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An oasis of light emanates from the inky shadows at Sixth and Brannan in the South of Market district. It's a few ticks shy of 5 a.m. on a Wednesday and every last person shuffling along the slick pavement has a story: hyperaggressive, lycra-suited joggers, diminutive women pushing shopping carts piled with rattling aluminum cans, unshaven men likely ejected from all-night diners when it grew clear the only thing they wanted was sleep.
But this place — this place is a story.
The day is already well under way at the San Francisco Flower Mart. Its vast loading dock is illuminated by an overpowering white halogen glow, and men and women broker deals and haul immense bushels of moist, pungent flora in double time. A burly florist clutching several dozen newspaper-wrapped bouquets in each arm tosses the lot in the back of a minivan and strides off in search of more. Nearby, a clipboard-toting man in a Giants jersey and backward cap cackles while filling out the day's orders with a group of vendors, and manages to use the word "fuck," effectively, as a comma.
He strolls inside and, fuck, you follow him.
The interior of the San Francisco Flower Mart seems designed for sensory overload. It's not so much the number of flowers on display within the Walmart-sized warehouse but the onslaught of more colors than you've ever seen in one place and some you may never have seen before. It can be disorienting; it's too much for the eyes to take in.
Strip away the trappings of exoticism, however, and the Flower Mart presents a deeply typical San Francisco tale. In the predawn hours especially, it feels like a self-contained little realm. It's anything but.
Superficially, this place looks much as it did a generation ago; some of the same faces even peer out from behind the forests of hydrangeas. But, in that time, the flower business has transformed. The Mart is an anachronism in a town where anachronisms are now perceived as a market inefficiency. It's one of the last industrial outposts in San Francisco, a sprawling, ramshackle hangar in the heart of SOMA, the burgeoning showcase of tech and imminent home to mushrooming office towers emblazoned with the gibberish names of companies defining the city's 21st-century economy.
The Flower Mart isn't nearly as valuable as the land beneath it (and the air above it), which, like so much of the city, is primed to house yet another high-rise tech fortress.
David Repetto does not resemble someone you'd find in a tech fortress. The amiable, 52-year-old farmer is quite possibly the only man in this city to wear a John Deere cap unironically. Repetto completes the ensemble with a Ben Davis workshirt, Wrangler jeans, and heavy workboots in which he will stand for 18 hours on most days. He leaves his Half Moon Bay farm, on which he grows pumpkins, Christmas trees, and 50 varieties of flowers, a shade before 3 a.m. to arrive here by 3:30. That's the routine for a Wednesday; he'll stick around until about 5 p.m. And then he goes home to do more work.
Repetto is a third-generation farmer and second-generation flower farmer. He first showed up at this spot at an ungodly hour to peddle his wares in 1980. And, in the years since, the neighborhood outside these walls has undergone a metamorphosis. The farmer still remembers a skid row dotted with junkies, junkyards, and the unreinforced masonry buildings that collapsed in the '89 quake and killed people not 100 yards from where he now stands.
This year, the earth shifted beneath his feet once more.
The Flower Mart was, for decades, composed of two organizations existing side-by-side: The San Francisco Flower Growers Association (the "Italian side") and the California Flower Growers Association (the "Japanese side"). In October, Kilroy Realty, Inc. officially acquired the Italian side and is on the cusp of doing the same with the Japanese side. As such, a plum parcel in perhaps the world's most desirable real estate market has fallen into the hands of one of the city's newest, most prolific — and most aggressive — developers.
Unlike would-be developers who, in decades past, swooped in and unceremoniously hustled out flower vendors (as the Academy of Art did during an attempted purchase of the Mart in 2008), both Kilroy and Mayor Ed Lee have said all the right things. The Flower Mart, they pledge, is a municipal treasure, and will, rest assured, be incorporated into the future tech fortress one day occupying its current site. Details, however, are sparse. And internal emails obtained by SF Weekly reveal the mayor's "quotes" regarding what is expected of this developer have actually been co-written and edited by this developer.
This was a long time coming. Developers have been eying the Flower Mart for decades; management here has been aching for a big payday for eons. And now it appears that day is at hand.
In an ideal world, the not-too-distant future will feature a shiny new tech fortress on-site, with all the familiar faces selling flowers below. But what might come to pass instead is the Mart being preserved while the many blue-collar vendors who actually work there are undermined. San Francisco does have a way of building over its hardscrabble past in favor of museum-like historical districts.
The Flower Mart is a repository of traditional, working-class jobs in a town rapidly shedding both tradition and working-class jobs. And, like everyone else, registered voters here like flowers, nearly as much as they like puppies and kittens. The universal appeal of flowers would be pretty persuasive if it landed on the ballot.
