally Fulfilling Part of its Promise to the Fillmore

A mural at the Buchanan Street Mall. Photo by Bunny McFadden.

By now, most of us know about the Urban Renewal policies that attempted to destroy the Fillmore, a historically Black neighborhood in San Francisco. With a windfall of $8.1 million from the federal government to finish the Buchanan Street Mall, the Fillmore community might have its phoenix moment. 

The Buchanan Street Mall opened in 1975. A public gathering space was one of the few good San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) ideas that stemmed from the two projects in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. For those unfamiliar with redevelopment in the Fillmore, projects A1 and A2 involved bulldozing, moving entire multistory Victorians out to the Avenues, and displacing 17,500 Black and Japanese American city dwellers. Widening Geary made it easier for cars to get to downtown, and it also conveniently cut the Fillmore District from Japantown so that realtors could rebrand the northern blocks as “Lower Pac Heights” and distance themselves from the Fillmore, which was labeled as “blighted” and seedy. But redlining and redevelopment aren’t ancient history. Implementation of these didn’t technically end until May of 2000. Up until recently, the City of San Francisco actively cleaved a culturally rich neighborhood in two and decimated the Fillmore.

Projects A1 and A2 were pigheaded and the community came together to fight them, but the harm was already done. The effects of redevelopment lingered and the Buchanan Street Mall struggled. Prior to cosmetic work, it was poorly lit and spikes of crime gave it a bad reputation. The Fillmore was cut off from the rest of the city and left to drown. This isn’t a secret; in fact, the City recently got additional funding to form a committee to do a study on how they might address the harm of their actions, a move which some might call classic SF bureaucracy. But the Western Addition Community Organization (WACO) was a coalition of Black and Japanese American leaders trying to save their neighborhood. They picketed the SFRA, organized, and blocked bulldozers, leading to an injunction that gave them more representation in the redevelopment planning. So involving the community from the beginning might be a good idea after all.

It’s worth noting that the Buchanan Street Mall project heavily invested in community engagement beginning a decade ago in 2014. With the length of time that’s elapsed as the city scrambles to find funding, one named partner, Green Streets, no longer has an active website and it’s unclear if they are still around the Fillmore. Citizen Film did not respond to a request for comments. Still, things in the neighborhood take time. 

Sign on the Buchanan Street Mall. Photo by Bunny McFadden.

With all these projects getting funded, momentum is building. There are recent discoveries of lost photographs that documented the destruction of the Fillmore, and new light is being shed on Japantown’s devastation. This history is inextricably linked with redlining, redevelopment, and the ongoing effects of structural racism. And there’s finally an increasingly visible commitment from the City to peel back the wallpaper and understand the role that Public Works played. In that context, this major grant from the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program (ORLP) funds work that a coalition has been working on for over a decade. 

The project will cover three blocks on Buchanan between Eddy and Grove and includes: a performance stage and seating areas, a picnic and barbeque area, multiple playgrounds, an adult and senior exercise area, a half court for multi-sports, lighting, landscaping, and information kiosks. The most recent April 2023 site plan calls for nine Catalina Ironwoods, a rain garden, a $5000 drinking fountain, and more. The Trust for Public Land, a project partner, describes the ultimate vision as Afro-centric in design. The funding was highly selective and stipulates that any grantee must agree to keep the project site public and accessible in perpetuity. 

The original project plan has kiosks intended for local businesses to use, although it is unclear what process will be followed and how difficult it will be for merchants and community organizations. When this reporter attended an ISCOTT meeting in March of 2023, it was clear that city agencies struggled to explain procedures for extending street closure permits to one Fillmore business owner. Historically, businesses closed during the A1 and A2 redevelopment projects of the 1960s were given “certificates of preference” saying they could be the first to return when new commercial spaces opened, but in reality very few Fillmore businesses were able to use them. In 1999, several decades later, only 4% of the certificates of preference had been cashed. You can still find many of these business names in sidewalk plaques along Fillmore two blocks over from the street mall, gone but not forgotten. With hope and this windfall, there may be space for businesses to anchor themselves in the vision of the project.

A local playing badminton on the Buchanan Street Mall. Photo by Bunny McFadden.

There are still untold stories beneath the ground around the Western Addition. A few years ago when the Green Team at Rosa Parks Elementary School worked with local architect David Darling to build a chicken coop, students and their parents discovered old bricks and other signs of what the Fillmore once was. Now with the Buchanan Street Mall project heading for construction this summer, what else might we uncover? 

“The Buchanan Mall in the Western Addition has truly been a team effort with our community advocates, neighborhood leaders, and federal, state, and local leaders. I continue to be excited by our momentum around the Buchanan Mall, and I am glad that we are able to fully resource the green spaces, recreational areas, additional lighting, and traffic safety improvements that are long overdue for this community.” – Supervisor Preston