San Francisco Flower Mart Will Stay Planted
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Mar. 31, 2008
Merchants at the San Francisco Flower Mart are celebrating this spring because a local school has canceled plans to build studio space on the 5.5-acre site where growers have been selling their blooms for decades.
A San Francisco institution since the 1880s, the Flower Mart has been operating at the San Francisco Flower Terminal since 1956.
"I feel relieved that the sale did not go through," says Patrick McCann, owner of Toscana Gardens and Greenworks Inc., one of the tenants. "We now have to work with the owner to keep [this property] in the right hands and keep it as an institution … The city is very committed to protecting the flower market."
The mart's owner, the San Francisco Flower Growers Association, issued eviction notices to 30 tenants on Christmas Eve, intending to sell the Flower Terminal to the local Academy of Art. To stall those plans, the city's board of supervisors in January imposed a two-year moratorium the use of any buildings in the area for institutional purposes.
Many San Francisco residents objected to the redevelopment plans.
"I thought it was outrageous that my school was doing this," says Daniel Heitzman, a sophomore at the Academy of Arts who created an online petition in support of the Flower Mart and made a short film about its venders in January and posted it on YouTube. "I did all I could."
The school officially withdrew from its sales contract on the property on Feb. 26.
"[The decision] was great for the small businesses; it was great for the San Francisco community base," McCann says.
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