Seizing on this possibility, the city's most prominent critics of high-rise development and tech ascendance could put the whole thing to a vote, calling upon the electorate (yes, you) to settle a spectacularly complex, high-stakes, and emotionally supercharged development proposal. Again.
Flowers are an ephemeral joy, an ideal match for the San Francisco of today. The permanence of the Flower Mart is yet to be determined. As the vendors keep wrapping up bouquets here at Sixth and Brannan, out beyond the joggers and the can-collectors, the site is being circled by the larger powers that define the city's present: developers, tech barons, the government — and the collusive combination of all three — as well as the activists and politicos who've battled construction for ages.
The Flower Mart is a story. But it's also indicative of a much larger story. And that may be the only story the city is interested in telling anymore.
David Repetto's organizational system doesn't seem to be much of either, but it works for him. In lieu of a computer, a dozen stacks of carbon-copied receipts are scattered around his desk, bound by binder clips and alphabetized by customers' first names. Or nicknames.
If the Flower Mart is a throwback to another era of San Francisco, Repetto is a throwback to another era of the Flower Mart. A century ago, when pushcart-toting immigrant farmers first gathered at Lotta's Fountain on Market Street to hawk flowers to passersby, it was a self-contained operation. They grew the flowers on land in the city's outer neighborhoods or the Peninsula, hauled them downtown, and sold them. For the most part, Repetto is still doing this. But, by the time the Mart's confederated, largely Italian and Japanese vendors moved from Fifth and Howard to its present digs in 1956, that system was already growing archaic. The same local and global factors that drove industrial jobs out of this city — and, for that matter, this country — wilted the flower business.
Now, the grandchildren of the growers at Lotta's Fountain must compete against growers thousands of miles away operating at a fraction of their costs. At around 1 a.m. on most nights, heavily laden cars pull up at the Mart. The drivers have arrived from the Los Angeles area with stems fresh off the plane from Ecuador or Colombia. They do a brisk business out on the dark streets unloading their wares to the Flower Mart vendors for resale before motoring back down south.
As such, within the Mart, vendors like Repetto who grow and sell their flowers have largely given way to vendors who act as middlemen between far-off growers and San Francisco buyers. The farmers market model that once characterized the Flower Mart has been superseded by a floral Costco, stocked with wholesale wares from around the globe.
Two stalls down from Repetto, Ron Gemignani personifies this transformation. The diminutive 67-year-old wholesaler ambles across the Mart to procure an armful of flowers from another vender to fill out an order. He glances at the flamboyant displays surrounding him and shrugs, disdainfully. "I don't put on a show like this," he says.
No, he does not. Gemignani's stall is a no-nonsense place. The particleboard partition walls are slightly obscured with completed jigsaw puzzles and his limited merchandise is casually tossed into a dozen plastic buckets. You like it? You buy it. "I know what I can sell. So I buy that. And a little more."
That's how it is. But it's not how it was. If you hike up Cambridge Street into McLaren Park in the southeast of San Francisco, you'll come to an aging house obscured by parkland. "My grandmother built that house," Gemignani says wistfully. It was surrounded by the family's farmland. The city, however, had other plans; the family was rousted via eminent domain, resettling in South San Francisco. But, in 1996, Gemignani sold that South City farm, as did so many other scions of immigrant flower families, undercut by the global market and tempted by local developers' insatiable desire for land, land, and more land.
"We had $53 in the checking account. What was I supposed to do?" he says. "I could sell cosmos for a buck-fifty a bunch in 1972, and a buck seventy-five a bunch in 1996. What's wrong with this picture?"
It's hard to get rich developing flowers. But developing land? That's different. The floral satellites in San Mateo, South City, and the Excelsior that supplied the Flower Mart have, one by one, been plowed under and sold for development.
And now developers have obtained the Mother Ship.
The Flower Mart occupies just one quadrant on the chessboard of city development. The pieces in this game figure to be the tallest San Francisco has ever seen.
Not so far from here, a clutch of SOMA skyscrapers existing only as watercolors are slated to loom over this city. The sight will greet the craning necks of passengers disembarking from the long-planned Transbay Transit Center, a rail hub connecting all nine Bay Area counties and the wider world beyond. It'll be the West Coast's ambitious answer to Grand Central Station.
Or perhaps not.
A simmering dispute between the city and the would-be developers of those skyscrapers boiled over in recent months, leading to a high-stakes legal standoff.
In return for being allowed to build far higher and denser than this city has ever before allowed, those developers were offered the opportunity to vote themselves into a special tax district. The vast amount of additional tax money they'd pay would fund rich amenities for the city below, and bankroll that ambitious, multi-billion-dollar Grand Central Station-to-be.
