San Francisco Flower Market bids farewell to its home of 58 years — but it’s not moving far

It’s last call for roses and tulips at the San Francisco Flower Market at Sixth and Brannan. While most of San Francisco was still asleep, the city’s flower community — the growers, importers, wholesalers, retailers, designers — started gathering at 6 a.m. Tuesday to bid farewell to the funky collection of warehouses in SoMa that has been its home since 1956.

A mariachi band weaved through the winterberry wreaths, the fresh cut flowers at Rafa Wholesale, the tea and spray roses from Neve Bros’ Petaluma farm. There was tequila in paper cups. Bouquets wrapped in Chinese newspapers. The concrete floors were damp and speckled with pine needles, green leaves and trampled blossoms.

For multigenerational growers like Victor Neve the celebration was bittersweet.

“The first time I came here I was holding my dad’s hand,” said Neve, the third-generation grower who cultivates lilacs, peonies and clematis at Lassen Ranch in Shasta County.

After 58 years on the corner of Sixth and Brannan, the San Francisco Flower Market will close its roll-up doors for the last time on Dec. 26. A week later the new 125,000 square foot flower market will open at 901 16th St. in Potrero Hill. Twenty-seven of the current flower market tenants will be making the move. Another 13 decided to retire or strike out on their own.

Neve, who will be moving to the new market, said he toured the space a few months ago. It was then that it hit him that the move was real — the collection of warehouses that had been home to his family business for 65 years would be gone. “It was a little overwhelming — I had to step outside and take a few deep breaths,” he said. “But I’m looking forward to it. I’m pumped. People are going to love it.”

Mariachi musicians perform at the San Francisco Flower Market in a ceremony marking its move from the longtime location. After 58 years on the corner of Sixth and Brannan, the market will shut its roll-up doors on Dec. 26.

The flower market’s move caps a long saga about the future of the historic institution and how it would fit into a shiny new Central SoMa, then envisioned as a burgeoning district of  technology headquarters and new condos. 

As city planners worked to figure out how to satisfy the, then, insatiable demand for office space, real estate investment trust Kilroy Realty bought the flower mart for roughly $70 million and pitched plans to redevelop it into what would become the pillar of the Central SoMa plan: a more than 2 million square foot office campus, spread across three new buildings ranging between eight and 18 stories in height. 

But the flower market wasn’t going to go away quietly. Led by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who was at the holiday celebration Tuesday, vendors organized to save the market. Initially, Kilroy agreed to find a temporary location for the flower market and then include it in the development. Eventually the market vendors decided that it would be better to move only once, and Kilroy bought the 1-acre Potrero Hill site for $99 million and agreed to build a new market.

Now, in a post-pandemic world where that futuristic vision for the neighborhood seems obsolete, there is little demand for new office space in a city with dozens of vacant buildings. Kilroy is currently looking into interim uses to fill the warehouses. In total, Kilroy has spent a total of $579 million on assembling the sites at Central SoMa and Potrero Hill and delivering a new facility for the vendors — without any sense of when it might get a return on that investment. 

In a statement, Kilroy Vice President Mike Grisso said the company “is pleased to have delivered a new, state-of-the-art wholesale flower market that will allow the flower industry to thrive well into the future.”

**Article by San Francisco Chronicle