San Francisco Fillmore Safeway store closes for good after one-year reprieve
Despite the outcry of the neighborhood over the past year, the Safeway grocery store on Webster Street in the Fillmore District is officially closing its doors on Friday.
Local residents said they are devastated that the store they have been going to for decades will be gone.
"I'm picking up my prescriptions, because this is the last day they are going to be open for prescription pickup," area resident Palmer Sessel told CBS News Bay Area.
He added that walking past all the empty shelves in the mostly deserted supermarket gave him an eerie feeling.
"It was a great blow to me, and people in the neighborhood. Particularly people with lesser incomes," Sessel said.
Safeway had said theft and safety concerns prompted them to close the location. The closure was initially announced over a year ago in January 2024 when officials said the land would be purchased by Align Real Estate and used for a housing development.
While it was initially slated to be shut down in March of last year, city officials made a deal with the supermarket chain to keep the location open until this week.
San Francisco District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and the Land Use and Transportation Committee met earlier this week to discuss next steps with Safeway.
"Our goal is to try to find a new grocery store to replace the in the interim, while the process for building more housing which is will take more time in that interim use," Mahmood told CBS News Bay Area.
City leaders hope to strike a deal where they can build a grocery store on the bottom, with the planned housing units on top.
"If we were able to get a grocery store in there today, it would take 15 to 18 months due to a lot of San Francisco permitting. But by changing some laws around conditional use permitting in formula retail, we can shave off 6 months from that process. So, the goal of my office will be streamlining the bureaucracy that makes it difficult to build a new grocery store, at a new grocery store, so it will get in there as well," he said.
Officials said there are nearly 34,000 neighbors in the surrounding Fillmore neighborhood who are living with food insecurity. While Mahmood and city leaders are working together to bring a temporary grocery store during the housing construction process, officials said there will also be more short-term solutions.
"We're working with the city and partners, to provide food access programs to the community that need that access today. We're working on activation, Farmers markets to provide the temporary services," he said.
The supervisor added that there will be another town hall in the coming weeks, as he hopes to more forward with next steps.
CBS News Bay Area reached out to Align Real Estate for comment and have not heard back.