In recent months, however, several of the major developers claimed to be jolted to learn that the tax rate they're being asked to pay was double what the city led them to believe it would be. Threats of litigation ensued, costly delays or an out-and-out derailing of the Transbay project became a possibility, and the ongoing standoff commenced.
The city has portrayed the developers as greedy opportunists angling to wiggle out of a deal. But there is another way of seeing things: The publicly administered Transbay Transit Center has stumbled into a nearly $350 million shortfall. So, just as the city determined that money was desperately needed to fund it, the developers found themselves being told they needed to pony up more. Much more.
But, with the city starved for cash to fund the Transbay Transit Center, it cut a deal denying itself cash.
In June 2013, Kilroy Realty donated $500,000 at Mayor Ed Lee's behest to help bail out the city's America's Cup debt. Two months later, the Planning Commission greenlit Kilroy's request to alter already-approved plans for a tower at 350 Mission, allowing the construction of up to six additional floors to house the anchor tenant, Salesforce. While, theoretically, this could have triggered a reassessment of the entire building to provide the tax district with much-needed funds, instead only those additional floors will be tapped for the tax district.
The result is that Kilroy holds just as much voting power within the tax district as developers erecting massive skyscrapers. But, unlike those developers, who'll be taxed on the millions of square feet in their hundred-story buildings, Kilroy is only on the hook for those additional stories.
"Every other developer would looooove to have that deal," mutters one.
Since acquiring its first San Francisco skyscraper in 2010, Kilroy has quickly amassed nine more properties, including a 3.1-acre swath of Mission Bay and, now, the 5-acre Flower Mart. Until quite recently, city politicos and development-watchers wondered "Who's Kilroy?"
They're not asking that now.
The July announcement that Kilroy and the San Francisco Flower Growers Association had agreed to terms sparked a flurry of interest at the Flower Mart, in the media, and, internal emails reveal, within the Mayor's Office. Everyone wondered what would become of the vendors while Kilroy erected its skyscraper.
A letter from Kilroy chairman John Kilroy Jr. to Flower Mart vendors assures these tenants they'll "have a lease up to and during construction of the new facility" and "tenants in good standing will be offered leases in the new facility." And that new facility will be on the site of the current one: "Let me be absolutely clear — the Flower Mart will remain at its current location." A future watercolor may depict a tech fortress with the Flower Mart situated in the basement.
Flower vendors, like so many San Franciscans struggling to hang on in this city, can take solace that the place will carry on, with or without them. What's at question isn't so much that a Flower Mart will exist on-site in the future, but whether current vendors can stay in business long enough to be there. And a number of them have told SF Weekly, in no uncertain terms, that relocating for even a matter of weeks or months, let alone during years of construction, would be a death sentence.
"Do we have an idea about where the Flower Market vendors will move in the interim that this new complex is getting built?" asked mayoral spokesman Francis Tsang in an August email sent among mayoral staff, intended to shore up statements to the media. "Is the City helping them to locate temporary space?"
Todd Rufo, the head of the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) replied, one minute later, "The plan would be for them to stay on site during construction."
And yet that is, emphatically, not the plan. There is no plan.
Mike Grisso, Kilroy's senior vice president of development, confirms to SF Weekly that he looked into potentially shunting the displaced flower vendors onto Pier 38 or land in Mission Bay, reaching out to multiple city agencies.
Keeping every flower vendor on-site during construction, he says, "may not be the best option. It's too early to say."
The Mayor's Office and Kilroy were apparently better aligned in July.
In a series of emails, OEWD development director Ken Rich and Grisso batted back and forth a statement regarding Kilroy's imminent acquisition of the Mart, line-editing each other's text. At one point, the city's Rich writes to Kilroy's Grisso, "I will send it to press people and see what they think. They probably will want something shorter." Grisso responds, "how's this for shorter," and resends a shorter version.
A shorter version of Grisso's shorter version ran in the Chronicle two days later: The quote "The Flower Mart is a San Francisco institution — home to small businesses and good middle-income jobs" is attributed to Mayor Ed Lee. Buttressed by the mayor's statements, the headline of that story claims "Current Tenants Won't Be Uprooted."
Asked if it's normal for a developer to ghostwrite quotes for the mayor — quotes pertaining to what the mayor expects that developer to do — Grisso pauses. "I don't know," he replies.
The factors that pulled the rug out from under the Ron Gemignanis of the world and imploded the flower business are global. As are the overall factors driving so much of this city's rapid transfiguration. But, on a block-by-block and building-by-building level, this city operates at an insular level. Remarkably insular.
