San Francisco Flower Market Uproots to Potrero Hill

Where have all the flowers gone? For the San Francisco Flower Market, not far.

The city’s wholesale flower market is uprooting from its home of 58 years in South of Market and moving to 901 16th Street, on Potrero Hill, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The 125,000-square foot market at 640 Brannan Street will close its home in a collection of warehouses at Sixth and Brannan streets on Dec. 26. It will reopen a week later on a 1-acre site on Potrero Hill.

The market employs 300 people and supports dozens of small businesses, from florists in San Francisco to farmers along the Central Coast. Of its 40 flower market tenants, 27 will move their stands and 13 will retire or strike out on their own.

The San Francisco Flower Market was forced out of its 4-acre home since 1956 in Central SoMa by redevelopment.

In 2014, Los Angeles-based Kilroy Realty bought the flower mart site for $70 million, with plans to build a 2.2 million-square-foot office campus with three buildings from eight to 18 stories.

After vendors organized to save the market, Kilroy agreed to find a temporary location, then include it in the development.

The flower sellers wanted to move just once, so Kilroy bought the Potrero Hill site for $99 million, and agreed to build a new market.

Then the office market collapsed during a pandemic shift to remote work and Kilroy was left holding the daisy.

In total, Kilroy has spent $579 million on assembling a 6-acre development site in Central SoMa and another acre in Potrero Hill, while building a new flower market — without knowing when it would get a return on its investment, according to the Chronicle.

The office vacancy in San Francisco is 36.9 percent, according to CBRE, and could get worse before it gets better.

Kilroy Vice President Mike Grisso said in a statement that the firm “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.”

The new market contains 216,000 square feet, including 125,000 square feet for flower vendors and 90,900 square feet for parking for 150 cars and 23 bicycles, according to SFYimby. Its corrugated exterior was to be painted purple.

The deal with Kilroy also includes a $20 million subsidy for taxes and other expenses that kicks in when the office project is built. If the office market doesn’t recover, and the project is not built — the market tenants could be on the hook, according to the newspaper.

— Dana Bartholomew