Prior to joining Kilroy several months ago, Grisso spent a dozen years with the city's Redevelopment Agency — the very outfit he subsequently called seeking potential Mission Bay space for displaced flower vendors.
And, before working for Kilroy, Grisso helped negotiate those aforementioned Transbay Transit Center deals — the ones that have since left other developers so livid.
In September, David Repetto's stall at the Mart was commandeered, at the rather sane hour of noon, for a press conference helmed by a trio of former city politicians: former board president Aaron Peskin, erstwhile supervisor and state Sen. Quentin Kopp, and former Mayor Art Agnos.
These three have kept themselves busy of late blowing up mayorally blessed development plans. Their weapon of choice has been the ballot measure: They undid the 8 Washington luxury condo project that way, then pushed an ordinance requiring voters to ratify virtually any waterfront development project.
And now, the trio sees the Flower Mart as another chance to stand against the mayor's sweeping development plans — this time while standing in front of Repetto's John Deere wall clock.
San Francisco is a complex place. Land-use issues are among its most complex. And the Flower Mart, a byzantine web of internecine ethnic and familial loyalties and prejudices, is about as complicated as they come. And that's just above the ground. Below, the future Central Subway will roll, as could trains headed to the Transbay Transit Center. In anticipation, the city is meticulously rezoning the entire sector skyward. The city's epicenter will, inevitably, shift south.
That's complicated. Peskin aims to keep things simple.
If he is unsatisfied with the positions taken by the city and Kilroy, he'll work to bring the issue to the voters with a campaign pitting the fate of salt-of-the-earth blue-collar workers against conquering tech interlopers.
Peskin promises the unsubtly titled "Flower Mart Protection Act of 2015" — which would lock in low height limits on the site — will be placed on the ballot if the flower vendors are made to relocate or otherwise complain that their livelihoods are being imperiled during construction. Period. Early polling indicates nearly eight out of 10 San Francisco voters could be inclined to vote for such a measure (people love flowers, remember) — saddling the proposed tech fortress of tomorrow with the height limits of today's warehouse.
The Flower Mart is a big place. And, in its way, it serves as all things to all people. For the growers and wholesalers hanging on in this business, it's the irreplaceable heart of the entire West Coast market. For the city and Kilroy, it's a lucrative scrap of ideally located and wholly underutilized land and, potentially, the opportunity to marry the city's past with its future.
And, for the familiar critics who've mobilized, it's a potent symbol of a complex, larger trend easily marketed to voters, a wedge issue (in 2015's mayoral re-election year no less), and a means with which to leverage themselves into this deal — and, the next one and the next one and the next one after that.
The Flower Mart, then, is a nexus of the conflicting forces at play in shaping this city. Change is coming to the city around it — but maybe not here. What distinguishes the Mart from all the other future sites of watercolor skyscrapers speckling San Francisco is its emotional tug. Like a cute and fuzzy species facing extinction, attention will be paid to the plight of this place, more so than a nondescript one.
In the abstract, the Flower Mart can be all things to all people. But, in the concrete, it cannot. Someone's vision for this site stands to conquer everyone else's; attempts to please everyone may end up pleasing no one.
The flower business, remarks one beleaguered florist within this warehouse, is hard, wet, and dirty. So much in this city is.
The sun rises at about 6:30 and David Repetto pauses for a moment and chuckles. Perhaps he knows he only has 10 and a half more hours work to do here before he goes home.
A thirtysomething female florist wanders up to place a major order. Like all of his early morning customers, Repetto knows her by first name; without breaking eye contact or slowing his banter, he reaches to his left and unearths her pile of receipts.
"So, what's your husband up to in Africa?"
"He's doing something in a copper mine. He'll be back in seven days. Maybe 10."
"Huh. Guess you miss him."
"Nah. Not really."
And everyone laughs. A bit uneasily. The real laughs require flora-related punchlines such as "This amaranthus — it looks like a tree!"
Well, that joke killed. Just as it would have a generation ago.
Other things, however, have changed. It's a different business run by different businesspeople and, to an extent, catering to different customers with different expectations. A man strides up to Repetto wielding a smartphone. This happens a lot now. He summons a photograph of a bouquet of deep burgundy flowers and inquires if Repetto can sell him some. But the farmer shakes his head. Those are chocolate cosmos. And they're out of season. Repetto offers a wan grin and glances up and around the vast warehouse. He pauses for a moment. And it's not entirely clear if his next words are meant to describe a flower, the Flower Mart writ large, or, perhaps, a bit of both:
"Some things," he says, "are just better-suited to exist in their own time."
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